10 Reasons why we love The Austin Stone

The overall primary reason we go to and love the Austin Stone is that Jesus Christ is exalted as Lord and Savior in the preaching, teaching, the mission of the church and infiltrates all aspects of the church. God is worshipped as a Sovereign King, who passionately loves and pursues His people and He has called us to invest our lives into the church.

Aside from that, if I had to add 10 maybe not completely spiritual reasons we go there, they would be these in no particular order.

1. Community – The Lord has blessed us with a community of friends who have become our family that love and care for us and our family, and we care passionately about them as well.
2. College Ministry – We’ve been doing college ministry since we came to Austin and at the beginning of this year I thought I would be done this coming May, but as the year has unfolded the Lord has increased my passion for it and given me vision for its future that I hope to be a part of. We love the UT students we get to spend time with it, it’s been used by God tremendously in our lives.
3. Get Trained – The pastors and staff take seriously the call of God for them “to equip the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ” from Eph. 4:7-16. So seriously, they spend their summers investing into their leaders, our Get Trained Classes (most people’s Sunday school) consists of classes with theology coupled with life application seeking to transform our minds through the Word of God.
4. Worship – We love the style of worship, our worship pastors, Andy Melvin and Aaron Ivey, value exalting Christ in worship through intimacy with the Lord. They choose music with meaning which involves lots of hymns with a contemporary rock style. We love it.
5. Our elders pray and lead well – Though rarely thanked and I’m sure oft criticized infinitely more than they deserve, our elders seek the Lord and follow His vision. They are godly men whom we trust and follow.
6. Constantly being challenged – The bar for personal holiness is held high challenging every attempt I make to compromise in every area of my life, calling me to repent and love Jesus with my whole life.
7. KidStuff/Next Gen – They love our kids well, they want Amber and I to know how to love them well and they have a plan to spiritually assist us and care for our kids from 6 weeks to graduating high school. As a parent, I can’t thank them enough. (I feel super old saying stuff like “As a parent”)
8. We get to see lives changed by the gospel – The extremely fun aspect of our church is seeing person after person encounter the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and see their lives change over and over again. Names just flood my head of people who didn’t completely understand why they came, but have been transformed by the gospel here. This includes us. Obviously it’s not simply the church, but God is moving and that’s fun to be around.
9. They want to plant churches – They are committed to raising up leaders and sending them as missionaries locally, nationally, and overseas (glocally for those who speak Christianese). They have hired 2 church planting residents, 1 church planting intern and are working on a training program to raise up leaders to see the gospel advanced outside of the realm of the Austin Stone.
10. Simply stated, we just love our church – We became partners at the Austin Stone over 3 years ago, have watched it go from 1 service to 4, and we simply love being a part of the mission of the church to our city. It’s one of the primary reasons we love Austin.

We love the church.