The local business we visited this week has become kind of a “heart of Spring Hill” kind of place for locals – we headed over to Old School Cafe for breakfast.  Located in the old building for Spring Hill High School at the corner of Duplex Rd and 31, this place has done the city a REALLY cool service by turning a historic Spring Hill landmark into a nostalgic – and EXTREMELY good – breakfast and lunch cafe.  The vibe of the cafe shows you how they’ve embraced its history…

Coolest part of Old School, to me, is the fact that when you’re there you feel like you’re stepping into a nostalgic movie scene in a 1960′s diner.  In all the cool ways and none of the bad ones, it feels like you’re stepping back in time 50 years. Very cool vibe.  The food is AWESOME.  Bill, the owner, has been a high-end chef in multiple locations and apprenticed under a German chef for a few years. Even though the food is classic diner food (eggs, bacon, potatoes, biscuits, etc) it’s seriously incredible. Everything hits the spot and all three of us ‘gents cleaned our plates  Ours was $6/person but you get a LOT of food.

Breakfast is classic breakfast foods and the lunch menu is a solid “meat and 3″ menu.  Old School is apparently renowned by its regulars (of which there are many) for its Derby Pie

Bill Corbett: owner, chef, cool dude

Old School cafe is owned by Bill and Maude Corbett.  One of our favorite aspects of Old School Cafe was why they’re closed for dinner. Bill and Maude have a special needs son with Down Syndrome that they love very much.  Even though it might be good for their business to be open for dinner, they’ve chosen to stick to breakfast and lunch so they can be home in the evenings with their son, who needs extra attention from them.

Other facts about Old School Cafe…

• Located in the old Spring Hill High School building, which closed in 1992
• The cafe closes at 2pm and is closed on Sundays
• It’s cash only, so bring yo’ wallets
• Famous for their Derby Pie… save room for dessert
• You can expect to spend around $7-8 for a REALLY GOOD breakfast or lunch

All in all, we LOVED everything about this place – food, vibe, and ownership – and will be having meetings there in the near future.  Help out “Old School” by sharing this post on your Facebook pages and dropping by for breakfast or lunch!

10 FROM THE VAULT

1. How do I decide which Christian preachers, teachers, and authors to listen to and which to avoid? In the over-churched Bible Belt where which Christian author(s) you read is kind of a weird status symbol, this post was both highly-trafficed and highly-important.

2. Profiles of the Religious, Irreligious, and Gospel person. The Bible doesn’t teach – like the church often does – that there are “two ways to live – God’s way and Man’s way”.  This post covers the “3 ways to live” that Jesus talked about and helps you figure out who you are.

3. Some thoughts about church size. I wrote this post for everyone who – like me – has either felt that “bigger churches are better” or felt that “smaller churches are better”.  Some thoughts from the Bible about church size.

4. Suburban Christians: change your fuel. A post about why many suburban Christians seem tired in their zeal for God.

5. Why aesthetics and media are important to Jesus’ mission. I wrote this post to help people understand why our graphics, video, multimedia are really important to us as good missionaries in our culture.

6. Will people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace?  This was a followup post to a sermon that highlighted the scandalous nature of grace. Many people left this sermon wondering, “But won’t people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace!?”  Here’s a Biblical answer to that question.

7. Is church membership Biblical?  Is church membership just a social construct? An organizational necessity? Or is it actually Biblical?  If so, why don’t I ever read about it in the Bible?

8. A third way to read the gospels.  This post highlights why many people read the story of Jesus’ life and come away discouraged instead of hopeful.

9. Why does our staff schedule meetings away from the church building?  For everyone who asks the question, “Why do those guys schedule meetings at Starbucks when they could have meetings at the church building for free!?”

10. What are proper and improper ways to express yourself in corporate worship?  Am I OK to raise my hands during worship? What about running flags down the aisles?  Can I set off M-80′s in response to God’s greatness in worship? This post answers all the questions many Christians have about how they can express themselves in worship.

UPDATE: someone asked the very good question, “Well then, what is forgiveness?” in the comment section. Click there to see that definition.

First off – HUGE thanks to our Kids’ Ministry workers (Kids’ Ministry was PACKED today) and another HUGE thanks to the people who stood during the first half of our 2nd WG to make room for guests to have a seat. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH!  I will not be preaching a 45 minute sermon again soon, I promise… probably

After WG’s today, people had a lot of questions about the “10 things forgiveness is not” list. This list is originally from Mark Driscoll.  Because there were so many questions, I wanted to repost here…

10 things forgiveness is not

1. FORGIVENESS IS NOT APPROVING OR DIMINISHING SIN.

2. FORGIVENESS IS NOT ENABLING SIN.

3. FORGIVENESS IS NOT DENYING A WRONGDOING.

4. FORGIVENESS IS NOT WAITING FOR AN APOLOGY.

5. FORGIVENESS IS NOT FORGETTING.

6. FORGIVENESS IS NOT CEASING TO FEEL THE PAIN.

7. FORGIVENESS IS NOT A ONETIME EVENT.

8. FORGIVENESS IS NOT NEGLECTING JUSTICE.

9. FORGIVENESS IS NOT TRUSTING.

10. FORGIVENESS IS NOT RECONCILIATION.

FORGIVENESS AND JUSTICE

Now, in hearing this, some of you, like me, will have strong sense of justice. You say, “But if I forgive them, where’s the justice?” Justice comes, friends, ultimately from Jesus. Either they will come to faith in Christ and you will get your justice at the cross, where Jesus’ blood was shed in their place for their sins as Jesus’ blood was shed in your place for your sin, because Lord knows we’ve hurt people too, or, if they remain unrepentant, your forgiving them does not mean that they are ultimately forgiven. They’ve sinned against you and God, and as you forgive them, you’re leaving them to Jesus. And if they live in a state of unrepentance and they don’t come to Jesus for forgiveness, they will stand before Jesus in the end. And they will be judged and sentenced to the conscious eternal torments of hell to suffer forever for all of their sin, paying their eternal debt to the living God. So, in forgiving someone, we are not neglecting justice. We’re leaving it to the perfect judge to enact perfect justice, either at the cross or in hell, but either way justice will be served. And we forgive in light of that.

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But in the midst of all of those things, this definitely happened…

Our first ever “worship injury”.  That’s how Spirit-filled WG’s were this morning

not actual T2C logo

We’ve been taking time on the blog for the last week to roll out the major initiatives from our elders for the next year.  We hit the first two major emphases HERE and HERE.  The third major emphasis addresses something we’ve seen God building within our body for a LONG time now…

Gender-specific discipleship and training for Bridge women

One of the interesting things about The Bridge is the uncommonly high number of godly, courageous men that permeate our church and disciple and lead like men should.  This is both Biblical and awesome as our culture increasingly sees boys try to stay boys forever and avoid manly responsibility at home, work, and church.

What we’ve seen in the last few years though is God providing a groundswell of godly, leadership-oriented women in our church body who are hungry to minister to other women.  In addition to the virtual uprising of godly women passionate for ministry we’ve also seen God entrust The Bridge with HUNDREDS of young women, new moms, and new wives who need encouragement, discipleship, and training.  This is good, as Titus 2 gives these instructions to women in a young pastor’s church…

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Seeing both what God has been doing in the women of our church body and this command in Scripture, we’re working toward launching a “Titus 2 Collective” (T2C) later this year with the vision of raising up an army of grace-filled, counter-cultural, godly women in Spring Hill, Thompson Station, and Columbia.  We’re still working on laying the foundation of everything this will be, but we know we want it to include…

• Leadership from godly women who are called to encourage and help shepherd other women
• Encouragement for tired, discouraged, and often guilt-laden singles, wives, and mothers
• Training in Biblical womanhood in the three roles mentioned in Titus 2 (Christian, wife, mother)

A lot of people ask the question, “Then how does God feel toward me when I sin?”  The answer is, “Exactly how he felt toward Jesus when he did not sin.”

Then last night and this morning it seemed like a few people all had the same concern with this statement. All four people voiced it differently, but all of their concerns could be stated like this…

“OK, I get grace and I believe it.  But won’t people just keep on sinning if you preach too much grace!?”

The assumption is that what a person who’s walking in sin needs is to be threatened with the law and made to feel guilty in order to get them to obey. First, I just want to say that all of these people – and you, if you have that same concern – have a good desire. They desire to see people glorify God and not harm others in how they live – a desire that The Bible is very much for!  But Biblically, saying “If you give people too much grace, they’ll stop obeying!” is like saying, “If you give people too much oxygen, they’ll stop breathing!“.  A few things from Scripture…

• Grace always comes before obedience in the Bible.  The Bible is so rich and true that we learn not just from what it says, but from how it says what it says.  Have you ever noticed that there is not a single command (imperative) about what we should do in the New Testament that isn’t preceded by a reminder about what God has already done (indicative)?  Seriously. Not one. In every epistle in the New Testament, the readers are FIRST reminded that because of their union with Christ, God is going to accept them regardless of their track record. Only AFTER that are people instructed about how to honor God with their lives.

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THE LAW AND GRACE: TRACKS AND A TRAIN

Move from “having” to “producing” good church leaders

About a year ago in one of the most important staff meetings we’ve ever had, we drew this image on the board and talked about it for about 40 minutes…

HERE’S WHAT THIS MEANS…

Unify on a course for relocation

From a pure attendance standpoint, the past few years have been a tidal wave of grace upon our church body…

• WG attendance has grown from around 80 to 425 (this week’s attendance)
• We’ve moved to two WG’s with the possibility of launching a third later this year
• The Kids Ministry, our primary space “problem”, has grown from around 30 to well over 100 kids weekly
• 580 people – an all time high – attended our Christmas Eve Eve services a few weeks ago

WHAT THIS WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2012

We’re still a fair distance away from relocation and definitely won’t be relocating this year.  Our emphasis this year is to unify on a course for relocation.  Here’s what’s going on…

• The elders launched a relocation team comprised of Pastor Josh, Scott Shoopman, Dave Hall, and Dave Malin to figure out how to figure this out!  These men have been working for about four months on this.

PDP

To download this self-assessment tool, click the link above.  Once you’ve completed it, to maximize the impact of the PDP…

• Ask your HG leader to talk through it with you, giving you a chance to confess your sins to someone, be reminded of grace, and helped to move in a Godward direction.

• Talk through it with your spouse and saved children. Husbands, lead your families in this.

• Ask a godly man or woman from your HG to complete it with you and then decide on a time to get together and talk through what you find.