My blog moved...

Hey People,
My blog has moved...you can find out about what is happening with me and the Malone family at www.jasonmalone.wordpress.com

Have a great week!!!!

One Year Later....

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of our first Sunday at the Merovan Center with our Core Group. One year ago we began to meet every Sunday to dream and pray about reaching the Upstate with the Gospel...below is an e-mail I sent to those first few families that joined us on that first day...

Hey Core of the Core Group,

I don’t do a very good job of remembering dates but my wife does and she reminded me that yesterday, April 15^th, was the one year anniversary of our first Sunday Celebration at Merovan Center. I can’t believe it has been a year since we gathered as a core for the first time to talk and pray and dream about being the church in our circle of accountability. It has been encouraging to see who God has brought to join us in what He has called us to do and be. There are people with us now that were un-churched and formerly churched that had given up on the church and churched that wanted to join a group desiring to be the church. We’ve seen people baptized and come to know Jesus. We’ve been able to serve the servers of our community and the teachers of our community and the churches of our community. Most of all we’ve seen God changing and transforming us. He’s shown us that it is not about us but about joining Him in His mission of redeeming people. He’s showing us that our own relationship and time with Him is the most important thing to living on mission. He’s teaching us to live with others for the sake of others and He’s giving us opportunity after opportunity to share our grace story.

Thank you for being apart of the Core Group. Thank you for having the guts and the patience to begin something new. Thank you for serving and giving of yourselves so that others could join the mission. Thank you for modeling the values in your own life so that others can watch and learn. Thank you for being on mission with our God. I can honestly say that I’ve been able to enjoy this journey more because of the people God has brought to journey with. I love you and thank God for you…be on mission today.

The Windy City

Well I realize it took me a week to get back with everyone about how the Envisioning Discussion went last Thursday. It was AWESOME. We had 80 pastors from 35 churches join us to talk about what it would look like for us to link arms and start getting intentional about reaching the Upstate with the Gospel of Jesus. Thanks to all of you that were praying for us.

As a result of our meeting last Thursday we are starting a Renovation Center at Summit. We will meet once a month for the next year to begin to talk about God's heart for the world and for the Church in Greenville. It looks as if we will have 30-40 pastors joining us for the Renovation Center. I'll do my best to keep you updated on what we are thinking through as we have our meetings.

On another note and the reason it's taken me longer to get back to my blog...I spent most of this week in Chicago. I have not been to the Windy City in many years but it was good to be back for a few days. I was meeting with pastors from 10 cities around the USA. We are all talking about God's heart for 303 million Americans. We see the need to re-evangelize the United States and it must start with the continued spiritual formation of Christ followers....

Mission Upstate

Today is an awesome day! It hasn't even really gotten started yet but it's awesome! In a few hours I will be getting together with 80 pastors from about 25 different churches in the Upstate of SC to talk about how we can partner to reach every man, woman, and child with the Gospel. I could hardly sleep last night I was so excited.

You see when we were starting Summit this is the one thing that people told us wouldn't happen. They said pastor's are to busy and to stuck in doing things their way to meet with other guys to partner. But we knew if we were supposed to take responsibility for 1.3 million people in the Upstate of SC then we would need not just 1 Summit Church or 50 Summit Churches but we would need to partner with every church that is preaching the Gospel of Jesus to share Jesus with those in the Upstate.

So over the past year I have met with many pastors to talk about what God is calling us to do. I have emphasized over and over that it's not about us or a "right" way of doing church but it is about being on mission with our God who is on mission and His mission is simple....He is redeeming people to Himself. He is using His Church to accomplish His mission so it's time we started working together.

Step #1: Meet with as many pastors as you can (this is what we've spent the past year doing)
Step #2: Get them in the same room and share God's Mission for redeeming our city (today and it's going to be awesome)

I'll post tomorrow about how it went...