Saddleback Irvine

1. What have your conversations been like with family, friends, coworkers and neighbors? Positive, negative, indifferent?
   
2. From believers and non-believers?
3. Has this helped or not helped people clarify their position on who to vote for? Why?
4. How did this affect their view of Pastor Rick, Saddleback, the Church in general if at all?

It has been an amazing and busy week with all the media attention due to the Civil Forum with Barrack Obama and John McCain at Saddleback. Pastor Rick was also on Larry King Live, Nightline and a hot media topic for the last few days.

This weekend, Pastor Rick will be sharing a message on The Kind of Leadership America Needs.

This will be a timely message, especially for your friends or coworkers that may have seen the forum and been intrigued by Saddleback and Pastor Rick.

Why not allow them an opportunity to experience Saddleback for themselves - who could you invite to come this weekend?

Will you commit to CARE this summer?

When one thinks about the needs in the world, it can be overwhelming.

So a great way to take a step to CARE is focus on the circle of relationships you already have - coworkers, neighbors, friends or family that don't know God's love yet. Summer is a great time to invest in relationships. And prayer is often overlooked.

Like you, the Apostle Paul longed and prayed for his community (the Israelites) to know Christ.

My heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. - Romans 10:1 (ESV)

Prayer for our friends is important because it provides CLARITY in a world that can be confusing and distracting in the search for truth.

Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don't believe, so they are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News that is shining upon them. They don't understand the message we preach about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. - 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NLT)

So here are some helpful tips in praying specifically for your circle – you may…

·       Ask God to open up your friends’ hearts to talk about their spiritual needs (2 Peter 3.9)

·       Ask God to help you participate in someone's discovery process (1 Cor 3.6-9)

·       Ask God to give you opportunities to help them or invite them over (Col 4.2-6)

·       Ask God to give you sensitivity to where they are coming from spiritually (1 Cor 9.22-23)

·       Ask God to give you confidence in sharing your testimony with them (Eph 6.19)

Don’t give up praying – it’s hard work but vital in helping people take steps in their journey toward Jesus.

Praying for you and with you,

Pastor Erin

Part 2 - Committing to Care: Share

Come find out ways how you can respond to the plight of human trafficking. This is an awareness and equipping event that will talk about recognizing trafficking in the community, how to respond, new resource tools, law enforcement learnings and stories of conducting community walks.

Date: May 21st at 6:30pm
Location: Saddleback Irvine Worship Room, 4782 Karen Ann Lane
Want to serve?:If you would like to serve as a Saddleback Irvine greeter, show up at 6pm.

I had the chance to visit Irvine last weekend, it was so great to see everyone in action. Everywhere I looked, people were working together to pull off the weekend.

TWO staff were gone last weekend: one had a planned trip and the other had an unplanned back injury, and everything went off without a hitch. That's pretty great, considering we're 8 weeks into a new campus!! If you're one of the volunteers who serves in Irvine: THANKS FOR WHAT YOU DO.

Here's the question: if you're not serving somewhere, what's keeping you? DON'T LET COMFORT keep you from going where God is leading.

There are some lessons that God wants to teach you and he can only teach them to you while you're serving. If you don't serve, then you're going to miss out on what God wants to do in your life. You don't want that!

If God's leading, then don't wait. There's tons of ways to get involved. Contact Erin today.

I also got to see Leo (STUDENT MINISTY GURU FOR IRVINE) in action, that was pretty great. It was his second week, and it looks like they are off to a great start. I've spent most of my years in ministry serving in youth ministry, so a part of me wanted to jump in and do something.

Think I'm headed down to San Clemente next week, to see how the ol' regional veterans are going.

great stuff all around!

Matt McGill
pastor of regional campuses
mattm@saddleback.net

• One person mentioned that he has planned a day and time to write a letter explaining all of the things he has appreciated about his parents - he had never done that before.
• Another was making a list of some close relatives that have never heard their testimony before and praying for an opportunity to share it with each one.
• One person committed to carving out 30 mins a day daily to study more about the claims of Jesus.
  
• What are you doing specifically to live differently?

We are loving this location for Saddleback Irvine.

We have been here a few weeks getting set up and have learned some things about our new home:

1. IUSD has a stellar staff - Martin, Kathleen, Mike, Joe, Tommy, Jorge, Ismail, Hector, Aaron have been wonderful!
2. This is the perfect campus for a sports & potluck party on the grass.
3. We have great law enforcement to protect our children - I tested it first hand with a rolling stop in front of the school. Bad pastor. 
4. We see a group of women who do morning calisthenics in the back lot – every morning.
5. There are four coffee shops within a ½ mile radius of our location.  
6. 3 million high school kids stream to Burger King for lunch from Irvine High School every day - its a hunger exodus.
7. Little league!
8. Everyone loves the kids mural in our new worship room (left from school days) just not IN the worship room. 
9. Staff meetings in the sunshine, on the grass with a frisbee or bocce ball is good team building time.
10. There is a team of prayer warriors that pray here every Friday at 7:15am in the parking lot.

We are so thankful to God for this location.

What else should we know? Feel free to comment.