[photo via]

Friends and Family of Mars Hill Church, I'd like to share with you a couple of notes I've received recently:

From Indiana… We are very thankful that Mars Hill provides sermons at no cost for people to listen to online. It benefits more people than Pastor Mark and Mars Hill will ever know until heaven.

From Canada… I live in a small town in rural Ontario where hearing the gospel preached is almost non-existent. I have been so blessed through your online ministry. THANK YOU!

From San Francisco… As a pastor, I have been greatly blessed and positively influenced by the ministry of Mars Hill and the preaching/teaching of Mark Driscoll. As a family, the Lord has used Mars Hill to grow us in our faith and ministry.

What's more, here's a glimpse into what's going on at some of our campuses:

• Last month Mars Hill Downtown went on a campus retreat —and one of the employees at the retreat center ended up meeting Jesus !
• A Bellevue Community Group organized a MicroMission to pack 270,000 meals to send to starving children in the Philippines.
• Renowned author Gary Thomas visited the Shoreline Campus to give a weekend marriage seminar.
• Over Memorial Day weekend almost 700 people attended the first gathering for the Orange County (CA) campus.

Until Jesus returns...

As we go through the book of Luke this month, we'll study Jesus' parable of the "Ten Minas." There's a lot packed in there, but one of the big ideas is that Jesus is coming back someday to claim his kingdom, and he's given us life and grace and resources in the meantime. We can invest these gifts—pouring them into something that counts—or we can bury them with fear, selfishness, and laziness. Our church is not perfect but, to borrow the metaphor from Jesus' story, it's been a good investment. The Bible's getting preached, people are getting saved, and the gospel is going around the world. This is the work of the Holy Spirit—we can't take credit—but it continues to multiply through the hands of his people. We've got a lot of reasons to celebrate, but the lure of complacency grows along with the size and scope of our ministry. This month is a prime opportunity to fight against the temptation to coast. With the end of our fiscal year coming on fast, we cannot afford (literally) to let up and check out. As a church family, please pray, persevere, and give so that we can make budget and start again strong this fall. Let's continue to work hard, together for Jesus, so that we can see God's great gift to us grow even more. –Pastor Jamie