Life Together
What the ordinary life of this church looks like between one Friday and the next. Not a list of programs, and not everything a church could theoretically offer. Only what actually happens.
Friday evenings
The whole church meets at 7:00 on Friday evening, in the sanctuary at Anchor Baptist Church on Winthrop Drive. It is the one thing every week that everybody is at. Scripture is read and preached, and the evening ends with communion and then the Lord’s Prayer, said by the whole room. Afterward people stay and talk, which sounds like a small thing and is not. Plan your visit has the practical version, and what we believe explains why the evening is shaped the way it is.
Through the week
Home groups meet through the week in members’ houses, and that is where most of the reading, praying and looking after one another happens. A group goes deeper into the teaching the church heard together that Friday, prays for its own people by name, and makes the plans that turn into meals, moves and time given to people outside the church.
There is also a class in the Christian faith running through the year, working through the creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. That order is not ours. It is the pattern the church has taught by since very early on, and it treats what we believe, what we pray and how we live as one subject rather than three.
Once a year the church keeps a three-day fast alongside the other churches we are joined to, starting when they start and ending when they end, and breaking it together at communion. A few times a year those churches gather jointly as well.
Beyond the church there is the Mars Hill Forum, a free public evening with a serious speaker, held on the University of Kentucky campus and put on by a student organization there. You do not have to be a Christian to come, and it is not really aimed at people who already are.
Looking after each other
When somebody is sick, or there is a death in the family, or a house to move out of, the home group is where it gets handled. That is where the meal trains start and where the plans get made. It is ordinary and unglamorous and it is most of what care looks like here.
It is also hard to go missing. A person can slip out of a church of two hundred without anyone noticing; that does not work in a room of twelve, and if you are not there for a week or two somebody will call.
Not everybody wants that, and it is worth saying so plainly. People come for a while and find that being known at this level is not what they were looking for. This church has deliberately stayed small enough that it happens to you either way.
If something has gone wrong and you would rather it did not go around the whole congregation, speak to one of the elders on a Friday evening, or email info@tcfky.com.
HOME GROUPS
The rest of the week happens in living rooms.
Groups meet through the week in members’ houses, for study and prayer. Visitors are welcome long before they are members.
KIDS & YOUTH
Bring the children. Really.
Children are welcome to stay with you for the whole service, and plenty do. There is a nursery if you would rather, and children through third grade can go down to the children’s Bible class.