Soccer: A Game That Brings Us All Together

Picture by Shufei L.

Perfect summer Bay Area weather and a soccer ball can bring about such fellowship at Gracepoint Berkeley, especially when the losing team has to treat the winning team to yogurt and boba drinks afterward!

Gracepoint and 30-Hour Famine

community service, home-baked goods sales, yard sales, convalescent home visits

30-Hour Famine – 600 participants. Over $115,000 raised.
Let us consider how we can spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ~Hebrews 10:24

Gracepoint Berkeley: Church Outside the Walls – Midweek Dinners

Submitted by Cheng C.

My snapshot would be a picture of us, the students, sitting around the table while laughing with food at our leaders’ home.  All of us are just very happy to be around each other, and we can just be ourselves.

LIFE Group

Submitted by Tommy C.

During small group meetings, we have the chance to really slow down and share our lives with one another – whether it’s problems we’re struggling with, prayer requests, or a message that really impacted us.  I feel that this really captures the church at Gracepoint Fellowship because this is really the core unit of what the church is built around.  Also, it captures the fellowship and closeness of every member to one another.  We feel comfortable opening up, knowing that there are people who will pray for us and share life’s burdens with us.  However at the same time, we are not just confined to just the small groups.  We care for and function as one body with all the other members of the church.

Gracepoint Berkeley: Church Outside the Walls – Home Worship

Welcome to our home worship

For the past month, Gracepoint Berkeley has been meeting in various homes for Sunday Worship.  As we meet in smaller groups, we have missed Pastor Ed Kang’s messages, Kelly Kang’s welcoming smile, the band’s rocking praise… some among us have even missed doing the chair setup and takedown.

At the same time, we have enjoyed going through the Truth Project DVDs by Focus on the Family – gaining an understanding about how to live out a biblical worldview in our culture and time.  It’s fitting that we study this DVD in a setting outside the walls of our regular church services at Willard Junior High.

What have you enjoyed about home worship?  How has the DVD influenced you?

Minivans for Not-So-Mini Lives

Which minivan is yours again?

Submitted by Dustin L.

This picture of a minivan represents the heart that many of the Gracepoint Berkeley staff have for missions.  Although many can afford cooler, trendier cars, they choose minivans because of the increased seating capacity, which comes in handy when going on an outing, driving students around.  I am thankful that the leaders choose to invest in people rather than worldly possessions (even in issues such as choosing a car), and that they prioritize eternity above this world in this concrete way.

Joy Multiplied, Sorrow Divided

Submitted by Joe T.

A snapshot of our church is the sort of joyful atmosphere that we have at our church.  The fact that the leaders are always eating, talking, joking, and just being there with us shows their willingness to share life with us.  Not to say that the atmosphere is always jovial – perhaps an equally representative and complimentary picture would be a small group meeting with the staff in fervent prayer over the needs of one of its members.

Open Lives, Open Homes

Submitted by John C.

If I were to pick one picture that I could use to explain to someone what our church is like, I would choose a picture of several college students at a door to an apartment, huddling around a lockbox trying to remember the combination.  “Who are those people?  Is that their apartment?” they might ask.  “Those are just a bunch of college students and that’s not their apartment.  The apartment actually belongs to a church member who ministers to them.”  I would answer.  This reality would be utterly shocking to most people, including, and perhaps especially, to those who regularly attend churches.  Giving someone access to your home who’s not in your family?  Who does that?  From this reaction of disbelief, I could begin to explain why is it that the people at Gracepoint Berkeley are able to open up their lives to the level that they do, and what exactly it is that bonds us together so tightly as a community to make possible this level of trust and openness.