We are planting a church because God has called us to this work. My life before Christ was not a huge mess by the world’s standards – in fact most would say I was fairly successful. My parents immigrated from El Salvador in the late 70s as a result of the civil war in their country. I grew up a farm worker here in the valley from the age of 6 to 15 you could find me picking oranges and grapes on holidays and breaks from school. I am a 1st generation American citizen, we worked hard, we were not rich. But we had enough. After high school Stephanie and I went on to Reedley Community college, and then we transferred to UCSD. I was blessed to receive a full scholarship from the Bill Gates Foundation and graduated from UCSD. Shortly after, Stephanie and I accepted jobs in the bay area, she was a pharmacy tech and I worked as a financial counselor at UCSF Medical Center. Stephanie and I worked hard and were promoted in our positions, we got married in 2005, and in 2008 we had our first born, Ethan. That same year we bought a small farm outside of Reedley and started plans to build our dream home. Even though we were accumulating financial wins and reaching personal milestones we never really had peace. I had also developed a lot pride in my life (a trait that I picked up from my dad) and unforgiveness, so on the outside I was a success but on the inside I didn’t have any peace, and yearned for more out of life.
I was invited to LVC in 2010 when my brother when my brother was baptized – and that is where I met Jesus. I accepted the Lord and committed myself to serving Him. I still remember looking at the senior pastor and his wife, when I gave my baptism testimony and thanked them for answering the call on their life to plant that church. Ever since 2010 I had a call to plant 7 churches in the Valley because of whom I encountered in that Church (Jesus Christ) and it needed to be shared!
On a personal level as well – at work, I have been part of a massive expansion of health care facilities and services. There are many parallels that I see in expanding health care clinics and planting churches. I believe God has been preparing me for church planting work over the years. I have a love for people and want to see them live the abundant life in Christ. I envision a series of churches planted as a network to free up the administrative burden and to free people to do the work they have each been called to do (preach, teach, shepherd, and reach people) for Jesus Christ. I want to plant churches for an abundance of gratitude for what God has done for our family, and would love for more families and individuals to experience God’s love the way that we have in our life.
We would like to plant several churches here in our surrounding communities because there is still a very huge need in our communities to reach people for Jesus Christ. Sure, there are other Christian churches in our area, but as I look around there is still a significant amount of people that are unchurched. We also need to be mindful that most of the Christian churches in my area do not reflect the demographic of the people that live in those communities. At the risk of even talking about race or ethnicity these days our goal is to raise up church leaders from their communities with similar cultural backgrounds to best reach and bring people to Christ.
From a biblical perspective we want to help achieve the great commission. To go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The world is in a fast moral decline as society continues to push God away. There is a huge misunderstanding of who God is and the true freedom that we find when we believe and follow Jesus Christ. He came to save and free us, but the world is becoming more hostile against God because they don’t know him and they believe the lies of the enemy. Our call as followers of Christ is to spread the good news and do the work of an evangelist.