Gracepoint Berkeley – Koinonia Christian Fellowship – Gracepoint Berkeley Ministries

Hey everyone, winter break is a long time, so let’s make the most of it. Come back a little early for January Term 2010 and train your mind, get some new skills, and enjoy great fellowship!

Date/Time: 1/11-1/15, 9am-4pm
Cost: $30 (includes breakfast and lunch everyday. it’s a deal!)
Sign-up now (Deadline: 12/31)

Also, the College Winter Retreat will be Friday 1/22 to Sunday 1/24 (the first weekend after school starts). We’ll get away to some refreshing nature and spend extended time hearing messages and testimonies to prepare for the new year, along with having great bonding and fellowship! This is the year’s most important retreat for our college department, so don’t miss it!

Sign up for the retreat!

The second installment of the Koinonia Weekly News, featuring the juniors:

Koinonia Weekly News, perhaps the first in a series. Here’s the Thanksgiving Edition, brought to you by the Junior class. Enjoy.

Here’s one of the videos we showed at Gracepoint’s Thanksgiving Retreat. It memorably recounts all that happened in the college department in 2009 and all we are thankful for!! For all the videos from other departments, be sure to check out Gracepoint Video.

If watching this causes you to spontaneously break out into praise/thanks, tell us about it at the Thanksgiving Dare site!

Berkeley College Thanksgiving 2009 from Gracepoint Berkeley on Vimeo.

Can’t believe it’s already Thanksgiving time! In addition to the Thanksgiving Retreat this Saturday (which is probably one of the most meaningful and uplifting times at Gracepoint Berkeley), the Thanksgiving Celebration will be Sunday, 11/22. This is always such a time of creative hilarity and jaw-dropping performances, all for the sake of having a great time of laughing, fellowshipping together, and recalling the different ways we experienced God during the past year. And of course, the fun acts are followed by a free all-out-Thanksgiving-Dinner-with-all-the-fixings!!

Hope none of you will miss the Thanksgiving Celebration!!

Gracepoint Berkeley Thanksgiving Celebration Trailer 2009 from Gracepoint Berkeley on Vimeo.

Remember Gracepoint Live? At long last, the Gracepoint Live Undo DVDs are finished and will be sent off for production. The DVD will be available in mid-November (maybe during the Thanksgiving Retreat?).

You can sign up online to reserve your copy of Gracepoint Live Undo. We can have a big viewing party when we get the DVDs!

And in case you don’t remember (or never experienced GLive), here’s a couple videos, starting with the trailer:



And then there’s the introduction to the entire evening:

Update: Hey frosh, just in case those wonderful memories are fading, check out these clips from the recent Sierra Lodge trip!

Taking off Friday afternoon from Berkeley, Koinonia’s freshman class headed to Sierra Lodge, leaving behind their books, tests, midterms, and worries. More than 80+ freshmen piled into cars and made the 2 hour drive up to the beautiful Sierra Mountains. Here’s the recap on all that we did, together with photo accompaniment! And if I missed anything, please chime in!

We got to the house and made our way to the lit courts. There was 4-on-4 basketball on one side, and on the other was this ad-hoc “Ultimate Basketball” game: half-court 7-on-7, coed, using a volleyball, running around and trying to score. Thanks to Steve S. for pointers!

Once everyone had arrived, we went into the house, welcomed everyone, and then had the mother-of-all King Kong Shower tournaments. The freshmen beat the staff (gasp!), and when it came down to it, the guys beat the girls. The celebration that ensued was maniacal. The winners were: Strong Man, Watermelon, In-N-Out (guess whose move that was), and Oh My.

After that, we all bundled up, grabbed flashlights and went on a night hike through the property. We scaled the hill and did some stargazing, marveling at the number of stars we could actually see, yelling as falling stars made their way through the night sky, and even enjoying a moment of eerie, quiet silence as we pondered what it would be like being outside all alone in the darkness. Steve’s 2-minute lesson was: Life’s a journey, and whether we experience fear or comfort while moving around in the darkness has a lot to do with the people and friendships in our lives.

The philosophy lesson ended quickly, however, when we got back to the courts, played one big game of Ultimate Ninja, and laughed at weird people like the guys below.

Again, somehow the freshmen eliminated all the staff (the likes of John K. and David W.), and in the end it was Jeremiah vs. Ann. We walked over to the campfire, and 115 voices strong sang the Milk song, ate Shin ramen (with Evergood sausages), and laughed and sang late into the night. Some folks knew motions to the Milk song and shooby-doo-bopped away. Wish you could have seen that.

After hitting the sack, we woke up in the morning, had healthy, continental breakfast (to offset the unhealthy ramen from the evening before), and watched the Incom-Parable Jesus Koinonia Bible Study. Gracepoint Berkeley’s Pastor Ed Kang had given the bible study on Friday to the Koinonia upperclassmen, and some of the guys who drove up Saturday morning brought the video up for us. Technology is great!

We did a brief icebreaker after that, hanging out by birth order and found out these couple highlights from various people. You’ll have to ask the freshmen if you want the full sibling horror story:

• An eldest sibling tying up his younger brother with a Nintendo controller after watching a Trix bunny commercial.
• An eldest sibling roundhouse kicking his younger brother, and that same younger brother coming after him with a knife.
• The youngest son of 7 kids, singing, dressed up, videotaped by parents, and that same video tape played every subsequent family get together.

We piled into the cars, went off-roading, ate lunch on the shore, skipped rocks and threw rocks, hiked a short (but beautiful) trail, arrived at Island Lake, and took a million pictures together, enjoying the scenery, enjoying one another, breathing in the fresh, crisp air of the mountains. We yelled “Go Bears” and heard crashing echoes from across the lake (so we could remember and cheer on Cal in their victory over UCLA), and then had a moment of silence as we thought about and prayed our personal prayer request for the semester.

After getting back to the house, we ate dinner, did fast (but effective) cleaning so the next group could enjoy the Lodge and Barn, played 15 minutes of basketball and Ninja, and then got into the cars to head home. Barely 24 hours, but it was packed, and the coolest part: Now we know everyone’s names, and the “Koinonia” that’s our namesake is a bit more of a felt reality for each of us. Until next time… Go Freshmen!!

There’s more pictures online.

A Koinonia all-Freshman trip to the lovely, splendiferous Sierras, October 16-17! We’ll leave after Friday Koinonia Bible Study and head up to the Sierras, staying in our very own (built with love!) Sierra Lodge and Sierra Barn, complete with beautiful outdoor decks and benches, fire pits for those late night barbecue and bonding sessions, lit basketball court, a lake right next door, majestic Sierra Mountains, and fellowship and much more!!

SIGN UP now!

Don’t miss this. It’s just for the freshmen. Leave your campus and midterms for a couple days, 150 miles away, out of sight and out of mind. Get away for a time of refreshing and bonding with the rest of the freshman class!

Check out pictures from recent trips here, here, or here!

Other things we might do: hiking, games, bonfire, night basketball, night hike, field sports, kayaking, lake/river fishing, archery, star gazing. So sign up!

We’ve got a new series starting this Friday with a message from Pastor Ed. IncomPARABLE wisdom – get it? In case your brain is still fried from midterms and didn’t get the clever pun, we’re studying the famous parables of Jesus—those rich and profound stories unmatched in all history for their insight into the nature of man, God, life!

Date/Time: Friday 10/9
Location: 2050 Valley Life Sciences
Who’ll be there: You!

Don’t have tickets to this weekend’s big game? Come join all of Koinonia this Saturday – we’re gonna watch Cal crush USC on a big screen at Willard! And before the game, to get your juices pumped up first, we’re playing 3-on-3 basketball at the gym. Both guys and girls are welcome, of course!