I have studied church planting for a couple years and the whole time I envisioned this day. The very first church planting event was going to be an exciting one. We are going to meet a lot of people and they are going to come to this awesome event and learn more about the church. I have been here almost 6 weeks now and have spent that time trying to meet people and get ready for this first event. Today was that day…

Yesterday it became clear to me that even with all the people we met we might not have that many show up. It became a lot clearer today when I tried to get a number and realized that a lot of people were out of town or couldn’t make it for different reasons. This was set up for disaster…

As I drove to Discovery Park (the place for our cookout event) I had a moment where I wondered if this was even worth it if we were going to have 10 or fewer people show up. Once everyone got there we totaled 6 people. I started the grill up and began to cook hamburgers, begrudgingly…

As I began to grill a guy walked to a trash can right next to the table we were sitting at. He looked inside and then made his way to the next trash can to see what he could find. God spoke to me and reminded me that His face is in the homeless. I approached one guy his name was Terry. I invited him to come have hamburgers and hotdogs with us. He brought his friend with him. Our team embraced them like they had known these people forever. We spent a couple hours in conversation with four different homeless men and enjoyed a meal together. God spoke to me a second time…

You are not here to attract people to a church, you are here to be the church…

We now have a ministry in Discovery Park, because tonight I saw the face of God, and I am changed, our team is changed…

A year ago I was in Baltimore and worked with homeless people in a park and I was brought to tears, as I write this I find myself back to this point…its not pity… it is an overwhelming feeling of the presence of God. We are in Sacramento and we are the church. We will feed the homeless, take care of widows, serve the people because we were called to.

I have been in Sacramento for almost six weeks and its not at all what I expected…its way better.

I have been playing flag football at Liberty for four years now. I have always been part of a really talented team. Every year we would make it to the final four or championship, but the big game would always elude us. We could never just finish the season well, and when losing the championship year after year (especially in the two OT game) you couldn’t help but to feel like none of the season really mattered. This year the pieces were finally put in place and we were able to win the championship game 19-18. Sudden strong emotions swept over me through the final realization of a four year dream. Thinking about the game later I realized that my vigor for God had not matched that I had for that game. Sometimes in life we need to just pause and realize what we are living for. What are our true passions, and will they even matter? I still love football and I always will, but when I love it into idolism….. then I will once again need a self check…. we all need them once in a while.

So its finally here…the Big Island Church website. All you have to do is go to the website, click ministries, and then Youth Ministry. If you want to go to the Youth Ministry Home Page then just click Youth Ministry. There will be upcoming trips that will be side links off of the Youth Ministry page that you can click on. If you are going to the event if you could put your name on a reply that would be great. Thanks! There will be updated blogs weekly.