Pastor Jim Kress

Sunday, April 11, was a special day in the life of Northside Church.

In our Sunday service, we celebrated with four people who were baptized. We were also encouraged by the words and prayers of Pastor Steve Walker of Canyon Hills Community Church.

After church, the people of Northside pulled together and spent a couple hours pulling weeds and spreading about 20 yards of fresh bark around some of the flower beds at Little Cedars Elementary.  It was a ton of fun, and having lots of sunshine and pleasant temperatures made it a perfect day to work outside with each other.

The administration at Little Cedars sent the following note of thanks:

Please let your congregation know how happy it made all of us employees, parents driving up and students happy to have the grounds looking so good.  The bark around the trees and plants looks fantastic. You are very much appreciated!

In addition, other Northside people worked inside the school assembling 200 Compassion Kits.  These Compassion Kits are designed to hand out spontaneously to people in need, providing physical and spiritual resources in Jesus’ name.

Afterward, we all enjoyed lunch together and had a great time time hanging out and getting to know each other.

Thank YOU Northside for an outstanding job.  Special thanks to Rafe and Christine Samonte and their team of leaders for wonderful planning and execution of the event.  What a great day!

Jim Kress

Pastor

You may visit www.imweb.org to donate today.

In addition, there  will be an opportunities in the near future for the Northside congregation to express our love and support for our brothers and sisters. Details coming soon.

Click on the link below to watch a short video which tells the story of their need. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GUkIpLGjE

- Chuck Pilcher, Northside World Outreach Team

Sunday, March 28th, Northside Church turned one year old.

In the first year of Northside Church, God has done truly amazing things through His people.  God has worked through some great PEOPLE, PEOPLE who have volunteered their time generously, faithfully, and cheerfully!  Here is just a small list of what God has done through incredible PEOPLE of Northside Church:

1.  Established an all-volunteer design, worship, and media ministry.
2.  Recruited, trained, and deployed LifeGroup leaders and new LifeGroups.
3.  Established support relationships with Little Cedars Elementary, World Vision, CareNet, Christian Relief Fund, and a Brazilian national missionary.
4.  Planned Northside’s first short-term mission trip to Honduras.
5.  Conducted special local community outreach events for Father’s Day, Neighborhood Bible Club, Snohomish Kla Ha Ya Days, School Clean-Up, Glacier Peak HS football games, and other special Youth events.
6.  Established weekly ministry for intercessory prayer, follow-up of visitors and of people missing from church.

The following is a link to powerful video slide show capturing highlights of some of these ministries, and the heart and spirit of Northside Church:

To all who serve, pray, love and support Northside Church – thank you!  To God be the glory.

Jim

2010 has begun with a bang in the Missions Ministry. We were blessed
to have Graci Mota and Eipeen Huang share with us at church on the
first Sunday of 2010. Graci and Eipeen work with Global Recordings
Network in Brazil. They travel to remote villages and work with
accompanying missionaries and indigenous peoples to translate and
record the gospel into the languages of the tribes of the Amazon.

Since Graci was 5 years old, she knew she was called to work with the
tribes in Brazil. After a YWAM course, she went to live with the
Mastanawa tribe in Peru teaching the people to read and write in their
own language, sharing the gospel and discipling believers in the
tribe. After several years, she was led to join Global Recordings
Network, where she has been serving for the last five years. She an
Eipeen are joined by one other team member working to record gospel
messages in the over 180 languages spoken in Brazil. They have a
passion to see the gospel shared with the 85 known tribes who have
never heard of Jesus Christ.

We are very excited to begin supporting Graci as our first missionary!

Erin Disch, Missions Ministry

Happy New Year!

2009 is history, and 2010 is upon us. It’s a perfect time to reflect and give thanks for the great things God has done. It’s is also a good time to look ahead and focus our attention on the work He has for us to do.

In 2009, here is what God did through you, the people of Northside Church:

• Held seventy-two Sunday morning worship services, including ministry to children and youth each Sunday.
• Baptized twelve people.
• Established ten new LifeGroups.
• Visited over 1500 homes within a two-mile radius of Little Cedars Elementary (Sow the Seeds Outreach).
• Hosted our first Neighborhood Bible Club.
• Established a ministry relationship with Little Cedars Elementary, including cleaning school grounds (Helping Hands Sunday) and co-supporting community outreach organizations.
• Held a Father’s Day Outreach Sunday and Kids’ Game Outreach Sunday.
• Participated in the Snohomish Kla Ha Ya Days.
• Gave $7,000 to LifeChoices.
• Conducted a Food Drove for the Maltby Food Bank.
• Established a $5,000 Aid and Assistance Fund, a $5,000 Missions Fund, and an $11,000 Building Fund, in addition to regular tithes and offerings.
• Established weekly intercessory prayer ministry and quarterly prayer meetings.
• Began mid-week Children and Youth Ministry and Outreach (fugitive, Snohomish High football games, Unleashed)
• Held our first Christmas Eve outreach, including our first Children’s Choir.
• Established an Interim Administrative Council and 2010 Ministry Budget, with consultation and approval from the elders of Canyon Hills Church.

To God be the glory! He has done great things.

Here are some of next year’s 2010 ministry initiatives you can pray for:

Continue visiting every home within 2 miles of Little Cedars (Sow the Seeds Outreach).

• Establish a Ministry (and Worship?) Center.
• Establish at least three additional LifeGroups.
• Teach everyone at Northside how to share their faith.
• Establish a support relationship with at least three foreign missionaries.
• Send out at least three short-term mission teams.
• Hold at least three Neighborhood Bible Clubs.
• Conduct at least three all-church community outreach/service projects.
• Establish support relationships with at least three local community outreach organizations (prisons, food banks, missions, etc.).
• Strengthen our Aid and Assistance program.
• Conduct special seasonal outreach services for Easter, Thanksgiving Eve, and Christmas Eve.

As we look ahead to 2010, let’s ask the Lord to increase our faith in Him to reach and serve people!

Happy New Year!

Jim

I recently got to sit down with Daniel as he was studying for his last final. We were in the library at about 11pm with one more day of finals week left. I saw him as I was walking by and we both looked like we needed a break. I sat down to talk with him and he reflected on his time at NU.

He kept talking about how God had guided him through his time here. From the very first day to the very last God was using him and preparing him for his current and future ministry.

The culture has been a real shift for him and one thing that he has noticed is how Christians preach the gospel. In his home country, people walk into an area and once they have some people’s attention they boldly proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ. “That is how we do it in Africa,” said Daniel.

“People here are so afraid about what people think, they become intimidated and caught up with stuff that just doesn’t matter.” We discussed how many times people are not as open to the gospel in Kirkland because they have bad experiences with Christians and they aren’t interested in hearing what they believe. He expressed a great desire for our Christian witness to be more important in the lives of Christians.

He shared an example of how a group of Pastors got together and decided to plant a church. They selected Daniel to be the church planter and they were sitting down to discuss it when it become apparent that their theology regarding the Holy Spirit was very different than what Daniel was used to.

We both brought up Paul’s words not too “quench the Spirit”. Daniel said that during his time at NU, he has been guided by the Spirit constantly and even though he doesn’t always feel like following the Spirit’s lead, he knows it’s for the best.

Daniel was a missionary to his own people in Burkino Faso and then God brought him to Kirkland where he also served as a Missionary to the people here. He hopes to return to his home country some day but is enjoying doing ministry here in Kirkland and will be going to visit his family on short term trips in the mean time.

I pray that God will bless his ministry and that I would be able to enjoy doing ministry with this man of God while he is here. Maybe someday I could make a trip over to visit his country.

Jimmy Reed

Youth Ministry Leader

Greetings from Yale.

It’s 1:42 am Eastern Standard Time, but I don’t have class until 11:35 tomorrow morning, so with the help of my faithful friend Starbucks Coffee, I’ll jot down some thoughts about God, school, and Aristotle that I hope you’ll find at least somewhat interesting.

Speaking of where God touches: assume that God exists outside of space. Then when we say God is omnipresent, we really do not mean that he exists in every space of our world. Rather, we mean that God accesses and orders every space of our world. The same goes for time (but only if you think that God is entirely outside of time. That discussion, it turns out, is very open, very nuanced and largely over my head).

God also dwells in his children, and, again to my surprise, a good number of his children dwell at Yale. Enough that you probably couldn’t count them on all your fingers and toes. One of them is my philosophy professor Gregory Ganssle, whose specialty is the philosophy of God and time and whose insights influence much of what I’m writing here.

Lately I’ve taken to referring to God as “the Unmoved Mover.” He cannot be moved, yet he causes movement: powerfully, invisibly, undeniably. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8, ESV).

The term “Unmoved Mover” comes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in which Aristotle started with his bewilderingly obtuse theory of change and, following a bit of a logical tangent, ended up accidentally reasoning his way to the existence, and almost the very nature, of God.

I have never seen my class so desperately engaged as on that afternoon when we were confronted with the logic of God’s reality. The Unmoved Mover was moving. Professor Ganssle took a long series of questions, ranging from curious to highly skeptical. Of course, philosophically speaking, no argument for the existence of God is irrefutable, because no philosophical argument is irrefutable, period. But truth in light of reason (as Augustine would say) comes very close.

I was once afraid that reading the Bible academically would threaten what I believe. But if truth in light of reason brings us closer to reality, it follows that putting the ultimate Truth, the Word, in light of reason brings us closer to the reality of God. So, when fifteen students and a professor sit around a table and examine the Bible in a literature class, God’s glory is revealed. Theology begins to make sense; God’s nature proceeds necessarily from his actions. Even if the approach is utterly secular. Even if the weekly lecture was spiteful to the point of illogicality. Even if the presentiments are decidedly anti-Christian. If you honestly search the text—even as small part of the text—you can’t avoid its author for long.

But there’s a catch: not everyone reads the Bible, much less studies it. I thank God for my Christian friends here, for my church and Bible study; I thank God that his Word pierces like a double-edged sword through any depth of academic hostility; and I thank God that he penetrates all and moves all according to his will. But the overwhelming majority of Yale is lost—brilliant, motivated, and often fervently curious—but lost nonetheless.

Humanitarian projects in Africa > poverty and civil unrest in Africa > genocide > machetes > decapitation > Did you know that your brain works for two minutes after your head is severed from your body? > final thoughts when dying > heaven > the plan of salvation.

Now, this friend has a remarkable (and often disconcerting) way of asking exactly the right questions. When I had finished explaining salvation, she said, very simply and honestly: “Why has no one told me about this before?”

I’ll end with that. It’s a question for which the best answer is action, not words, anyway. Thanks for reading, and when you pray to the Unmoved Mover, please praise him for moving at Yale.

You may have experienced this yourself. I know that I am not alone. The world isn’t always friendly to Christians, especially ones who are following Jesus closely. I know that there are many of our students who are facing opposition daily in their public schools. It may not come out blatantly (though some times it does) but it is there.  Fortunately, God has a plan for our students and for the public schools they attend.

God can redeem any situation. In the midst of darkness, God shines light. That’s why Jesus came, check out Matthew 4:15-16:

“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the gentiles – the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.”

Jesus is light in darkness. Jesus knows that there are people in public schools who curse him today but tomorrow they’ll be coming to him humble and broken. People belong to him, they just don’t know it yet. Jesus lives inside of some students who walk the halls of Bothell and are there on a mission from God

I want to encourage you, yes you. I know that God has given you many future opportunities to shine his light in darkness. If you are a follower of Jesus then you have even been given, yes given the abilities to carry out what God wants to you do.  Northside Church, as a community, has an enormous opportunity to bless Little Cedars Elementary during the churches temporary stay. Let’s make the most of it  I know that many people have and will.

The students have experienced this. For the last couple months the youth ministry has been meeting every other week at Gateway Middle School. While there we have seen many of the teachers, students and parents. One thing can be said for our event we dubbed “Unleashed,” we were loud. Our band practiced full on from 4:00 to 6:00pm and then we had our worship service from 6:30 to 8:30pm. People had couldn’t help who we were and why we were there. God’s light shined in darkness.

In Christ,

Jimmy Reed - Youth Ministry Leader