Author: cyberevangelist

Greetings from the Santa Barbara International Christian Church! We had a fantastic and fruitful past couple of weeks. As fall began to descend on Santa Barbara, we excitedly got spent a great amount of time worshiping God and fellowshipping in his nature at the past sunday’s park and beach services.

The movement is moving on SBCC! The campus ministry’s bible talks have been extremely fruitful! The past few weeks the visitors have been ranging from 5-10+ visitors! Our new and powerful bible talk leaders are Dominic, Andree, Jody and Dori who lead three amazing bible talks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Our newest sister in Christ is campus student Beatriz! Beatriz was baptized on Wednesday September 30th at the Flury’s apartment pool! Beatriz was so eager to become a disciple that she did three night studies in a row until 2am with Corinna, Jody and Dori. It was very encouraging to have another sister added into the amazing kingdom of God! Our hearts were full with love and happiness when Beatriz became a disciple!

In addition, Linda, a freshman city college student, was met at the bus stop by our sister Jody who was on her way to our Karaoke Night at the sisters household. After recently moving to Santa barbara from Virginia, Linda responded well to the new friend and joined us for karaoke. She soon after began studying the bible and was indignant about the fact that she never knew that she was not a disciple. She eagerly went after studying the bible and joining the kingdom events, even zealously joined our fundraising events! Excitedly she was baptized into Christ on October 15!

Our singles ministry has had four visitors that came out to bible talk twice on Thursday evenings at the Flury’s. The visitors were Mormon missionaries, and the two girls of the four were neighbors of the Flurys. Also they all came after church service at the beach and spend a good amount of time fellowshipping, eating and singing with some disciples. One of the missionary sisters mentioned to us that she was impressed with how much our church gets into the bible and is passionate about the mission. She didn’t know that other churches did that besides theirs. Although, the two women were soon transferred to a new location they assured us that we left a lasting memory in their hearts. Please pray for the many more miracles to come as our singles ministry grows!

Greetings from the Santa Barbara International Christian Church! This good news article we have combined two fantastic weeks into one article. Starting with Sunday August 30th, David and Jordan Swann came up from the Ventura region of the LA Church to Santa Barbara to preach the word of God. Their powerful sermons inspired us to continue doing God’s work and being on fire for Him! Jordan preached that if we aren’t doing God’s work, we are doing Satan’s will. Jordan challenged us to not disobey the vision, have fire inside of us and love the lost. David preached about how many people aren’t believed in by family, friends, co-workers, teachers etc. It’s easy for people to get beaten down from the world. As disciples we are commanded to love others and we all must participate in doing God’s work and not just wear the uniform. Disciples will suffer for being a Christian at times, but we must remember that Jesus suffered more than us.

As we begin the fall session, we now have three bible talks going on and have come up with names for each. Our professional singles and married bible talk is called T.G.F.F., which stands for Thank God For Family. The Santa Barbara City College bible talk is called SWAT, Students With a Testimony, and the UCSB bible talk name is The Truth.

God showed us his power to bring the harvest outside of our own efforts this past week. SBCC had a campus club day where the campus ministry set up a very simple table, compared to the other clubs. They simply made a sheet of paper for students to sign up if they wanted to study the bible. However, to God’s glory, seven men and eleven women said that they wanted to study the bible!

Additionally, at the professional singles and marrieds bible talk Thursday, we started off the evening with at great meal but sadly had no visitors until about 40 minutes in. Right when we were preparing our hearts to go back out and share our faith to get some visitors, we heard a knock on the door and four Mormon neighbors came to join our bible talk! Jason led a powerful lesson that opened up a great discussion. The Lord is the master of the harvest.

The Saturday before labor day, our church got to participate in our 1st annual Women’s volleyball tournament at William Mason Park in Irvine. The Santa Barbara sisters that participated were Dara Teamer, Corinna Sloan and Jessica Pengra. Their volleyball team consisted of sisters from the Ventura and North regions of the LA Church. The team first met each other that day of the tournament. Most of the sisters had the heart to play volleyball but the only experienced player was 7th grader Bella Swann, from Ventura! Although, the sisters lost the first six games against some very talented regions, they persevered and practiced continuously. At the last game, the sisters prayed and relied on God’s strength, and miraculously they played their best and closest game of them all. After a neck to neck game with the West region, the North and Ventura region sisters came in with their 1st victory!

Monday, we returned to Irvine for the congregational Labor Day picnic of all the churches in Southern California. It was a fun day filled with fellowship, games, and food. From soccer, to volleyball, to capture the flag, disciples and visitors were able to enjoy a day with many exciting activities. Our church brought along two visitors from Santa Barbara who had a great time. It was a great way for our visitors to see the fellowship of God’s family from all over.

It was a heart filled week as we prepared our hearts to send out our dear brother Brian Lin to soon move to Australia. After women’s midweek at the Flury’s, the brothers came over to join the sisters to have a goodbye party for Brian. We celebrated with brownies, shared how Brian has impacted our lives, and wrote down special memories that we had with Brian. This was a great time of fellowship with the family and sharing with him the love of God’s Kingdom!

On Friday evening, the church went down to LA for a congregational devotional at USC about pure dating. Tim Kernan preached about the importance of purity because it separates us from the world. Our true worth is that we are priceless because Jesus died for our sins to give us a new life. Tim emphasized that brothers and sisters both need encouragement dates, but we must act with absolute purity. After Tim’s lesson, we had a speed dating session outside which was encouraging for the brothers and sisters from the same or different regions to get to know each other better.

We are excited to see the great and exciting news to come this next week in Santa Barbara!

– Laura Lewis

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” – John 3:8

It is an exciting, yet very sad week for the Santa Barbara Church, as this being the last week we are able to fellowship with our dear brother Brian Lin. After witnessing Brian’s birth in the kingdom just slightly over a year ago, and seeing his exponential growth, the spirit has called him to move on to be trained in Australia under the evangelist Joe Willis, and will be continuing his education at the University of Sydney. Prayfully from there he will be sent out as a part of the Hong Kong Mission Team in 2017! Having a Taiwanese heritage, Brian will be able to use his gifts of speaking mandarin to preach the word of Jesus to the Chinese nation! His dreams do not stop there, but he prays to one day reach out to his family and save his own people in his home country of Taiwan. This weeks good news article features Brian Lin’s powerful testimony on how he was sought by God during his darkest moments in life, which brought him to become now a sold-out disciple of Jesus.

Hello, my name is Brian Lin and this is my testimony. I grew up in the small city of Diamond Bar, California. It is a very quiet place and from what I’ve seen, the dominant demographic is of Asian descent. From a very young age, I was taught that school was very important and that I must put education as my first priority. In addition, my mom also encouraged me to have a love for God and to go to church every Sunday.

I was eight years old when the leaders of the church I was going to asked me if I believed Jesus was my Lord and Savior. I purely responded “yes”, as I did with many other things around that age that I didn’t know much about. As I grew older, still not quite grasping what I was supposed to believe, I went to church disinterested and uncommitted. I would struggle with my belief in Jesus Christ for many years, especially in middle school and high school, where my life did not reflect the life of a sold-out Christian.

For the most part, I did well in school and had a wide range of hobbies such as skateboarding, badminton, piano, guitar, ping pong and basketball. Although in my sophomore year of high school, I was introduced to marijuana and hated it, but I continued to smoke from time to time because I wanted to fit in with people. I eventually found a group of friends that I felt I could identify with because they all loved to skateboard, but in the end most of them ended up smoking marijuana and I would again be pulled into smoking. I never smoked frequently because I believed it was morally wrong, but slowly I began to enjoy the effects of the drug more and more. Now about to graduate high school, I had already narrowed down my choices to two colleges, which were UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara. UC Santa Barbara was the more appealing choice to me not only because of its party reputation, but also because of its top 50 rank. I was excited to begin my new life at UC Santa Barbara with one of my best buddies from my hometown, named Curtis.

We moved into the freshman dorms and even shared a room together! One day, when Curtis and I went downstairs to head toward the dining halls, two guys named Richie and Dale approached us. They invited us to church and challenged us to play a game of ping pong with them. In my prideful head, I knew I had played ping pong quite a bit, so I observed Richie and Dale rallying.  To me, ping pong had always been an Asian sport, so for me to watch a 5’7” black guy and 6’4” white guy playing ping pong, I thought these guys were toast. Yet, they were actually pretty good and both Curtis and I agreed to go to a church service.

We attended the Santa Barbara International Christian Church (SBICC) and thought it was pretty cool, but we believed that our focus had to be more on school and maintaining a decent social life. Richie and Dale spent hours upon hours studying the Bible with us two, but I was just not convinced because my heart was so hardened with sin. I admittedly gave up on studying the Bible with them for about 6 months and went into my own little world. I stopped caring about God and began to think God was holding me back from accomplishing the things I wanted to do. But Richie, Dale, and the rest of the brothers and sisters at Santa Barbara did not give up on me.

One Thursday night, about 7 months after our last bible study, I went to Richie and told him something very traumatic that had happened to me. I was trying to hold back my tears, but couldn’t, I was just so ashamed that I had fallen this hard. I told him that I wanted to get baptized, to be forgiven of all my sins, and he told me something that blew my mind! On Thursday morning, Richie prayed to God that a person who had almost made the decision to be a true sold-out disciple, but just barely slipped away would come back to them and want to be baptized. His faithful prayer became a reality in me, as I came to him that same day at night and told him I was ready!  Richie, Dale, and all the awesome brothers and sisters of SBICC came and supported me.  I was baptized on July 27th, 2014, on the same day as Joshua Galindo, a fellow brother who I will now forever share that awesome moment with.

I still have many friends back in Diamond Bar that I want to reach out to and help to strengthen their relationship with God. I pray that God will use me to reach out to them and to any place in the world that needs to know about Jesus. God’s miracles didn’t stop there. As soon as I returned from our church’s Global Leadership Conference in Palm Desert, I prayed that God would reach out to the Isla Vista community, (where I live by the university) and save people. I went outside to pray and in less than a minute, a guy walked by me and said “Hi”. I introduced myself and gave him a handshake.  We talked a little bit about life and I invited him out to church on Sunday. I told him how awesome it is and it persuaded him! He even offered to give me a ride and said, “Let’s get breakfast before we go”.  After we hugged, I immediately called Richie and Dale and went into my room to pray some more.  I prayed that my family and friends, and the rest of the world would be saved.  I know it may take some time, but I truly believe God will use all of his workers (a.k.a. disciples) to reach out to every part of the world and change lives.  I have a lot of growing to do as a disciple, but the old me is gone! I now put my complete faith in God and know for a fact that Jesus truly is my Lord and Savior.

I want to thank all the brothers and sisters at the Santa Barbara International Christian Church, and the rest of the disciples all around the world.  God bless!

Greetings from the Santa Barbara International Christian Church! We had another fantastic week! Dennis preached part two of becoming Mighty Warriors of God. He spoke on the significance of prioritizing the word, worship, and walking with God. Dennis stressed the importance of eagerly examining the scriptures everyday and to love God with our lives because the Bible is our foundation. We had four visitors at service, which was encouraging to see disciples harvesting the fruit!

While the sisters were at midweek service on Wednesday, the brothers were at their Mighty Men of God (MMOG) meeting. This week the brother’s gathered at the Sloan’s apartment for a BBQ and lesson on how to become pure men of God. This was a time of fellowship, prayer and breaking of the bread, just like the first century church demonstrated in Acts 2:42!

This week was the first week of classes at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC). The campus ministry was excited about going after the harvest this semester! The church had many bible studies going on we were excited to teach the men and women about God and His purpose for their lives.

The singles ministry gathered Thursday evening for the free drive-in movie night at the West Wind Drive In. We watched a double feature “Home” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron”! It was a great time of fellowship with the family and Stephanie, Dara’s co-worker who joined us too! Before the movie started, some disciples threw the football and spent time together. While watching the movie, there was a full moon and many stars visible to remind us of God’s amazing creation.

Friday night, the Santa Barbara and Ventura church had a combined devotional at the Swann’s house.  Both Javier (from Ventura) and Dennis preached powerful sermons. First, Javier preached on how to find and make a warrior for God’s kingdom by having quiet times, prayers, sharing our faith, and fellowship. Javier emphasized that God believe we can do more and that we must go beyond our borders of our current campuses. Dennis preached on living and embracing your purpose for God. He emphasized that our purpose is to make disciples. If you are on the vine, you will bear much fruit. Dennis also mentioned that when we encourage others, we will be encouraged in return. As disciples we find joy in our salvation, and because of that God commands us to share the good news with the world!

On Saturday evening, some of the Santa Barbara disciples joined the City of Angels region churches for a pure dance for the singles in North Hollywood. This was a great opportunity to fellowship with other brothers and sisters from other branches of our church. It was like a mini Global Leadership Conference (GLC) reunion!

To finish our good news, an amazing opportunity happened back in July when our leaders Dennis and Corinna Sloan went on a family reunion in Louisiana. There they were invited to preach and run their family’s sunday church service. Dennis preached to approximately 40 family members about seeking God and making the Word of God their standard. The sermon sparked great interest in many of Corinna’s family members, specifically her cousin Oleviya, who lived in Baton Rouge,LA. Now she has been studying the bible virtually with Corinna! We don’t have a church in Louisiana yet, but hopefully we will someday soon! The movement is always moving!

Article Written by Laura Lewis

The Santa Barbara International Christian Church had a great week! Starting off, Dennis preached a powerful sermon on how to become mighty men and women of God. After service, the church came together and made impactful plans to go sharing together, and set up bible studies for the week.
 

In the bible, some in the church in Corinth had the gift of speaking in different languages. So, it was on some of the disciples hearts to use their gifts and go sharing with the spanish speaking nation in Santa Barbara. Tuesday, some of the brothers and sisters came together to share their faith in Old Town Goleta. Our brother, Richie, and sister, Michelle, excitedly got to use their gifts of speaking spanish for God!
 

Wednesday, while the brothers were at midweek service, the sisters gathered at the Flury’s home and laid out goals to become powerful women of God. Since we wanted to portray all the character traits of the woman of noble character in Proverbs 31, we settled that the name “P31” would best represent our group. Look out for the powerful growth that will happen in the Women’s ministry soon!

Friday evening consisted of a combined campus and singles devotional at East Beach. We were excited to have two campus students, Jocelyn and Layla, as visitors! To start of the evening, Dennis gathered the church for a fun trust game called “Blind landmine.” In this game, everyone partnered up; then one partner closed their eyes and had to follow their partner’s verbal directions as they walked across a mock minefield obstacle course created with cups in the sand. In order to keep from touching the mines (cups) in the course and make it safely to the finish line, the partners had to rely on good communication, and active listening.
 

After the game, Dennis inspired the group with Christian Apologetics and preached on God’s creation. We saw that God’s existence is shown all over in nature; and that everything shows prove of a creator. As we looked up at the moon and the stars, and looked out to the ocean, it was humbling to look at God’s creation. P​salms 148:3­6 “​Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all stars of light! Praise Him, highest heavens, And the waters that are above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded that they were created. He has also established them forever and ever; He has made a decree which will not pass away.” We are excited to see what God has planned for us this next upcoming week!

  
– Laura Lewis

Following the exhilarating Global Leadership Conference (GLC), the Santa Barbara church led the week with a powerful start! Sunday Service was filled with enthusiasm. The buzz of the fellowship was loud and proud. God allowed the church to have 7 visitors attend service! One was a newly baptised sister from the central region of LA, Chelsey, who move up to Santa Maria for the summer to stay with family. We wrapped our arms around Chelsey and welcomed her to the Santa Barbara family as she will continue to fellowship with the church until school returns in the fall.

There is a mighty flame building up in the men and women’s ministry. Wednesday nights, the men gather for MOG (Mighty Men of God) meetings, led by our new leader Dennis Sloan. The men are training to become excellent examples of Jesus in leadership, servitude, and even health and fitness. We are excited to see how much God will help the men grow and powerfully lead the way for the church!

Additionally, the spark has caught fire with the women! On Wednesday, our new women’s leader, Corinna Sloan, preached an inspiring mid-week lesson titled “Hit the reset button.” The point of the lesson was that now is the time to reset, not reboot, our lives and goals in the ministry with a new fresh record. All the women were fired up to do so, and decided to imitate the men and create a similar MOG group for women. Although the final name has not yet been discovered, the women are already set to meet up the following Wednesday for a mighty women’s meeting!

We finish the week celebrating the beautiful unite in marriage of Anthony Zarate and Kassandra Campos of the Ventura region! What an honor was it to have the Santa Barbara Church attend and serve to make their wedding spectacular.

The Lord has blessed us with an amazing week. As we finish the last week of summer, we are all ready to reset and make the end of this year one to remember. Like Joshua, we pray for God to give us every land that we set our foot and to grant us success in the mission of Jesus here in Santa Barbara. Glory be to God.

– Dara Teamer