Pastor Steve Timmis is the founder of The Crowded House, a group of church-planting networks in the UK. Pastor Steve is teaching the Total Church Community Training at our Ballard Campus on Monday, March 9th from 7pm-10pm. This event is free with registration at THIS LINK.

When you attend this evening event you can expect to learn about living in community shaped by Jesus’ grace. Pastor Steve will bring both practical and theological wisdom that will help families, community groups, church members, and people interested in joining a church.

Pastor Steve’s book Total Church was published through Re:lit, and last month he contributed five articles to The Resurgence blog. Also in February, Acts 29 posted a four-part interview in which he answered questions from a group of men training to be church planters.

Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

Pastor Scott Thomas: You’ve done a lot of work on pastoral care, and some training and equipping of leaders. How important is that in your model?

Timmis: It’s absolutely crucial to what we do. Effectively our pastoral care is gospeling one another. We’re committed to biblical counseling – so our commitment to ‘every issue is a heart issue,’ we try to get the sin underneath the sin, showing how we’re made to love and worship God, but in our fallenness we love and worship ourselves, and all sin emanates from that broken spring and polluted water, and then trying to get people back to love and worship God. And that really is absolutely crucial to what we do.

So we can’t just focus on mission as something that we do outside – mission begins in our own heart. As we bring the gospel to bear in our own lives, we bring the gospel to bear in one another’s lives. And every expression of mission is where we bring the gospel to bear in others’ lives – is a continuation of that [gospel in our lives]. If people want to adopt some of the principles from our model or example, they would really need to see how crucial this is – pastoring one another.

MHC|WS helps support The Crowded House through our giving to Acts 29. You can learn more about The Crowded House and the other churches the West Seattle Campus supports on our Who We Support page.

Please join Mars Hill in welcoming and praying for him during his time with us in Seattle.

The Crowded House Lead Planter: Steve Timmis Location: Sheffield UK Mission: The Crowded House is a group of church planting networks in Sheffield and Loughborough. Most of our churches meet in homes. We want to offer a place of belonging. We are committed to: -mission through community – we believe that the life of the Christian family is a powerful apologetic for the gospel -communities in mission – we want to be congregations focused on the gospel and church planting.

Read the MHWS “Meet A Church Planter” article on Steve Timmis