Spring bring new things.  New growth and rebirth and hope seem to sprout up everywhere.  With Christ all things are made new.  One really amazing thing about God is that his actions are continual.  God is eternal and therefore not bound by time.  He is constantly and continually acting.  Even when things look like they aren’t blooming there is growth internally that is just as vigorous, just not obvious.  It is so wonderful that there are times like Spring when God makes it easier to see the gifts that he is always giving us.  We at East Nashville Community Church are planning on celebrating God’s gift of obviousness this spring in many ways but there are three that I want to make sure everyone that checks this out knows about.

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

Our Pastor Matthew Costner, the brand new daddy, is in North Carolina this week preaching at Flint Hill Baptist Church.  Then he’s helping Three Forks Baptist Church kick of an amazing new youth event.  Both of these churches have been extremely supportive of us and we just wanted to share what God has been doing in a personal way with them.  Dave Lippert is preaching in Matt’s place this week.  A break from Big Buts in the Bible to learn about how we can partner with other Christians that are called to missional lifestyles and offering everything to worship Jesus Christ through service.  If you are part of our family, and we believe that if you are in Christ we are united, let’s all pray that God transforms us into true living sacrifices.

As I am sure you are aware, many new and exciting things have happened at East Nashville Community Church since we last posted.  Here is a quick synopsis of the last 7 months (with pictures).

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?

Since we’ve been meeting we have seen 85 people accept Christ!!! Here are some pictures of one of the events with On The Go Ministries.

Thanks for visiting our church site. We are a church plant that is starting up in East Nashville. In East Nashville (zip codes 37206 and 37216) there are roughly 115,000 people, with 100 churches that have an average weekly attendance of 50. This means that there are currently 110,000 unchurched, dechurched, persons living 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!