No Church This Sunday / New Start Time is 5PM

Quick note to say that there will be no Living Room gathering this Sunday, in observance of "Freedom From Church Day". The following Sunday, July 13th, we will start our gatherings at 5PM (instead of 7PM) so that we can go out for dinner after our gathering. We will be continuing a new series of conversations on the meaning of communion. We kicked the series off last Sunday night at The Brickstore Pub - yes, we had communion in a bar.

July Newsletter:

Greetings friends and supporters of The Living Room!

I hope this newsletter finds you well. I write this to you after putting down my children for sleep. I am officially on vacation for two weeks with my children. We have had so much fun doing local day trips to the pool, the zoo, the children's museum - and they even came with me last night to The Living Room! Skylar, my daughter, said to me afterwards, "Hey dad, that was a lot of fun for church". As it says in Psalm 8: "Out of the mouths of babes..."

PCUSA IS EMERGENT? The first bit of news I want to share comes from the recent General Assembly of the PCUSA: Bruce Reyes-Chow was elected moderator of 218th General Assembly. Why is this significant and newsworthy? Read the opening words from the PCUSA news service:

SAN JOSE, June 21, 2008 —The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, 39, an energetic new church development pastor in San Francisco and leader in the "emergent church" movement, was elected moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

This is significant news for many reasons: first, because all things "emergent" will be highlighted by Bruce as he travels the nation these next two years; second, as The Living Room is one of the few explicitly emergent churches in the PCUSA, this is good news for our community! I corresponded with Bruce yesterday and he assured me that The Living Room would definitely be one of his stops. News of Bruce's election was even commented on by Tony Jones, National Coordinator for Emergent Village, who said in his blog, "Bruce offers great promise to the PCUSA in his two-year term - and, let it be said, the PC(USA) has been about the most interested in emergent ideas of any denomination". Hmmm...

JULY IS GOING TO BE BUSY! The Living Room is one of the co-sponsors for the July 19th Jesus For President Tour at Community Fellowship Church and also the Church Basement Roadshow on July 27th. The evening of Saturday, July 19th, will feature a speech by Shane Claiborne, founding partner of The Simple Way and author of The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus For President, the music of The Psalters, and a general carnival atmosphere. Want to help out for this event? I'd love your help with my projects: putting together an online resource for local ministry opportunities. The evening of Sunday, July 27th, will be at The B-Complex and will feature Tony Jones, Doug Paggit, and Mark Scandrette- who are three leaders in the emergent church movement. They are touring the country this summer in an RV to sell their books and put on a rollicking "21st century roadshow revival of that old time religion". Again, if you want to help, let me know. The big need is to raise $400 to help cover the expenses related to this event. Let me know if you want to help out with either of these events - both promise to be TONS of fun and are important outreach events for getting the word out about TLR.

BENEFIT CONCERT TO SUPPORT INNOCENCE ATLANTA: Kit and I have begun to plan a benefit concert to support the work of Innocence Atlanta, an organization raising awareness and working to to eradicate child sex slavery and exploitation in Atlanta. We have a great venue, a couple bands have already agreed to help out, and I will be meeting with Daniel Homrich next week to talk about promoting this event. Our goal will be to raise $500 and, more importantly, to raise awareness of this issue for fans of the participating bands. Do you know any bands (or play in one) that would like to play at this event? Or do you want to volunteer your time/talents to help pull this event off? Then please contact either Kit Fordham or me.

UPDATE ON GEORGIA AVENUE: For the past couple months, we have been praying about the possibility of moving into an old sanctuary in Grant Park called Georgia Avenue. I have already met with our steering committee and with the emergent church committee of my presbytery. I am meeting tomorrow morning with the leaders of the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry (GACM), who use the old Sunday school building of Georgia Ave. The next step takes place next week when the leaders of the GACM and I will be meeting with Ed Albright, the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, to discuss this opportunity for our community. I sincerely ask for your prayers as we continue to discern God's will.


Well, if you've read all the way down to this line I want to say "thank you"! Please open and read the attached newsletter written by Troy Bronsink that features a story about TLR. There is a lot going on at TLR, and I am thankful that you are a friend or a supporter of this growing ministry. The Spirit is at work, good things are happening, and new opportunities continue to emerge...

Blessings,
Tom Livengood


PS: Interested in helping our ministry financially? You can do so by using PayPal, a safe and easy way to donate online. Click here to make a donation or go anytime to our blog and click the "Make a Donation" button. All donations are administered by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta on behalf of TLR. Donate with confidence!

PPS: And here is a group photo from one of our recent Sunday night gatherings:



Aren't we an eclectic bunch?

Our Communion Song and Message:

Click here to listen to our communion song we sung last Sunday night:

Click here to listen to Tom's message before we take communion (also last Sunday night):

Thanks Amy for helping me with this. I'm really trying to be a techno savy kind of guy... but trying is the key word!

Listen, enjoy, share, comment.

Bobby's new article

Here's Bobby Williamson's (our "Bible guy") new article: http://sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=777

It's really good, though he forgot to include any mention of TLR ;)

TLR in part

At The Living Room we don't want to be too comfortable defining ourselves because the moment we do so, we've created standards apart from God's unimaginable dreams for us

Well, I wrote a description on my other blog and I hope this description changes:

i'm a part of the living room. we're a self-described emergent community with a relationship to the pcusa (since tom, is ordained in the pcusa). we meet at tilt coffeeshop in the castleberry hill historic arts district.

our gatherings are unique in that we exercise in local theologizing. we converse, experiment, relate, and wrestle with faith, scripture, culture, and ourselves together to build a dynamic theology for God's kingdom on earth. there is no sermon except for the sermon we create together. and the songs we sing are created by our community for our community. our liturgy is raw and flat, while simultaneously rich and elaborate. it's creative, spontaneous, biblical, mystical, imaginative, and contemplative. we espouse an ancient-future paradigm where we draw from our ancient, historical traditions but create new liturgical expressions as we look towards Jesus' reappearing. our lord's supper is supernatural and symbolic, communal and priestly.

our kingdom mindset is missional where we take with us redemption and beauty towards those in our lives who yearn for those things. we seek the justice of God. the voices of the margins are the voices where God's kingdom erupts. we pray for those who wonder how long they'll sing their song. and we sing those songs along with them.

we're literally young and old. we're multi-ethnic. we come from various christian traditions, or no traditions at all. some of us barely believe in God. but we worship in faith together.

Tim Keller and "The Reason for God"

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, visits Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters to discuss his book, "The Reason for God." This event took place on March 5, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series. It is an hour long - but is VERY though provoking:

This Is The Living Room

Aren't we an eclectic bunch?