Joyland Video Released: The Gospel Time

This is so good I have to share it with you. It's the start of the new message series in Joyland: The Gospel Time. Joyland is the children's ministry of Berkeley's Gracepoint Fellowship Church. What're you're seeing below is the intro video. Each week, the intro video is followed by one of the vignettes from the sophomore GLive skit, performed LIVE and onstage for the kids. Needless to say, the kids were thrilled at the first week and can't wait for more.

And if you're interested in volunteering for Joyland, you can start by checking out the beautiful Joyland website. Note that signups are online now for assistant teachers. There's other Joyland volunteer opportunities as well. Go take a look, and enjoy the video:


Joyland - The Gospel Time Intro from Nelson Wong on Vimeo.

This is the intro video for our new message series: Gospel Time.

The News for December's first week

Jenny and I spent some time on Tuesday night just reading through the scrapbook, all the words you guys wrote, and we just thank God for how He's worked in each of you this past year. We look forward to how He'll continue to lead not only our homegroup, but all of Koinonia and our church in 2009. We're grateful to God for each one of you guys.

On to the news, starting with Friday (12/5):

• 6:00pm dinners by smallgroups. Listen for more info from your smallgroup leaders.


• "This Is Your Life" Bible study at 7:45pm, First Pres. It'll be our last Koinonia Bible study of the semester.


• The last RSF Night of the semester is after bible study. Come with a change of clothes and get ready to rumble and shake out all that Finals stress!

The other big news of the week is this Sunday's baptism. Several weeks ago, Tabby was baptized along with 6 other people. We gave God thanks for how He had worked in each of their lives and celebrated together afterwards by taking a ton of pictures. And this Sunday, after the 1:30pm Worship Service (at Willard Auditorium), we'll sit down to listen to the stories of 7 more people who are getting baptized, including our very own Hugo! Be sure to be there so we can celebrate together!

In other news:

• Heads up on our annual Winter Retreat! It's the spiritual highlight of our whole year. It'll be the first weekend after school starts (1/23-1/25) and you need to sign up online! There's early bird and late bird registration...
• Joyland Christmas Celebration is an awesome annual performance put on by the kids (and all the helping adults) at Gracepoint Fellowship Church.
The children from Joyland and Impact get on stage and tell the real story of Christmas! It's one of the highlights of our calendar. To put it into perspective: think of it as a kids' GLive! It'll be on Sunday, 12/14. But if you want to help as a stagehand, prop mover, acting coach, or anything else (AND you're prepared for finals), Joyland could always use more volunteers.
• If you want to help paint Sierra Barn, there's a workday next Saturday (12/13). You can sign up online and participate in the fun!
• Sophomore discipleship retreat is 1/13-1/15. Don't miss it. Sign up online.

That's all folks. Study hard... see you Friday!

Gracepoint Joyland Archives: Ken is a horse

It's finally been posted: Ken's wonderful stint as a horse at Joyland. I'm so happy it's there. You can watch the "horse" video online, or you can go to our official Gracepoint Fellowship Church, Berkeley, Joyland website and cruise around.

I can't tell you the joy this brings me. I can't wait until Hugo, Simon, or John is put up there on stage. What animals do you think they can be? Tiger? Giraffe? Squirrel? Jumping fish?

Gracepoint Joyland Archives: Gangsters

Oh my gosh, so I was looking through our Gracepoint Berkeley website and stumbled across the Joyland site. I had forgotten that a couple weeks ago, Jenny had given the big group message to the Joyland kids on "Peer Pressure."

As part of her talk, Jenny got some of the juniors (ahem, Justin, Mike, and Brandon) to dress up like poser Gangsters. It was pretty funny. If these pictures aren't enough and you want to see the actual video, you can watch the video online.

There's always chances to plug in at Gracepoint, whether you want to help out with the video or web teams, or act in skits (think Gracepoint Live, coming in 2009), and I know a bunch of people are helping out with Impact and Joyland. Kind of cool to see our homegroup stretching out into different parts of our world, Koinonia group, and church to serve others.

Joyland Open House

An email from our Joyland Director, Michelle Sun:

For those of you who are interested in serving in Joyland, you are invited to the Open House this Sunday(4/13) at 1:45pm in the Willard gym.

We are currently going through a series called "Bourne Again" where Chris Bourne(a brand new Christian) discovers how to live a Christian life each week. The service will last about 40 min and you can come and observe our service in the back. Only catch is that everyone who is in the gym has to be fully participating in the praise moves :)

Please join us if you would like to check out our Joyland ministry and possibly serve in some capacity during the next term which begins end of June this summer.

Joyland Applications and Information Packet

If you missed the Joyland informational meeting this past Sunday, that's all right. Teacher Michelle has made the info packet available if you need it. You can let me know and I can send you a soft copy. Signups for Joyland close at the end of April.

You can sign up to be a Teacher (or Assistant Teacher), or you can sign up to be an Administrator and part of the Operations team. I believe more details are available if you follow the links.

There's an assortment of other things to be on the look out for:

• Impact SpringFest signup deadline is tomorrow, Thurs., 3/20.
  
• Summer mission trip signups online end this Friday, 3/21.
• If you have PESI questions, let Kate know. She's our rep.