Happy New Year!

We can’t believe 2008 is coming to an end.  As a church, we started 2008 with Philippians 3:8 as our key verse–“What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ”–and the challenge from the Winter Retreat to embrace the calling of a prophet.

It has been a challenging and exciting year for the Gracepoint family as we tried to expand our sphere of concern to embrace this calling to be a prophet in the midst of all the ups and downs of life – birth of babies, death of loved ones, transition to working life, married life, graduate school, parenthood.  We started Visiting Scholars Ministry, Junior College ministries at College of Alameda and Berkeley City College, Elderly Care Ministry, and, of course, Gracepoint-Austin.

We are so thankful to be part of this community of faith. We are very thankful that we are a church that knows what it means to give it all, knows the joy of living sacrificially, and knows how to have fun together.  In the midst of all that we enjoy as a community, it’s our prayer that we will never allow these blessings to get in the way of knowing Christ Jesus.  Let’s be sure to steward these blessings well.

For 2009, we chose 1 John 1:3-4 as our GFC key verse.

3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.

We love the message of this passage.

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.”
Let’s pray for 2009 to be filled with proclamation of the gospel—not just conveying gospel content, but testifying to what we have personally experienced of the goodness of God, and the truth of his Word.

“…so that you may have fellowship with us.”
We pray that our fellowship with one another, centered on our fellowship with the Father and with Jesus, will grow ever more real and rich.  As every person in our church pursues honest fellowship with God, we will inevitably be drawn into a circle of authentic closeness, leading to much joy.

“We write this to make our joy complete.”
When the Apostle John said that he is writing in order “to make our joy complete,” we know what he’s talking about, don’t we?  It’s so joyful to experience genuine oneness with brothers and sisters around our great heavenly Father.

As we write this, we are waiting at the Sierra Lodge for the arrival of all our precious co-laborers for the annual Directors’ Retreat.  Although we have a lot of hard work to do during this retreat, there is almost a giddy anticipation of the joy that we’ll experience just being together as fellow soldiers for Christ.  It’s our prayer for our entire church that we will experience much joy this coming year, and that the desire for others to share this same joy will drive us to powerfully proclaim the gospel, in word and deed.

We are really looking forward to the upcoming winter retreat.  See you there!

With much love and prayers,
Pastor Ed and Kelly
Dec 2008