Sunday morning. We’ll have the Sunday Gathering there immediately following the event at 10:30am.
Parking ?’s: go here and click on Pittsburgh on the interactive map.

Everyone who comes to “Displace Me” will be asked to bring the following:
1. Enough cardboard to build something the size of a small tent.
2. A sleeping bag.
3. A 1.5-liter bottle of water (with airtight seal-to be collected upon entry).
4. A box of saltine crackers (yes, they need to be saltines, with sealed packaging- to be collected upon entry).
5. A current photo of yourself wearing a white t-shirt with a red X.

Hello Friends -
Three Nails will be participating in Invisible Children’s Displace Me, which is an event to raise awareness about children soliders and refugees in Uganda. Essentially, we’ll be living like refugees for the night, and the hope is that since the event is taking place simultanteously in 15 U.S. cities this weekend, that more folks will become aware of the situation in Uganda. If you have more questions about what Invisible Children is, or what this event will be like for you, I suggest checking out their website ( www.invisiblechildren.com). There is no need to pre-register (it’s free) - just come and go as you please. If you’d like to spend the night, feel free to join us, or if you’d just like to come for some of the time, that’s cool too.

Kris Opat will be there from 3pm on, so if you’d like to meet up with other Three Nailers, contact him at 412.780.6212.

SUNDAY GATHERING - NOT AT IT’S REGULAR LOCATION THIS WEEK
SUN, APRIL 29
10:30am-11:30am
Schenley Park
In lieu of meeting at the Foster Center like we normally do for Sunday Gatherings, we’ll be meeting at Schenley Park directly afterthe Invisible Children event is over.

If this Lent, you pour your energy into what you can do to make yourself better, then you will fail, and you will be no closer to God than when you started–in fact, you may lose ground. But if you, even through the disciplines you take on, throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus, who already has defeated the power of sin, then you may find the power of the grace and forgiveness of Jesus lifting you above the white-knuckled work of resisting temptation into a clear-eyed vision of what God has in store for you–his plan and future and destiny for your life. Let me close with Paul’s encouragement to depend on Jesus for freedom and promise, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Amen+

This quote grabbed me and I hope it strikes you all as well.

March 17, 2007
Chatham College
4-5 PM @ Sanger Hall Auditorium

March 19, 2007
Forum on War Affected Children
8-9:30 PM @ WQED

March 20, 2007
Edgeworth Elementary School
7 PM @ Community Room, Sewickley, PA

March 21, 2007
University of Pittsburgh
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM @ David Lawrence Hall

March 22, 2007
Union Project
6 PM - 8:30 PM @ Great Hall

March 22, 2007
North Allgehany High School
9:30AM-1:30PM @ Auditorium

Several folks from Three Nails will be headed to the screening taking place at the Union Project on March 22, 2007.

If you’re not from the Pittsburgh area and are interested in viewing a screening of this movie, check out the listing of all the currently scheduled screenings across the United States here.

That’s the brief update. I hope everyone is having a great beginning to 2007!

Kris

David walked into Hot Dogma looking for a wireless connection and ended up spending the night. He is traveling the US to meet interesting people and is writing a column for a London newspaper as he goes. He will send the link to the column once he gets it going.

What is interesting is not so much the unusually large cell group meeting where Megan told her story or the four hour session at the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern talking and joking, but the conversations along the way. I don’t know about many of you, but I have been struggling with how much of a difference we are making and how far the message of the gospel is spreading becuase of our existence. It seems that God comes just when you need him and in the most mysterious of ways.

David is not religious, in fact he has always been very cynical of Christians in general. He spent the night being a part of the Three Nails community and he was moved. That is all we ever hoped for. Being a presence of the gospel in a lost and broken world. No one asked for or expected a conversion and to be honest I think it would have been insulting if we had, but we lived life together with him and he was impacted by our lives and we were blessed and encouraged by his words.

The strangest things.

We were unable to really get to the bottom of it on Sunday, but the general consesus was that it was his popularity that made things difficult and after further study and an email to one of our NT professors it appears that my postulation is probably unfounded. Here is what he has to say:

Well, it is an interesting suggestion, but doubtful. Jesus was not
strictly breaking the law by touching the man, and although one would
expect Jesus to become unclean, in fact the man becomes clean -
purity/impurity seems to work backwards in this case. And although Jesus
may have been considered ‘unclean’ for touching the leper (he certainly
puts himself into the unclean realm, but somehow the impurity does not
touch him), even that uncleanness would not have been considered
contagious. One becomes unclean by touching a leper or a dead body, etc,
but one does not become unclean by touching someone who has touched a
leper or a dead body. So the fact that Jesus must stay outside the city
must have another explanation - probably related to Jesus fame as a
healer making it more politically expedient for him to avoid cities
(like Sepphoris and Tiberias) where his message of the Kingdom (Empire)
of God would have put him at odds with the Herodians and other who were
complicit with the Roman elite.

This seems to me the best explanation, although Mark is rather cryptic
about it.

K

I have been thinking a lot about the grand vision of Three Nails and especially the idea of our non-geographical nature and movement mentality. I have been thinking a lot about Sunday gatherings and about how they have not seemed to take the shape we had in mind originally. I am beginning to think that all of these ideas are connected (go figure). I am starting to wonder if a better way to look at our Sunday gatherings as “a” Sunday gathering instead of “the” Sunday gathering. What if what the Sunday gatherings are really a weekly “cell date” for the city cells to get together and worship and fellowship. What if that is what gatherings are really about? What is to stop other geographical areas from getting together one night a week when most people are free (Sunday night) and worship and fellowship together?

One of the difficulties in cells mulitplying is that people don’t want to leave their community to start something else, but what if anyone who went off to start another cell knew that every week there would be a place to meet with and worship with their old cell as well as to introduce those in their new cell to their predecessors? I think it sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe some more on this later.

K

Heck, what is to stop a gathering in New Orleans if Katie decides to start a cell and that cell multiplies? Or Boston (Matt)? Or Boone (Don and Shannon)? Or Charleston (Holly and Jim)? Craziness…

Amie’s comments helped me to envision a bigger picture than before. What we offer at Three Nails (as much as I hate the give/take mentality) is community and a supportive structure for that community. Your cell group doesnt have to be in Pittsburgh or even Wester Pennsylvania. The idea of a non-geographical church is that it can go anywhere. If someone moves away, they can start a Three Nails cell wherever they go. There is nothing to stop the spread of a community like that. We would have to rethink how we offered ideas and support and materials for cell groups that were not in immediate driving distance, but it is more than feasible. I want to see this happen. I want to see the inbreaking of the kingdom in ways that we have never conceived them.

Like pollen in the wind, let us be taken to the ends of the earth, carrying with us the truth of the gospel…Amen.

K

now i have a picture of what this looks like for us individually, in one on one relationships, calling the person up, checking up on them, listening, praying, loving them as Christ loves them. i’m right on board with being a part of that communally for us as a community too. but the picture of my community in threenails carrying ME? well now that picture’s a little fuzzy. a lot of that has to do with the fact that giving myself and all i’m holding onto and working through up to a community is knock down, drag out scary. i’m afraid of being a burden (there’s that word again) to people. there is so much fear wrapped up in laying myself down and thinking that people “won’t want me anymore,” that they’ll turn and book it in the other direction. so if i just take care of myself and don’t say i need help, don’t admit to myself that i need help then i’m safe, right? (and yes i’m aware that this fear or bad habit, whatever also affects my personal relationship with God). am i making sense to anyone? does this ring true for anyone?

so when martha asked me, how can threenails as a community carry you, i had no answer. i wasn’t being coy. i really didn’t know what that would look like. (and this is coming from someone that’s been hanging around here for over 3 years with friendships that date back farther than that. no new people jitters here. i don’t know, maybe it’s harder with people you’ve known for a long time, maybe not) so my question to all of you is, is this something you can relate to? what’s your picture of a community carrying? what’s your picture of being carried by a community of people? what does this look like for threenails? where’s our growing edge with this?

this isn’t as put together as i wanted it to be, but i guess that’s the point, isn’t it?