2012 SBC Women’s Conference

Stories catch our attention and leave an impression on our hearts.  Jesus often taught using stories, and each one of us is living a story.  At this year’s women’s conference, we will hear others’ stories, reflect on our own, and be assured that Jesus knows and cares about each of our life stories.

Everybody’s got a story… What’s yours?

Come join us on Saturday, March 10th, from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the Family Life Center.  The cost is $30 per person, which includes lunch and dinner.  The dinner will be held at the Oak Glen Room at the Sonora Oaks Conference Center (on the corner of Hess and Mono Way).  You can register for this event between church services on Sunday mornings or in the church office during the work week.

Our guest speaker will be Joanne Kraft, who loves to encourage women.  She has been published in Today’s Christian Woman, In Touch, and several other magazines.  She serves as Marriage Study Leader, Leader of Inspire Christian Writers, and a 911 Dispatcher in Sacramento County, California.  She is married and has four children.  To learn more about her, please see JoanneKraft.com and GraceandTruthLiving.com.

For more information on this event, please contact Christy at 694-4224 or christymaxson@yahoo.com.

Host Families Needed

60 international university students will be at Sierra Bible Church on the weekend of February 24th.  As in past years, 30 host families are needed to house these students and staff.   Please call Elzie Gerrels (586-7355) for more information or to volunteer your home.

The Story – Week 4

Mark’s Prayer Letter

January 20, 2012

Dear Prayer Partner,

It is great seeing the growing excitement as we begin our journey with The Story. We had a great time last night reviewing and applying chapter 1 at our small group. More books and resources have come in and will be available at Front Porch on Sunday. You can get a head start on this Sunday’s study by reading the email from The Story (click here) and reading chapter 2 in The Story: God Builds A Nation. It might also be helpful to review your HANDy Summary of the Old Testament story a couple of times also!

I also want to encourage you to consider the two invitations included in this email. There is a group of us coming together to see the C.S. Lewis presentation…and of course I am always anxious to introduce you to some of our Russian friends. Join us if you can!

Hope to see you Sunday. Now please take a moment to PRAY for the areas of ministry mentioned above. Thanks.

Pastor Mark

Sr. Pastor Search

Senior Pastor Position
Process of Inquiry

 

Thank you for exploring the possibility of becoming a member of the pastoral team at Sierra Bible Church. We are praying that God will clearly direct each of our paths for His glory and honor.  We expect that this may be a lengthy process, but we hope to have our new pastor in place by summer of 2012.

Please take some time to look around our website (www.sierrabible.com).  There is a wealth of information that will help you discover who we are and what we’re all about.  Potential candidates should download and review our Senior Pastor Opportunity Profile (includes Ministry Description) and Statement of Faith (contained in our By-Laws).

If you feel led to pursue our opportunity after you’ve looked over everything and prayed about it, please email your resume and responses to the essay questions below in two separate attachments (Word/doc format, please) to search@sierrabible.com:

1. Resume

When writing the resume, substance is of more interest than brevity. Give enough information so that the breadth of your ministry experience is understood.  While humility is appreciated, it is important for us to know the breadth and depth of your involvement and how God has used you.

Please include information on your full educational background (high school, undergraduate and post graduate work and all degrees earned).  When describing your work as a church staff member, it would be helpful to know the total membership of the church, the worship style of the church, the size of the staff, where you were on the organizational chart, your specific responsibilities and what you feel were the highlights of that time of ministry.  As we progress through our careers, many of us have changed jobs and/or employers several times. For each job change, be sure to include why you moved from that position to your next.

We would like to get a good picture of you holistically—your experience, your education, your family, your calling, your life as much as possible from a simple document.  We are looking for a great match and want to know as much about you as we can glean from a resume.

For confidentiality purposes, please consider providing us a home/personal email address for us to communicate with you.

2. Responses to Essay Questions

In order to help us get a more complete picture of you and your interest in SBC, please provide succinct, but well thought out responses to the following questions:

1. Share with us your spiritual journey, including a time that uniquely prompted your spiritual growth.
2. How will you utilize your spiritual gift(s) at Sierra Bible to ‘help introduce people to Jesus and together become more like him’?
3. What do you see as the greatest challenge the Church will face in the next 5 to 10 years, and how do you think the local church can and should respond?
4. How do you view leading a church staff team, and what kind of manager are you?
5. Share with us the kind of work/ministry environment where you tend to flourish. What kinds of working relationships energize you?

Should you have any specific questions or simply wish to talk with someone about the recruitment, we would ask that you email your request to SBC’s Search Team at search@sierrable.com.  A member of the Search Team will get back to you promptly with the requested information by email or a phone call.  We would request that candidates not call the church office directly since: 1) Search Team members will not be readily available to take your call; and 2) we wish to protect the confidentiality of potential candidates.

Once you have submitted the materials listed above, we promise to keep you apprised at each step of the recruitment process.  You can expect notification confirming receipt of your materials and when our initial screening is complete, you will receive prompt notification as to whether you have been selected for the next round of the recruitment process or not.  May God lead you to the place which he has prepared for you to do good works (Eph. 2:10).

The following are links to some specific information we thought may be particularly helpful to you in becoming better acquainted with Sierra Bible Church and the position of Senior Pastor:

Senior Pastor Opportunity Profile

Organizational Charts

By-Laws (including Statement of Faith)

2011-12 Budget

SP Compensation Summary

Couples of all ages…

The banquet promises to be a wonderful time of fellowship, delicious food, and live entertainment…it’s a chance to dress up and take the love of your life (or an enjoyable date) out for an enjoyable evening, as well as to celebrate God’s marvelous gift of steadfast love and faithfulness to us.  You can purchase your ticket for the event on Sunday morning between services at the Journeymen’s table.  See you there!

SBC Fun

What fun we all have during our yearly community outreach, “Trunk or Treat”!  It is such a blessing to provide safe, wholesome fun in an amazing setting!

Rejoice Always Videos

Below are the individual video testimonies that were shown during our “Rejoice Always” summer series.  Please click on the link to view the video…

• Rob Ditler (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/u/5/M-r_UItlbPY)
• Steve & Susie Lavagnino (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/u/4/W9d-rKm6hJg)
• Jackson Flannery (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/u/3/4GnVsFdnI-8)
• Ben Howell (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/a/u/2/U1VfkNXiZy4)
• Justin Meyers (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/a/u/0/RjtUlEQz4J0)
• Mark Levering (http://www.youtube.com/user/PaperMache2010#p/a/u/1/KUjXAyUrsWo)
• Walter Moberg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1KKk1Q3-xQ)

August 10, 2011

The summer is flying by and with it some very precious
moments to encounter God and allow Him to work in and through our lives.  For me, the past two weeks have been
wonderful and refreshing as my husband and I spent time away from home, first
at Hume Lake Wagon Train and then with Ed’s family in San Diego.  Both of our weeks were wonderful, but both
were oh, so very different!

A week at Wagon Train Hume Lake is a like a visit to the
past—six nights of sleeping in a covered wagon with few of the modern
conveniences available in this century!
Wagon Train is a week of warm, sunny, dirty, crafty days and a week of
cool, starry, campfire-filled nights in the mountains of Hume with 35 of the
children from our church family. While everyone had a wonderful time, the best
part of our week was the concentrated time the children were able to focus on
God our Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
I was privileged to participate as our kids sang awesome songs,
memorized God’s Word, and were touched by the power of God moving in their
young hearts.  Several children made
decisions for the first time to follow Jesus, and for others wonderful seeds of
truth were planted.  Pray for our kids
that God will continue the good work He began at a little camp called Wagon
Train.

My other experience in the past two weeks could not be
further from Wagon Train.  My husband and
I spent a week with Ed’s family by a pool at a beautiful Southern California
golf resort.  Beautiful grounds, with
pools, activities, and all the wonderful food you could possibly eat.  God allowed us to rest and be refreshed in a
wonderful week. Yet the biggest difference in our second week was the absence
of Jesus, as Ed’s family does not know Him.
To them, Jesus was a good man who lived long ago and they are good
people that live now and do good things.
Ed and I both looked for small ways each day to plant the seeds of God’s
love.  Our hearts break for our family,
and we pray for the day when they will accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior,
too.  For me, this was an amazing reminder
that God is active in so many areas of our world: with children as well as
adults, with the simple things of life as well as the privileged.  We just need to be willing and ready to
participate in sharing His love.

Phil 4:12-16

Becky

May 23, 2011

“Victory in Jesus…” the opening phrase of the chorus of a great hymn – not one that has been my favorite over the years, but one that I connected with this last week.  I used to think that the song was a little trite and communicated a message that when you commit to follow Christ all the difficulties of life will be turned into victories, one happy & pain-free experience after another.  Of course, that’s not what the hymn writer was communicating and that’s not really my attitude about the song, it was more a feeling.

Now that I am “older”, I realize that there are certain difficulties in life.  Some that are the result of my choices, some at the hand of other people’s choices, and some just because I live in a troubled world.   But really, there is no difficult circumstance that is off limits to God’s redemptive work.  In other words, no matter what my circumstances are, God can use them for his glory.  My recent revelation came when I understood that I need to embrace the circumstances of my life, all of them, and look for how God might want to use them and work through me to point others to him.  This act of surrender possesses great power…a victorious power.  The victory that came through Jesus is eternal and present.  It’s a victory that has saved me forever, but it’s also a victory that empowers me to live in a way that my circumstances are just shadows in the light of who he is.

So sing it with me…

“Victory in Jesus, my savior forever
He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood.
He loved me e’er I knew him and all my love is due him
He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood”

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