Gather on 1st and 3rd Fridays

The Gathering will begin meeting regulary on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month. We'll gather around 5:30 PM to eat and connect with each other, then around 6:45 until 7:30 PM we'll have a brief time of worship with music, a Bible message, and lesson, crafts, and a movie for the children.

You're invited! And remember, participating in a Gathering event does not commit you to this new thing God is doing. So don't be weirded out about coming to check it out.

One of our values is sharing gifts, so, like did the early church, bring something to offer: yourselves, food, a poem to read during worship, your music, your love for children, your story to share - whatever God has given you, share it with us!

Next Gathering is Friday, October 7 at 5:30 PM. 

Great Nite!

Had a really fun night last night meeting new friends, eating together, inspiring time of singing, enjoying children, navigating chaos and noise, invigorating conversation, drawing pictures and flying paper ariplanes and community clean-up.

Our 'Gathering' events happen the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month at 5:30 PM. You're invited so join us next time! Jimmy n Liz

Gathering This Friday!

You are invited to our home this Friday at 6 PM to relax, eat together, enjoy relationships, hear about the new church we're raising up, and participate in a brief time of informal worship. Children are welcome. Come over, we'd enjoy having you! E-mail me (jimmy@gatheringtucson.org) if you need our address and/or directions. Jim n Liz

Stand In Man

In His own body He bore our sins on the tree ...


Stories are powerful. They are especially so when they intersect with the Gospel of Jesus. And all stories eventually do intersect ...

Here is the account of how an aspect of my story intersects with Jesus' story, highlighting a key element of the Gospel.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I got busted for growing a small crop of marijuana in the basement of my home. It was a horrible and hopeless experience. A team of DEA agents raided my home and confiscated my grow-room for evidence. I felt agonizingly alone, shamefully burdened by the pending charges against me, enraged at the 'friend' who betrayed and turned me in, hopeless for any bright future, and absolutely red-hot inflamed against God for allowing my life to be torn apart. The sun didn't rise anymore. There was no way out.

But to my surprise, a DEA investigator made me an offer. If I would work with them and help them arrest someone on similar charges - one of my 'friends' - I myself could go free. A way out ... ... hmmmm ...

Trouble is everyone I knew knew I got busted; surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird! I decided I would not do this violence to another like had been done to me. It was my mistake, my foolishness, my charges, my punishment. So without an advocate, I took my own hit.

A year later, after the process unfolded and my punishment was satisfied, I attended a Catholic Bible study - why I'm not sure. There I heard a priest read from the Bible. While I don't remember what he read, I do recall the tremendous impact it had on me; it left an indelible mark on my life. For the first time I heard God speaking directly to me. It was like those words were penetrating into parts of me I didn't know existed; a new world opened up on my inside and there God warmly met me and took up residence. The tap root of faith vigorously invaded and began to grow and overtake me.

I was being apprehended by God! His Spirit was raiding my inner space, lighting up my darkness, uncovering my defilement, convicting me of my rebellion, exposing my dirtiness, and all the while revealing Himself to me as an eclectic, mysterious, compelling, awesome, terrifying, gracious and compassionate God. His holy presence - now terrifyingly in me - convicted me of sin, high treason, love-lacking, self-absorption, idolatry. Talk about terror! I felt like a translucent blob inner-lit and exposed before everywhere present eyes. I was horrified yet compelled, despairing yet expectant, mixed up, broken apart and laid down.

Then it happened ...

God made me an offer. I could either take my lifetime of rebellion on my own shoulders or ... lay it on someone else's. Trouble with mine is that they are weak. Who can stand before the Lord's judgment? Not me. I'd be consumed. Trouble with Jesus' shoulders is that they require me to trust something outside of myself, to relinquish my control of things, to risk putting my trust in something or - more terrifying - someone I can't physically grab hold of, to offer my life on the altar of grateful service (along with any number of other scary things).

But why Jesus? Why not Fred or Julie or Izzie my dog? Because sin and death entered the world and human nature through a human and this human nature must pay for its sin. My sin. And because the severity of judgment on sin is so brutal - on account that it is war and violence against a holy God - only He Himself is capable of absorbing, enduring the eternal weight of His anger and wrath for sin, that is why a virgin birth is so vital. God must be born into this world with both a human and divine nature because both are necessary if I am to have a way out, a stand in.

This time I took the offer.

I became a new creation! This identity, this realization hit me while driving westbound on I-94 into Milwaukee in my retro-green 1966 Pontiac Bonneville with a 396. I was listening to - what I frankly would now consider a cheesy - Christian radio station during a brief devotion on that verse.

I began to weep, thinking, "This is true of me ... now!" Somehow I had been repaired, reborn, restored from within apart from my own doing and its feels so surreal, so unreal, so superbly real, so vital, so brand new, so new born. Old things passed away, everything became new.

Honestly, it felt weird. It felt like my old self was melting away and a new self was beginning to emerge. New, fresh faith in someone, something outside myself, new desires that were eager after God's heart, new longings for realities outside this world, new relationship with the ancient of ways, new courage to navigate a jacked world, new hope for a new world renewed by fire, new expectation for a face to face with reality of the highest order - Jesus.

In sum, repair amid brokenness. Hope amid despair. Healing amid sickness. And the relevance of Christ's life to mine. The good infection.

These are the reasons we are passionate about raising up a new faith community. To discover together a fitting response to God's matchless grace. To offer to others the same grace of Jesus we ourselves have received. To journey together on the way of Spirit-led spiritual disciplines.

To tell the story of my Stand In Man so that others may learn of and embrace Him.

My God and I.

May He belong also to you ...