RCLB Family and Friends!

Hope you all had a GREAT summer and are getting back in the grind of things. It’s been a hot summer here in the LBC and it will be nice for things to cool down a bit and we prepare for this next season at RCLB.  It’s been a fun summer, with the “Food, Fun and Film” events to backyard BBQ’s it seemed like there was something going on every weekend and a lot of days in-between, it’s been great being family. =)

With this new season comes change and although change can be scary sometimes for us we have always said that we write our mission and vision as a church in stone but the way to get there in pencil. Because we want to always be flexible with the way we get there, being willing to change and adjust when needed in order to stay most effective with the call that God has given us. So some excited changes will be coming soon and we are asking that you be in prayer for this next season!

Keep praying and stay sensitive to the Spirit of the opportunities that God is giving us to be His church well. God has us here, in this city, at this time to do His work. Which is going to be a great and glorious work! I hope your excited to be a part of it!

RCLB Family and Friends!

The year is halfway over and we have seen God working in so many ways. New people, new families, new lives and new dedications. We are walking through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and learning what it means to be in love with God so that it overflows into all the world.

Over the last month we have been challenged as a church to be unified in outrageous generosity and fervent prayer as exampled by Jesus. In doing this our goal is to seek God’s will, direction and favor in being apart of His plan in Long Beach. We hope that you would join us in prayer!

Keep praying as we go into a time of prayer and seeking direction for the opportunities that God is giving us to keep loving on our city well and to continue to be a healthy and growing church. These are ways that you can be specifically praying for.

1. Unity in our church family.
2. Monthly Mexico Mission Trips direction.
3. 5 for 12 love initiative. (Getting us more strategic and focused on loving our neighbor)
4. Generosity, commitment and obedience of our church family.
5. Right ways to partner with other churches in Long Beach.

Keep praying and stay sensitive to the Spirit of the opportunities that God is giving us to be His church well. God has us here, in this city, at this time to do His work. Which is going to be a great and glorious work! Be excited to be apart of it!

RCLB Family and Friends!

We are halfway through 2011 and excited to still be going and be used by God in the redeeming work of our city. We had a great Easter, Mothers Day and Memorial Day. Got our hearts focused on the sacrifices that people have made so that we can have hope and freedom. Jesus first and foremost who gave the greatest sacrifice so we could be saved from sin, mom’s who sacrifice so that we can grow up well and our soldiers that have sacrificed their lives so that we can stay free. Hope you all took communion hugged a mom and thanked a soldier recently!

We teamed up with City Church for Easter, another church plant and it was a great day of hanging and celebrating Jesus together. We had over 300 people come to 2 services and 25 children. Our egg hunt got rained on so we moved in all inside and just kept on going and it was a blast! Thank you all for your hard work and generosity to make this an event that we hope that city will want us to do over and over again.

Keep praying as we go into a time of prayer and seeking direction for the opportunities that God is giving us to keep loving on our city well and to continue to be a healthy and growing church. These are ways that you can be specifically praying for.

1. Continuing our morning service.
2. Monthly Mexico Mission Trips direction. (Our week long VBS trip in November)
3. 5 for 12 love initiative. (Getting us more strategic and focused on loving our neighbor)
4. Generosity, commitment and obedience of our church family.
5. Right ways to partner with other churches in Long Beach.

Keep praying and stay sensitive to the Spirit of the opportunities that God is giving us to be His church well. God has us here, in this city, at this time to do His work. Which is going to be a great and glorious work! Be excited to be apart of it!

Easter Sunday is coming up, which is the day millions celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now hold on, before you tune out saying that you don’t believe in this resurrection Jesus stuff. Have you ever asked yourself, what if the story of Jesus is true? What would that mean to you?

What if Jesus is the son of God and He did come here to show us what God is really like? What if He came here to show us as life as it was originally intended to be? What if your life now, with all the pain and suffering and death is not how it has to be.

What if, like the Bible says, Jesus really did let Himself be rejected by us so that we could be accepted by God? What if He really did choose to die for us, tortured and killed on a cross for us, so that we could really live?

What if the one and only God of the universe really does love YOU so much that He did send His one and only Son to die for YOU and then He rose Him form the dead, conquering death just so that He could be in a personal relationship with YOU.

What would that tell you about this God? What would that tell you about love and how much He loves YOU? How would YOU respond? What if we could stop asking questions and really know that truth?

Whether you believe all this or not, why don’t you join us?

Easter Sunday, April 24th 2011.

no pressure, no gimmicks, no confusion, just truth.

RCLB Family!

I hope this email finds you loving life because you are living in line with God’s plan and will for you! It’s been exciting to hear so many stories of how you are stepping out in faith taking hold of the opportunities God sends your way and then seeing God use you to do awesome things in your day to day! Keep on trusting in God, taking the time to get to know Him more and more, that way you can recognize the opportunities that He gives you and then have the courage to go boldly!

It’s been an exciting month! Watching God work as we launched a morning service in faith that it would glorify Him and that He would see it through! There was a need for a service in the morning, being more welcoming and available for families and children and it’s been great to see God bring new people to both services. We have had visitors each week, new children, people saying yes to Jesus, signing up for covenant membership, getting on board and behind God’s work for our church in Long Beach and we have baptisms coming up in two weeks! =) This is a great time of momentum for us and I’m excited to be apart of it with each of yall! Keep up loving God and loving each other! =)

RCLBers!

Happy New Year!!! It is now 2011 and I hope you are excited about God’s plans for you and our church family this year! =) Hopefully you all had good family and friends time over the past couple of weeks and are ready to get back to the daily grind. We took a week off of our Sunday night gathering to spend time with family and friends and we were back this last Sunday. Also just happened to be the night of one of the biggest storms that we have had here in a long time. We show up and it’s raining hard with no signs of letting up, so we have to set up everything inside. For a church in a box trying to set up all of our things in one big room, it wasn’t easy but it was awesome to watch our leaders lead their teams and figure out how to make it work and work it did, very well. Those times are awesome in our journey, to just see a hurdle come up and God work out the solution right there and with our church like any church plant, those times come up often. It makes us excited about the plans that God has for us in the near future when we launch0 our first morning service coming up this February 13th! We know that God wants us to reach our city and that having a morning service will greatly help us to do just that. And with the teams that we have I know that we will figure out how to do whatever it is that we need to do in order to keep up with God’s plan for us! =)

So keep up your prayer for God’s wisdom, discernment and energy for us so that we can all be bold and courageous as we take this next big step. Thank you for all your support and hard work, it is all going towards the glory of God here in Long Beach! We are all here for a purpose and we all have our part to play thanks for doing yours well! =)

RCLB Family!

Happy December! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are looking forward to the Christmas season! The family and food and fun! Don’t forget that Christmas can be big, should be big because it is the season that we celebrate our Savior being born a baby to save the world! Don’t get caught up in the pressure and stresses that tend to overwhelm us during the month of December, focus on Jesus! =) And don’t forget to slow down EVERY DAY and take time to look around and see what all God is doing for you and around you! That will keep you encouraged and motivated to keep or pressing on to do the work that God has for you to do!

Great news! A BIG God rocks story!

When we first moved to Rec Park we looked at the possibility of having a morning service but the city said that it wouldn’t be possible because there was a class that has been meeting there for years so we stayed at nights. Which worked out great because as we have come to find out, there are not many night services available in Long Beach and time and time again people come, stayed and would tell us how much they appreciate having a night service to go to, so we could see God working in that. But more and more we saw people come that really liked our church family but felt that the nights service was too late, mostly young families with kids. We kept feeling that we needed to have a morning service and so about 4 month ago the leadership discussed and agreed that we all felt that God was giving us the go ahead and so we actively started looking for another place to meet a bit disappointed because we really liked our location. Its amazing to look back and see how many people visited just because of our location and the sign outside and we really didn’t want to move location but where willing to if need be to keep in line with God’s will for our church. SO I am stoked to be able to tell you the God has opened the door to Rec Park Mornings, we got an email that they are willing to let us meet in the mornings and keep our “stuff” set up in between. We will be starting to meet there on 2/13/11!!! =) I am so excited to see what God has in store for us in this next chapter of our church! =)

This is going to be a pretty big change for us and will take lots of resources so I ask you all to pray for us to stay in line and in God’s will, that we don’t get discouraged and stay excited about His work! Please pray to see how God wants your to be apart of this next chapter, we don’t know what all we are going to be doing, what it’s going to take but we do rest in the fact that God is in control and that will provide everything that we need! =) So thank you for all you have done and keep supporting us in whatever way God’s got you too! =)

I thank you all for your diligence and hard work and count it an honor to fight beside you all in the battle for Long Beach! =)

RCLB Family!

It’s been a great October, lots going on all over Long Beach! It has been great seeing you all doing life together, relying on and encouraging each other through it all! God is working through us and using us to make His love known in LB. People have said “yes” to Jesus, rededicated their lives to Jesus, and decided to give “church” another try because when they spend time with our family they see something different; what they see is Jesus in yall and that ROCKS! =) Keep making God smile by loving Him because of how much He loves you.

Lifegroups are running strong, and we are just finishing up our first round of Discipleship classes “Gospel in Life.” These have gone great, and the feedback from yall has been very helpful. It’s encouraging to see how excited and motivated you get when you learn about God’s purpose for you, His church and the Gospel in your day-to-day lives. The stories of the Gospel at work at your school, jobs, local coffee shops, and on planes have been so awesome to hear! If you couldn’t make one of the classes, no worries, we are going to offer it again in the new year along with ‘part two’ of our discipleship training which will be a practical, hands-on class to help you see when and how God is telling you to be His hands and feet. So be sure to let the info table know if you’re interested or reply back to this email and we will let you know all the details.

October 31st just passed and most of yall know that we partnered up with two other churches in Long Beach to put on a Candy Festival for the downtown LB area. It was a huge success, success being measured by how bright the love of Jesus shined out of us and the conversations we had; the hundreds of kids that were laughing and smiling and being loved on by many, MANY volunteers; and three churches united under the flag of the love of Jesus to serve our city. It was a huge success. Well done loving! Here are some pictures from the event on our website, keep checking back as we will continue to add more. =)

Candy Festival Pictures

Also we were a part of putting on the Unashamed Movement event that happened on 10/30, where Christian hip hop performers came and put on a show for over 2500 people. The Gospel was thread through the entire show, these were top-notch artists who have songs and albums that have topped Amazon and itunes charts. And people from all walks of life came to the see the show and left seeing Jesus! Thanks to you all that volunteered hours and bought tickets for those that couldn’t afford them. The night was a success, God was glorified, thanks for playing your part!

Remember, we are called by our Savior King to “be disciples of Jesus that make disciples of Jesus” through “loving Jesus and each other practically,” so that we can “be a place where lives are transformed.” A place full of people with transformed lives is a place where people are seeing and saying “yes” to Jesus– a place where the unchurched love to come, and a place where God is glorified! It’s exciting to see this coming to pass, keep loving each other out of the love you have for Jesus!

You are important, a beloved child of God, and He has an amazing plan for you– are you ready? =) Be bold and courageous! Love you all!

andrew