Get involved with a weekend service volunteer team. Consider serving once a month as an usher, greeter, at the coffee bar or in Port Mariners. Contact Kim.

Last week, I broke something. It’s something I’ve held onto, counted on, believed in, and needed. It’s something we all have. There’s nothing wrong with it, generally. In fact, finding a good one is a worthy practice. But, I broke mine last week.

I broke the rhythms of my daily life for 5 days. I went on vacation… without my kids. Whatever I usually do, I didn’t do on vacation (even some of the good things). I fell asleep when I was tired. I woke up when my eyes opened. I got out of bed when I was truly ready. I ate when I was hungry. I stopped eating… when I was tired. I went for a “run” (read: all-out mountain trail death sprint) with Amanda. She, who happens to be a runner, is convinced this our new “thing.” My body is firmly convinced it is not. I turned off all alarms, alerts, beeps, tones, keyboard sounds, and reminders of my usual rhythm. I changed the way I read the Bible. I talked differently to Amanda. I talked differently to God. Perhaps, because I was less hurried or less anxious or maybe, because I was free of the pressure to manage things, I felt a newness I desperately needed.

What is so surprising for me, most likely because I don’t do this enough, is that breaking any pattern is so very difficult. Even when I need to break the cycles that cause me harm, I find myself holding on to them with an uncommon protective vigilance. Summer is almost here. Kids in school naturally change their rhythm. We don’t. Perhaps, even without a really great vacation, a small change in the “way we do things around here” might be worth the effort.

I realize I can’t always break my rhythm with a vacation (my 15th anniversary was a great time for me to do so). But, in the rare and tiny pockets of time that offer an unexpected respite from the familiar cadence of my daily life, perhaps I’ll live differently within them: a cancelled meeting, early arrival at carpool pick up, someone else taking care of carpool altogether, accidentally leaving the phone in the car, or even a whole day off. Maybe, I’ll even learn how to actually carve out moments for that ever-elusive “margin” we’ve heard so much about but so rarely, seize…

…That is, until I hear my phone chime a predictable and timely reminder.

See you Sunday,

Jeff

Have you ever wondered how prayer works? Are you interested in learning more about the MCMV Prayer Team? Join us for lunch and a brief informational meeting. Questions? Contact Mike Kenyon.

Sunday, June 1, 12:45 – 1:30p
MCMV Upper Room, free

Jeff is taking a few days to be with his family this week, so we hope you enjoy this note from MCMV High School Pastor, Jordan Maslyn.

Hello Mariners family!

We are rapidly approaching Memorial Day Weekend – a weekend often characterized by vacations, barbecues, and time spent with loved ones, but it is also a weekend rooted in remembering. Our country has set aside this day, and this weekend, to take time from our busy work schedules to remember the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom as a nation.

As citizens of Jesus’ kingdom, this day can also serve as a beautiful reminder of a specific man, Jesus, who laid down His life for our own eternal freedom. So as we gather for church this weekend, and as you gather with friends and family for barbecues and parties, let us be a people who celebrate! Let’s celebrate the freedom we have been given while also remembering with gratitude the lives that have been laid down to maintain that freedom.

See you Sunday!

Jordan Maslyn

Attention readers: This Compass note has been hijacked by me 😀 , Kim Alexander.

Have you ever had one of those days where you knew something special was happening? You just know it is somehow set apart, anointed, something you were going to remember for a long time to come? For me this past Friday, May 9^th was one of those days. I was so excited to have Tricia Lott Williford come to speak to the women of our church. I had heard her share her story, read her book, shared it with others, and I just knew it would be great to have her with us.

I drove to Tricia’s hotel to pick her up; the plan was to share a meal together and get a bit more comfortable with one another before the event that evening. From the moment she said hello I knew Tricia was the real deal. She has that ability to make you feel like you’ve been friends forever. We shared lunch. Conversation came naturally. We laughed. We cried. We talked about woes of motherhood and the complexity of Mother’s Day.

The group of us, five ladies in all, found a commonality. We represented an average group of girls. But, the average girl, today’s woman is anything but average. We are sensitive and brave, adventurous and simple; we love our work both inside the home and out. We don’t want to be patronized by the image a women eating bon-bons, watching soap operas and listening to Amy Grant. We want to be challenged to step into all of the greatness that God has uniquely designed us to be. And in a moment of clarity, while sipping diet coke and listening to Tricia share about what God had laid on her heart to say later that night, God made it abundantly clear that He had set this day apart. He had a divine plan, His hand was in it and He was the reason it was going to be one of those truly unique days.

You could hear a pin drop as Tricia shared with us later that evening. There was a stillness in the room and we listened to her carefully recount the moments of a day that was so tragic. Tricia lost her husband suddenly and tragically. One day he was with her, the next he was not. But she had a way of letting us come as close as we dared to our greatest fear in life. She spoke to every woman in the room. All too many knew Tricia’s story on a personal level. But, so many more could see themselves in it through any number of challenges. As she closed her message we were challenged to trust God more. To find hope in His faithfulness even when it seems like He is far away or that the pain is too difficult to bear or that the miracle we had prayed for was given to someone else. That in those moments God is looking us in the face and saying, “I got this! Trust me! It’s gonna be ok.”

Ladies, it was a privilege to have shared this day with you. Thank you for inviting your friends to come. Thank you for being women who want to be challenged, who want to be the best you can be wherever God has you at this time. For me, a broken, trying, hopeful girl doing my best to love God and others, I am truly grateful for you.

Kim

To all our moms:

For always believing we were something special… Thank you.
For driving us everywhere… Thank you.
For making bad dreams vanish… Thank you.
For calmly dealing with any: thing, persons, or inexplicable behaviors related to our experience in junior high school… Thank you.
For every time you forgave us for losing a shoe… Thank You.
For every time you found that shoe, in plain sight, right in front of us… Thank you.
For letting us learn some lessons, the hard way… Thank you.
For making memory-making a priority… Thank you.
For finally giving in to getting us a dog/cat/hamster/goldfish/lizard… Thank you.
For any time you let us stay home sick when the word “sick” covered a variety of ailments which seldom involved any real illness… Thank you.
For helping us find our way… Thank you.
For stability… Thank you.
For making birthdays matter… Thank you.
For letting us attempt any musical instrument… Thank you.
For letting go of that time we broke that thing you really cared about with a soccer ball/basketball/baton/Nerf dart… Thank you.
For helping us see the things that really matter… Thank you.
For giving us such a great model of how to be a parent to our own kids… Thank you.
For being you… Thank you.

We love you Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

See you Sunday,

Jeff

Join us for a night of Encouragement, Laughter and Hope with guest speaker Tricia Lott Williford, author of And Life Comes Back. Enjoy a concert from our very own Kim Johnson and shop homemade products in the lobby. Invite your friends! Click here to register and for more info. Questions? Email Kim Alexander.

Friday, May 9, 7p
Mariners Mission Viejo
$5 pre-sale, $10 at the door

Bless our God, O peoples! Give him a thunderous welcome! Didn’t he set us on the road to life? Didn’t he keep us out of the ditch? He trained us first, passed us like silver through refining fires, Brought us into hardscrabble country, pushed us to our very limit, Road-tested us inside and out, took us to hell and back; Finally he brought us to this well-watered place.
– Psalm 66:8-12 [MSG]

This past week, we started our Spring Rooted experience. As I talked with people, giving them a picture of what is to come in the next ten weeks, I saw a number of reactions. Some looked right at me with eager excitement. Some nudged each other. Some stared at the floor. Some shuffled their feet and attempted to get comfortable while I described how some of the best “stuff” of Rooted is in the parts that are a bit un-comfortable.

But, everyone’s attention gained focus, unblinking as I talked about the value of each of our stories. We acquire, quite tragically, a belief that only some parts of our stories matter or are worthy of being shared. We learn, through the subtle parlance of social conditioning that our own story, the personal narrative that informs how we live, may not be worth the risk of sharing. Yet, it is God who is working his own redemption narrative through (not in spite of) the story of our lives – every chapter, every page, every sentence of dialogue, in every setting, and in every conflict, God is at work in us.

What I am discovering (often unpleasantly) is that God’s script to intentionally shape me into the kind of person He intended me to become occasionally surpasses my fiercely defended need for comfort. The Psalmist writes that God should be granted a “thunderous welcome” because “He trained us… push[ing] us to our very limit.”  People who push me to my limits are hard-pressed to receive any kind of welcome from me. But limit pushing, it turns out, is how God’s renovation script often meets our story. Someday, I will learn to greet trials with gratitude. Someday, I’ll give God His due applause for taking me to “hell and back.” In the meantime, I’ll learn to thank God that He knows more than I do; that His intention is, in fact, to shape me. In all of it: the discomfort, the conflict, and the being made new, constitute my story.

And that story is a good one – one worth telling.

See you Sunday,

Jeff

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”  Matthew 28:19-20a

Jesus’ final words, as Matthew records them, are among the most central to historic Christianity. Jesus instructs the apprentices to His way of life (the disciples) to multiply themselves. In some cases, this gets interpreted flatly as: “Go make converts…” In that sense, the principle goal of faith is merely to give to someone a fresh thought on the spiritual life. But, Jesus tells people who have recklessly given up their lives to follow Him to help other people to do the same foolish thing. And, the task has the whole world in view.

Then He instructs His own disciples (the insecure, shallow, power-hungry, people-pleasing, attention-grabbers that they were) to baptize these new apprentices. They’ll immerse these new disciples in water, symbolic of dying to an old life. Then, they’ll be lifted up out of the water soaked in new life with Jesus.

For a lot of us, we wonder how to “disciple” people. What does that really mean? We neither want to seem pushy nor insincere about conveying what life with Jesus is really about. Churches have a number of ways in which people come to understand all of what it means to walk with Jesus. No system is truly perfect. But, the best methods involve discussion, authentic relationships, personal experiences with the practices of discipleship, and (not least) an examination of God’s Word, the Bible. Mariners’ method is called ROOTED. If you are looking to get the clearest picture of what it means to follow Jesus, Rooted is for you. If you are a person taking Jesus’ commission seriously, consider inviting people to join you in a Rooted experience (even if you’ve already been a part of one). Get signed up for Rooted here.

This Sunday, we’ll celebrate, publicly, what life with Jesus is about in baptism. It’s a powerful symbol succinctly telling the story of letting old things go and embracing the Holy Spirit infused newness of life that is given to us in Jesus. If you’ve never been baptized as an adult, consider what is holding you back. Baptism isn’t a gimmick. It’s a powerful public marker, made in the presence of the church family, of the work Jesus has done and is doing in our lives. Email Kim Alexander to let us know if you’d like to be baptized. But, should you show up and wish you had emailed us, don’t worry about it, the water’s fine. We’ll make room.

I cannot think of a better way to illustrate all of what Jesus accomplished during Easter weekend than with Baptism. I am as excited about this coming Sunday as I have been for any since I started at Mariners.

See you Sunday,

Jeff