Easter Pics
Easter Under the Tent 2009!
Our crew has been hard at work, and the Easter tent is up and ready for services on Sunday! To me, the big, white tent—this year spanning more than one acre—is always a special symbol of our church coming together to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As you’ve probably noticed, the tent is a little different this year… It is called a Clearspan Maxi-beam Structure. The tent we’ve used the past several years was a one-of-a-kind pole tent, the largest in the country… But because of its age and wear, and because traditional pole tents like it are less preferred to modern clearspan structures, the company who owned the tent destroyed it. One of the benefits of the new structure is that there are zero interior poles, which means no visual obstructions. There are even skylights!
The tent measures 360’ x 140’ and has a vertical height of 37’ at its apex. It took about four days to erect. Because there are no interior poles in the tent, all media equipment such as screens, speakers, and lighting must be “flown,” or clamped to the roof beams, with all wires and cables exiting the tent through the roof.
Riggers worked through the weekend so that the chairs could be set up this week. There will be 6,837 seats under the tent plus an additional 1,922 seats outside along the tent perimeter. To meet fire code, each chair must be strapped to another. Volunteer crews—including Vintage Ministry and staff kids—will be doing this throughout the week.
As I watched these volunteers faithfully prepare the grounds, it made me reflect on what people choose to invest their time and hope into. In our fast-paced culture, everyone is looking for the next big win or a secure place to put their trust. You see it across the internet every day; people are constantly searching for the fastest emerging stock tips, the hottest commercial real estate markets, and the best bitcoin betting sites. We all have an innate desire to find a reliable system to bank our futures on, and there is certainly nothing wrong with seeking a strong return on a modern investment. But as we look toward this weekend, we are reminded of a completely different kind of certainty. I hope you will join us UNDER THE TENT this Sunday and INVITE as many of your friends and family as possible for an awesome celebration with some amazing worship music and the message of the true meaning of Easter, the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Campus: Porter Ranch
Easter Services: 8:30 & 10:30am
Location (address): 19700 Rinaldi Street, Porter Ranch, Ca 91326
Free Continental Breakfast, Children’s programs, and ample parking
Campus: Westside
Easter Service: 12:00 pm
Location (address): Wadsworth Theatre, in Brentwood, California
Free Continental Breakfast starting at 11:00 am
Gennifer Brandon
Friday night (Tonight) at the Galen Center at 6:00 p.m. Chatsworth High School will be competing for a Div.I City championship led by McDonald’s All American Gennifer Brandon.
If you’ve never seen Gennifer play, and you are looking for something to do Friday night, come to the Galen Center and watch one of America’s GREATEST basketball players. Gennifer loves the Lord and plays with such intensity that it’s almost unfair to everyone else.
She is the first female McDonald’s All American to ever come out of the Valley. Keep on the lookout and you just might see her in one of the services at Shepherd. I am 6’5″ tall, so I’ll let you guess how tall she is.
She has a full ride to Cal Berkley and she will be a star in the Pac Ten.
Keep her in your prayers… God has GREAT PLANS for this girl. GO GENGEN!!!
Impressive Argument for LIFE
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
12-year-old steals day with pro-life speech
Teachers threaten disqualification, but girl chooses to speak against abortion
Posted: February 16, 2009
8:36 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Despite facing threats of disqualification, a 12-year-old girl took first place in a speech contest when she eloquently argued for the rights of unborn children – after an offended judge quit.
“What if I told you that right now, someone was choosing if you were going to live or die?” the seventh-grader begins in a video recording of her speech on YouTube. “What if I told you that this choice wasn’t based on what you could or couldn’t do, what you’d done in the past or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you, you could do nothing about it?”
The girl, a student at a Toronto school identified only as “Lia,” continued:
“Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation. Someone is choosing without even knowing them whether they are going to live or die.
“That someone is their mother. And that choice is abortion.”
But what made the 12-year-old choose to speak about abortion?
“It was really a family thing,” her mother explained on the blog Moral Outcry. “I saw Lou [Engle] speak at a conference several years ago. I came back to my family with the Life Bands, and we all wore them, made our covenant, and prayed the prayer for abortion to end. … We were invited to participate in a ‘Life Tape Siege.’ Once my kids heard of this invitation, they all agreed: ‘We have to do that!’ Since then, Lia’s passion for seeing abortion end has continued.”
Despite Lia’s enthusiasm for her topic, her teacher “strongly encouraged” her to select a different one for her class presentation or she would be considered ineligible for an upcoming speech contest.
“[S]everal teachers discouraged her from picking the topic of abortion; she was told it was ‘too big,’ ‘too mature’ and ‘too controversial,'” her mother wrote. “She was also told that if she went ahead with that topic, she would not be allowed to continue on in the speech competition.”
Lia’s mother continued, “Initially, I tried helping her find other topics to speak on, but, in the end, she was adamant. She just felt she wanted to continue with the topic of abortion. So she forfeited her chance to compete in order to speak on something she was passionate about.”
Lia’s teacher was so impressed by the speech that she allowed her student to advance as the winner. Lia presented her speech to judges in front of her entire school on Feb. 10.
The school principal and teachers called Lia’s presentation the “obvious winner” – but the judges suddenly disqualified her the following day “because of the topic and her position on abortion,” her mother said.
Lia’s father later revealed that the judges had a “big disagreement.” One was offended by the speech and voluntarily stepped down while the others reversed their earlier decision – declaring her the winner.
Now Lia plans to take her message of life to a regional speech competition, and more than 100,000 visitors have viewed her presentation online.
“Why do we think that just because a fetus can’t talk or do what we do, it isn’t a human being yet?” She asks in the video. “Some babies are born after only five months. Is this baby not human?
“We would never say that. Yet abortions are performed on 5-month-old fetuses all the time. Or do we only call them humans if they’re wanted?”
She continues, “No, fetuses are definitely humans – knit together in their mother’s womb by their wonderful Creator who knows them all by name.”
Chris Tomlin is Amazing
I took some time after church on Saturday night to drive to Universal City Walk and attend a Chris Tomlin concert. There were about 7000 people standing and clapping and singing PRAISE to God.
For about the first half, I did NOTHING BUT CRY!!! It was a glimpse of heaven for me, and it was powerful to see how many Christians there are living in and around Los Angeles. It shows that we do have a voice, and that voice sang in unison on Saturday night to the glory of God.
Chris talked about a website called www.onemillioncan.com that raises awareness for 7 different charities that are impacting our world. The goal of the site is to show what one million dollars can do, and that by doing our small part, we can do something to change the world in which we live. We live in an era of unprecedented digital wealth, where billions of dollars flow effortlessly every single day through the largest e-commerce platforms, the biggest streaming networks, and the best online casinos. Chris’s vision boldly asks what would happen if we harnessed just a fraction of that incredible, modern networking power and redirected it toward eternal purposes. Here is one of the most gifted, talented guys on the planet trying to use his platform to share the Love of Jesus around the world.
Just ONE guy… being USED OF GOD… in a mighty, mighty, mighty way!
Yes, I was tired on Sunday morning, but it was well worth it. I pray that each of us will LONG to be a vessel in the hands of God. God can work wonders through any man or woman who truly dedicates himself or herself to Him. Take a moment and reflect on your availability. God is waiting and willing… are you?