How long have you been attending LBCF?
I've been at LBCF for 10 years, since 2012 when I moved to Long Beach after graduating from college. (I know, this should make me too young to be on the board, but apparently our church leadership disagreed...)
What prompted you to join the LBCF elder board?
When I was asked to join the elder board I absolutely did not want to do it! The last thing I needed was one more thing to be responsible for. (I was running the Production team essentially single handedly at the time). But through prayer, and the repeated encouragement of many friends and family who believed that I had something to offer the community in the form of my boundless wisdom and dry wit, I felt the call of an opportunity to serve the community in a new but still critical way.
What are you most excited about/hoping for with this new group of elders?
I'm very excited to be part of a larger board that can divvy up the work into smaller pieces for each one of us. (I'm kidding, but it's also true.) But mostly I'm just excited to be a part of a group of people who love this community as much as I have, who have been loved back as much as I have, and who are ready to share their wisdom and life experience to the leaders in this community as we all careen toward Jesus together.
What moment in LBCF history was meaningful/significant for you?
So many of them to choose from. Too many from pre-3-ish years ago, which made me a little sad to think about, but some memorable moments in the recent past too.
I think I will go with the first cadre I ever joined. Bill Goodman and Matt Cullen were in this cadre, along with a bunch of other guys I don't specifically remember. I was brand new to LBCF, and was a Christian but had basically none of the experience and background and testing in the faith and the church and the Bible that the other older guys in the group had. So when we batted around some theological concepts and questions based on the reading we had done before that meeting, I fell back on the moral guidebook I knew best- The Jedi Code- and went on this huge, meandering, incomprehensible tangent about it.
At the time I don't think I recognized what really happened there but looking back now I shake my head at my own absurdity. But the most important thing was that the older guys in the group all listened intently, and even praised and reinforced some of the points I had made, the comprehensible ones at least. It would have been way too easy for the guys to scoff and dismiss everything I said, based as it was in the eastern mysticism of the pseudo-religion of the Jedi and the Force from a popular science fiction property, but all I got from each of the guys in that group was support and the earnest desire to see me grow in my Christian faith.
That's the kind of family that LBCF can be, and that's what I love and remember most about it when I'm looking back at significant and memorable moments.
