Last Sunday we had four baptisms and a great celebration. Below you can read our baptism stories of those who got baptized. Video coming soon.

Download Baptism Stories

It’s been a wild two years! Fear, stress, shutdowns, regulations, and more have upended our world, including our tangible experience of gathering together. Through all of this, we know God has continued to be good and in control, and we have loved the opportunity to gather together each week to celebrate who He is—both in person and online. We’re seeing more people returning to in-person gatherings, which is exciting! With that, we want to take some time this Spring and Summer to extend a warm welcome to those ready and looking to return in person. We understand it can feel strange gathering together after spending so much time apart. It can feel awkward or embarrassing or new after developing other routines. So, this season, we’re providing various opportunities for you to reconnect at Element without judgment or shame. With Spring being a time of newness and rebirth, we’re celebrating not just who Jesus is, but what it means to be in community with one another.

We hope that these events also serve as opportunities to invite others to Element…maybe for the first time! And for those of you watching online, please know we are thrilled to have you join us in any way possible. Our hope and prayer is that wherever you are, you would come to experience the joy and fullness of living in community with others.

It’s the COMEBACK…and you’re invited.

Upcoming Events

	May 29th Sunday New Sermon Series: Never Read A Bible Verse* There are some Christians who say that those who don’t believe the Bible or trust in Jesus, “just need to read the bible,” but what happens if they do and it has the opposite effect? There are many things in the bible that are written that are hard to understand without having a clear cultural understanding of the context in which it was written; many Christians even assume the Bible says things that it does not because we fail to understand context. Cultural changes over time can lead to shifts in the way we use certain words, and this makes a difference when reading/translating texts of the Bible. There are a lot of people who do not know or understand the Bible and yet they claim it is filled with nonsense, it is why study of the Bible is important for us…because as I said ultimately the Bible is about Jesus. It shows us who we are and who He is in His person. *without context
	June 5th, Volunteer Info & Training Day Coming back means we need your help! From children's classrooms, tech team, band, and mid-week set up and maintenance, we need our church family to help make ministering possible. Questions, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. At the same time, our eFamilies! team wants to help our current teachers feel more confident while also showing those interested in helping in the classroom learn what that looks like. Whether you teach Preschoolers or Elementary students, its all about how you present the story. Join us for this short training to learn about how you can effectively covey Spiritual truths to children through the stories of the Bible. Questions, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
	June 19th (Father's Day) Dodgeball Double-Elmination Tournament Dads, grab your families, GCs, friends, and come celebrate being Father by throwing dodge-balls at other people! More details to come!
	July 3rd, Crockpot-Palooza & Movie Night Once upon a time we celebrated moving into our permanent home with the biggest crockpot potluck you've ever imagined! We called it Crockpot-Palooza and we are doing it again! Combining this event with our annual eFamilies! "Drive-in Movie Night" this is now an event for everyone! Young, old, single, married, parents, empty-nesters... EVERYONE! Movie and theme TBD! Stay tuned!
	August 26th, Community Trivia Night This event will be:   A- FUN! B- Loud and chaotic C- A good chance to hang out with other people D- Mildly embarrassing - both for me and for you E- All of the above   More details to come, but start studying now!
	September 4th, Baptisms & Labor Day BBQ Join us for our second Baptisms for 2022.
	September 24th Fall Holiday Market Come support our annual Fall Market and get your holiday shopping done early! Interested in being a vendor? Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for details.
Coming Soon	September 25th New Series: Prayer
	September 28-30 eFamily Change Their View (CTV) Check Back Soon for More Details.
	October 7th & 8th The Weekender Check Back Soon for More Details.
	October 30th Pumpkin Killing Check Back Soon for More Details.
	November 11th Night of Prayer and Worship Check Back Soon for More Details.
	November 20th Agape Thanksgiving Meal Check Back Soon for More Details.
	Youth Summer: Beach Trips, Water Park, Pool Party Roller Skate, Fireworks Booth, Strawberry Festival & Local Outreach Week

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This is my second blog where I wanted to delve a bit deeper into something I talked about in an updated Gospel Class that we called The Weekender. The original point of our Gospel Class was to give people who were considering making Element their home a quick primer on basic theology and the reasons Element functions the way it does (from our mission to our vision in how we accomplish God’s call as a church). This year we decided to streamline the course by holding a Friday night/Saturday morning class. In streamlining the class, there were certain things that became condensed, and one of those was a section we call “Creation and Sin.” I wanted to write a couple of short blogs to round out some of what may have gotten lost in the class. Since this is the second of these blogs, I want to write about what we call “The Fall.”

In Christian theology “the fall” references humankind’s rebellion against God by trying to “live our own truth” and ceasing to trust Him. Now you may be thinking…what? I wasn’t there! However, Scripture’s portrayal of Adam and Eve represents how all of humanity would respond in that situation. We all buy into lies about our identity and about God. In that sense, even though we were not there shortly after creation, we are responsible for the effects of the fall and can witness our own brokenness today. God had essentially given us the entire world as a gift, calling us to steward and take care of His creation, and we (in no time at all) did our best to destroy it. God called us to trust Him for what was good and true, and we bought into a lie that God was not as good as He claimed to be—that we could be more than we were created to be. We distrusted God (as we still distrust Him every day) and we did the one thing He commanded us not to do. In so doing we fell from relationship with Him into sin. As those who fell, there was/is nothing we could do to restore relationship with a holy and eternal God, so God Himself came to us to bring us back to Himself.

God coming for us ultimately leads to the proclamation of good news. The first proclamation is in Genesis 3:16 right after we fell. In Genesis 3:16 Jesus promises that He (Himself) would be the one to pay for the penalty of our rebellion…this is the essence of the Gospel. Jesus takes our death upon Himself and gives us His life; He takes our sin and rebellion and gives us His righteousness with God. In the Weekender I kind of blazed through this on the way to the session about salvation, but I want to take a step back and talk about what happened in the fall because it still relates to our lives today.

In the creation narrative, we see that God is creator and there is a distinction between Him and the creation. As I wrote in the last blog, God is self-contained. He is A SE (from Latin…this is where we get the word Aseity). He is dependent upon nothing, while creation (and humans particularly) is dependent upon our creator epistemologically (knowledge) and metaphysically (reality). This is why when God says we are to trust Him for what is good, there is no good that can be understood apart from Him. When the fall takes place in Genesis 3, there is a de-creation, a reversal, of what God did in Genesis 1-2. The order God created unravels and we are still living in the dysfunction that remains.

How? In Genesis 3 the serpent becomes humanity’s guide for the “good,” as humans eat fruit that was forbidden to them. Under the serpent’s advice, we dismissed the authority of God. In creation, the order (in terms of authority) went God, man, woman (who was created equal), creatures. In the de-creation of the fall, the serpent lies to and tempts the woman, the woman gives some fruit to her husband (who then eats) and we see a reverse cycle of whose authority we trust to determine our lives: serpent, woman, man, God. John Calvin wrote about how we turn aside from God’s truth to falsehoods: “…the first man revolted from God’s authority, not because of Satan’s blandishments, but also because, contemptuous of the truth, he turned aside to falsehood. And surely, once we hold God’s word in contempt, we shake off all reverence for Him.” The fall happened because we ceased to revere God for who He is; I would say that the same thing still happens in our world today.

In the fall we tried to shrink God from who He is. D. A. Carson wrote, “The true God is holy; He is unique, and cannot, by His very nature, tolerate those who try to relativize Him. We are not gods; and by death we learn we are only human.” In the fall God warned us that if we sin, we will die; part of what death does is blow away our pretentions. The most striking difference in today’s world is not between those who have “faith” and those who have none; it is between those who have true faith and those who have false faith. Adam and Eve didn’t become atheists and refuse to believe in God (God came walking in the garden, calling out to them). Instead, they left the true faith for a false faith that was centered on themselves and not God. Adam and Eve still sincerely believed in the existence of God, but in false faith, sincerity is not the issue—the truth of who God is is the issue. Mike Ovey writes, “…the truth or falsehood of the faith turns not on whether the person who has faith is sincere or not, but on whether the belief that person holds is true to the reality of the person of whom he or she believes it.” False faith believes lies about God. In this case, Adam and Eve chose to believe God wasn’t enough for them.

False faith today, culturally speaking, believes lies about God that are rationally and ethically justified by our own standards. False faith will treat what God does as bad, when He is clearly shown to be good. It argues that the legitimate sovereignty that God has over His creation is not legitimate. False faith treats God’s loving warnings as bad commands—calling His goodness into question. When we have false faith, it obscures and distorts who God made us to be; it continues to degrade our relationship with God and pushes us farther into the fall.

There are questions that we must ask that come out of the ways we diminish God:

• In what ways are we listening to authorities, other than God, in our life?
• In what ways are we adhering to false faith, rather than looking for who God has revealed Himself to be?
• In what ways are we continuing to live in the lie that began the fall in the first place?

We naturally, because we are born into sin, run from God and toward false faith. It is why salvation comes from God’s hand alone. The Gospel is the good news of God’s rescue of us from our own lies and falsehoods we have adhered to. If God had not been for us, we would have never known restored relationship with Him again. Eugene Peterson translated Psalm 124:6 as Oh, blessed be God! He didn’t go off and leave us…when the entire world went against us, because of our own choices, God comes for us.

Psalm 124:8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  

A couple of weeks ago we led an updated Gospel Class that we called The Weekender. Our Gospel Class eventually grew from an original 7-week course to an 8-week course as we refined our vision over the years. The point of the Gospel Class was to give people who were considering making Element their home a quick primer on basic theology and why Element functions the way it does (from our mission to our vision in how we accomplish God’s call as a church). Since people tended to have “life” happen to them and couldn’t make all 8 weeks, this year we decided to try something new and streamline the course by doing a Friday night/Saturday morning class.

In streamlining the class, there were a couple topics that became condensed. One of those was who God is in His person and the other was the fall of humankind (into what we call sin). These two things have been running through my heart and head in the last couple of weeks, so I wanted to write a couple of short blogs to round out what may have been missed in the class. Let’s first talk about God (you know, because God is always first).

When we speak about God, we speak about God’s shared and unshared attributes. God’s shared attributes are the ones that He shares with His people. This includes Spirit (we have a spirit because God gave us life), Holiness (God gives us the gift of being set apart for His purposes), Love and Goodness (we love because He first loved us), Truth (we can know and live in the truth), Justice and Righteousness (we know true righteousness and just because they stem from God Himself), Mercy (God doesn’t give us what we deserve, He gives us grace and we are to show that same grace to others), and Beauty (God creates in beauty and allows His creatures to also create works of beauty).

God also has attributes that He does not share. These would be His Omnipresence (God is everywhere at all times), His Omniscience (He has complete and perfect knowledge of all things), His Omnipotence (He is all-powerful and able to do all that He wills unopposed), His Immutability (God does not change because He is perfect), His Eternality (God has no beginning or end and is not bound by time), His Sovereignty (God is supreme in rule and authority over all things), and His Aseity (God is sufficient in Himself and does not need anything from creation (including us) to complete Him.

All the above may be review and could lead you to ask the question, “Why this blog?” The answer is that there is another point I wanted to make regarding God and His attributes…all of this is only relatable to us when we understand that God is within a Trinity and His unity is correlative only to Himself. All the complexities of the attributes above stem from God’s person—which is unity in Trinity. I hope I am not confusing you.

While God Himself is unity in trinity, He made the world in diversity; sometimes that diversity causes us to misunderstand God’s Aseity. As created beings, we are dependent upon things outside of ourselves for life, but God Himself is not like us. Let’s take something as simple as love…if God were not a unity in Trinity, then what would be the object of God’s love? Us? The world? John Frame wrote, “…love in the fullest biblical sense by its very nature reaches out to another, not merely to the self.” That means if God was not a Trinity, He would then need someone or something else to love to be God. Frame writes, “On a Trinitarian basis…God’s love is both interpersonal and self-contained.” God’s love is a love among the Father, Son, and Spirit—it is not dependent upon anything else.

The reason the Trinity is so important a doctrine is that it guards God’s Aseity. Without God being a Triune God, He would be dependent upon the world. As Frame writes, “Trinity…guards the personality of God: He is not blank unity, which would be impersonal. Rather, He is a unity of persons.” Michelle, who I have proofread these blogs, responded with these words after reading the above paragraph, “And—if I’m understanding this correctly—He would HAVE to love us/creation, right? Which would not only compromise His omnipotence, but also detract from the goodness that…He actually chooses to love us of His own free will.” Correct, but it would compromise His Aseity as well.

This is a doctrine that theologians call God’s “Simplicity.” God is not made up of the attributes listed above because there is nothing in Him that is independent of His person…every good thing we know stems from who He is. If you take God’s goodness, for instance, that is not an external thing that God focuses on in order to be good. Goodness is not an attribute that God conforms Himself to; goodness comes from God Himself. If goodness came from outside of God, then goodness would essentially be another god (a second deity) that God would conform Himself to—He would cease to be God. Cornelius Van Til has been quoted as saying, “Denial of God’s unity of simplicity violates God’s unity of singularity.”

Hopefully you can see why I am sharing this in a blog. This whole discussion, while fascinating to me, could take us into the weeds if I were to do it in class. Suffice to say, a proper understanding of God’s simplicity, unity in Trinity, and Aseity tells us that there is not any “non-being” (attributes) that have/had any power over God. Logic, ethics, truth, mercy all come from His person and are just some reasons why we worship and ascribe worth to who He is. It is why we are a people who are lost and broken without the God who made us. We are dependent and He is sufficient in Himself yet chooses to love us; that is a great God!