An update from epic Life Church

Here is an update from our friends at Epic Life Church as they launch into new ministry in North Seattle. 


Thanks for watching and praying for them.  Pray also that a trip out to visit this next summer would be possible.


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Dear Friends and Partners,

We want to first and foremost ask you to praise God with us for the kick-off of Epic Life Church!  God has been so faithful and we have seen His hand guiding us so steadily throughout the past year.  Here is an excerpt from Keith's blog outlining the day's events:

Three years ago God tugged on my heart to leave a very secure and exciting college pastorate and move to Seattle to start a church. This past Sunday, after three years of listening to and following after God, Epic Life Church was officially opened.  And it was awesome!

We began the morning pulling the trailer to the theater and starting to set up a half hour late at 7:30am, but things started coming together and we broke at 9 am to pray and asked God to give us peace and let us enjoy the morning, no matter what happens.

Ten sandwich boards and an eight foot banner set out on the streets and outside the theater and then with the lights down on the house, lights up on the stage and a great atmosphere creating screen behind, D-Vic and the band cranked up the amps and worship ensued with 110 people in the main auditorium and twenty some kids in the children's theater. The worship music ended with a hiphop hymn and Nathan rapping to bring it home. It was sweet.

I spoke on John 1:1, The Word/Logos with painted black boxes with white letters painted on them, "LOGOS" and explained the Epic Life vision and what God is doing in North Seattle and on Aurora.
We ended out with David's own song, Your Words.  Then it was off to talk to people and encourage them and answer questions.  It was excellent!

By 12:30 pm we had the trailer packed back up and exited the theater clean and ready for the next movie.
Later that night we met to celebrate at our home with ample celebratory ice cream and toppings.
Thank you God for letting us be in the midst of your Story here in North Seattle.

As a church body, we are so excited to see the plans that He will continue to have in store.  Please keep reading below for specific prayer requests and continue to support us through your finances, advocacy and prayer.  We have seen the greatness of the One and Only.  He is so worthy of our praise.

Live Strong, Live Epic.

EPIC PRAYER

There has been so many seasons we have encountered as a church body.  As the Lord brings us to your mind in the coming weeks, please accept that as a reminder to pray for the growth and development of Christ's Bride in Seattle.  Here are some specifics to guide prayers: - Pray for Keith as he begins to more fully understand the role of Lead Pastor of a developing church. - Pray for God's provision as we begin to discover the joys and concerns of administering a property and a school. - Pray for the Core Group of Epic Life.  We have wonderful volunteers.  Pray for unity, growth and joy as we lean on them for the setup of Corporate Worship each week. - Pray for volunteers of the Children's and Youth ministries as they begin developing relationships with families and teaching the children about Christ.

Some Words from our team

Tara: "Joy comes from the simplest of things.
the littleist things mean the most and you have to take action if you want change. If you want change, you cant just sit there. keith and the group took a leap of faith and look where it got them. they are working miracles in Seattle.
relationships are important. the way that keith made friends with that lady at Twin Gardens and just how that is a total God thing. and being there for eachother in your faith. holding eachother accountable is key."

Andreal:"I am continually learning about who God is and what he sees. I also learned on the trip (from the 'experience' book) that I can always be serving whether I am resting or working. On this trip I felt that I would be able to be a better servant in the long run in Rochester and on other trips because of the way I was forced to think about my motives behind what I was doing. Remembering to ask God what he was doing in certain situations or thinking about how Jesus would connect with the people there helped me to be in the right mind set. That's only a little bit of what I learned in Seattle, but these are the things that came to my mind first."

Jared : "it was amazing to see how God just puts things together for us. all the stories that we heard from Kieth, Nate, and the rest of the Epic crew were amazing examples of how God can answer our prayers and questions in amazing ways, through dreams and visions and drawing people together through amazing experiences!"

Fun on the houseboat. Last night in Seattle

We made it!!

We are home! We made it safe and sound. As we drove home in the van, I and Denny ended up in the van made up of mostly girls, it was so amazing to hear the energy and new friendships. The laughter and stories told me that some good relationships had been made or had gone deeper.

One thing that Keith (of Epic Life Church) told us in our debriefing is that we need to do all that we can to not lose the passion from a missions trip. He mentioned that the average time is 10 days before the passion burns out. So pray for our team to remember the lessons we learned on our Urban Journey and pray that we can implement some of those lessons to our daily lives before our routine attacks us and sends us back to our rut.

Also, as Keith told us the vision that God gave him for reaching Seattle he asked us to keep praying for him and his team. The area they have been called to is full of sex shops, prostitution, drugs and all sorts of godless distractions. This will be a tough time but is obvious that they need the help.

So, pray for the Epic Life Church in north Seattle as they reach the Aurora area. Their little church building just off the corner of Aurora and Northgate (the Northgate Baptist Church building).

As for our trip, here is just a small list of serving opportunities we had while in Seattle:
Spiritual preparations times
Served breakfast at the Union Gospel Mission
Sorted food for food banks with the Food Lifeline
made a sand volleyball court for community outreach at the church property
pulled weeds and helped to clean up the grounds at the church property
Aurora beautification project along the store fronts planting flowers and cleaning up weeds
scrubbed and cleaned rooms in the church building which is used for a k-12 school
painted some property for the Jubilee Women's shelter
Cleaned out, bleached, scrubbed and reorganized the Immanuel community service food bank
toured the New Horizon's center for homeless teens

This is among other many opportunities we had to build relationships with the community.

Thanks for your support and prayers.

we will have some students sharing on this blog about some of their insights of the trip in the coming days.

Darin

Sunday

Wow, what a busy couple of days. I will have one of our students give a more complete report tomorrow. It is late here and we need some sleep before another early morning of service. In short, Saturday we had the privilege hiking through and around Mt. Rainier, seeing some waterfalls, eating pizza at the Pizza Station at the Hobo Inn in Elbe, WA. Then saw fireworks and live music with the community in Kirkland.

Today we visited Mars Hill Church (Mark Driscoll's church), visited a local sunday market, did our collaborative art projects (ask our students about this, amazing experience) and then sunday eve. service with the Epic Life Body.

Thanks for praying.

More later.

Darin

Afternoon Post

Life is always tough for me when ever i get up early in the morning and i mean real early.
But, looking through the serving window of the i have seen that my life isn't that hard compared to the men and women who are homeless in Seattle. I complain all about things i have but these people are always happy because they live their life and are happy with what they have. We also went through a walk of down town Seattle and i almost thought i was in Minnesota with how friendly people are and helpful here. It is a different life here for people. They don't have the luxury i learned of having so many churches like we do, like having 5 churches in every corner. i just pray that more churches see that these people are willing to learn about God; the churches just have to take there time in help them. I personally road on my first transit bus ride ever which was fun haha and that is all. Pray for safety and impact we make on this city.

Jordan

The Increase of Decreasing

Today comes early. Today we are waking up at 5 am to be ready to head down to the Union Gospel Mission to serve breakfast to the men and women there. Today we will be reminded of both the blessings we have and the brutality of living with out. This morning we will see some amazing things and here some amazing stories. I pray that we will able be able to process this through the filter of Love. That we will all be able to see what God's wants us to see.

1 Corinthians 10:31 says that whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. I pray that today we will not see what we do as just a task or an action to help those who are in need, but to do it for the glory of God.

After breakfast we will spend some time processing and listening before we go back to the church building to do a bit more work on the property. I pray that we will also see this not as a task but as a way for us to continue to decrease so that God and his glory will increase (John 3:30).

Thank you in advance for praying for us today.

An alley we walked through on our 'getting to know the city' walk. We were sent around to learn what we could about culture and values of the city.
















Some folks we saw along the way. Keith introduced himself and invited them to check out Epic Life.


















Playing with some kids at the church. They host a K - 12 grade Christian School.

Thursday

Yesterday was a fun day. We had the opportunity to learn about the food distribution system here in Washington. FOOD LIFELINE is the organization that we worked with. They have trucks that deliver food and travel over 170,000 miles per year delivering food and picking up food.

We split into two teams and were able to prepare and sort through over 1,050 pounds of food for the food programs that they support. Make sure you ask us about shoveling/scooping Rice Crispies, sorting grapes/cherries, and for the mathematically inclined separating dairy, eggs and juices. We were told this amount of food would provide over 800 meals to people in the area.

Later, we were able to take in the culture of Seattle by touring around the downtown pier area and sampling local cuisine at Ivers. We traveled across the floating bridges on I90 East out to Snoqualmie Falls, which once again brought to our attention God's awesome creation. One member of the team decided to play soccer with the majestic pines of the northwest and lost. Jared injured his foot and was taken to the local ER for x-rays. Preliminary results indicate no broken bones but he now is wearing a very fashionable open toed shoe and using crutches.


Today was a good day of interacting with the local business owners as we helped to beautify the community and the church property that Epic Life Church has been graciously given. However, this property is in need of a lot of tender loving care.

The property includes an empty lot next to the church which required a LOT of weeding, trimming and sweeping. We were also able to help put in a sand volleyball court for the church to use in neighborhood outreach. Members of the team also went along Aurora Ave (Hwy 99) and replanted/replaced several flower pots with new flowers and plants. We came in contact with several business owners during this portion of the project who were more than thrilled to with this gesture of love for their comunity and even a few provided some assistance as we beautified the area. One local business owner, Brian, who owns a catering service, was very excited to see us, offering to help by giving us water to drink, a bucket to use for watering the plants and possibly his services to Epic Life Church. Wow! It is so cool to think that something so simple, a tiny seed (a small plant in a planter) may just be the point of entry for Brian (or even the local pet shop owner next door) to be brought into a relationship with Jesus Christ. God is at work here and it is so cool to keep hearing the stories of those who have come before us and how they have heard His voice and His calling of them to this area.

There is so much that needs and can be done here for Epic Life Church so they can focus on ministry to north Seattle. Please continue to pray for Epic Life Church as they bring the hope and love of Jesus to this area. Continue to pray with us as we prayerfully ask "God, what are You doing here?"

What we learned about Church Planting Today

It's not easy.
There isn't much space available inside the city.
The people's perspective of church is only from the TV because there was no Christian influence when the city started.
The property isn't cheap.
It takes a lot of prayer and trust in God to get the resources and support needed.
There are likely more Starbucks customers in Seattle than churchgoers. This is a problem needing fixing, but care must be taken when going about this. We can't just beat people over the head with the Gospel. We also need to avoid the opposite extreme, which is running for the hills and leaving the confused masses to sort out truth on their own.
You can't just build a church and expect people to come. Here you need to go out into the community and start relationships with your neighbors, local business and restaurant owners, and even homeless man who has a regular spot. Only after you make these relationships can you expect the to be open to an invitation to church.

Some photos

Keith explaining the vision of Epic Life Church











Checking out the city





























Dinner in the back yard at the Carpenter's House.

Tuesday Day 2

So, I woke up to a glorious blue sky, but chilly, here in Seattle. The students are pretty excited to learn about the city and the processes to go through in planting a church. Today the pastor, Keith, will take us on a journey through the city and help us get familiar with the city and the vision of Epic Life Church. While spending a few minutes with him yesterday it is apparent that God is working in the lives of the leaders here as they seek out relationships with folks in the community.

Like you saw in the previous post I will have students posting as well so you can get their perspective and their humor. Be sure to comment so we know you are reading and following us through our Urban Journey.

Pastor Darin

We have arrived :)

hello eager readers :) we have arrived in Seattle! after an agonizing seventeen hour plane ride, which was actually only three hours. lovely Mr. Keith picked us up at the airport and drove us back to his humble abode, which we are currently typing at. At this very moment, we are having a heartwarming bonding experience around the piano. We`have some prayer requests for y'all. Please pray for our safety as we trek across the city of Seattle. We have already been blessed by the hospitality of our host homes. Salmon burgers are amazingly delicious! Quotes of the day will be posted. So far we have :

"I might be talking quietly but it sounds loud in my head." Andrea

"It's like a magical fairyland!" Joey

"You dial 111 for the cops?" Joey

"How far are we away from here?" Tara

"Oh it's adding." Sofia

Thank you for your prayers and support.

Urban Journey Crew

Our group as we left the Church

WE MADE IT

We made it and we are eating bacon cheesburgers in Keith Carpenter's back yard. More to come after we eat.

Our bags are packed, we're ready to go....

Today is the day we leave. Please pray for us as we depart on our Urban Journey to Seattle, WA to help the Epic Life Church do ministry in and among the people of that great city.

Pray for us as a team that we would gel together.

Pray for us as a team that we would learn about each other and about ourselves.

Pray for us to each go deeper with our relationship with God as we act as his hands and his feet.

Thanks for your support, your time and your resources.

See you in a week and a day.

Darin

Packing List

Don’t forget to Pack
• Photo ID
• Sleeping bag
• Air mattress
• Towel
• Toiletries
• Rain gear
• Cool weather gear
• Warm weather gear
• Walking shoes
• Modest swimwear
• Bible/Journal/Dev. Book

Don’t Pack
• Laptops
• DVD players, etc.

Music players are allowed for
the plane ride only.
LOADED WITH
CHRISTIAN TUNES!

Almost ready

Just a few days left until we leave for our trip to Seattle, WA for a church planting mission trip. Our team of 13 is ready to do whatever we can to aid the community and help the epic life church reach out to the community.

Be praying for us as we leave.

GETTING READY TO GO

This will be a place for any of our parents and other students to get updates and photos of us while we are on our trip to Seattle, Washington for our urban journey trip to help the epiclife church get started.