mike goldsworthy

Thought I’d share a few photos that were passed on to me from Parkcrest at the Beach and the baptisms from last Sunday

I already can’t wait til next year!

Yesterday was our Parkcrest at the Beach. Our annual event when our church all comes together at the beach to hang out, play games and to cap off our time together with people getting baptized at the beach.

It’s a very cool experience to see almost 80 people publicly declare their faith in Jesus by getting baptized there.

One very cool story from yesterday that I want to make sure gets told…

A woman was at the other side of the bridge from the beach where we were at and heard the worship music (probably a quarter of a mile away or more). She came over and waded down into the water to our Children’s Pastor, Lacey. She told Lacey, “I heard the music and came over. I’ve been away from the Lord for several years and I know I need to come back. Will you baptize me?”

She was one of several people who were there, but didn’t come planning on getting baptized and then just came down in their street clothes and got baptized on the spot.

Parkcrest – we are a part of something special! Not everyone gets to experience incredible moves of God like this.

At the encouragement of a few people, I’ve been thinking about starting a short-term Leadership Learning Community.

I’m thinking of a 6 month commitment with a 1-day midweek gathering each month. We would read books together, engage in some interactive learning experiences, share life and challenge one another. The hope would be that at the end of 6 months that we would have learned from one another, increased out leadership capacity and grown in our understanding of ourselves and our personal leadership.

It would be open to anyone who’s a part of Parkcrest (but we would limit the size of the group), and would also include a small monthly cost that would be for covering expenses.

I’m trying to gauge interest to see if this is something worth pursuing to begin in the Fall…possibly sometime in October.

If it at all sounds interesting, fill out this form to let me know

This past weekend, we had a powerful and moving service as we talked on God’s ability to heal and trusting in his goodness and faithfulness even when he doesn’t heal. We then had a time where leaders in our various campuses and venues anointed people with oil and prayed for physical healing. From what I’m hearing, there was probably a couple hundred people who came up for prayer for some sort of healing.

It was one of those really powerful weekends. But one of the things that you need to know is that the origins of it weren’t mine.

Once a year, a small group of us get away for a couple of days to pray and plan out 1 years worth of message topics. I come with a lot of ideas, but so does everyone else. After processing everyone’s ideas we work through figuring out what we feel like God has stirred in us to talk about and lead the church through for the coming year.

This last series was someone else’s idea. And honestly, I wasn’t that excited about it originally. We did it because enough other people felt like it was right that I was willing to trust them. It’s really turned out to be one of our more powerful series this year, and it never would have happened if I had to be the one with all of the ideas.

I wonder how often leaders miss out on some of the best ideas because we can’t trust other people to have them and we don’t create a context for them to be given a voice.

Andrew Marin, author of Love is an Orientation and Founder of The Marin Foundation, will be at Parkcrest this weekend (May 22-23) as we kick off our FAQ Series. He’s going to be dealing with the most asked question for this series – What’s the Deal with Homosexuality and the Church? Figured we’d start with an easy and non-controversial topic :)

Come to hear a thoughtful and engaging discussion, and to probably have some preconceptions challenged.

Also, if you’re a ministry leader in the Long Beach area, we’ve invited Andrew to lead a Ministry Leaders gathering on Monday (May 24) morning from 9-11am. We’d love to have you be a part of it, just email Sylvia to let her know you’ll be there.

For those of you who are a part of Parkcrest, here’s a brief update on some of what’s going on with the relief work that we have been involved with in Haiti that you helped to fund…

Our partners in Haiti, New Missions, wrote to tell us that they were able to recently ship 2 large cargo containers containing construction materials as well as medical supplies for their 22 school clinics and their hospital which served 25,000 patients in 2 months. Thanks for making a difference!

Today our staff took some time to pause, reflect and celebrate what God did Easter weekend at Parkcrest. Several times in the Hebrew Scriptures, God has the Israelites set up tangible reminders of what he did for them.

So, today during our staff meeting, we wrote down some of the things God did, and put them up on a board as a tangible reminder of how God moved at Parkcrest during the Easter weekend.

It’s really easy for me to move on to the next thing and to forget and even miss what God has done. I need visual and tangible reminders.

By the way…one of the things included on here was that Parkcrest gave around $50,000 towards our Easter Offering which we give away 100% of!

For those of you at Parkcrest or in the So Cal area…this Saturday, we’re hosting a Worship Seminar to help you to hone your skills in playing an instrument, singing, doing sound or being the worship leader.

We’re bringing in some great people to teach clinics in a few specific areas:

• Worship Leading
• Bass
• Electric & Acoustic Guitar
• Keyboard
• Drums and Percussion
• Singing
• Sound/tech

Here’s the deal, if you’re a part of Parkcrest – whether you’re currently volunteering in Worship Arts or not, it’s free for you – we’re paying for you as a way for us to honor you and to help you to become better at what you do. Even if you’re not currently playing in the band, or want to become better before trying out, this will be a great opportunity for you.

But if you’re not a part of Parkcrest, we wanted to open this up to you also, so it’s only $25, which includes both breakfast and lunch.

So, it’s this Saturday, April 17 from 8am-3pm (breakfast is from 8-9) at the Heartwell Campus.

If you’ve got any questions, talk with Jo Jo Ambion.