Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

Possibly the biggest event of the fall, the Gracepoint Thanksgiving Retreat, is coming up!

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The past West Coast College Winter Retreat at Mt. Hermon was definitely a memorable time of messages, testimonies, praise, games, bonding, and AWEsome food.  Pastor Ed gave really stirring messages on topics like our heart’s approach to the word of God, spiritual warfare, purity and dating, knowing ourselves, the “Good Samaritan”, and living out the faith.

Thanks Pastor Ed and Kelly for leading us in the retreat!

We also heard numerous uplifting, powerful testimonies from church members and how they struggled with boundaries and experienced God’s redemption and love.

And let’s not forget about the AWEsome, gooooooood food.

During free times, we played sports, went on the ropes course, and went on hikes around the beautiful Mt. Hermon sceneries.  We also played group games wherein we had to form our own clubs and perform numerous tasks together in order to get our club to win against other clubs.  Afterwards, we played a cotton ball relay game that has never been played before.

Some of the great sceneries in Mt. Hermon.

We concluded by singing in a circle and afterwards creating a tunnel to send off our church plants: San Diego and Riverside.

Overall, the retreat really reawakened and challenged us to see the spiritual battle that we are engaged in as well as appreciate the boundaries God has placed in our lives.  A constant theme in the retreat was Psalm 16:6: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” Finally, praise the Lord for the many salvation decisions and recommitments!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you all had a good time of giving thanks with friends and family.

Hopefully you made it out to Thanksgiving Retreat. It was a blessed 2 days of sharing and reflections of the past year, for all God has done in our different ministries. It was also a special retreat since we had people from all our different church plants come to join us: Taiwan, UT Austin, Riverside, San Diego and Minnesota! It was great to see Gary, Bob, Will and Isaiah again, along with all the Koinonia staff that went on different church plants.

We had people from each of the different ministry groups come up to share their reflections on the past year. The most memorable sharing for me was Andy’s, when he started off his reflection in Mandarin. Everyone laughed, which either means his Mandarin has gotten better, or it’s still really horrible (I can’t tell). Anyways, it was great to hear from all the different sharings how God was moving on the different campuses. And it was great to see all our brothers and sisters from the different church plants!

In addition to people sharing their reflections, we had different performances by different groups. The seniors came up to sing us a song (it sounded really good!) that I forgot the name of (whoops). Some of the youth kids came up to lead us in a time of praise!

The brothers and sisters from Riverside did a dance that reminded me of TC.

We had an all-Gracepoint orchestra (we had people from Austin, Riverside and San Diego!) play an arrangement of “My Tribute”, composed by Paul. The brothers and sisters from Taiwan sang a song (which I also forgot the name of) in English and in Mandarin.

Finally, in last year’s tradition, all the people from the different church plants came up to sing “Thank You For Giving to the Lord”.
It’s amazing how just over the course of a year, the size of that group singing doubled! Praise God for how he is bringing people to him on the Riverside, San Diego and Minnesota campuses!

We also had Pastor Manny from UT Austin gave a talk about the history of college revivals. If there’s anything I remember from that talk, it’s that so many of those college revivals were started by students! Something for all us college students to ponder.

Thanksgiving Retreat ended with many brothers and sisters making public their salvation decisions! Terry from Kairos (my peer and fellow chemical engineer) made his salvation decision, and so did Eugene, Mike and Anthony (from Koinonia). Praise God for these lives committed to Christ!

That wrapped up Thanksgiving Retreat 2010. Hopefully you were all able to make it! If not, don’t miss the Thanksgiving Retreat next year!

Please sign up for the Thanksgiving retreat. It’s our favorite retreat of the year because we hear many personal testimonies about how God has worked in people’s lives, as well as reports from all our ministries and church plants. It really opens our eyes to all that God’s doing and causes our gratitude and praise to increase! And this year, there’s a real special treat: many students from Austin, Riverside, Minnesota, San Diego, and even Taiwan are joining us!! So don’t miss out! Sign up.

This past weekend, the upperclassmen from A2F, Kairos, and Koinonia had a combined discipleship retreat with Pastor Ed and Kelly at Sierra Lodge where we had a time of fellowship, studying God’s Word, and casting visions together.

Those of us who were able to get a day off of work, don’t have class on Fridays, or just wanted to chill, headed up to Sierra Lodge early and spent the day at Lake Tahoe. We had an awesome time swimming and kayaking in the lake, trying to catch little fish with our bare hands (which proved to be impossible), and getting our friends as wet as possible without capsizing our own kayaks. I’m sure we all returned to Sierra Lodge several shades darker than we were when we first left it.

When the rest of the upperclassmen arrived Friday night (for a total of 120 students/staff!), we got started right away as Pastor Ed and Kelly started off the retreat with our first session—a review of the gospel through Genesis, and the theme of entrustment as shown in 2 Timothy. We were all reminded of the life changing treasure that each of us has been entrusted with, how we have received the gospel message through reliable men, and how we are also called to become those reliable men who preserve and guard this treasure.

Other sessions throughout the weekend included reflecting on the picture of wisdom illustrated in the book of Proverbs, looking at Apostle Paul’s relationships and reevaluating our own criteria for feeling close to people, and listening to an inspiring message, “the local church is the hope of the world,” by Bill Hybels.

Hearty meals (bomb pulled-pork-sandwiches), fun at the lake, singing hymns around the campfire, late-night basketball fellowship, and simply spending the weekend with all of our peers really put the icing on the cake.

We ended our time at the retreat with a time of casting visions of where our church will be in 10 years. Expansion of our Interhigh ministry, homegrown leaders in our sister church in Taiwan, church plants at every UC—let’s remain faithful in sharing the gospel and maturing spiritually so that these visions may become a reality!

Time sure flies by! Can you believe it’s the third week of school already?!

We recently had our Winter Retreat at Mount Hermon, led by Pastor Ed and Kelly. God really spoke to many of us through different messages and testimonies, and we also enjoyed a time of sharing from all of the directors. We related to Saul, Samson, the Rich Young Ruler, and Pilate, and we learned how it ultimately doesn’t matter how competent we are but how faithful we are. As a result, many of us made commitments to keep regular DT and prayer times each day. So for those of you who were there – don’t worry, it’s still not too late to sign up for DT groups!

Here’s some pictures:

We also recently had our Spring Welcome Night, followed by our homegroup hang-out time at Steve and Suzanne’s. We had a class Jenga battle and a guys vs. girls building challenge. Here’s some pictures: