1 Easter Sunday corporate Worship.  April 24th 10:30am at Kirkpatrick Community Center

2 East Nashville Community Garden.  Work starts Saturday April 9th at 10:30am at Kirkpatrick Community Center

3 Easter egg hunts. One Friday at Kirkpatrick and one Sunday after the service at Kirkpatrick.

These are chances to both be served and to serve.  If you have children then you know how fun it is to see them looking for bright happy eggs.  But even better is the inevitable child that discovers that they are good at finding and start helping those children that are younger or less adept.  The community garden harvest is open to everyone.  The planting and weeding and maintenance are chances to get outside and get some light exercise and stress relief.  Easter Sunday we want everyone to bask in the joy that Jesus is risen and remains so.  We always need volunteers at Church to greet and teach and setup and all sorts of things.

I wish this was at Kirpatrick but it’s not

This can be

and this will be

August to October 2010: The family at East Nashville Community Church grew immensely! We got to know many of the members of our community and had awesome opportunities to love each one of them! We began our Saturday morning activities (CommunityKids and Complete) and added some new staff members (staff page coming soon). God continued to move through the community and we saw many people come to know Christ…

November 2010: East Nashville Community Church held its first baptism service. Three of our children were baptized! watch?v=BodWAmXu6nc

December 2010: We saw more growth in December. Thanks to the assistance of churches in our area and across the country – Flint Hill Baptist Church (NC), Three Forks Baptist Church (NC), Boiling Springs Baptist Church (NC), and Rehoboth United Methodist Church (TN) – we were able to serve our community by handing out treat bags to the children, provide gifts to families who could not afford it, and provide holiday meals to almost every family our church!!

January 2010: In January, we began to feel God drawing us to expand to other areas  of East Nashville (East Nashville spans 2 zip codes in Nashville). We began holding Wednesday night worship services at one of the local music venues every other week and Bible study/fellowship the other weeks. Through this, we were able to minister  and show love to people who would not be able to fellowship with other believers (many of the folks living in East Nashville are artists and generally work on the weekends). The leadership team also started praying for God to provide us an additional building to enable us to serve during the week and other times when Kirikpatrick Community Center (where we hold our Sunday service and Saturday activities) is closed. Our pastor, Matthew Costner, also began working on a book, Crackheads, CEOs, and Other Christians: A Book on Acceptance.

February 2010: February was a busy time for us. East Nashville Community Church teamed up Lifelines to start a Bible study in the Edgefield Manor Senior Living Center on Wednesday afternoons along with our other activities.  As mentioned above, we continued to pray and ask God for guidance in our next steps as a church. In late February, God led us to a building!

Which brings us to the present…

On March 1, we signed a lease on a 6,000 square foot building in the heart of East Nashville. Because our mission as a church is to Love East Nashville, we chose this to be the name of the building. The building is located directly across the street from Nashville Auto Diesel College, it is approximately 4 miles from the James A Cayce housing projects (where we hold our Sunday and Saturday activities), it is centrally located between the gentrified areas of East Nashville and the section 8 housing areas as well. With this space we are hoping to join all areas of the community and complete the work that is being done there. This building will hold our church offices, counseling area, exercise room, music venue (for worship services and general concerts), game room, and much more! As you may have noticed, we are VERY excited about this! Through the provision of God, we will now be able serve areas of the community often left out or forgotten.

We want to take this opportunity to thank each and every person, church, organization, and business who has helped and prayed for us. Without your love and support, much of this would not have happened! We are so excited to see God moving in our midst! We have seen children and adults come to know Christ, broken relationships restored, hopelessness healed and love.

One of the favorite songs of our church members (especially the kids) is God of This City. It has kind of become our mantra. The songs repeats “Greater things have yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city!” We believe that!

Will you join us?

What a crazy month we had in July. In July, we saw God move in our midst in ways that we truthfully weren’t ready for, but was super exciting to experience. We saw over 100 people profess Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior! We saw lives being restored and redeemed! To God Be The Glory!

In August we have been meeting at Kirkpatrick Recreation Center. This is the neighborhood we have been praying for God to open doors in and boy has he ever. We love every second we get to spend here. On August 1, 2010 we had our service outside under the big tree to talk about an even bigger God. On August 8, 2010 we had service inside to be in the cool (The temperature was ridiculous).

Please be in prayer for our community and us as we share the love of Jesus to those around us. We are in need of a way to purchase or rent a house in the area to serve as our church house to have discipleship classes, offices, fellowship meetings, etc. We love Kirkpatrick but having a place that is our own where our church family can come and go as we please would be such a win for the people around who are looking to find moments of solitude and rest.

Please enjoy the pictures. There will be more to come. Join us as we continue to pray and expect big things to happen and to continue to happen as we share Jesus in our community.

Out of the 115,000 persons, 35% percent of those are currently living in poverty (combined household income of $22,400 for a family of four), and many of those live in section 8 housing. In the section 8 housing that surrounds where we will be meeting, the majority of those individuals live on less than $5,000 per year. 87% of those persons are single female parent led households with 57% of the entire population being under 18 years old. Our community’s average age is 34.

In addition to a large percentage of the individuals being poor, the crime rate is over the top. The burglary in East Nashville is 5x the national average, murder is 3x the national average, and rape is 2x the national average. Needless to say, our community needs to be transformed by the redemptive love of Jesus.

Please be in prayer for us as we share and show the love of Jesus to our community. Thanks!