In Real Marriage we have been learning that discipling your kids is an incredible blessing and a huge responsibility. As a church, we desire to support and help parents by walking with them and providing a place of gospel community for their children. That is why we have a student ministry that meets every Wednesday night from 7-8:30pm.

Every week, we have 10 through 18-year olds gather to eat, hangout, worship, listen to teaching and discuss life’s hard issues and theology. Right now we average approximately 50 students every week and we have 18 faithful volunteers who help make the group a success. If you are a parent of a 10 to 18-year old, we would like to invite you to hear what will be going on the next season of our student ministry.

Staff Deacon Mitch Miller will be holding a parent meeting Saturday, February 18th from 10-11 am, in the family lounge in our family foyer.

At this meeting, we will celebrate what God has been doing in the lives of our students, go over the calendar and discuss the needs for the upcoming semester. Mitch will also dive into some of the material we will be covering on Wednesday nights for both Jr. and Sr. high, so that you may have more intentional conversations with your children about what they are learning on Wednesday nights.

Whether your children come all the time or you are just interested in learning what we do at Proxy, this will be a great time for community and encouragement. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided, and no registration is required. Hope to see you all there!

Today after the 7:15pm service, our second installment of a two-week series will be taught on Biblical Womanhood by Deacon Alex Gardner. Last Sunday, Pastor Bill Clem taught on Biblical Manhood, and now it’s the ladies turn.

This is a great opportunity for both singles and married to get some additional training on what the Bible says about being women for Jesus. At the end of the teaching session, there will be a Q & A panel.

If you would like your question about Biblical Womanhood answered tonight, please text your question to (206) 659-MARS (6277) anytime throughout the day. No registration is required, and anyone is welcome.

On Sunday, we had our first installment of a two-week series of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Pastor Bill Clem led the teaching on what the Bible says about being a man for Jesus. On February 5th, Deacon Alex Gardner will be teaching on Biblical Womanhood after the 7:15pm service.

At the end of the brief teaching session, our Q and A panel comprised of Deacon Jeremiah Hinton, Deacon Lance Moore, and Pastor Phil Smidt answered questions that had been texted in throughout the day. If you weren’t able to make it to this special event, check out the video and hear what Pastor Bill had to say about Biblical Manhood.

Saved at the age of four, today I am married to my best friend with whom I have four breathtaking children. I’ve suffered mild depression and anxiety my whole life and have had a lifelong reoccurring dream: I’m in a speeding car that is out of control. My brakes don’t work, I’m hitting cars right and left and there is a police vehicle in hot pursuit.

Unintentionally, I’m sure, my parents raised me to measure my value by three things: looks, intelligence and obedience. This was reinforced with a potent combination of much praise and many spankings.

My early years were spent in a cult. Many followed Christ, but were swayed by a charismatic false teacher into rejecting the Trinity in favor of a false theology called, “Oneness.” Other sin followed. I witnessed my parents’ sin and the sin of many adults around me. Men and women, single and married, spent untold amounts of time with members of the opposite sex in “worship,” developing exclusive relationships called, “connections” and even, “mega-connections.” It was like Christian clubbing; a way to entertain the lusts of the flesh under the guise of, “seeing Jesus in each others’ eyes.”

There was a special room (E250) for a select group to practice their form of worship with their connections. One of my parents had a member’s card; the other did not. In the main church sanctuary, connected couples would sit for hours after the main Sunday or Friday evening worship service was over, staring into each others’ eyes, bodies intertwined. Music would be playing. Other couples would be dancing.

The children would be under the pews, sleeping or coloring on the undersides of the long, red upholstered benches. Many times we had no idea where our parents were. If an usher walked by, we pretended to sleep. Sometime around midnight they would finally close the building. Often that meant extended sessions of staring in the car with us kids in the back. We were not allowed to interrupt them.

I remember looking at the clock in the car once. It said 2:00 AM. Other nights we would drive home and sleep with one connection’s child in a sleeping bag on the floor in my room. It became a part of our normal routine. Our other parent was assumed to either be with another connection or was perhaps getting more overtime at work. On my way to use the restroom, I could often see my parent on the couch in the living room, making out with the connection. One time, my other parent came home before the connection left, and there was a fight that almost went physical.

I knew what was happening was wrong. I was angry and I felt helpless to do anything about it. My parents fought and fought. There were hints of physical violence.

After a long agonizing struggle, my parents’ divorce was finalized when I was nine. Both parents remarried, finding spouses from the same cult (one began as a connection). They began attending other churches. Though they made a break from their old charismatic cult leader, there was no repentance or admission of wrongdoing or wrong theology. They still persist to varying degrees in their false understanding of Christ and His eternality.

I knew at the Mars Hill | Ballard member’s meeting last summer, that apart from signing up to serve, I also needed to sign up with the Redemption leader to take part in a Redemption Group. My depression had worsened to the point where I struggled with suicidal thoughts at times, and on a general basis I had no joy or reason to live. I did not enjoy my children or husband the way I had. My doctor discovered I suffered from hypothyroidism and after beginning treatment, my depression lifted significantly, but I still searched every day for meaning in the mundane operations of being a wife, keeping a house and raising children.

Children are excellent idol-smashers; this I had learned through several years of Mars Hill teaching. On my own I had been able to identify several significant idols and repent, but I still knew I was not as free as I could be. I still suffered days of melancholy and occasional suicidal thoughts. I still had a raging temper. I still sinned against my children and husband, and felt weighed down by guilt and shame. I tried and tried to figure out where my worship was being misplaced but I had hit a roadblock and I was stuck.

The first epiphany at Redemption Group was that this is God’s story. My story is just a subplot meant to add to his. I needed to be okay with the fact that I was not the star of the show. Then the most life-changing realization came: God is my Dad and he LOVES me. I thought he liked me because of Christ’s work on the cross, but that I also needed to perform much better in order for him to really delight in me, love me, enjoy being with me and having conversations with me. I saw him as a distant father, not as an engaged dad. Until this point I had never had an honest heart-to-heart with him. I always prayed to Jesus, someone I felt accepted and loved by, but never the Father.

The one who made everything: God, is my dad. It changes everything.

From there I was able to give up my crippling fear that I would not be accepted by others. It used to be that after any social gathering, even Community Group, if I was not embraced and celebrated, I would fall into a depression the next day. Rationally, I knew that was ridiculous, but I was helpless to change my emotions.

Now, secure in my dad’s love for me, I am not affected by praise, or lack thereof, of mere mortals. The creator of the universe is my DAD and he LOVES ME! I can also defend my beliefs to my parents without fear of losing their love.

There is an underlying peace and joy in my life that was not present before. Things still go wrong; my brain is so used to putting it’s hope in things instead of God that I still struggle with depression and anger when my idols are smashed, or when life’s circumstances don’t turn out the way I’ve planned. When God doesn’t work a miracle in my intended fashion, I still lose hope temporarily, but now the depression or anxiety attack is a clue to lead me back to my dad.

My dad, through his Holy Spirit, has been teaching me about the burden and yoke he has for me; that it is easy and light. Any time I feel a panic attack coming on, I remember this and I stop and think: what am I worried about? What work is God giving me to do? What work am I doing that he has not given me to do? What idol is about to be smashed, the fear of which is making me freak out?

My dad says to me, “I don’t care that your house is messy or that you’re going to be made late by dawdling kids, or that you’re about to go to the store with one child still in pajamas and missing a shoe. I’m totally pleased with you. Do the work that I’ve given you to do. Don’t worry about impressing anyone.”

This Sunday after the 7:15pm service, our first part of a two-week series will be taught on Biblical Manhood by Pastor Bill Clem. This is a great opportunity for both singles and married to get some additional training on what the Bible says about being men for Jesus. At the end of the teaching session, there will be a Q & A panel.

If you would like your question about Biblical Manhood answered this Sunday, please text your question to (206) 659-MARS (6277) anytime throughout the day. No registration is required, and anyone is welcome.

We serve a God that is good! We serve a God who loves us! We serve a God who calls us out of sin and death, into eternal life and then lets us be a part of his ministry! And that is exactly what is happening in Proxy at Mars Hill | Ballard. If you don’t know, Proxy is our student ministry at Mars Hill for students who are in middle school and high school. God has allowed us to reach out to the students in Ballard and other surrounding neighborhoods through this ministry. I’m Collin and I get the privilege of leading the group of Junior High proxy students and leaders. Our goal in Proxy is to make disciples that make disciples, and by God’s grace we are doing just that.

The junior high group has been blessed with awesome leaders who love students and want to see them come to Jesus. They are committed disciple makers with their first priority is to glorify Christ by making disciples who make disciples. Without them there would definitely be no Proxy ministry. We have also been blessed with fantastic students who are fun and love to hang out with us on Wednesday nights. It is really encouraging to see the overall excitement and enthusiasm that our students have for Proxy.

On a usual Wednesday, Proxy junior high will typically look like this: Students arrive at 7:00 pm and hangout. We do things such as play Rock Band and Mario Kart, eat snacks and drink beverages and just chill for a few minutes. Then we get together as a big group and play a fun and crazy game that everyone can participate in. We call this our connect time. Then we do a few songs of worship and listen to a sermon on that weeks topic. Lastly, we end the night off by splitting up into small groups, separated by age and gender, and discuss what we heard in the sermon.

Last semester we went through Pastor Mark’s book “Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe” which gave us a good foundation for all of the other things that we are going to learn in Proxy junior high. This semester we are doing a series called “I AM” and answering the question who is God and what does that mean for his children. We kicked that off on January 11th, and it will go until March 28th. I can’t wait to see how God continues to show off in Proxy and I am excited that he has allowed me to be a part of it.

If you are a student age 5th – 8th and want to experience what Proxy is like or if you are a parent with a student in this age range and would like them to check it out, you can email me at collin.hoke@marshill.com or just come on by the Mars Hill | Ballard church on Wednesday nights from 7:00 – 8:30pm. We would love to see you there!

Lastly, if you are interested in being a part of the Proxy team and have at least graduated from high school, then you can email me at the above address and let me know you want to be a part of what God is doing here at Mars Hill in Proxy!

In God’s grace,

Collin Hoke

Every Sunday, we have over 300 children come through our doors to worship Jesus with over 80 volunteers every Sunday at Mars Hill Ballard. Our mission at Mars Hill Church is to make disciples that make disciples, and that starts at a very young age.

In this video, David Ginn, the Deacon of Mars Hill Kids at Ballard, gives you a glimpse of what our children are learning every Sunday during the 9am, 11:15am, and 5pm worship services.

Each service saw men, single and married, standing toward the end of the sermon, making vows to love and serve their church. Hundreds of husbands prayed over their wives, followed by then serving their wives communion. Here are some photos from this past Sunday at Mars Hill Ballard.

I signed up for Redemption Groups with no “major” or “clear” focus for my time in RGs. Simply, I knew that Jesus would show me whatever He wanted to during the time in group. I signed up for RGs in June and was accepted in late July for the fall quarter that began at the end of September. Providentially, the timing was totally Jesus.

Growing up hyper legalistic, I didn’t know that I rejected grace. I did not know the truth of living under Jesus’ grace moment by moment. I think I had this whacked notion that grace was that thing that happened on the cross and it stopped there. The rest was up to me to figure out. I didn’t know in my heart His design for daily grace. The great analogy that my RG leader used was that I was “on the floor with a toothbrush trying to scrub up all the dirt” when my Dad simply wanted me to crawl into His lap and rest in Him.

I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be constantly looking for all the junk in my soul which then proved to me that I belonged on the floor. That’s how jacked up legalism can get. You think that you have to find all your sin, beg God to show you how messed up you are, then feel prideful and Pharisaical about your knowledge of your sin. Then, defend your position on the floor because supposedly that’s where you belong according to your own sinful broken reasoning.

That, dear friends, is captivity. I did not know I was rejecting grace. I did not know that I was sinning in my rejection of grace. Rather, I was actually prideful about my scrubbing and idol hunting; I thought that I was a lazy Christian if I wasn’t on the floor.

Jesus, in His grace and NOT one ounce of my own effort, revealed this to me during my time in Redemption Groups in the most loving, compassionate manner. He has shown me that rest and grace are inextricably linked. He has revealed to me more of His heart and who I am as His child. He has redesigned my heart. He makes all things new.

And here’s the deal: I didn’t think my way to this conclusion, I didn’t read a bunch of theology or philosophy and simply agree with this. This is not the advice of some nice books that seems to work as I work it out. I did nothing. Jesus does everything. He did it in me. I get it now, I totally see and know it differently now. I am different because of Jesus in this. He is doing a radical redemptive work.

You can’t make this stuff up, people. Jesus came to set the captives free.

Because of the impending snow storm that is predicted to hit Seattle tonight, the first Women’s Midweek Study is being CANCELLED tomorrow, January 18th. The Midweek Study will continue on it’s normal, every-other-week schedule, and will pick up on February 1st to kick off the winter quarter.

While we are excited about the new Women’s Midweek Study, we want to ensure we are not endangering our women and children in any way to make this happen. Safety is a priority, and we hope in two weeks the weather will provide much safer travel to Mars Hill Ballard. We hope to see all of you on the 1st!