Phos Hilaron Church
Purposely Different to Make a Big Difference!
Unusual Name – Cool Concept – Phos Hilaron is pronounced ‘foce hill-a-ron’ and means ‘dancing light’ – a reminder that Christ followers are called to carry the light of Christ wherever we are.
One big focus =
Transforming Ordinary People into
“Full-On Apprentices of Jesus”
Three Running Themes = Love God, Love Our Neighbors, Expand the Neighborhood
Redefining ‘Church’
For most of Americans ‘church’ means a ‘building’ where we gather to ‘get some God’, but at Phos Hilaron Church we’re not sure that’s the best way to understand ‘church’. We believe that Christ commissioned his followers as a ‘movement’ not a ‘monument’, and that we’re called to be difference makers not just passive spectators. The original church in the Bible’s book of Acts was a force that impacted culture because its members met in public venues where people already gathered to share the Gospel, and they met in homes for smaller intimate gatherings of these earliest Apprentices of Jesus. We intend to follow their lead and gather for large events in cool venues like Tinseltown Movie Theater, local parks and River Front Amphitheaters, and then to use our homes as smaller community gathering points to dig into what it means to be followers of Christ.
Re-imagining ‘Worship’
When most of us hear the word ‘worship’, we probably get images of a preacher and some music and an offering, or if you’re from a more liturgical background you may think in terms of sacraments and homilies. Either way, we intend to expand the bandwidth on what Worship might be and how God can be encountered in Worship. We imagine Worship to include the following…
As individuals worship is…
–24/7/365 – learning to experience God wherever life takes us all the time.
–Mission at 1 degree – being ‘light dancers’ wherever we are in life by living as Apprentices of Jesus who make a positive impact wherever we are – a ball game, at work, at school, in the grocery store…wherever & whenever—that’s Mission at 1 degree.
Corporately we believe that worship includes…
–Gathering in Creative Public Spaces like a park, a movie theatre, or a River Boat to experience the wide-open story of God on the move in the world.
–Incorporating a wide array of artists like painters, sculptors, dancers, story tellers, musicians and more to help tell the Great News of God’s Kingdom on the move through the work of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God unleashed in the world.
–Service Worship is built on the concept of worship as a ‘living sacrifice’ found in the Biblical passage at Romans 12:1-2. The idea of ‘Service Worship’ is that we’ll serve those around us in the name of Jesus to help meet real needs in our neighborhoods, local schools and communities. We’ll take one Sunday each month and ‘worship’ by serving out in the community somewhere.
–Life Transformation Groups (LXG’S) – Some of the best worship experiences you’ll have will be hanging out with good friends at somebody’s home digging into what it means to become a ‘Full-On Apprentice of Jesus’. We call these ‘life transformation groups’, and believe that these intimate gatherings are very much ‘worship’.
Creating a ‘Forge’ for Apprentice Making
The reality is that only God can call someone into following Christ, and only God can ‘make a true disciple’ out of an ordinary person, but in Matthew, Jesus commissioned His movement, the Church, to be an ‘Apprentice Making’ community. So, God allows us to partner with Him in forging Apprentices out of ordinary people. At Phos Hilaron Church the Forging process follows the path of our transformational worship experiences. That is, we believe that Apprentices will be forged by joining in the worship experiences that we’ll offer. We believe that Apprentice Making is done best in up-close community in Life Transformation Groups, and that the larger experiences allow us to be energized, challenged, and honed in on our quest to become full-on followers of Christ.
The Apprentice’s Path can start anywhere on this worship cycle, and the cycle runs monthly. So jump in anywhere you like and ramp up at your own pace until you are ready to journey with us in becoming an Apprentice of Jesus…
Transformational Worship Encounters at Tinseltown and Other Creative Public Venues (Large Gatherings) 9:50 Sundays
Transformational Worship Encounters in Service Worship Venues (Medium Gatherings where several Life Transformation Groups serve together to benefit our communities) –ck Ph-church.org for details
Life Transformation Groups (Intimate Home Based Gatherings where real friendships are built and our greatest gains as Apprentices of Jesus are likely to be found)
Online Community—Online Worship & Learning Experiences to support the Forging of Apprentices – watch for opportunities to grow by plugging into online community experiences that will connect you from anywhere you are in the world at any time convenient to you. We’ll even have some Life Transformation Groups and Mentoring Matrix gatherings utilizing the online community platform exclusively. So, it’s possible to be a Phos Hilaron Church journey partner from the other side of the world via the web Interested? Send an email to jeff@ph-church.org to learn more.
