This Week @ TLR

Greetings Friends of TLR!

Here's a quick glimpse of what's happened and is happening @ TLR:

• Jesus 4 President Tour. This past weekend was a wild success! We passed out an estimated 500 fliers about TLR! I want to personally thank everyone who helped make this event a success. A lot of hard work went into this.
  

• Church Basement Roadshow. Our Sunday night gathering will be @ 7PM at the B-Complex. Click here for directions. Check out our post below to watch a YouTube video about CBR. Please come and help get the word out about this. Contact Dan Ra if you want to help volunteer.

• TLR Google Group. This past Sunday night we discussed our need to have greater participation in planning our Sunday night gatherings. We agreed to start a Google Group and to use it as a tool to promote greater involvement and transparency. Join the open-source revolution...

• Georgia Avenue. Next Sunday, August 3rd, @ 5PM will be our first worship gathering at Georgia Ave! I have talked with a friend of TLR who who is going to help us get couches and love-seats. We need to build a ramp so that the sanctuary is accessible. Any volunteers? We could buy a portable ramp for about $200 - anyone want to help? Click on the "Make a Donation" button to donate online using our PayPal account.

• Dwell. There are 3-4 people from TLR who are prayerfully considering moving into a new intentional Christian community in Grant Park (literally 5 doors down from GA Ave). Please keep this in your prayers. Move in date is September 1st.

We have the keys to test drive Georgia Avenue!

Well friends, I have some exciting news to share with you: starting August 1st we have the keys to test drive meeting in the sanctuary of Georgia Avenue in Grant Park (address is: 645 Grant St SE, ATL, GA). Above is a picture of the sanctuary taken from Troy Bronsink's ordination service. Here are my thoughts on this new opportunity:

• Can we afford it? First, Georgia Avenue is owned by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta. On Monday I met with the head of the presbytery and with representative of the Georgia Avenue Food Bank (who use the old Sunday School building). The agreement we reached is for TLR to begin meeting at GA Avenue for one year, sort of like a trial period. We will be sharing the sanctuary with Southwest Christian Fellowship, a traditional historic African-American congregation. We will be sharing the rest of the building with the food co-op and a day care. Together we will pulling funds together to pay for utilities and upkeep. Our share is $100/week, which is $50 less per week than we are paying at Tilt Coffee Shop. And now we will have 24/7 access to a facility and not just 2 hours a week.
  
• Is this a permanent move? One word: no. Friends, I have to be totally honest with you that I'm not sure if this is the right thing for us to do. How will moving into a church building affect the ethos and culture of our community? We meet now in a cool hip "secular" coffee shop - how will meeting in a building with stain glass affect us? Also, now that we have 24/7 access to a building we will become just another overworked Christian community with meetings, meetings, meetings? My hope is that this opportunity will be a blessing and not a curse for our community. But I want us to go into this with our eyes open.
  
• Are we going to sit in pews? Yes and no. I want us to reorganize the worship space in the sanctuary at Georgia Avenue. In the picture above they organized it into a U-shape. This is part of my hope. I am also interested in having people donate or buy some couches from Goodwill and add them to the space. Maybe we could dedicate some couches instead of pews! I want us to have fun and play with our new worship space - the last thing I want is for us is to feel we have to sit all prim and proper in pews :)

The proposal is for us to start meeting at Georgia Avenue starting the first Sunday in August at our new time of 5PM. There is a great independently owned restaurant near Georgia Avenue called Dakota Blue where we could grab a bite to eat after worship.

Please post your comments/concerns/ideas about this opportunity for our community.

Church Basement Roadshow in Atlanta on July 27th

The Living Room is co-sponsoring The Church Basement Roadshow, A Rollin' Gospel Revival is rumbling across the U.S. this summer, bringing good fun and good news to anyone who will listen. They will be rolling into ATL on Sunday July 27th @ The B-Complex. Here's one of their songs:

No Church This Sunday / New Start Time is 5PM

Quick note to say that there will be no Living Room gathering this Sunday, in observance of "Freedom From Church Day". The following Sunday, July 13th, we will start our gatherings at 5PM (instead of 7PM) so that we can go out for dinner after our gathering. We will be continuing a new series of conversations on the meaning of communion. We kicked the series off last Sunday night at The Brickstore Pub - yes, we had communion in a bar.

July Newsletter:

Greetings friends and supporters of The Living Room!

I hope this newsletter finds you well. I write this to you after putting down my children for sleep. I am officially on vacation for two weeks with my children. We have had so much fun doing local day trips to the pool, the zoo, the children's museum - and they even came with me last night to The Living Room! Skylar, my daughter, said to me afterwards, "Hey dad, that was a lot of fun for church". As it says in Psalm 8: "Out of the mouths of babes..."

PCUSA IS EMERGENT? The first bit of news I want to share comes from the recent General Assembly of the PCUSA: Bruce Reyes-Chow was elected moderator of 218th General Assembly. Why is this significant and newsworthy? Read the opening words from the PCUSA news service:

SAN JOSE, June 21, 2008 —The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, 39, an energetic new church development pastor in San Francisco and leader in the "emergent church" movement, was elected moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

This is significant news for many reasons: first, because all things "emergent" will be highlighted by Bruce as he travels the nation these next two years; second, as The Living Room is one of the few explicitly emergent churches in the PCUSA, this is good news for our community! I corresponded with Bruce yesterday and he assured me that The Living Room would definitely be one of his stops. News of Bruce's election was even commented on by Tony Jones, National Coordinator for Emergent Village, who said in his blog, "Bruce offers great promise to the PCUSA in his two-year term - and, let it be said, the PC(USA) has been about the most interested in emergent ideas of any denomination". Hmmm...

JULY IS GOING TO BE BUSY! The Living Room is one of the co-sponsors for the July 19th Jesus For President Tour at Community Fellowship Church and also the Church Basement Roadshow on July 27th. The evening of Saturday, July 19th, will feature a speech by Shane Claiborne, founding partner of The Simple Way and author of The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus For President, the music of The Psalters, and a general carnival atmosphere. Want to help out for this event? I'd love your help with my projects: putting together an online resource for local ministry opportunities. The evening of Sunday, July 27th, will be at The B-Complex and will feature Tony Jones, Doug Paggit, and Mark Scandrette- who are three leaders in the emergent church movement. They are touring the country this summer in an RV to sell their books and put on a rollicking "21st century roadshow revival of that old time religion". Again, if you want to help, let me know. The big need is to raise $400 to help cover the expenses related to this event. Let me know if you want to help out with either of these events - both promise to be TONS of fun and are important outreach events for getting the word out about TLR.

BENEFIT CONCERT TO SUPPORT INNOCENCE ATLANTA: Kit and I have begun to plan a benefit concert to support the work of Innocence Atlanta, an organization raising awareness and working to to eradicate child sex slavery and exploitation in Atlanta. We have a great venue, a couple bands have already agreed to help out, and I will be meeting with Daniel Homrich next week to talk about promoting this event. Our goal will be to raise $500 and, more importantly, to raise awareness of this issue for fans of the participating bands. Do you know any bands (or play in one) that would like to play at this event? Or do you want to volunteer your time/talents to help pull this event off? Then please contact either Kit Fordham or me.

UPDATE ON GEORGIA AVENUE: For the past couple months, we have been praying about the possibility of moving into an old sanctuary in Grant Park called Georgia Avenue. I have already met with our steering committee and with the emergent church committee of my presbytery. I am meeting tomorrow morning with the leaders of the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry (GACM), who use the old Sunday school building of Georgia Ave. The next step takes place next week when the leaders of the GACM and I will be meeting with Ed Albright, the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, to discuss this opportunity for our community. I sincerely ask for your prayers as we continue to discern God's will.


Well, if you've read all the way down to this line I want to say "thank you"! Please open and read the attached newsletter written by Troy Bronsink that features a story about TLR. There is a lot going on at TLR, and I am thankful that you are a friend or a supporter of this growing ministry. The Spirit is at work, good things are happening, and new opportunities continue to emerge...

Blessings,
Tom Livengood


PS: Interested in helping our ministry financially? You can do so by using PayPal, a safe and easy way to donate online. Click here to make a donation or go anytime to our blog and click the "Make a Donation" button. All donations are administered by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta on behalf of TLR. Donate with confidence!

PPS: And here is a group photo from one of our recent Sunday night gatherings:



Aren't we an eclectic bunch?