Migrating to a New Site!

We're migrating to a new site! We'll be combining with the rest of the Homegroups underneath the Koinonia (domain name) banner! Come catch us over here:

New Homegroup 1 Blog

See you over on the other side!

Balance Beam by Francis Chan

Here's a 3-minute excerpt from a message by Francis Chan. Watching this, I was challenged again and committed to confront and push through my fears as I live out Christian life.

REDOing Gracepoint Live - Seniors

As you study for finals, here's a couple of videos from the Seniors, who took a sentimental walk around the Berkeley campus remembering Gracepoint Live... even redoing the Intro video!

Here's their take on what Gracepoint Live would have looked like with and without different elements:




And here's their REDO of the Gracepoint Live intro video. I can't believe they did this!



Go Seniors! Finish strong, and we'll see you at your graduations!

Multiply Your Talents 2009

It's time to Multiply Your Talents this summer! Every year we have a series of classes to develop people's talents and skills, from Photoshop to Photography to Music and Script Writing. They're also offering a couple GTS-type courses: Apologetics in Depth and Advanced Course 101. Class descriptions, prerequisites and more can be found on the MYT 2009 signup page.

Here's the video trailer. Watch it.

Gracepoint MYT Promo 2009 Video from john ko on Vimeo.

8 weeks, 11 classes, great training, and tons of fun! Fridays at 7pm starting on June 5, Gracepoint Fellowship Church will be offering these MYT classes in what has become an annual tradition.

End of Year LifeGroup Outing!

2009-04-29_21.19.40
Originally uploaded by Justin Teng

LIFEGroup last week for H.1 & H.8 took the sophomore and junior brothers and sisters on a car ride 25 minutes away from Berkeley, campus, studying, books, and the looming shadow of upcoming finals. We all started our LIFEGroup on the car ride, talking about life and sharing from our week. Once we got to Lake Chabot, we hiked in about 20 minutes in the pitch black, each carrying a piece of firewood, checking the brush for lurking animals, and the lucky ones carrying marshmallows, skewers, and Evergood sausages.

While we were setting up the fire (Eddie brought a fire starter log!), Kevin D. busted out with the glow-in-the-dark frisbee and someone else magically produced neon glow bracelets and necklaces. There were our teams--necklaces vs. bracelets--and we played Ultimate Frisbee on the field. After eating bursting Evergoods with toasted buns and getting our fingers sticky with marshmallows and s'mores, we sang a couple songs, prayed for the sophomores and for the juniors, and then all committed together to love God and honor Him with all our hearts. It was fun being out in nature (I ran over a possum on the drive home) and being together... although next time, we'll need to make sure we set aside time to tell ghost stories... for more pictures, Justin's got a great set online.


Couple more things to note this week:

Mother's Day is this Sunday (5/10). Make sure to get something nice for your mother. At the very least pick up a card, write something meaningful, and drop it off in the mail. Guarantee you'll make her day!

LIFEGroup for the guys this week will be dinner at 7:30 PM at Chang Luong, Wednesday night (5/6). We'll get dinner together, talk, and pray.

Friday, there'll be dinner before GTS. And then GTS at 7:00 PM (as usual) at First Pres. Afterwards, all of Koinonia, freshmen through seniors, will gather together at the YWCA to have our informal farewell for the seniors as we start to close out the school year.

As long as we're rattling off announcements, here's a bunch:

• Worldview Camp signups are open through May 15th. The Camp will feature guest speaker Sean McDowell, and run from 6/17-20, Wednesday to Saturday.
• Signups for Impact's SummerFest have closed, but if you'd like to be a part of Joyland next year, Joyland Teacher applications are online.
• Discipleship Retreats are coming up for this summer. If you're a junior or senior-to-be, have completed SK1, will be in town this summer, and want to invite discipleship into your life, sign up online for the discipleship retreats. As always, it's a time to recapture our vision, ignite our spiritual fervor, and spend time together with other class brothers and sisters of Gracepoint Fellowship Church.
• Order your summer DT Journals by Wednesday (5/6) and you'll get the discounted price. Otherwise, pick them up at the book table starting this Sunday.
• Gracepoint Berkeley's annual tradition, Multiply Your Talents, is just around the corner for this summer. Stay tuned for signups and the cool video.

Gracepoint Live: Freshman Memories

Gracepoint Live, a biennial production of Gracepoint Fellowship Church Berkeley, was completed exactly a month today. It feels like it happened a long time ago, like in another lifetime or something!

Anyway, the freshman class put together this thank you video for their frosh GLive staff. It's a little shocking at parts, but if you like that kind of stuff, this might be your cup of tea. At least it's a great way to start off the week.

Updates for Tonight - News Flash!

Here's a couple quick updates about the news today:

• We have dinner as an entire homegroup (both H.1 & H.8) at First Pres in the Mears Room, just down the hall from the gym. We'll start at 6:00 PM. Just bring yourself. Dinner will be waiting for you!


• For your GTS tonight, go directly to your GTS class at 7:00 pm. We won't be meeting all together in the gym beforehand for a time of singing. Don't be sad. It's just for this week! The band will be back next week...


• Tonight after GTS and Bible Study is over, we have sports night! Even if it rains, we're going to have sports night! So bring your gear. We'll either go to Maxwell Field (if there's no rain), or we'll head over to the RSF and join acts2fellowship!

See you guys tonight! Spread the word to your friends!