Before you go there, though - why not check out this week’s edition of Faith Today, our new show where we look at what’s going on in the world through the lens of faith!

Agape Today #1 August 2011 (Birmingham, Alabama) from Faith Today on Vimeo.

Hello all: We’ve still moved! PinsonChurch.com is now www.AgapePinson.com. You can find out everything you need to know about us there: Pinson Church.

Pinson

Pinson

Do you need help with food? If you do, we give away bags of groceries this Sunday morning at Agape. Here’s how it works:

Come at 10am and sign up to receive food.
Enjoy a fresh, made from scratch breakfast with us (free!)
Worship begins at 10:45, followed by a Biblical message.
Food will be distributed shortly after noon. If you can’t come at 10, you can come shortly after noon, but please know that we normally run out of meat early.

See you Sunday!

Don’t forget that tomorrow (Wednesday) night we are continuing our small group classes at Agape! It is not too late at all to get involved in a group, and you have two to choose from:

The 1st Corinthians 13 class is taught by Kevin Small and is centered on the “love chapter” of the Bible. This week we will be covering what the Bible teaches us that love actually is. I went to this class last week and had a great time!

The Personal Ministry class is going through a book called “Instruments in the Hands of the Redeemer”, and is designed to teach people how to engage in one on one ministry. It is a class that teaches how to use God’s Word to help people through trials, how to counsel broken people, and how to encourage each other. I heard great feedback on the class this week.

Both classes begin around 7, but come early for coffee and fellowship!

Nursery is provided and potty trained kids get to go with Kids ReVive to be either taught by Mrs. Lynn or Sam and Laurie. Kid’s ReVive and EPIC youth both start at 6:30, so be sure and come early.

Speaking of EPIC: This is from David: We are fasting tomorrow (Wed) praying for purity among EPIC. Specifically sexual purity. Understanding that if the demand for the sex trade goes away, then so does the sex trade. So we are calling ourselves to a deeper place of purity Also, Sunday morning at 9:40AM, David, Neely and the youth are meeting at the altar Sunday before breakfast to pray for those caught in sex slavery, and they invite all of us to join them.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for Linda Roberts. Linda has had a terrible increase in pain over the last two weeks and has had to be put on Oxycontin. She is only able to stay in her wheel chair for an hour or two at a time, and thus has not been able to join us at Agape for the last few weeks. I talked with her yesterday, and she wanted to tell everybody hello, and to let you know that she (and Jason + the kids) have really missed everybody! She also asked for us to pray for her pain. It is very severe, and demoralizing to her. She is scheduled to attend a pain clinic soon, but first will likely be in the hospital for 2 weeks for extended therapy. Please, please remember them in prayer!

Also pray for Charish and Shae - if you will recall, they were both baptized at Agape in January. They both were involved in wrecks over the weekend, and Charish hurt her back. Please pray for healing and grace on their cars, which were somewhat damaged.

See you tomorrow night!

Chase

Hello all,

Wow!! This is an action packed week at Agape! First of all, we kick off with breakfast and food pantry this Sunday. We need your help! If some folks could come a bit early Sunday morning (say, at 8:45) and help get ready for the food pantry, that would be great! We already have an assembly line set up to make food bags. so we should be able to get them made quickly with a little help. This might be a long email, so here are the highlights: 1. Food Pantry this Sunday 2. The message this Sunday is…interesting 3. Awakening Sunday night at 6:30 4. Wednesday Night ReLaunch this next Wednesday night at 6:30.

During the message this week, we are in 1 Timothy 2:8-15 . If you click that link, or in some browsers, just hover over it, you will see that this is quite a passage! Is the Bible sexist? Was Paul a misogynist? Was this little section only applicable to the first century, or to Ephesus? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO US? These are the questions that we will be tackling Sunday in the message. I am not going to lie to you - this is a tough passage - especially for us 21st century Americans. This passage is also one of the reasons why we have made an intentional change in our teaching of late in moving more towards going through entire Bible books during a message series. Doing it this way - we can’t skip the hard parts, or the awkward parts. We can’t pick and choose the parts of God’s Word that we want everybody to hear. Instead - we have to wrestle with all of it, and all of it is God-Breathed and inspired. I believe this will be a challenging message for both the speaker and the listeners; for both men and women; and for us as a congregation. In addition to that, I believe it will be very good and comforting for us - because God is good. His Word is good. His plans are good!

SUNDAY NIGHT - at 6:30 our friend Shawn Lombard is joining us for Awakening!!! Awakening is a refreshing time of worship and prayer that has the goal of seeing revival in our area of Birmingham, and of elevating our own worship and prayer lives. Shawn is a very powerful worship leader, and if you were at the first Awakening, you might remember how wonderful it was. This is something you are not going to want to miss! Here is a video of Shawn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgY8wl3ub0A and here is a link to the Awakening Facebook page. If you are coming….could you confirm your reservation online?

Finally - NEXT WEDNESDAY NIGHT (March 2nd) at 6:30pm, we are ReLaunching our Wednesday nights @Agape. Kids ReVive will be revitalized and meeting in a new place, and there will be three new small group classes that you can participate in. We will start at 6:30 with coffee and treats, and then break up into classes. Please make plans to join us for this very important Wednesday! Here are the details of the classes below:

What Is This Thing Called Love? taught by Kevin Small
“8 Weeks in 1 Corinthians 13″

Session 1: Importance of Love
Session 2: What Love Is
Session 3: Content Like Jesus
Session 4: Mannered Like Jesus
Session 5: Giving and Forgiving Like Jesus
Session 6: Handle Stress Like Jesus
Session 7: Pure Like Jesus
Session 8: Dependable Like Jesus

Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands taught by Michael Fargarson
This class is focused on teaching people how to engage in one on one ministry and will be a practical
survey of the book Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp. Some things addressed by the class will include:

Fulfilling God’s purpose in our relationships
Properly using the Bible to help someone through life’s trials
Helping others in the midst of suffering
Identifying the real problems that must be addressed for us to see God’s will done in other’s lives
Why and how we speak the truth in love to others
Giving people what they need to change
Faith Foundations 101 taught by Chase Thompson
“Important Questions – Useful Answers”

Session 1: How can I know God is real?
Session 2: How can I know the Bible is trustworthy?
Session 3: How was the world created? What about evolution?
Session 4: Who was Jesus?
Session 5: Why did Jesus come? What is the Gospel?
Session 6: What is the church and how did it start?
Session 7: What happens when we die, and how does the world end?
Session 8: Your Questions and Answers

This Sunday morning, beginning at 10am, we will be having our food pantry ministry at Agape. What this means is that if you are a family that needs food (and you meet certain income qualifications) we will have a free large bag of groceries to give you. If you are a widow, or person with many children, we can possibly help more than that. Here is how our Sunday morning process will work:

10:00Am - Arrive and those that need food, sign up at the food ministry table in the sanctuary.
10:02Am - The entire congregation - (members, guests, people that come for food) sit down and eat a home cooked breakfast, which includes made from scratch biscuits, eggs, homemade pancakes, juice, and more. All are invited to eat with us, and there is no charge.
10:40am - Worship starts (note: we have no special dress code at Agape…come dressed as casual as you like!)
11:?? At some point, the worship music will end, children’s church will begin, and there will be a Biblical message given

At approximately 12:15-12:30, we will begin to hand out the free bags of groceries. The people who arrived first will be the first to pick up their food. If you are unable, or not interested in coming to breakfast and worship with us - don’t worry…you can still get a bag of food! Just come at 12:15 to pick up the food. There will be several people in line in front of you, and it may be that we run out of meat (when we don’t have enough) but there is generally enough food to give out, even to the latecomers.

Feel free to email us through our contact page with any questions.

We look forward to seeing you Sunday!

Does everybody remember that we are meeting at Living Word Church this Sunday morning, instead of at Agape!? If you are like me - perhaps that has slipped your mind, so let me remind you: This Sunday, at 10am, we need to be at Living Word Church building (directions below) at 10am. Pastor Bo Johnson called me this week to let me know that they would be having breakfast for us, and encouraged us to come at 10, so let’s get there a slight bit earlier than the time I gave this past Sunday morning, and come hungry!

Once again - come to Living Word Church this Sunday, at 10am, hungry for breakfast, fellowship, worship and the Word of God! How do you get there? LWC is just a short drive past Pinson High School, on highway 75, heading to Oneonta. It is a five minute (3.1 mile) drive from Agape, and a one minute drive from Pinson Valley High School. Here’s a link for directions: CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS

Also this Sunday NIGHT, at 6pm, we will have Genesis at our house. All are invited - bring some food to share. This will be our kickoff Genesis meeting for 2011, and will help us get back into the habit of meeting regularly.

See you Sunday (at Living Word Church),

Chase

Upcoming Events:

All of February: No Adult Bible Study or Kids ReVive@ Agape (see below for relaunch in March). EPIC YOUTH IS MEETING AS NORMAL

Sunday, February 20: Joint Service part 2 - Agape to join Living Word church - I will be preaching there, and their worship team will be leading worship. ALSO: Genesis Sunday night at 6pm.
Sunday, February 27: Awakening: Worship and Prayer, led by Shawn Lombard - Sunday night @6:30pm.
Wednesday, March 2: Wednesday Night ReLaunch.
Coming in March: 1st Timothy series within a series: How to minister as the Body of Christ.
March 26 (tentative date): Man Gathering: Featuring fellowship, large chunks of meat, and other primal things. Led by: Louis “Captain America” Gruendler
April 22nd: SECRET CHURCH simulcast at Agape live and featuring the teaching of Dr. David Platt.
Coming in April: Cleanup Day @Agape.

Don’t forget that NEXT SUNDAY we will be joining up with Living Word Church (1/2 mile north of Pinson High School on Highway 75) for worship and word. We need to be there at 10:15, and we will leave a few trusty folks behind at the Agape building to help you remember if you forget.

Also - we are having a bit of a food drive this Sunday. Mary has asked us to bring some boxes of cereal to give away in the community. Could you go through your pantry (or go to the store) and bring some unopened boxes of cereal to give away? That would be great, and would be good for our community as we are rarely able to offer cereal to our food pantry friends.

I look forward to seeing you Sunday!

Chase

Upcoming Events: (DONT FORGET IN ONE WEEK WE GO TO LIVING WORD CHURCH TO JOIN THEM FOR WORSHIP!)

All of February: No Adult Bible Study or Kids ReVive@ Agape (see below for relaunch in March). EPIC YOUTH IS MEETING AS NORMAL

Sunday, February 13: 1st Timothy Series: Fight the Good Fight (David McConnell preaching) plus Mini food drive - bring cereal for the food pantry!
Sunday, February 20: Joint Service part 2 - Agape to join Living Word church - I will be preaching there, and their worship team will be leading worship. ALSO: Genesis Sunday night at 6pm.
Sunday, February 27: Awakening: Worship and Prayer, led by Shawn Lombard - Sunday night @6:30pm.
Wednesday, March 2: Wednesday Night ReLaunch. NEW! IMPROVED! Shiny! Cleans and polishes! (Real details to come very soon)
Coming in March: 1st Timothy series within a series: How to minister as the Body of Christ.
March 26 (tentative date): Man Gathering: Featuring fellowship, large chunks of meat, and other primal things. Led by: Louis “Captain America” Gruendler
Coming in April: Cleanup Day @Agape.