When I left home to get married, I had such mixed feelings. Sad to leave a loving home yet excited to start one of my own. I have had the exact same feelings as I sadly leave a church family that I so dearly love yet excited to be part of a brand new work in the Chino Valley.
Over the past twenty six years, God has used the Evergreen church family to raise me up in the faith. You were my Sunday school teachers, mentors, employers, friends and family. I was baptized and called to ministry in this church and when it came time to look for internships, Evergreen by faith, brought me on as an intern and then as an associate pastor. I was young, arrogant and extremely inexperienced, yet Evergreen recognized God’s call on my life and was willing to walk by faith rather than by what little they saw. Thank you for humbly allowing me to be one of your pastors for the past nine years. You have been supportive in my times of immaturity and been patient as I have learned from my mistakes. It has been a privilege and pleasure to shepherd and serve you. I will be forever grateful for my time with you and am glad to know that our partnership in the gospel continues as you carry out God’s mission in the San Gabriel Valley and us in the Chino Valley.
On Easter Sunday, God will birth Lifesong Community Church in the Chino Valley. For the next six months, we will enter into a season of “sowing seeds” in our local communities. We believe evangelism happens best in the context of relationships and Kingdom community so our emphasis will be on small groups we call “Bridges.” In these groups, we hope to build bridges with God, with one another and with our local communities. On Sunday mornings, we will gather at an elementary school in Chino Hills for corporate worship. We call them “simple services” because they will be simple times of praise, offering and God’s Word preached. The purpose of keeping them simple is to allow our church to focus on building relationships with those who have yet to know Christ. These simple services will temporarily be reserved for those who have visited a Bridge or are committed to the plant. If you have friends who are interested in Lifesong, please let us know so we can include them in a local Bridge or a variety of events that we will host over the summer. In the Fall, the Sunday morning worship gathering will become public and more specific information will be dispersed at that time.
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in your will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”. Philippians 1:6

Pastor Jon Hori