360church

If you have been reading the 360blog (the blog you are on right now) recently, you no doubt have heard about 360homes. The whole idea of 360homes is studying the Bible with friends in homes. We study the Bible because it is an amazing gift from God, the love letter of truth that he wrote to humanity. We study with friends because you desire relationship. So do I, but you’re the one reading this right now, not me. Thanks to online resources like BibleGateway, Blue Letter Bible, The NET Bible Online, and others, online study of the Bible is remarkably accessible today. Thanks to hundreds of social network services and the other online communities that are out there, it’s easy to maintain many versions of friendships online. What about that third...

What are 360homes? It’s where you study the Bible with friends in homes.   Why are we doing this?   Because you asked us to.   Why didn’t we do this before? Because we don’t do things just because other people do them. This is Berkeley. We don’t copy, we invent. That is unless what we want has already been invented.  Besides, let’s be honest we’re always only six months from someone’s innovation improving whatever we’re doing anyway.   Isn’t this just like a small group? That’s exactly what it is.   How did 360 come up with this ingenious idea? People like to hang out with friends. People at 360 like to study the Bible. 1+1= 2 2 > 1   How much time is involved in a 360home? 60 minutes   Is it...

Around three years ago I started attending a girls’ high school/college home group Monday nights when I used to attend my old church in Fremont, Harbor Light. The average attendance of the home group was about four to five girls and one amazing leader, Mrs. Bean,  along with her amazing daughter, Kori. Our leaders were such loving and wise mentors for us. I’m honestly not quite sure how I came about knowing about this home group or how it evolved into being part of my weekly routine, and I barely knew any of the girls when I first attended. After being part of the home group for about a year, I didn’t realize how much of a blessing this home group was to me.   First, it was an accountability group. Every week we’d spend at least...

Groupthink, the wisdom of crowds, all-of-us-are-smarter-than-any-of-us. You’ve heard it called by a lot of names: something happens to ideas when processed by a group of people. The 360church leadership team took advantage of this principle recently when working on the launch of our new small group initiative. Among other issues, we had to decide what to call the groups. So I proposed a collaborative game to our leaders: come up with the worst possible name for our small groups. If we flushed all the bad names out of our system, perhaps a residual good name would emerge!   Here are the nominees for worst name: 1. Koinonoinia Groups – No part of the alphabet says “incomprehensible” like the letter K, especially when it begins a word in...

A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity of having dinner with my family and an elderly couple from my former church congregation. As we sat around the dinner table, I noticed that we had three different generations represented within the span of 40 years. How wonderful it was to hear firsthand stories about World War II, about how God had guided each person’s life, and about the various experiences we all had! It was a beautiful moment for me, learning from others who are further along in life and drawing from their wisdom. Every week, I get more chances to learn from others when I meet up with my wonderful friends at 360Church and do life together, whether we’re practicing a worship set, planning an event, celebrating a birthday, or gathering just to...

This week our church celebrated holy week for the first time in the building at 2107 Dwight, and Friday, April 6th was the first Good Friday there where we remembered as a community the day that Jesus was betrayed, tried and killed. At our church’s Good Friday service we walked through four different “stations” that had been set up around the room with images or symbols representing events that happened during the last few hours of Jesus’ life.  One of the pastors read scripture at each station and mentioned something for personal reflection or action. The station that struck me the most was the one that had blank post-it notes stacked on a table.  At first I thought, “What the heck?  Am I at the office?” and when the pastor...

This week is often referred to as Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday this past weekend and concluding with Easter Sunday this weekend. Today is known as Maundy Thursday. Though there are good theories, we’re not exactly sure why it’s called Maundy Thursday, but that’s how etymology works sometimes. Regardless, it refers to the day before Jesus died on the cross before rising on Sunday morning. On that particular Thursday, Jesus and his twelve disciples gathered together for the Jewish Passover meal, an event we commonly call the Last Supper because it was the last meal Jesus ate with his disciples before he died. The Gospel of John records in chapter 13 that Jesus was talking to his eleven disciples (the original twelve minus Judas...

“Welcome, everyone, to the Chi Alpha, Christian testimonies night. We are here on the steps of Sproul Hall to share some stories from our lives about Jesus and how he has impacted us as Christians by his love.” These were some of the introductory remarks on Monday evening from one of our students who was emceeing the event. We had a few signs indicating what we were doing and we even had a protestor silently holding a sign saying that it was OK to not believe in Jesus. My mind was already in full swing, thinking about what I might do. Well, I’ll probably go up to share – I mean I am on staff with Chi Alpha here so I’ll at least be ready if that’s how things work out. I was fine with the idea of public speaking, even speaking...