A Taste of Heaven

Our Multi-Ethnic Worship Service

A few Sunday nights ago we gathered in the Sanctuary for an amazing night of worship. We joined up with our ethnic churches who share our church building – the Samoan, Mexican (Centro Cristiano), Chin, Karen, and Nepali-Bhutanese fellowship! It was a powerful evening to gather with people who wouldn’t typically worship together.  It was an amazing time to learn about these different churches – meet the pastors and hear how they got started, about their culture, and growth that is happening in their communities. 

This experience was a taste of heaven.

When I was on the Summer Mission trip to Mississippi a few summers back, I was talking to John “Grandpa”  Perkins, a Civil Rights leader in the South, about his dream to see the church more unified…experiences like this shared worship service are just one more step in the right direction. 

Grandpa Perkins and I share the same dream--a community of people able to worship together regardless of age, ethnicity, and life experience. With so many differences between all these groups (differences that often times separate us), we have the privelege to serve and love the same God!! My hope is that we embrace these experiences and we find more excuses in this new year to be together!

-Pastor Ruby

"Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us."  Col 3:10-11

Thankful

We were talking in Hard Rock with our high school students last Thursday night about things we've run into in the Bible that have blown our minds -- those things you see that hit you upside the head in a powerful moment of realization. 

We talked about the moment of realization that God has always existed and the mind bender it is to try to conceive of someone with no beginning.
We talked about the fact that in Ephesians 5 that God wants us to avoid even a hint of sexual impurity, and what a huge mind blowing life goals that is. Not even a hint!

And lately I've been pondering the ridiculous hope God has for us that we be massively thankful people as followers of Jesus.  1 Thessalonians 5:18 implores us to "Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus."

That is mind-blowing.

The Message puts it this way: "Thank God no matter what happens."

So many of us were thankful for the glorious flag football Meatball Bowl on Saturday

As we sat with Kristen's family for our Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving meal this past weekend, we were talking about the things we were thankful for. Like we do every year. And as I wandered through my brain trying to think of what I wanted to talk about, I realized I hadn't been thinking many thankful thoughts lately.  I've been in productive/task-oriented/dad/cleaning/teaching/planning/struggle brain lately.

I need to spend more time in thankful brain.
We all need to spend more time in thankful brain.

And if I may encourage you, while you're thinking through people and situations that you need to thank God for, I know a whole fleet of people around KCC Student Ministries who could use some extra love.

Being a student ministries volunteer is an amazing privilege. And it can be a pretty rough commitment at times. It takes lots of time, energy, and struggle to love our students well.  But I think the hardest thing about being a student ministry volunteer is you rarely get to see or hear about the impact you're making.

So if you see Amanda, Mark, Herb, Allen, Kirk, Kathy, Dave, Hanna, Nathan, Rachel, Sarah, Cindy, Ted, Kurt or any of our others leaders about this holiday season, let them know how important their ministry is and how thankful you are for who they are and what they do.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, may we all learn a little bit more about being thankful people in every circumstance in our lives. And may we learn to express our thankfulness out loud in word and in action.

Sonic 11-25-12

Sonic Audio for Week 11 - November 25, 2012

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Recommended Process for Memorizing

1. Download or access the audio stream and set aside 30-60 minutes.
2. Listen to the story repeatedly (6-10 times) until you start to feel the flow of the passage 
3. Speak along with the audio until you can tell a 4-8 verse chunk without major mistakes
4. Turn off the audio and start telling it on your own while referring to the audio when you get lost.
5. Celebrate when you find you have some of jesus' words stuck in your brain.
6. Refer to the printed words only if you absolutely have to. But don't feel badly if you need to peek.

Matthew 13:24-30

New Living Translation (NLT)

Parable of the Wheat and Weeds

²⁴ Here is another story Jesus told: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. ²⁵ But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. ²⁶ When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.

²⁷ “The farmer’s workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?’

²⁸ “‘An enemy has done this!’ the farmer exclaimed.

“‘Should we pull out the weeds?’ they asked.

²⁹ “‘No,’ he replied, ‘you’ll uproot the wheat if you do. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.’”

text from Bible Gateway