A Town Center Christmas

Tomorrow Kingsfield will be taking over the Aliso Viejo Town Center from 5:30pm-9pm to bless the OC a little. We'll have everything form a giant slide for the kids, to live Christmas music with Brook James and the worship team. Rumor has it that we may even make it snow a little (Disney style), not to mention the hot cider, carolers in costume, free churros, crafts, you get the idea. I'm really excited about the opportunity to be in the community and am praying that the Lord uses our time to change some lives. We as Christians can sometimes get trapped into focusing on such petty things, and most of those things are usually very self serving and and become self consuming. We want everything we're doing as a church to move us past ourselves and into the commission God has given us reaching the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we simply gather together on Sundays and get into the Word and then live the rest of the week without going out into our world. It makes me wonder how much of the Word is really getting into us.

Lord as we step out in obedience we pray that you will work in our midst... We look forward to all it is that you will accomplish.

Meeting in the market place...

So we've been doing Church at the Aliso Viejo Town Center for just over a month now and I think were starting to get the hang of it. It was a big challenge for us moving from a “never having to do anything to set up on Sundays” to a “now we have to do all to set up on Sundays”… honestly I was holding my breath a little on the first Sunday. Watching it all come together absolutely blew me away, Lots of hard work has gone into making it happen and it’s all so worth it.

Here’s a few of my most memorable moments from the first few weeks…

· Wondering if anyone was going to show up to our first 8:30 service and if I was going to be preaching to the staff. Relived to see that people actually get up that early and show up to church.

· Brook printing out volunteer name tags and blown away that we had to make close to 100 for the first week… You go Kingsfield, rock the volunteerism.

· Everyone heading out to lunch after the 10am’s… walking into Wahoo’s and running into so many Kingsfieldians. (were on to what your doing and are actually working toward getting those with a bulletin in hand some discounts, ya… who loves ya.)

· Meeting with some of those who were the first to gives their lives to Jesus in the theaters… Love to hear the stories and can’t wait to hear all the more to come.

· Our children’s ministry volunteer actually singing in somebody, taking down names, putting on wrist bands and walking them into children’s church only to find out that they were coming to see a move… classic, way to go guys, Jesus loved to use the element of surprise.

· The smell of popcorn after the 10am… Not a bad thing, seriously, I kind of like it and actually think that somewhere down the road when the Lord moves us on from the theaters I’ll actually kind of miss it.

· First Men’s morning fill in the interim HUB, something just felt very fresh about the whole thing. An exciting new adventure. By the way we call it the interim HUB because the real HUB is currently undergoing some construction just around the corner and won’t be completely done until sometime in December. Excited to watch that whole thing come together.

· A lady walking by our connection table on her way to a movie and signing up for SheMinistries, how cool is that?

· Meeting the many new faces that have been showing up, looking forward to watching God work in and through each one.

Keep up the good work Kingsfield, keep praying as we press on into all that God has in store.

Chris

Kingsfield Moving Forward >>>>

For quite sometime the leadership of Kingsfield Church had been praying about what would be next for us as a Church. While we were in the process of selling our 45 Tesla facility and moving forward on some plans to develop the larger lot of land next door God began to direct us elsewhere. We (actual a very talented architect in the church) drew up some amazing plans for a beautiful facility that on the surface seemed to make so much sense, but in the end none of us felt that the Lord was calling us to build there. Rather we sensed the Lord calling our body into a new season on ministry and moving us to place where we could more effectively fulfill the commission that He has given us. God has called us to "Go into the World and preach the Good news!" ~ Around here we like to say "Connecting People to Life in Christ!". As we sought the Lord He opened up the doors for us to meet at the Aliso Viejo Town Center in the Edward's Cinema and we jump in.

Chris

Walk by Faith

Often when God desires to stretch us and teach us more about who He is He'll call us to take steps of Faith in our walk of Faith.  Those steps take on different forms in our life at different seasons of our life, but they always require one key ingredient...  FAITH.

In other words we should not expect the things God calls us to do to be easy.  Often we think that if it's God it's easy.  Ahhh, Not True.  Because of the very nature of Faith, we can expect those calls of God to move us past our own understanding and resource and put us in a place where we must rely on Him.   So often we take steps of faith because we believe that God is calling us to, but then in the middle of it start to doubt and get worried because things get a little tough.  What we need to realize is that when we made the decision to take that step of faith we also made the decision to put our life in a place that might be a little uncomfortable for a season, a little stretching.. 

Think about Peter walking on the water...  Nothing of his own strength enabled him to do so.  It was only possible as he keep his eyes on Jesus and trusted Him. 

What steps of Faith has God called you to take lately? How are you holding up?

Keep your eyes on Jesus 

Chris

We like Home Groups!

Kingsfield Church is passionate about living out the commissions God has given us in His word. One of those is interacting with one another in a way that honors Jesus and allows us to not just do church, but rather be the church. For that to take place one of the things we hold to as a church is the importance of Home fellowships (soon to become connection groups after our summer revamp... but shhh, no one knows yet). On Sunday a passage in James 5 reminded us yet again of their important role in our church.

A twitter from your house plant!

Tatum and I are notorious for killing house plants, and have for the most part, if not entirely moved to the fake stuff. Not as cool as the real deal, but it works for now. I recently ran across something that might help us out. it's a kit called BOTANIcalls. Simply put this deal enables your house plant to Twitter you whenever it needs water or wants to thank you for taking care of it. Talk about brilliant.
When we surrender our lives to Jesus we are in no way promised that life is then spent "skipping through the daisies". As a matter of fact Jesus promises us that we will experience tribulation. James tells us that there will be of all sorts of shapes and sizes. As Christians it is not Gods intentions that we would face those tribulations without Him. What we have been given as Christians is a connection to our creator, water for our thirsty souls. We've taped back into our purpose and brought back into the atmosphere where we've been created to live and thrive in relationship with God.

How foolish it is for us to neglect that relationship and not cultivate it. How foolish to not move ourselves constantly toward the very one who has given us life. how foolish to not abide in him as John 15:5 tells us "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." If you plant a seed and give it the resource it need to come alive. We couldn't then withhold that same resource and expect it to flourish.

I have to wonder, if I had a BOTANIcalls in the soil of my own heart how often it would twitter me and what it would say when it did? Would it be content with the amount of nutrients I'm pouring into it though interaction with the Lord and His Word? Or would I be getting the message that says "hey buddy, I need more, getting a little dry here!!!"

May we never be those who are guilty of holding back from the soil of our lives the nutrients we've been created to thrive in.

Lots going on

At this point I have come to consider myself one of the worst bloggers ever. There are guys who are probably ten times more busy then me and yet still kick out the blogs. I don't know how they do it, but I am determined to figure it out.

Speaking of busy, I personally have never been more busy in my life and am asking the Lord for an extra portion of His grace to be able to manage it all. My days have consisted of everything from creating graphics for the upcoming Series and planning out my teaching schedule to board meeting and ministry budgets. All normal stuff, but just lots more of it than usual. I've literally been non stop from early in the morning to late at night with all sorts of great stuff that God has on my plate right now. I'm enjoying every minute of it.

A highlight over this last Couple of weeks was the first ever Kingsfield Married Couples Breakfast. We had a great time together over some breakfast and games. Then Tatum and I got a chance to share with the couples some things that had been on our hearts for them. We've heard great feed back and are actually looking to do a breakfast for the couples every 3 months.

This last week I took some time to get away by myself for a couple of days. I used the time to seek the Lord and His continued direction with all that He is doing. I had a great time with the Lord and really got so much done as I was able to kind of turn off the phone and emails for a few days. Well at least that was the intention, some things somehow just can't be ignored.

We'll be finishing the book of James next Sunday at Kingsfield church and then start are trek toward Easter in a Series I've titled "Statements : from a cross ~ from a tomb". We'll be looking at many of the statements made by Jesus and those who went looking for Him after the crucifixion. Each one meant to shape our lives.

Here's a sneak peek comp of the graphic...