80s & Udon Preview!!!

Location: Toy's House
26938 Diamondhead Ln
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275

Time: 5:00pm - 7:30pm

80s attire recommended! (Prize awarded to best dressed)

big drew on the open mic

If you've been with us at EPIC, you know that we've been making our way through the book of James.  Last night we found ourselves in the passage of James 2:14-26 where James basically says that faith without deeds is not true faith at all.  It's a challenging passage and our creative elements team decided that instead of spending time breaking down this passage and discussing it together, let's just provide opportunities to get out of the church and apply it.

Tommy Morse organized three projects for people to participate in - a visit to a local convalescent home [which turned into a neighborhood prayer walk], an outreach to the homeless at Alondra Park, and cooking a homemade dinner and delivering it to a family which consisted of a single mom and her five kids.

Instead of me [chris] telling you about it, I'd like to introduce Big Drew to tell you about his experience last night.

Tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Andrew Terrel Abram.  People call me “Big Drew”.  I grew up in Gardena all my life.  Roosevelt told me about this church.  I’ve been coming to this church for 5 months.  I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

What do you like about being part of the family we call EPIC?

I like being around people my own age, people I can relate to.  I live not too far from the church so this is my community.  I’m a part of the worship team so when I sing, that’s part of my outlet.  There’s still some people I don’t know but it’ll come in time.

So what did you do as part of our service project opportunities last night?

I went to Alondra park to reach out to some homeless people.  The group I was with [Teagan, Lainel, and Josiah] gave out some blankets, and fed them a hot meal.  We talked to a guy named Norman.  He’s been homeless since 2004.  He used to work as a dispatcher at LAX, and then he became a construction worker.  He wanted to work but he got laid off and never found another job.  After the unemployment checks stopped coming, he couldn’t pay rent and was forced to make the streets his home.  It’s not what he wanted for himself but it just happened.

He said it’s hard sometimes, especially when it gets really, really cold.  He makes his rounds through different parks to elude the cops.

We also met a guy named Antonio who also used to be construction worker as well and he’s been homeless for 2 years now.  Him and a couple of his friends sleep under the parking structure.

After spending some time with them, giving them some blankets, and buying them a hot meal, it just felt right to treat the homeless as people and not statistics. 

What did you come away with from the overall experience last night?

That if you don’t put your faith into works, it makes your faith useless.  Also, if you do works for recognition, there’s no worth in that either.  It's just good for us to get out of the church building and be the church.

Any last words you want to say?

If you don’t know me, come up and talk to me and we can get to know each other cause we’re family.

Evangelism - What is good?

When you think of talking to your friends about Jesus, do you ever freeze up? If you're like me, you might wonder how they'll take it - and if the Gospel will even sound like "good news" to them!

Earlier in October, Andre and I went to the Passion for the Nations conference. One of the speakers, James Choung, addressed this issue. He actually wrote a book called "True Story" that expands on this. But for now, I'll share a couple things from his talk that shed some light on sharing Jesus with my friends...

[re]understanding faith intro

Hope you guys can join us this sunday night as we kick off our new message series!

introducing our EPIC blog team...

We've decided to share the blogging love that is overflowing around here so, without further ado, I introduce you to the EPIC blog team known as [drumroll please]... the EPIC blog team!  [see, this is why we need more people writing posts other than me]. 

So anyways, there's four of us and I thought it would be best if we introduced ourselves -

daren lou on the open mic

The other day, I [Chris] had lunch with one of our EPIC students, Daren Lou [a fifth year CSULB student] and I was compelled to have him post some of what God's teaching him.  Enjoy.

You know it's hard to imagine that it has already been 2 months since I came back from China. Hey, if you don't know me, my name is Daren Lou and I was in the college group 2 years ago. GVBC made a huge impact in my life, what fueled my passion to find answers was the need to find responsibility because I knew my previous life of seeking worldly experiences to fill my desires were finite. None of them lasted long and I seemed to be spiraling down, brought down by my own nervous, judgmental personality that seemed to eat away at my life. I recognized it most with my family because I had few friends. My sister kept on attending Church, and it was not until my Uncle Yosh Amano asked me to come to the Men's retreat 2 years ago (2008). The message moved me, especially the book of Matthew, with all the lessons on how to develop the qualities that Jesus modeled as an example to the people he created. I know it was going to be tough, but I never looked back from there. I got baptized after a short time of becoming a Christian, became more involved with college group, went to retreats with my Asian American Christian Fellowship at college, cabin lead, went to leadership camp, and soon I felt God was calling me to test my faith by going to China.

a letter to our freshmen

Dear freshmen,

Now that the school year is underway, I'm sure you're enjoying your newfound freedom and independence as an official college student [for those of you who are going to school]!  Those really were the good ol' days, when you could schedule your classes to sleep in and wake up naturally and alarm-clock-less, when you could stop by the cafeteria and there would always be a nice hot meal waiting for you, and when you could go straight to class without shaving, brushing your teeth, or combing your hair and still be in your pajamas and it's not a big deal... yes, those were the good ol' days.  Carpe Diem dear freshmen.  Suck every ounce of life out of your college experience while it is still called today. 

Anyways, as you embark on this exciting and potentially life-changing season of your life, let me give you three small nuggets of advice –