Salon (& Smiles) in the Park

By Kirsten Grubb 

Pacific Lifeline is extremely grateful for those who served our families through the Salon in the Park event on May 11. To those who spent hours planning and serving, may God bless you for your investment of time, energy, and love. The food was delicious, the activities for the kids were a blast, and the haircuts and manicures were so appreciated! The families felt loved, and many expressed a desire to start attending LBF.

• One mom told me that the only time she gets her hair cut is at LBF’s Salon in the Park. 
• A mom and her son wanted to come so badly that they took a taxi to LBF. When the event ended, the two of them started walking toward Euclid Ave., heading for south Upland. Don’t worry, I gave them a ride home. 
• As I took one of the resident families back to the shelter, the mom said that this was her best Mother’s Day ever. She said she felt so loved and blessed. 

Thank you, LBF, for reaching out and ministering to Pacific Lifeline’s families. Learn more about Pacific Lifeline.

Jeremy Moore Comes Home

By Carol Hawkins, Missions Coordinator 

As you will remember, Jeremy Moore served with the Africa Children’s Choir since July of 2011 and has recently returned home. The choir put a lot of miles on the bus, touring through 26 states in the U.S. and also spending five months in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland doing concerts. All-in-all, they performed over 250 concerts, bringing glory to God. That’s a lot of music being shared! The Lord opened many doors for ministry, even giving them the privilege of recording on an album with Steven Curtis Chapman, and performing in arenas that seat 23,000 in the UK.

The children in the choir, ages 9-11, were selected and trained in their home of Uganda before heading to the U.S. for the concert tour. This was a learning time for them as they left home for 18 months and traveled throughout the United States. As you can imagine, touring for 18 months brings a lot of joy, blessings, and fun, but it also has daily stressors. Jeremy was the sound technician for the concerts and he also had a very important role as a chaperone for some of the boys. He recently shared some thoughts with me.

Jeremy knew this two-year experience would be a time of stretching and growing for the children, but it was also a huge growing time for him as well. Being in charge of the children’s daily schedule and making sure their needs were met was a huge responsibility. Each morning he and the other chaperones would make sure the children were up, dressed, had eaten their breakfast, and were ready to head to their performance site (usually a church) all by a certain time. Some days Jeremy would teach a class for the children (usually math, English, or science). Yes, even on tour the children had school. They would make sure the choir had time to rehearse, rest, eat their meals, dress in time for the concerts, and much more. Following the concerts, they made sure the children were back in their host homes, showered, and in bed by a certain time. Then they would begin thinking about the next day’s schedule. Each day also included a time of Bible reading and group devotions.

That’s a full schedule to maintain for 18 months. There were some fun field trips along the way – like going to Disney World, playing in the snow along the East Coast, and other fun adventures.

Jeremy thanks you, LBF, for your prayers and financial support during his 20 months away. This experience changed his life. It caused him to rely more on the Lord everyday, helped him learn more about living out his faith, and helped him gain confidence in the process. And the Lord used this time to help him see more clearly the direction in missions he wants to go in the future.

Please continue to pray for Jeremy as he transitions back to life here and prayerfully considers his next steps. Thank you for being part of this ministry, for blessing thousands of lives, and for encouraging Jeremy on his journey.

And if you would like to be more involved with the lives of our missionaries through prayer, please let me know. Just email me at carol@lbfchurch.com. I have a team of people praying for them regularly, but I’d love to have you join us too! Or, if you’re interested in helping support our missionaries in other ways, let me know that as well. It would be a blessing to have you join our team.

This Weekend's Message: Broken Stride

I love to read and I will often leave any book that I am reading on the side table next to my bed. Many times I will have two books going at a time. But due to the fact that I am easily distracted, I will often find the books piling up. Rather than making my way through a book, I come to find that there are 5 or 6 on, under, and near that side table. This happens because I continue to start a book, get distracted, and then start new one before I have finished the previous one. After a while, all of those books appear to become a monument to things that I have started, but left unfinished.

Many of us struggle to finish well. We start a book or a project or a relationship, but then we get sidetracked and go off course. Throughout Galatians, Paul has been speaking to a group of Christians who started their relationship with God by faith in the grace of God. But now they are off course and are living a distant, rules-based relationship with God. This Sunday, we will all be called to finish well. And as we are called to this, we will learn some of the enemies and some of the keys to finishing well. 

Dan

Quilt Stories

By Rita Dixon 

A 79-year-old father with bladder cancer who has an 8-year-old son; a 17-year-old teenage girl with a brain tumor; a young man who loved to surf but has cancer; a little boy with M.S. who trails a quilt behind him every time he goes to the hospital; a tiny child who has eye cancer, wrapped in a quilt, who is too young to know what’s happening; and a young Muslim boy, fighting for his life with stage 4 cancer. What do these people have in common? They have received a quilt from the Quilter’s Prayer group.

The 79-year-old dad died of bladder cancer and his son took the quilt and earnestly told his mom, “This is mine, because it was my daddy’s.” The girl with the brain tumor took her quilt with her to the hospital, on car rides, and everywhere she went. After she died, her mom took the quilt and treasures it as a memento of her daughter. The surfer found himself in a time of remission. He went surfing again, but eventually the disease took him. The quilt, with surfing motifs, covered him at all times until he died. An 8-year-old girl loved her quilt and took it with her wherever she went. When she died, her parents had her buried in the quilt.

There are also stories of people who survived illness and surgeries, who now have the quilt hanging over a chair at home, waiting to be covered again during cool weather. It is a symbol of what they have overcome with God at their sides.

As Mr. Frank Coffman said, “I was taking my new round of chemo today, snuggling under the prayer quilt you made for me the last time I had chemotherapy. It was such a blessing and telling the nurses about it makes for a lovely witness. Thank you so much again for the quilt and your prayers during this time.”

Our reward is knowing that our quilts have meaning to those who receive them and that they provide a witness of God’s love to others. We think that when someone is covered with a quilt, they are also covered with God’s love. The Quilter’s Prayer group has given quilts to 167 people in the last three years. This means that there are 167 stories, each of them unique, each with a different ending, yet each with the same theme of God’s love.

This group of dedicated ladies meets every Thursday evening at LBF. For information about joining the group to make quilts, call Rita Dixon @ (909) 931-9322. If you know someone who needs a quilt, please note it on your K.I.T. card during any weekend service and place it in one of the offering boxes in the back of the church.

Bringing the Gospel to Japan

By Russ Parker, Pastor of Administration 

Japan is a country with 127.3 million people and boasts the third largest national economy in the world, tremendous technology, and many exports that make our lives unbelievably convenient. Along with this prosperity, however, there is a darker side of Japan that many are unaware of. There were 34,427 Japanese that took their own lives last year. Eleven percent of Japanese people say that they wish they had never been born. And 85% of teens wonder what the point of their existence is. Hope is something missing for so many in Japan. A culture where performance and shame often go hand-in-hand, Japan is in desperate need of discovering they are loved and valued by the Creator of the Universe – that they are being offered life through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their behalf.

Japan is the second least-evangelized nation on the planet. There is one Christian church for every 16,293 people. In the city of Tokyo, there is only one church per 12,192 people and average attendance per church is 58. Out of every 1,000 people, only two attend a church. In many cases the issue is not the rejection of the gospel, but the lack of people telling of the radical love of God for His creation.

This summer LBF has the opportunity to send a team of musicians to take the Message of Hope to Japan. Partnering with Youth With A Mission Tokyo (YWAM), this team will tell of God’s love, speak the truth of God to people who are unaware of what His son Jesus did for them, and be obedient to whatever God may lead them to do.

The team will serve in music ministry and street evangelism in partnership with YWAM, participating in established, ongoing ministries in local schools, universities, and churches that desperately need encouragement and people to come alongside them. Our team and each of its members was selected because of their personal pursuit of God and His will for their life, their heart to minister the Gospel of Jesus through music, and their willingness to go to a different culture and embrace the people as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Japan team leaves June 29 and returns July 9. We appreciate your prayers for our team as they prepare their hearts for service and raise the resources to fund this mission.

Transport Your Kids to Athens, Greece!

By Lauria Baiz, Director of Life Kids Children’s Ministry 

As the school year is quickly coming to a close and summer vacation is about to begin, there is a touch of excitement in the air about the fun activities that will be planned for the warm weather to come! So as you make your plans, I hope that your kids will be available June 24-28, from 5:30-8 p.m. for Vacation Bible School. This year the kids will be transported to Athens, Greece and learn all about Paul’s adventures and what it means to share the truth! During their time in Athens, they will make crafts, share a meal together, play games in “the arena,” and enjoy lots of music!

Don’t miss out and preregister today at lbfchurch.com. We can’t wait to see you in Athens!

Car Show Serves a Greater Purpose

By Phil Shahbaz, Pastor of Community Life 

The Second Annual LBF Car Show on Sunday, July 21, from 12:30-5:30 p.m., will not only serve to bring the community together this year, but will also assist the GAP Food Bank in providing for needy families in our community.

The GAP started in the early ‘90s by distributing food out of a garage to local families. Almost 20 years later, the GAP is located in a 4,500-square-foot warehouse in Rancho Cucamonga, equipped with a truck for large donation pick-ups, a forklift, and walk-in freezer and refrigerator.

GAP’s immediate goal is to increase the number of families fed to 500 or more by continuing to feed them at their facility, as well as expanding the amount of food provided to other food banks, senior centers, and churches. Since their primary source of revenue is free-will donations from local churches, businesses, and individuals, we’d like to contribute and help them meet their goal.

So this year, as you get ready to head over to the Car Show with your lawn chairs and picnic blankets, bring along a canned good or two to donate to GAP Food Bank. Then your family can enjoy the live band, bounce houses, petting zoo, and an assortment of fun activities and vendors. Panera Bread will be providing all of the food, dessert, and drinks, and 10% of their sales at the event will go toward GAP Food Bank.

The Second Annual LBF Car Show will feature all makes and models of classics, customs, hot rods, muscle cars, choppers, imports, and antiques! If you have a car, truck, or motorcycle that you would like to enter in the show, please register online at lbfchurch.com. Trophies will be awarded in several categories. Registration fee is $20 per car and $15 per motorcycle.

This Weekend's Message: One Fulfillment

I was a confident teenager who felt like I knew how to handle things. Once, when I went to visit my grandparents, they picked me up from the airport in their 1964 Rambler station wagon. After our greeting at the terminal, we headed back to their car. I opened the back tailgate of the wagon and put my luggage in. As I lifted the tailgate to close it, we noticed the glass window was not down all the way. My grandparents told me to stop and lower the window, but of course I knew better and shut the tailgate. You know what happened, right? As I closed the tailgate the glass window shattered.

That was one of those times when instead of doing it my way, I should have listened and done it their way. This has probably happened to all of us at sometime in our life. We think we know the better way to do things or we try to do something ourselves when we should have asked for help. This week in our study of Galatians, Paul uses a familiar story from the Old Testament of someone who did it their way instead of God’s way. It is a brilliant piece of teaching from Paul as he writes his final arguments to the Galatians on the subject of being “Freely Limited.”

I hope to see you on this Father’s Day Sunday.

Gary

Summer Missionaries Come & Go

By Carol Hawkins, Missions Coordinator 

Short-term Teams & an Individual Head Out From LBF 
It’s exciting that we have two teams going out this summer on short-term trips.

Nicaragua Team (July 6-13): Russ Parker, Noel & Debbie Norton, Shirley Loza, Stacy Townsend, and Rob Vance. Please pray as they make plans, raise funds, and meet together as a team. They are partnering with Living Water International by fixing broken-down clean water wells, teaching lessons on hygiene, and sharing about Jesus in villages across Nicaragua.

Japan Team (June 29-July 9): Jeff & Laura Taylor, Andrew & Amanda Bixler, Paul & Jenn Casequin, Erin Methvin, and Nick Sholz. This team is partnering with Youth With a Mission (YWAM) in Tokyo to do street evangelism with worship and other ministry opportunities. Pray for finances and details in planning.

Carol Hawkins (June 24-July 5): I’ll be going to Sri Lanka, an island nation off the southeast coast of India. On a team with six other women, we will serve widows and orphans as well as meet with the wives of local pastors. Please pray for health and safety and that God will use us to share His light and love.






LBF-supported Missionaries Return From the Field 
This summer we will have the privilege of having two missionary families come to visit us at LBF.

Leigh & Barbara Labrecque and their children will join us on July 28. They have been translating scriptures in Vanuatu (an island chain northeast of Australia) for the past 12½ years. This major project is complete and they will be moving to Canada with a change in ministry focus. Save that date and plan on joining us for a lunch reception in The Garage to hear more about their ministry and the many lives being blessed through having God’s word in their own language.

Pete & Mary Q will be with us August 11. They have been serving in Asia for more than 30 years and are currently working with the Mekong Minority Foundation as well as the Chiang Rai International Christian School in northern Thailand. Come and learn from their years of experience and hear more of what God is doing in Thailand.

LBF reaches around the globe and it will be an honor to have these two families join us and share what the Lord is doing in their part of the world.

Two Testaments: Two Gods?

By Dan Franklin, Pastor of Teaching 

One of the most common questions from both Christians and non-Christians concerns the connection between how God is presented in the Old Testament and the New Testament. We associate the Old Testament with God’s wrath and judgment: the earth swallows people up, armies wipe each other out, and God’s fire consumes sinners. We associate the New Testament with God’s grace and kindness: Jesus dies for sinners, the thief on the cross is forgiven, and all who come to Jesus are promised eternal life. We may find ourselves asking, “Is this really the same story?” 

On May 5 we held a Deeper event in order to explore this question. I encourage you to listen to the whole session in order to gain perspective on this question.* Here, however, I just wanted to answer it in short order. Below are two key reasons why we should not conclude that the Old and New Testaments present a different picture of God.

God consistently reveals Himself to be full of both grace and wrath. God’s wrath is not limited to the Old Testament. Jesus spoke more about hell than any other character or author in the Bible (Matthew 5:29-30). We see Ananias and Sapphira struck dead for lying to God’s people (Acts 5:1-11). Paul speaks of Jesus saving us from God’s wrath (Romans 5:9-11). Revelation contains the outpouring of God’s wrath and judgment against humanity. In both testaments we encounter a God who takes sin so seriously that He judges it fiercely. We don’t eliminate God’s wrath by ignoring the Old Testament. Just as God’s wrath is not limited to the Old Testament, His grace and kindness is not limited to the New Testament. God reveals Himself to be slow to anger, abounding in love, and overflowing with forgiveness (Exodus 34:6-7). He is a God concerned with saving His people (Isaiah 45:22), whom He chose out of the overflow of His own great love (Deuteronomy 7:7-9). Both the Old and the New Testament present a God who is overflowing with both grace and wrath. We cannot solve our problem with His wrath by ignoring the Old Testament, and we miss out on His powerful grace when we limit ourselves only to the New Testament.

God’s people consistently respond to God with both fear and love. Sometimes we read the Old Testament and think that God is not very loving. Whether or not this is our conclusion, it certainly was not the conclusion of the Israelites who lived under the Old Covenant. The Psalms overflow with Israelites who see God as their gracious and compassionate Savior (36:5, 59:16, 145:8, etc.). He is their fortress, their only hope, and their source of life. It is certainly true that they responded to God with appropriate fear. But it is equally true that they saw God as the ultimate source of grace, kindness, and forgiveness. On the flipside, the fear of God is not absent from the New Testament. Jesus talks about it (Matthew 10:28), as do Peter (1 Peter 1:17), Paul (2 Corinthians 5:11), and the author of Hebrews (10:30-31). It is true that John says that perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:17-18), but he is not saying that we don’t fear God at all. In the context it simply means that we don’t fear final judgment and condemnation from God. There is a powerful consistency about how God’s people relate to Him. There is always love, and there is always appropriate fear.

There will always be passages in the Bible that confuse us. There will always be passages that will rub us the wrong way. As this happens, I want to encourage you to be willing to engage with God’s Word instead of ignoring or disregarding it. God has spoken to us. We shouldn’t assume that we will always instantly agree with Him. After all, shouldn’t God have the ability to correct and instruct us? The key is not that we should instantly understand and agree with God immediately. The key is that, when we disagree with Him, we adjust to Him, instead of demanding that He adjusts to us.

*You can find the video recording of the Deeper event on May 5 on our website: lbfchurch.com

This Weekend's Message: One Truth

Is it good to be religious? Does God value religion?

Throughout human history people have always shown some form of religious observance. And throughout history people have always argued and debated over which religious observance is superior.

Is God looking for a specific kind of religious observance from you? If so, which kind? And how are we to determine God's preferred religion?

Dan

What’s Going on Here?

By Gary Keith, Lead Pastor 

As I write this I’m sitting in my office on a Thursday afternoon after having just returned from our annual pastoral staff retreat. I’m not sure why we call it a retreat because there is very little retreating. Mainly it’s a time of work. We spend time reflecting back and looking forward. We spend time making new plans to more effectively live out our mission. This year’s work retreat was an important time because it was the first time we looked back on how it is going with our new mission and vision. We asked ourselves, “How can we do better?”

Someone may wonder, “Hey, we are doing pretty well; why do you want to do better? After all, we added more than 600 people to a daily Bible reading plan, we tripled the number of LIFE Groups, we entered into some new community projects, we have two international missions trips planned for the summer, and since January we have seen at least 37 people come to faith in Jesus, which all sounds pretty good! Why do you want to do better?”

The answer to that question is both simple and profound: Because LBF is a church that is consumed by a very real burden for people who are far from God. I am consumed with a burden to help people who are far from God. Our pastors are consumed with a burden for people who are far from God. Everything we do is centered on that burden of helping people who are far from God come close to Him and then begin living in a passionate pursuit of LIFE in Jesus. That’s why we want to get more people reading the Bible everyday.

That’s why we want more people in our LIFE Groups, connecting with God and connecting with others. That’s why we want to grow in serving God in our community and around the world.

That’s also why we will always challenge the status quo – always. We cannot rest and assume that the way we did things in the ’70s will work in the ’90s. Or that the way things worked in the ’90s will work today. Every innovation has an expiration date. At some point, new isn’t new anymore. Eventually, new ideas feel like yesterday’s news. Bread is not the only thing that gets stale. Nothing is relevant forever. But innovation is something I want us to continually pursue because in that innovation we find a better way for us to reach people who are far from God.

As I reflect on my 30-plus years here at LBF, I can remember times where a new method for doing ministry was put into practice – it was a new innovation.

I can still remember the first Sunday we introduced drums into worship. I was the worship pastor at the time and it was a risk, but a risk we believed would help people who are far from God come to church. And while it may have been innovative at the time, today that is old news.

Let me tell you, everything that is currently in place at LBF was adopted as an improvement over an outdated approach. Everything that is currently in place began as a challenge to the status quo in a previous generation. Why? Because we have a burden for people who are far from God.

And so we are now in a new season at LBF – where for many it is an exciting time and where a new mission statement is less than a year old, where there is a new feel inside the Worship Center, where our student ministry is embracing new ways to reach our students, where our children’s ministry will approach helping our kids find God in a new way, and where our LIFE Groups are helping people connect and serve God.

Why do we do this? Because more than anything we want to reach people who are far from God. We want to help people come to faith and grow in that faith and live out a passionate pursuit of LIFE in Jesus.

And my prayer for all of you who are part of this church family is that you too will feel a burden for the people who are far from God. So that when your status quo changes you will recognize that more than anything you are part of a church that will reach people with the good news of Jesus.