by Darren Inouye

2020 was a year in which normality was interrupted and challenged. Our normal experience of church changed, and in that change I believe God was refining me.

One area of refining was my view of “church worship”. I felt this refinement begin at the first outdoor service my family attended. Daniel Gee was leading worship acapella, and we could barely hear his voice as the sound setup was limited. We had to rely on the voices of our brothers and sisters singing beside us to follow along in worship. There was no fancy trickery to pull me out of our reality during that Sunday worship time. You could hear the shaky, amateur, beautiful and real voices of people praising God. You could hear the muffling of their voices as they struggled to sing while wearing masks, contextualizing the times we were in. In past “normal” seasons, I may have considered these very things a distraction, but in that time and on that Sunday, these were the instruments and people who led me into worship. 

When Pastor Victor initially let me know that we would have summer worship nights, I was overjoyed to be outside again worshipping with brothers and sisters. I remembered how we exalted the Lord above our pains, struggles, differences, and successes.

During those summer nights we joined together in the singing of prayers, truths and scripture within and despite the contexts of our individual lives. Once again, God showed me beauty through the simple, real and messy worship of people who love Him and lift their voices to exalt Him. 

The outdoor services of 2020 and the summer worship nights of 2021 were a great reminder to me that worship is so much more than excellence of sound. They challenged me to appreciate worship contextualized by real people undergoing real struggles and exalting the name of our Lord Jesus through it all.

Pastor Kenny has played a key role in coordinating our outdoor services for the past year. Here, he shares some of the challenges this past year and our preparations for moving services back indoors .

Please Share what happened one year ago when the church had to livestream.

Our country decided to follow a nationwide lockdown in order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The initial idea was the slow the spread and then it seemed like it turned into an attempt to completely stop the spread.

By God’s providence, we had purchased video streaming equipment a few months earlier for a memorial service we hosted at our church in May 2019. And so, when we were deciding to livestream our worship service, we already had the equipment necessary to do it.

We started live-streaming on Sunday, March 15th, and have been doing it ever since.

What were some of the challenges when the church was able to reopen at limited capacity indoors?

The main challenges were understanding which COVID-19 protocols were necessary. Then the challenge was to make sure we agreed on how the protocols would be followed on Evergreen SGV‘s campus. The other challenge was and continues to be reliable knowledge about COVID-19 in general. However, as more time passes and different states in our country apply various approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that we are getting a clearer picture of what protocols are necessary for us to follow in order to protect the most vulnerable in our society and which ones we can stop practicing. 

Describe what outdoor service first looked liken when it began summer 2020.

We first started outdoor service as an alternative service for those who wanted to worship in-person and were weary of online church. We held the service outside at 9 am without a PA system. Pastor Victor led two worship songs at the beginning, Rocky preached and then we closed in worship. It was simple but sweet. After the outdoor service, we would go inside and do the livestream service at 10:30.

We eventually combined the two services and started to livestream the outdoor worship service as it is today.

Please share how outdoor service has grown since then.

Outdoor service began with about 15 to 25 people but once we created one outdoor service, it quickly grew to approximately 150 each Sunday. Recently, with more and more people being vaccinated, we now average about 225 to 245 people each week. The PA system is clear and the worship team is no longer just Pastor Victor on the guitar but it’s grown to 4 to 5 people worship teams and now even drums! I have already heard many times how people enjoy worshipping outside. However, with increasing temperatures, we are looking forward to going back inside.

Please share some of the discussion going on as we prepare to reopen service indoors again.

As we prepare to go indoors again, we want to focus on two things: One, we want to make sure that we were following the Los Angeles county health department guidelines. Two, we want to address the health concerns our church family might have regarding worshipping indoors.

As for the LA County guidelines, we are currently in the Orange Tier and so we are allowed to meet indoors at 50% capacity. As for the health concerns, we will be following the social distancing protocols laid out by the county and plan to continue to health screen everyone coming into our worship service. We are also assessing the rare possibility of COVID-19 being spread via aerosols since we believe that is the primary concern of most people as we plan to move back into the sanctuary. We will also have an outdoor option available for those who are not ready to return indoors.

Looking back, what are some of the lessons our church can glean from this year?

There are so many lessons we have learned over this past year. 

We have learned that we need to communicate better at all levels leadership and with you, our church family. 

We learned that ALL news sources have an agenda and bias, and so it’s necessary to balance our intake with both Left-leaning news sources with Right-leaning ones. We are better informed when we do our research well. 

We’ve learned that we must focus on growing each believer deeper in their relationship with Christ and with one another (i.e. focus on discipleship) and not on large programs. When all the programs cease, what is left? What is left are relationships and so we want to major in relationship in the upcoming years. 

And last of all, for me, I have learned again that death is our greatest fear and that our message, the gospel message, the message of the whole Bible, addresses this most foundational fear of humanity.

Please join us for “Moving Forward", a presentation assessing the risk of infection from moving services indoors by church member, Dr. James Chow, this Sunday, 4/18 at 1pm. You can sign up at www.evergreensgv.org. 

by Allen Chin

“Lord, I offer my life to you…”

The hill tribe children of Maohjo, from Kindergarten to 6th grade sang and worshipped together in their rows of picnic benches. The open air meeting space, which overlooked the green hillsides and rice paddies below, served as a place for worship every other morning. The chords from the acoustic guitar encouraged the children onward. Some children belt out the tune while others hummed quietly in the background.

“...everything I’ve been through, use it for your glory.”

Of course, it’s actually in Thai. There’s only so much English I managed to teach in my 6 weeks at Maohjo – an Elementary school which connects several villages together. I raised my hands up and the children followed.

“Lord I offer my days to you, lifting up praise to you…”

In my short time at the Karen village, I discovered I needed to start from scratch – teaching greetings, asking, “How are you?”, and singing a Pete the Cat version of Old MacDonald, which the Karen children connected quite well to. Around the 3rd or 4th week, one of the songs which the children sang kept popping into my mind. “Gosh, that sounds really familiar!” I pondered and one day I found the worship song it matched. I set out to teach the children the words, but I mostly received blank stares. I started using my hands instead and the kids started to follow. I figured, as long as they knew what it meant in Thai (which was their second language and Karen being the first), they’d be fine. Adding the third language, English, might just get them confused. Besides, worship is about our hearts, right?

 “...as a pleasing sacrifice.”

Being my last day in the village before heading back to Chiang Mai, I wondered what happened to the time. I came with the purpose of teaching English, but the Lord revealed His deeper purpose of connecting with the children and sharing His love with them. How was this all possible? I started my year on sabbatical from full-time teaching to rest, to study, and to serve. I've come to realize through the year that it’s a part of being available – to be able to say, “Yes”, and serve in ways I never would have thought or imagined possible. 

As we all raised our hands in worship, I’m thankful I was available to connect with God’s plan in loving the children, teachers, and the village community at Maohjo. 

*I served with Becky and Mike Mann through the Integrated Tribal Development Foundation back in January and February 2020.