This is the sermon I gave at The Collective last November. The event was held in the LinkUp International hangar at Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke, Texas.
Thanks to Chason Laing and Lumindeo for filming the event. Also thanks to everyone who came that night. It was truly one of the best nights of my life.
(Also thanks to Dr. Lai Ling Ngan for teaching me all that cool stuff about Genesis 38 when I was in seminary!)
Rob Carmack. The Collective. November 7. 2014.
First of all, let me say thank you again to everybody who came out to The Collective.
Thanks especially for everybody who helped make it happen. What I thought would probably be a very small and intimate gathering of about twenty people or so became much more, and you made that happen. Thank you.
Now, the question becomes, What happens now?
Here’s the plan.
We are holding an informational meeting on Sunday, December 8 at 5:00pm.
The nature of the meeting will be to explore the possibility of starting something new and more permanent—of creating a regular space and time to continue the new and ongoing conversation about God and life and reality.
In short, we are starting a church.
Just like at The Collective, childcare will be $5 per child and will be able to have kids up to age nine. Older kids are welcome to sit in on the meeting. When we begin having regular church services, our childcare will be more capable of catering to more ages, and it will be free. However, for now, this is how we have to do it.
So if you are interested in participating in the new and broadening conversation and in being part of a new kind of church (or if you just want to hear more), I hope you will join us on December 8!
You can click here to visit the event's Facebook page.
Can I just take a moment to say how great people can be?
People can be really great.
After it was announced that I was no longer serving as a teaching pastor at Fellowship of the Parks, there were lots of people—more than I could have ever expected—who contacted me in one way or another to offer some kind of encouragement and to ask what was next for my family and me.
To the encouragement, I could only say thank you. This is what I mean when I say that people can be really great. I have never felt so widely loved and supported in my life, and there are no words that can fully express how much that has meant to me.
To the second part—the question about what we are doing next—at the time, I had no idea. Then after I spent a week of thinking and praying and growing restless, my friend Nate said to me, “If you want some space to do something, I’ve got an airplane hangar you can use.”
That sounded interesting.
So we began to plan, and the idea for The Collective was born.
In case you don’t know, The Collective is a one-night worship/teaching event with food.
While it may have taken a couple of weeks to come up with what comes next, we finally had an answer to that question.
So why are we doing this event?
Because sometimes we need to stop and take a night to spend time with other people.
We are doing this because some of us need to be reminded that no matter what we are going through at the moment, there is always hope and the potential for new life.
We are doing this because we believe a new conversation is being had in the world, and we want to invite other people to join in.
The next question frequently has been, “What is the long-term plan for this?”
The answer to this question is simply that we don’t really know.
Could this be something we do from time to time, existing apart from any sort of church affiliation or association? Perhaps.
Could this be the beginning of a new church, one that involves a different conversation and asks different kinds of questions? Possibly.
Again, we really don’t know. All I know is that The Collective is the next thing, and my hope is that people will draw some kind of encouragement from being part of it.
I hope you will come.
I hope you will join us in the ongoing conversation about God and life and reality.
I hope you will find life in new kinds of places and new kinds of ways.
Click here for more information about The Collective on November 7.
Click here to visit the Facebook event page.
