In December 2007, a group of 8 began dreaming and preparing for the launch of Element church, knowing that this was something the city of Tampa had not yet seen before. In April of 2008, nearly one hundred of Element’s Core team met for the very first time to pray for what was becoming our church. Excitement was in the air as something that had been but an idea or a dream was now a reality. In May of 2008, 8 house churches were launched in the hopes of making the vision and the heartbeat of what it means to be the church something much more tangible.

You see, we are in the beginning stages of what we believe is a calling, and the story of the people that call themselves Element is still being written. Most of us were a part of a 20somethings movement called Revolution, where God challenged us to be a sudden and momentous change for our generation… Little did we know that that movement would transform into something so much bigger than ourselves.

So here we are, a dream that has been planted and is growing into a deliberate catalyst for love, grace, and hope for our city and its people… And we welcome you to join your story with ours.

why element?

Element is a church for people who don’t go to church because we are the church. With that in mind, we have this desire to make things more simple. You know, to get back to the basics or the heartbeat of what Jesus was calling us to.

There was this night a couple of years ago, where my desire to uncomplicate things turned into God and I arguing over whether or not I was going to launch a new church. As you can imagine, God usually wins conversations like these, and that night as I lay awake in my bed I asked Him to show me what this all looks like.

I heard, not like with my ears… more like in my mind, the word Element. So I when I woke the next morning I grabbed a Bible to see if I could make some sense of my thoughts. I  flipped to the last page of Jill’s Bible (mine was still in the car) and she had written three words some time before. They were FIRE, WATER, and WIND.

I felt like God told me that the FIRE meant that we were to ignite a passion in our people for God, the WATER meant that we’re to deepen our affection towards Him, and the the WIND meant we were to spur into action what it means to be the hope that this world needs. That’s what Element is supposed to be about… Getting back to the basics, as sort of Church-in-the-raw if you will.

As you will come to see, we don’t have a lot of programs and we don’t own our own building, but we do have a very real calling to invest ourselves in the people of Tampa… And maybe because of that, they might see that God is who he says He is… And that He really is worth trusting in.

- Bobby

Element Information Packet