Koinonia Christian Campus Fellowship – UC Berkeley Club

This Friday, we’re having a special churchwide Christmas program. Please come and invite your friends!

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!

I can’t believe TC is done already. Feels like just yesterday we were practicing for our ridiculous dances. Oh well, post TC blues aren’t nearly as bad as post G-Live blues.

TC this year was pretty awesome. After 3 years of TC, it still doesn’t get old. It just gets funnier as you realized that you know more and more people on stage.

The Kairos act was a first…first time I’ve ever heard a song used word for word…turns out that “To Save as Many as Possible” is an actual song. It was also surprising because it wasn’t completely ridiculous. Of course, this was followed by the more normal ridiculous, shameless dances….like this

SF Campus was next and of course there would have to be something with Richard and the Evil Beanbag. SF Campus didn’t disappoint.

Poor Richard. That beanbag is going to end up following him for the rest of his life at Gracepoint.

After SF the order of groups going up gets all jumbled up in my head. The pictures on Flickr being out of order doesn’t help either…

So anyways, I think the next act was A2F. When I saw that the name of their song was “OT Rhapsody”…well, there’s only one song I can think of that has the word Rhapsody in it. Yeah, that song by Queen.Way too many awesome moments in this one. I think that most awesome ones (read:sick) were these two…

Wait…it gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view)

Yeah. I was kinda speechless at that point. True shamelessness.

After seeing that shocking act, I had enough awesomeness for the day. Enter the Koinonia Freshmen and Seniors. They started with a serious and meaningful time of giving thanks for different things. Best things I heard people giving thanks for were “Food” and “Dana House”. Nice.

Of course this was followed by some less-serious times of thanksgiving.

Besides learning that the frosh were thankful for BT, I also found out that Steve and Suzanne know how to dance.

Sadly, they declined to give us an encore performance later after dinner.

We (the Koinonia sophomores and juniors) were up next. Don’t really remember much from this act except that we were supposed to get a cue at the end of the second song, but it never came. Yeah, that was awkward. The cue never came. Anyways, they said that our act had “Best Use of Props”. Judge for yourself.

(I guess the powers that be like to cast Wilson as a ridiculous looking circular object. I wonder what it’ll be next year….)

Objects are Larger than they Appear

That’s one nice looking pencil. Yeah, I think we had the best props.

We also had this…

Yeah, that didn’t really serve any purpose at all. Just wanted to jack David. Look at the person laughing  in the background!

The next act was the Youth.

This was supposed to be about how it’s “Too Hard to Evangelize” for today’s youth. I think they just wanted an excuse to dress up and look cool. Well they also had a dance to the Pokemon theme song renamed “Fisher of Man.” They pulled it off well! Sadly, no pictures…

IGSM and VSM was next, to give us all insight on what life is like a grad student. That professor was a jerk, but I wonder how much they’re actually exaggerating. Anyways, I think the funniest part was Professor Great drinking that lab experiment that he shouldn’t have drank.

For all of you that took o-chem, I think you got the joke about L and R enantiomers. For those of you who didn’t, go ask someone who took o-chem to explain it to you.

No TC act would be complete without a grand finale act. That was Praxis’ job this year, although I think “finale” to them meant “try to gross people out as much as possible”. Here’s proof…

I think they one-upped our waiters.  I was in shock (again), but then this happened…

And this

Wow. Just. Wow.

That wasn’t all of the act though (I can’t end the blog post like this). There were many other dances (that I forgot after being shocked by above said pictures) so hopefully you guys remember them and can fill in the blanks. They ended with an awesome finale dance

After all the performances, all Koinonia headed back to Berkeley for a Thanksgiving FEAST!

Turkey and mashed potatoes and corn and ham and chicken and pumpkin pie, oh my! And of course, that Thanksgiving staple – kimchi.

And because we didn’t get enough dancing, we had some more live encore performances:

So that’s TC for you. We all go on stage and make fools of ourselves, but somehow it ends up being awesome. One of those mysteries of life. But overall, a wonderful time of thanking God and enjoying sweet fellowship with each other. For those of you who weren’t able to be a part of it, you missed out! Don’t let that happen again next year!

Join us and join in next year for more fun, laughter, and exuberant thanksgiving!

This Friday we’re all together again for The Friday Night. Afterwards, it’s the last practice for TC! Are you ready? Can’t wait to see everyone’s acts…

It’s a packed weekend, with our Thanksgiving Celebration on Sunday. Our special Thanksgiving service starts at 1pm in Alameda, followed by the stage acts we’ve all been practicing hard for. We cap the night with an amazing Thanksgiving feast! It’ll be such a sweet time of fellowshipping, praising/thanking God, and just laughing and having fun.

To whet your appetite, here are a couple acts from last year’s TC! Here’s the Element teachers’ ribbon dance. It won the “Most Beautiful” award. A stunning visual display…

Here’s a part of the “DT Review” act….Might there be another DT Review extravaganza this year??

Looking forward to a wonderful weekend! You don’t wanna miss out for anything else!! Who knows what you might see?

It’s that time of year again! Our first practice (for the sophs/jrs) for Thanksgiving Celebration will be this Friday! Come check our our exciting, dramatic, meaningful, memorable (hopefully) idea!

Thanksgiving Celebration is an annual tradition at our church. After our special Thanksgiving worship service, we enjoy a series of hilarious stage performances by different groups, followed by an amazing, all-out Thanksgiving dinner! It’s really a wonderful time to properly praise God for what He’s done in our lives this past year, as well as a time to let down our guard, laugh (and eat) until our stomach hurts, and enjoy the close fellowship we have in this body of Christ.

This year it’s on Sunday, Nov 7. Mark your calendars.

This Friday, the frosh and seniors will be going up to Sierra Lodge! If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late! You can still sign up here.

The sophomores and juniors will have for TFN a special talk at 7:30pm in 145 Dwinelle. We’ll be discussing the topic of truth. Is there such thing as absolute truth, or is truth merely relative?

Afterwords, we’ll head to BT (Buffet Town) for a fun time of snacks and games, followed by TC (Thanksgiving Celebration) practice! TC is a yearly celebration where our whole church displays its talents (or lack of) on stage, followed by an-out Thanksgiving feast. It’s a hilarious time of fun and food! Don’t miss it!