Adam recently came to be part of our church and is recently married to our missionary in Japan, Sabrina. Hear from Adam, a missionary himself to Japan, as he shares more about himself.

Please share a little bit of your background and how you came to Evergreen.

I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I come from a family of Italian Canadian nominal Catholics. I decided to follow Jesus during my third year at university, becoming involved in student ministry and by extension, missions. I’ve traveled to India and Japan for short-term missionary work, and spent one year in Osaka, Japan (August 2019 – August 2020) for medium-term missionary work. Amid my preparations for my Osaka term, I met Sabrina through an online dating website. As we met in-person and dated in Japan, we decided to meet each other’s families. This brought me to California in September 2020, where I had the privilege to meet Sabrina’s biological family and her spiritual family here at Evergreen.

How has your time at our church been so far? What are you initial impressions of our church?

COVID-19 has definitely made things interesting in my initial engagement at Evergreen. I first started attending Sunday services online. I’ve appreciated the love of Jesus being made explicit during the services, and seeing that incarnated with the people of Evergreen as I’ve been attending in-person.

My initial impression was that Evergreen is big! My home church in Canada is a small percentage of the size of both the congregation and the campus. The size and scope have definitely been a change for me, especially after returning from Japan, where a group of six people every Sunday was a successful turnout.

The few families that Sabrina has invited me into fellowship with have been loving, patient, funny, and encouraging. These families have been intentional in cultivating community with us, not as a duty, but as a natural outflowing of their character and care for us. We’re excited to dive deeper in relationship with them.

What are you most looking forward to in your time at Evergreen?

More than anything, intentional community and the organic discipleship that comes out of that are something that excites me about my time at Evergreen. I’m excited to learn more about the vision of discipleship here, and encouraged to see that vision play itself out within these families of community Sabina and I are engaged in.

How can we pray for you and Sabrina? 

1. Our marriage. We are seeking to cultivate a space where we are living out our identities as family, as missionaries and as disciples. Pray that we prioritize loving God, loving each other and loving others in this.

2. Immigration and citizenship processes that we’re currently involved in. We are seeking to become dual citizens (Canada-USA), and the processes are long. Pray for favour.

by Pastor Victor Chen

In an old television commercial, a bear climbs a yellow trailer, rips off the roof to peek inside and exclaims, “Hey, where’s the cream filling?”

The bear thought the yellow trailer was a Twinkie. 

You too may be looking at our website, Plugin or app and be asking, “Hey, where’s the summer program?”

Good question. 

Why isn’t there a weeklong summer program?

Though things are reopening after over a year of the “stay at home” order, much of our church, especially families, are still home. As we explored having a weeklong program, it became difficult to anticipate how many families would feel comfortable sending their children to a weeklong program and how many volunteers would feel comfortable serving throughout the week. In short, there were a lot of unknowns that made it difficult to plan.

Why isn’t there an online weeklong summer program?

Producing weekly videos for families to join Church School online is already a lot of work. Producing an entire weeklong program would require even more time and additional resources. For now, the livestream service and Church School videos are the priorities online. 

Furthermore, we are still providing in-person worship services in the sanctuary and in-person Church School in the MPR with breakout sessions in the MPR and various classrooms. It would be one thing to only produce online content, but to do both online and in person requires more attention, time and resources.

Finally, as a pastor (and parent), I am concerned about the screen time consumption our children have had with a year (or more) of distance learning. This summer, I would recommend our children rest their eyes, go outside, be active and play!

Our family is comfortable returning, what is available this summer for us?

I’m glad you asked! Because we want families to return to service and Church School in person when they are comfortable, we will have opportunities for families to come out on campus outdoors as a step towards returning. 

On June 27, we will have our next Summer Worship Night where families can come early to bring dinner and picnic on our lawn from 4:30-6pm. At 6pm, we will begin our program with family-friendly group activities for both children and adults. This is followed by a time of worship with a devotion as we learn and sing songs that span the generations represented in our church.

Note that this is not just for families, but for the entire church family. At our last Summer Worship Night on May 30, we were blessed to have a great mix of generations join and participate. College students and young adults led the group activity and hand motions for kids worship. It was neat to see the entire group worship as one family.

On July 30-31, we will have our last Summer Worship Night on Friday night with an optional Summer Worship Campout afterward! Households can come set up their tent, have a dinner picnic and join with the summer worship time. Afterward, they can sleep in their tent on our campus under the stars. We hope to provide brunch Saturday morning and allow everybody to enjoy hanging out on campus together.

If you are interested in participating in our Summer Worship Campout, please contact me at vchen@evergreensgv.org to sign up!

by Pastor Victor Chen

Mere months into leading our 5th/6th grade Church School department, I was faced with the task of identifying a person to head our 1st/2nd grade department. It was the beginning of the 2020 school year and we were still in the midst of a “stay at home” order. 

Church School was still largely done online and I was having a difficult time recruiting help for Church School. Finding a Department Head seemed impossible.

What were we going to do?

I remember proposing a solution to our other Church School Department Head leaders after much prayer. Though they admired my heart, they were concerned this was too much.

I admit it sounded crazy.

I would lead both 5th/6th and 1st/2nd grade departments. The only way I could do this is if we had a unified curriculum across all grades. I would produce pre-recorded lesson videos each week to be shown online, followed by break-out small groups by our Church School teachers. I would teach in person outdoors to everybody 0-6th grade and break everybody out into small groups according to their age groups.

Over six months later, we continue to offer a unified curriculum, “The Gospel Project”, across all grades through high school. For grades Pre-K through 6th, we continue to offer an online option with small groups. On May 2, we began having a unified Church School gathering indoors at 9am in the MPR. I teach the lesson in person, after which everybody breaks out to their respective departments for small groups and activities. 

More families are coming out as things reopen. children online and in-person are beginning to grasp the rhythm of the curriculum — the key passages families can commit to memory and the overarching themes for each unit of 4-5 lessons. The curriculum covers the entire Bible over three years, specifically highlighting how each part of the Bible points to the good news of Jesus. I especially appreciate the resources the curriculum provides to facilitate family worship throughout the week. With a unified curriculum, a family with multiple children can review the same lesson, the same theme and the same key passage.

Looking back, I had always wanted to introduce a unified curriculum for our Church School departments. My wife dreamed of being able to track with all three of our children and what they had learned in Sunday school. 

Who knew a unified curriculum would provide a solution to our church in a difficult season? Praise God that we have a clear path in “The Gospel Project” for a unified journey through the Bible and discovering how it points to Jesus.

This fall, The Gospel Project will begin its 3-year cycle going through the entire Bible beginning with Genesis 1. Join us as our Church School goes through The Gospel Project together. There is even a potential option to add an adult track so everybody can join along! Feel free to contact me at vchen@evergreensgv.org for more information.