Ministry in Motion

Lord, as I look to the New Year please don’t let me forget - - T hat accomplishments  come in the doing, not just the planning;  T hat what’s easy doesn’t always last;  T hat no step taken in faith in you is wasted;  T hat no one will be remembered for what they planned.  As I move into 2018 may I be rooted in being present, not perfect;  by what I’ve done for others and by how well I have loved.  Amen .. . #pkes #MinMChurch #MetroLifeChurch

Serving and Giving Back to our Community.  Follow our comings and goings on Instagram #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

The circumstances of  Paul's Voyage to Rome  were far different than for his earlier travels and missionary journeys. Before, he was a free man; this time he travels was a prisoner of the Romans. After Paul's arrival in Jerusalem at the end of his Third Missionary Journey, he became involved in a serious conflict with some "Asian Jews". The conflict eventually led to Paul's arrest by the Romans and imprisonment in Caesarea for two years.  Paul sets sailed for Rome where he was to stand trial for his alleged crimes.   Join us Wednesday December 27th @ 7pm as we dig into Paul's story and see how his  experiences may very well be similar to the storms and trials we face today.  Directions to Ministry in Motion/MetroLife Church #MetroLifeChurch #MinmChurch

🎶    A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices For yonder breaks a new glorious morn Fall on your knees O hear the angels' voices O night divine O night when Christ was born O night divine o night   🎶 O night divine, when God throws open the door of this world, And He joins humanity & enters as a baby, Born in a stable while wrapped in swaddling clothes, Lying in a manger - an utterly vulnerable image. Why ? Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with us. Merry Christmas... #pkes #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

“If we are to have peace on earth , our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.” *   Christmas is marked by anticipation for what is now and to come. ‘God with us,’ here, now, and present and to return, yet again. He, Emmanuel brings peace - peace of mind and heart!, not a fragile peace like the world gives. Each one of us has to find his peace from within. To be real, peace must be unaffected by outside circumstances.  Mull this over: If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace on earth. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that true peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather it’s love going through conflict(s).   May you find rest, comfort, and hope and peace as you move into Christmas Day and   into the New Year - know that you are not alone, that you are loved …  #pkes   Peace on Earth: Casting Crowns U2 - Peace on Earth * #MLK #MetroLifeChurch #MinmChurch

“…Mary, don’t be afraid. You have found favor with God…you are going to become pregnant. You will have a son, and you must name Him “Savior,” or Jesus… I am the Lord's servant. [Mary replied] May it be to me as you have said."   My soul lifts up the Lord! My spirit celebrates God, my Liberator! Often a work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain. In Mary’s story she embraced both. Her example should be a lesson for us: Wasn’t she the first person to accept Jesus on his own terms regardless of personal cost? #pkes #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

The holidays are a time for giving and showing our Christ-like love for all of humanity. Helping the homeless is nothing new for Ministry in Motion, we take to heart that “ following Jesus is as much, or maybe even more, about being his hands & feet as it is about ears and eyes and Biblical intellect.” #pkes   This year our stuffed stockings include: socks, toothbrush, toothpaste, bandaids, Kleenex, soap, razors and lip balm, along with cookies and snacks. Please join us Wednesday night, December 20th @ 6:30pm  as we share a meal, then stuff a sock to warm a heart. Directions  to Ministry in Motion

Joy to the world The Lord has come Let earth receive her King Let every heart prepare Him room… 🎶 It’s easy to associate joy with the Christmas season. The uplifting music, sparkling decorations, and all the great food - it’s the holidays. But it’s the remembrance of Christ coming to earth that really makes for “tidings of great joy” That was the message of the angels to the shepherds, remembered this third Sunday of Advent, a devotion to the theme of joy.  When we remember the Christmas story, when we navigate the rhythms of Advent, it’s impossible to do so without paying at least some attention to the strains of the season too.   In Charle’s Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Scrooge wrestled with his own tensions. To overcome, he was given three nocturnal specters to help him embrace and see beyond his own uncertainties, to the joys of Christmas. We have a spirit too, the Holy Ghost, to helps move beyond the real and perceived tensions of Advent. Will you let God open you

Advent, the shared practice of exploring the themes of hope, love,  joy and peace, all   functioning as a forerunner to the arrival of Jesus.   This Advent, I encourage you to remember the God of love in your past - see how He's kept you close, feel his heartbeat;  See His love in the present - get past the white noise of our society, Notice His hand on your shoulder?   And, recognize this second week of Advent that the kingdom of God’s love is both now and to come.   Ask of the Father: If I say I’m made in your image, is love the reason for my existence? #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch #pkes

Showing Love in our community through  Open Hearts and Willing Hands. Ministry in Motion.Church Giving online is simple and secure. Click on the 'Donate' button above to make a one-time or recurring donation by credit card or electronic check. All gifts are tax-deductible and a year-end giving statement is prepared and sent, the end of each January.  Ministry in Motion is a Texas Nonprofit Tax Exempt 501(c)(3) corporation under the US Internal Revenue Service Code. #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

We at Ministry in Motion wish our Jewish friends and colleagues a Chag Urim Sameach   (a Happy Hanukkah) and a joyful and illuminated holiday season... Enjoy the video. It's informative, cute and funny.  The amusing quiz will keep you on your toes.  And, a Hanukiah as opposed to a Menorah, who knew?

Star of Hope Outreach - Being the Church Outside the Church Wednesday December 6th, 7pm.  Pastor Keith's message: Fear Not .  Being fearless doesn’t mean eliminating  fear  it means  knowing how to leverage it and what to do with it. #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

Today marks the beginning of Advent, the four-week season of anticipation that guides us into the celebration of Christmas. Advent is a time for telling the story of how Jesus Christ fulfilled the story of Israel waiting for Messiah: “… Come, O Come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel …” Every year we tell the Christmas story, again, because we need to immerse ourselves in the story of Hope, Love, Joy and Peace - Emmanuel, God with us.  I’ve come to really appreciate Advent as more than a season in the liturgical year; than a time of Christmas music after Thanksgiving. More than sentimental fluffiness or the lightning a colored candles on a horizontal wreath. Advent is the time where we press into the Eternal with an expectation of Him breaking through and interrupting our lives. In the birth of the baby, in Bethlehem, we find the essential of every human hope and every earthly fear. What the poets and prophets hoped and prayed for, and what the principalities and powers fear

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ' Thy will be done,'  and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'   ~C.S. Lewis #MetroLifeChurch  #MinMChurch

“...So he got up and returned to his father. The father looked off in the distance and saw the young man returning. He felt compassion for his son and ran out to him...” Most people understand imagery much better than doctrines and religious dogma. In Jesus’s gospel story we see this imagery clearly: the jilted father hurrying to his returning son. No judgment. No condemnation. No “I told you so’s”   The faithful father didn’t look upon his inquisitive, carousing, indulgent son as a loser or a reprobate. He doesn’t labels him; no negative monikers or accusations or judgment. Au contraire, the patriarchal papa welcomes his son home, showing him that he’s valuable, loved and appreciated. This story here isn’t about conversion to Christianity. Just maybe, it’s about God being on the lookout for those, in the family, who have wandered off. God simply can’t wait to welcome the wayward home and He gives thanks for their return. In   the story we see what it is to run towards

Are you madly in love with God? Before you respond too quickly and say yes, give an honest pause… breathe...exhale. We must explore this question carefully, almost silently, knowing, realizing,  that God knows the secrets of the heart .  Love, as we often define it, is a far cry different, and often contradictory to the kind of love revealed by the Christ: “… love your enemies , do good to them...without expecting to get anything back…”  To be madly in love with God demands we love as Jesus loved. Love the seemingly unlovable, starting with the people who creep you out the most. This is at the crux of being a Disciple - it pushes love to the extreme.   #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch  #pkes

Do dogs really like hugs? The short answer, and according to veterinary specialists is, not really. Hugs are for humans.  “…For everything that happens in life—there is a season, a right time for everything under heaven… a time for a warm embrace [a hug] …”   Almost nothing in the world is better than a "proper" hug!  I grew up in a home where hugs were sort’a rationed, especially by my dad. We didn’t hug, we shook hands. As an older adult my mom and dad came to visit. After a week of sharing time and space with my parents I took them to the airport, they were headed back home. As we said our goodbyes my father extended his hand. I took it, pulled him close and gave him a “proper” man hug. He was shocked. Speechless. His eyes welled with a tear or two. We embraced on the concourse, near departures. It was a special moment.  I think we were made to let people know we care, and with a hug we can show our compassion, our concern, our love. Hugs boost happiness levels, bot

Let’s be honest! Some people are more difficult to get along with than others; they totally rub us the wrong way. Getting along with these folks requires a innovative point of view = we must see them as God sees them. Seeing God’s handiwork in every human being is not easy.                    S andpaper people are not only a reality of life, but opportunities given to us from the heart of God, a:  “...product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives created in the Anointed, Jesus...”   I think He uses difficult people & relationships as catalysts through which He lovingly upsets our comfortable plans. Every arduous relationship, every exhausting person, is wrapped in God’s love, faithfully delivered to us. I’m pretty convinced He purposefully redirects our safe and sound steps and, if we listen closely, he’ll give us permission to engage and enter into their story, for his name’s sake.  Are you willing to see others differently and enter into their challenging story?…#pkes

#MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch #pkes Pastor, you smell like sheep!   Me, that’s a good thing, right? “…The priest who seldom goes out of himself … misses out on the best of our people, on what can stir the depths of his priestly heart…” Pope Francis  The invitation for all of us in leadership roles is to be like good shepherds and get out among our flock.

All Hallows Eve or Halloween as we call it in America has a significant place in church history. Do you know why? It goes far beyond the evangelical’s dilemma of handing out candy to   tricks and treaters. All Saints Day and the day before, All Hallows Eve, is celebrated by some Christians and looked down upon by others. The earliest observance of the holiday was recorded in the early fourth-century.  Regardless of weather you engage in All Saints Day or not, five-hundred years ago on All Hallows Eve Martin Luther nailed his Theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther was proposing a theological debate, but what he got was a theological rebellion, or maybe it was a revival. In either case, Prof Luther unknowingly perpetrated one of the most pivotal movements in church history: The Protestant Reformation . The Reformation started a religious campaign aimed at refining the Catholic Church. However the results were much more monumental, the founding of, a

Humanity should be our race;  Love  should  be our  religion; This would be so like Jesus.... #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

#MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch Do you realize that Jesus is never surprised by the outrageous, imperfect things people do, you and I included?   Picture this: Jesus meets some religious highbrows who tell Him a woman, that woman right there, was mixed-up in a sexual liaison. The scholarly are looking to stone her and they try to draw Christ into their debate. Thoughtfully,  perceptively, compassionately he draws close to her and asks: “where are your accusers...?” They had all split, taken off, left. In a voice, birthed in heaven, he says: " Well, I do not condemn you either; all I ask is that you go and from now on avoid the sins that plague you." Truth be told, we all have a sundry of private struggles and skeletons in our closet - you have yours, I have mine. In my contemplative quiet times I’ve asked myself, what kind of Disciple am I if I can’t get somethings right, even after 35 years of walking intently with God?  Then it dawns on me. What if one of the mark

MINISTRY IN MOTION/METRO LIFE CHURCH Being The Church Outside The Church Our Current Study Series: Book of Acts The true gospel was becoming clear as the church spread and developed. With what happened in Joppa, gentiles being grafted into the God's people, the church was being built from both the inside, the Jewish community, and from the outside, the non-Jews; The message of Jesus was now for  all  people of  all  time.  But controversy is brewing...in Jerusalem.  #MinMChurch #MetroLifeChurch The Jerusalem church to Peter: Acts 11:3  Why did you violate divine law by  associating with outsiders and  sitting at the table with them for a meal?  This is an outrage! Join us   Wednesday October 18th @ 7pm < Directions >

In the Scriptures, the Christ criticizes hypocrisy more than anything else. I find it pretty cool that Jesus was never really upset with sinners, he tells them to go and sin no more. But for folks who pretend they are not sinners, the hypocrites,  he has some fairly harsh words:   “...Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures,  criticize their faults— unless,  of course, you want the same treatment.  That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging...” #MetroLifeChuch #MinMChurch

Follow us on Twitter @minm_church Always Respectful            Usually Insightful              Sometimes Provocative Occasionally Incendiary @minm_church #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

#MinMChurch #MetroLifeChurch October 11th, 6:30 pm  The book is called the "Acts of the Apostles".  Not the "Ideas of the Apostles"  Nor the "Theology of the Apostles".  It's the activism of the Apostles.   This week we meet as a community to discuss the story of Ananias and Sapphira, from Acts chapter 5. There’s no denying that the passage depicts the death of this couple as a divine judgment. In his mercy, God usually strives with people to protect them from death and the repercussions of their sin.  However…this storied couple went down a road with tragic consequences. We’re a Community who gathers each Wednesday night.  A church for those who aren’t into church. A bastion of grace.  A spot for truthful reflection & an interactive study. Map & Directions to  Ministry in Motion/MetroLifeChurch

Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples . So we Christians share the the gospel saying “have you asked Jesus into your heart”? This is an over simplified gospel, an evacuation proclamation, designed to take you to heaven and escape the doom. This isn’t a risky sharing of the Good News, it’s safe and comfortable. But what we should be saying is re-think your life, repent, then believe in the Jesus way of doing things: care for the least of these; Take up your cross daily; Love God and love others; practice the Beatitudes ...This gospel is deeper, more complete, but more demanding. As Thomas Merton put it, we're not sharing “...an invitation to escape into a private heaven...[but] a call to transfigure... [a] stricken world.”  Ignoring the deep we continue to share   the shallower gospel of Jesus dying to take you to heaven. We proclaim Jesus as the heavenly conductor who is handing out tickets to heaven as opposed to the carpenter who repairs, renovate

Give love and kindness and grace   away as if you were made of it. Kyrie, eléison Christe, eléison #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

The Lord is calling Saul for a particular task in Acts 9. The person charged with getting the message out to those outside the law of Moses, those in the heathen and pagan world, is none other than a hardline, fanatical, ultra-nationalist, super orthodox Pharisaic Jew, the unlikely candidate, Saul. Who says that God doesn’t have a sense of humor?! We’re a diverse Community who gathers  each  Wednesday at 6:30pm .  A church for those who aren’t into church.  A bastion of grace.  A spot for truthful reflection & a highly interactive study. < Click for Map and Directions  > #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of JesusChrist our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.  Proper 22 - #BookofCommonPrayer #MetroLifeChurch #MinMChurch

Did we plan to meet? Some of life's best experiences begin unexpectedly. The Apostle Philip had a way with people; he was also very sensitive to God's leading. So he finds himself along a major road and headed south out of Jerusalem towards Egypt and Ethiopia. He'll soon discover a divine appointment awaits him.. We're a Community who gathers each Wednesday at 7pm . A spot for truthful reflection, study, and a bastion of grace, accepting those wh o are single or married, divorced or gay, filthy rich or dirt poor. We welcome you if you sing like Andrea Bocelli or like our pastor. Join us if you are inked, pierced or both. We don't care if you're more Catholic than the Pope or haven't been to church since the last wedding you attended. We want you to lean in if you are a NASCAR guy or a vegan tree hugger. Pharisees. Romans. Prostitutes. Saint or Sinner. All are welcomed ...​   #MinMChurch

The Apostles’ Creed & Orthodoxy.  The word orthodox may be more foreign to you. It comes from two Greek words meaning  right + belief .   The word was coined by the early Christians, grafted into early church doctrines, due in part I suppose, because Christianity is first and foremost all about faith. Christianity places a far higher emphasis on right belief than other major world religions. Christianity is, at its core, a belief system that says before you can live   right, you must believe   right. Also, the early church has historically made kind of a big deal about doctrine, a word that scares off many an American evangelical. The Apostles’ Creed is  a prayer I memorized as a child, is not found in the Bible, but it’s very orthodox, and rooted in church history. It was actually written somewhere around 150 years after the apostles had all died. However, The Apostles' Creed is a good summary of Christian doctrine. It goes like this:    I believe in God, the Father