Our very own Jason Nix was featured in the March edition of the Mansfield Now Magazine. If you’d like to see the entire magazine, you can download a digital copy by clicking here. Jason’s article starts on page 30.
For those of you that do not know, Jason joined our church staff several years ago. His coming to Mansfield was actually preceded by his brother Josh who first came to work for us doing music for our student ministry back when I was working in that area. Josh was a High School friend of our current Student Ministries Director, Johnny Brower, and we were super excited to have Josh. [Josh still works with our Student Ministry and helps lead our 9:30 Contemporary service as well]
From my recollection, it was probably 6 months after Josh arrived that I started hearing about another Nix brother who also played guitar named Jason. Long story short, Jason moved up here to be with his brother, he eventually started playing music at the Saturday service I was leading at the time called Mosaic and then later joined our Saturday Night band after Mosaic and our current Saturday service combined.
In September of this last year when Doug Peak left our Saturday Band to start our new Sunday morning service called The Well, Jason stepped into leadership of our Saturday band.
Jason has been on an incredible journey these past few years, and I have really enjoyed seeing how God has been working in his life and growing him into a great musician and leader for Saturday Night. He has also gotten married to a lovely girl named Jamie and they bought their first house here in Mansfield just a few months ago. Jason is a passionate guy who cares deeply about his faith and providing an environment where people can meet with God.
Jason is one of the many gifts that God has brought to First United Methodist Church in Mansfield over the past several years and another example of what I wrote about two days ago. God is certainly being honored by Jason’s life and his service to our faith family.
If you would like to hear the audio from our most recent episode of our GPS podcast, click the play button below. I will start posting this each week here on the blog. To find out more about GPS, visit www.growpraystudy.org.
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The sermon from Mike which I reference in the podcast can be found on our church website here.
During this past weekend’s message, I referenced one of my favorite TV shows, LOST. I hesitate to share illustrations like this because I am mindful of the fact that not everyone watches the show, and some have no idea what the show is about.
But this one was too perfect a connection. If you want to hear more about that illustration, you can listen to the sermon here.
For those of you who are fans of Lost, I had previously posted about a great book I read recently from a Pastor in Houston named Chris Seay. The book is titled, The Gospel According to Lost. You can read more about that here.
As a supplement to that resource, Chris is recording some video diaries after each episode of this final season. Normally, this isn’t something that I would post here because it makes me feel too much like a dork, but Chris has some great insight as to some of the “spiritual” themes that are at work in this TV show.
The only thing I will add to what this clip is my agreement with Chris that last night’s episode was my favorite of the entire series… The scene at the last when Ben says that he is going to Locke because, “he is the only one who will take me,” was powerful. Who among us haven’t felt like that before? Kicked to the curb trash with no place to call home?
And yet the words of the Savior still echo… “I will have you.”
Our Executive Team had a meeting this morning and during our discussion our Senior Pastor, Mike Ramsdell, posed some questions to help us evaluate where we are right now as a church. One stuck out to me in particular.
How is God being honored in our church?
My comment was that I answer that question a bit differently than I might have a few years ago. My mind was immediately drawn to individuals who have shared with me how this church is blessing their life and directing them in their journey of faith.
Two weeks ago in my message, I shared one of those moments.
Several weeks ago I got an email from a mom in our church. She wanted to tell me about what her 6 year old had done in response to one of our recent message series where we looked at the Lord’s Prayer. Here is what she said…
My youngest daughter has been diligently trying for weeks to learn the Lord’s Prayer. Well, she finally got it…all by herself at the end of last week. At bedtime, she said the whole thing perfectly without any help from me and boy you would’ve thought she won the lottery…or the Cowboys won the Superbowl…lots of whooping and hollering and victory dances. Too cute, and made me so proud.
So then Sunday at The Well when the service started, she starts nudging me and whispering in her stage-like 6-year-old whisper, “Mommy, The Lord’s Prayer?” “Mommy, The Lord’s Prayer?” “In a minute. In a minute,” I whisper back. I bet she did that a dozen times before it was time to say The Lord’s Prayer. Then, she was absolutely beaming that she’d been able to say it out loud correctly with the Congregation for the first time.
I can’t think of a better illustration for how God is being honored by our church!
This past Sunday morning, every seat in the house was taken during our 11:00 service we call The Well. All of our extra chairs were set out and there were even some standing in the back. Just 5 months into this new service, we are filling it up almost every weekend which is an amazing blessing.
And yet, it’s also a challenge!
In four weeks it will be Easter, and our regular Easter crowd multiplies our regular weekend crowd by 2 1/2 times. Many of those are families who may be visiting from out of town, visitors who are checking out the church for the first time as well as friends that members of our church invite to our Easter celebration. We are honored by every individual who chooses to worship at First Methodist Mansfield on Easter!
Now, all of our other four weekend services will have plenty of seats on Easter. Saturday Night is a great opportunity to be in worship during that weekend. We have about 750 in that service last year and we could double that. Our 8:15, 9:30 and 11:00 services in the sanctuary are very large on Easter, but there will be room for more and those services will all be outstanding!
But if you’ve been attending the Well, and you want to share that experience with a friend, I want to make sure that can happen.
So here is the challenge I shared with the 240 who were present this last Sunday morning!
On Easter, we will have two opportunities to be present at The Well.
We will have our regular 11:00 service in the chapel as well as an identical service at 12:30 p.m. If 12:30 p.m. could work for your schedule, I want to ask you to consider making that change for this Sunday to make room at the 11:00 a.m. hour. We should have plenty of seats at 11:00 so if you have family and friends you would like to invite on Easter, that would be a great service to invite them too also.
Wake up late, have a nice brunch with the family and come join us at 12:30!
Wouldn’t it be great to fill our Chapel twice on Easter Sunday?
Love carried a cross, love was betrayed,
love saw a close friend, deny his name
Yet love surrendered, love remained,
and gave his life, gave his life away
Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins
You could have called your angels, to carry you away
From the hurt of our words, from the nails we made
Still you surrendered, love remained, and gave his life, gave his life away
Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your Love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins
You are Savior, Jesus, Holy One, Messiah, Redeemer, Lamb of God
Your love broke the chains of sin, and spoke into the heart - of man
Love wins, Love wins
Two weeks ago we rolled out our new GPS daily Bible reading guide. As a supplement to that resource, we are also going to be recording a podcast with myself, our Senior Pastor Mike Ramsdell, and Kevin Selle, a member of our church who works in broadcasting.
Each week, this program will include some reflections from Mike and I on the previous week’s messages as well as some insights and key ideas to look for in the daily readings you find in your GPS guide.
If you would like to give that new podcast a listen, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like more information about subscribing, click here.
By the way… at the end of this latest recording, I reference a sermon that Mike preached about a year ago on the Temptation of Christ in Matthew 4. It’s one of the best I’ve ever heard, and available on our website here if you would like to listen to it.
By the time this posts on Saturday morning, I will be heading to Fort Worth for the Cowtown Marathon. Along with several friends from our Saturday morning men’s group and one of my best friends who lives in Dallas, we are going to attempt to conquer the 13.1 half marathon track today.
I will let you know if I survive.
UPDATE: I’m not walking really well, but I finished!
