Grief does not require a death.

Good morning, Reader.

Four days from now, Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church walks into a room with Mars Hill Anywhere for the first joint service either congregation has held in years.

That is not a small thing. Two pulpits do not share one microphone by accident.

This Sunday: The Gathering

The Gathering: One City. One Savior. One Worship Experience.

This Sunday, Mars Hill and Ebenezer combine into one 11:00 AM service, done by 12:30. Tag-team welcome and announcements, one combined worship set, Pastor Barry carrying intercessory prayer, one sermon, one invitation. A Fifth Sunday scholarship offering will be taken.

Watching from home? Skip the YouTube and Facebook buttons below this week, they won’t carry it. Marcie (Mars Hill) and Jalen (Ebenezer) have the joint service running straight through Restream instead.

When the benediction lands, stay. A reception with light refreshments follows immediately after in Ebenezer’s upstairs dining hall.

Final artwork is approved and already moving across every channel we have. Full run-of-service details and team assignments land in your inbox this week. For now: get August 30 locked in before anything else claims that morning.

This Week’s Message

The Last Passenger You Have to Release Is Not a Person. There’s a folder on your phone you haven’t opened in four years. You know its exact name. This week closed WHO’S IN YOUR BOAT by asking who’s still sitting in the seat behind you, grading every Tuesday against a Tuesday that never came.

👉 Watch Why You Can’t Move On (And How to Fix It)

New Episode: Still Standing

Going deeper this week. Answering Everybody Is Costing You the Work just dropped on Still Standing. You are not slow and you are not disorganized. People keep bringing you their fires because every fast reply has trained them that you will put yours out to handle theirs. The episode names the eleven words that retrain it and hands you a seven-day audit to catch the pattern before it costs you another week.

👉 Listen to Answering Everybody Is Costing You the Work

Give

Everything you are watching right now was built by people who give. The stream, the team, the ministry that reaches somebody who cannot walk into a building this morning.

Give at marshillchicago.org/giving. That link is in the chat and in the description.

Give as worship, not as pressure.

Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

P.S. Sunday’s room will hold more people than either building normally does alone. Get there by 10:45. The scholarship offering opens with the welcome, not after it.

A word from this week’s sponsor

This letter lands in your inbox free, and part of what keeps it that way is the sponsor below. This week it’s 1440. Take ten seconds to see what they’re about. Supporting them helps us keep showing up in your inbox every week.