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6 Months on 6th Street!

Announcing The Garden Church Pop-up Garden and Gathering Space

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Dear Friends, It’s an exciting week in the land of The Garden Church! We signed a six-month lease for a lot right in the heart of old-town San Pedro. We are thrilled to be moving into phase three of our church planting strategy, having a space to plant our edible urban sanctuary, and fling open our gates to welcome people to feed and be fed! We will be opening the gates on May 1st and together we will put in a pop-up garden and gathering space for a six month growing season. Starting May 3rd we will be meeting weekly for our Sunday Gathering (3 pm Work, 4 pm Worship, 5 pm Eat) and we look forward to being a community gathering space and communal garden throughout the week in many forms. We’re delighted to be working with our fantastic collaborators at Green Girl Farms, who bring their gardening expertise and inspiration and dedication to bringing organic edibles and education to our community. It is a moment to pause and express gratitude to all of you for the ways that you have held and contributed to this vision so far. We would not be here without you, and we look forward to sharing together as this church grows into a living sanctuary where God’s love is made visible as people feed and are fed in body, mind, and spirit. Looking forward to being together in the garden, Rev. Anna TGC vision

Mark Your Calendars 

Sunday, April 26th Garden Church Gathering 3:00-5:30 pm We’ll work together to prepare to “pop-up” in our new home the first week of May. Friday, May 1st  Opening the Gates Placing of the Table and blessing the space. Time and details to be announced. Other Work Times: We will be bringing in straw and stock tanks on Friday, May 1st and Saturday, May 2nd. If anyone has a truck and would like to participate, let us know! Also, straw bales are heavy, and we could use all the people power we can get! Contact us at gardenchurchsp@gmail.com to participate. Sunday, May 3rd Build Day Stuffing straw into burlap tubes, creating garden beds, moving dirt, creating a prayer corner, we’re going to pop this garden church up! Work: Noon-4:00 pm Worship: 4:00 pm Eat: 5:00 pm Sunday, May 10th Garden Church Gathering—Special Mother’s Day Service Work: 3:00 pm Worship: 4:00 pm Eat 5:00 pm Sunday, May 17th Planting Day  Time to plant the seeds, seedlings, and plants into the dirt. Work: 3:00 pm Worship: 4:00 pm Eat: 5:00 pm Garden Church Gathering Every Sunday afternoon for the rest of the season Work 3:00 pm Worship 4:00 pm Eat 5:00 pm Theology Group is on hiatus for the month of April as we focus on preparing to grow our new home. We’ll reconvene in May in the garden.  If you have an idea for an activity, group, or event, please email us at: gardenchurchsp.@gmail.com

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Easter Vigil with the Garden Church and the Holy Ground Community

Saturday, April 4th from 4:00 p.m. to 6 p.m.
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Two start-up churches come together to celebrate Easter in the beauty of creation. Join us as we walk through the stories of Jesus’ last days on earth, exploring themes of life, death, and resurrection in our lives and the world. We’ll end our celebration together with a shared meal, including a salad made from the greens our community has been growing throughout the season of Lent.

Bring a blanket or chair, a contribution to the potluck, your family and friends and a heart ready to worship together. All are welcome!

Location: Angels Gate Park–lower section, below Korean Friendship Bell
834 W. Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro 90731 See Google Map

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Glimpses into the Garden Church Gathering

What a beautiful Gathering we had yesterday! Here’s a glimpse of it for those of you who couldn’t be with us in person. 
1cWhen you’re making church from scratch, the trunk of the car is key. 1dThose leading arrived early and scouted out our meeting place….
2...and then enlisted people to help set up as they arrived. One of the mottos we are engaging is, “give the work away.” Feeling useful and being a part of something engages us in a way that many other things don’t. It’s part of our whole “feed and be fed” bit. And so, as tempting as it was to get everything set up before people arrived, we restrained ourselves and had the joy of an entire artistic “name tag team” form, bonding over a “fill the watering cans” run, and worship space designers preparing the table. 34We then gathered around, ready to “make church together.”  5cJanis and Rachel shared with us how to plant and care for our lettuce seeds.
4aAnd then we got to work!9
5a People shared about the people in their lives that they were going to give their second pot to. Neighbors who they’d been wanting to connect with, homebound grandparents, close friend who is going through a loss. The Garden Church goodness spreading out into the world. 5Meanwhile, Lisa led the Garden Church Choir (“that’s you!”) in learning a song to sing during worship.4bOur youngest gardener won the prize… and made six pots! 5b At the Garden Church, we work together….8a We moved into our time of worship and unpacked our Tabernacle, the marker points of God dwelling with us as we are a community on the move.  Helpers were at the ready and set out the Bible, the candle, the bread and wine, the water and our icon of the Tree of Life. We then rung the gong and entered into the sacred silence where we can hear the Divine speaking to us.  8bHearing stories form the Word. 14c
And reflections on how we can engage our spiritual lives. 10
The community furthers the sermon in their reflections.
14a And then we share together in the Sacred Meal. The bread of life… 14b…and the cup of salvation. Feed and be fed. 13aOur Sacred Meal led into our community meal, where we enjoyed delightful food and good company. 
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA17  We enjoyed the beauty of the choir singing and then teaching us, “This Pretty Planet” and by the end had the whole circle singing it as a three-part round, complete with movements and an ode to the scene behind us as we sang, “Golden sun going down, gentle blue giant, spin us around.”OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA May the Lord bless you and keep you….as we go out to love and to serve.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEveryone take your pots of future salad…OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Packing up and leaving with full hearts under the glorious blessing of creation and our Creator.  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALet’s be church together again soon!

Add your offering to the basket for the work of the Garden Church.

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Garden Church Gathering | Today at 3:00 p.m. | Join us!

IMG_6648On Sunday, November 23rd we will have our Garden Church Gathering! We have a beautiful collection of ways that we will work and worship and eat together this month.  It’s time to get our hands in the dirt as the Garden Church! Our work together will be planting pots of lettuce seeds that will be able to grow on your kitchen counter and provide fresh lettuce, as local as it gets, for months to come. Each one of us will get to take a bit of the Garden Church home with us. But more than that, we’re inviting everyone to make a second pot and give to someone you think could enjoy a little bit of love and food and goodness.

As we worship together, we’ll be blessed by a couple of guests from out of town. Two of them will be assisting with our music for worship and will be leading anyone who is interested in learning a song to sing as a mini-choir piece during worship. The sermon will be inviting us into a conversation about the dynamic between God and humanity, through the image of the Shepherd and the sheep, as we explore the difference between the goal of conversion or transformation. Our  worship time will culminate in a Sacred Meal (Communion/Holy Supper), which is open to all and where all are welcomed to feed and be fed.

Our Sacred Meal leads into our communal meal where we will eat together and enjoy the sharing of food and of conversations. Lorie will be making her delicious wraps again and we invite each of you to bring some kind of finger food to add to the meal. Fruit, veggies, drinks, chips, etc.

We are looking forward to being church together. Invite your friends, come on over, feed and be fed!

Directions: Our November Gathering will take place at the small park just down the hill from the Korean Friendship Bell in Angels Gate Park at Pt. Fermin in San Pedro.

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*If you’re a GPS type, program it for Pt. Fermin Park. Then, drive past Pt. Fermin park, down below the Korean Friendship bell, and you will see a parking lot on your right (away from the water). You can then pull in and park in the parking lot there.  We’ll then gather at a cluster of picnic tables near the middle of the park. Take the path leading out of the parking lot and you’ll find us. 

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Being Church Together

The Garden Church gathered this Sunday to be church as we worked and worshiped and ate together.

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People were greeted in the parking lot of a local park, with a “Welcome to the Garden Church!” and handed a trash bag and gloves.

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Soon the hill was filled with people with black plastic bags in one hand, bending down and gathering up the litter and debris that was covering the area.

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And in what seemed like no time, the area went from a messy dumping ground to a clean slice of nature. I watched as people went from individually picking up trash in various areas, then slowly migrating together to form a trash-collecting cluster of community caring for the earth.

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After celebrating how much trash we’d picked up in a short half hour, we washed our hands, grabbed our picnic stuff, and headed over the hill to a grassy spot under a tree.

IMG_5936We spread out blankets and set up our worship table and put our picnic items in the shade.
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Our youngest community members helped me to begin our time of worship together by setting out the objects that mark our worship space together. We set out the Word, the bread, the cup, the light, the water, the bell, and the tree of life. As we unwrapped each one we talked about the meaning and the vision for who we are as a church and how God is present amongst us.

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As we moved into worship we spent time in silence that our bell ushered us into, finding silence in and amongst the sounds and movement around us. We noticed the wind blowing, the feel of the grass, and how the ocean had places that looked purple in it.

IMG_5900 We then shared the story of the Children of Israel and how when they traveled, they set up their tabernacle and we heard the story of the Manna, the bread of life that God gave them in the wilderness. And we talked about what this story means in our community, and our lives.

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Which led us into sharing the Sacred Meal, Communion, Holy Supper together, gathered around God’s table and feeding and being fed by each other.

IMG_5966 IMG_5965The Sacred Meal then led into our Community Meal and we enjoyed fresh sandwiches, delicious fruit and crisp creative salad.

IMG_5938During our meal we heard people’s stories about where they find belonging and feel at home in the world, and what it means to be church together.
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We closed in prayer as we stood together holding hands in a circle and thanked God for the gift of worship and community.IMG_5941

We packed up our tabernacle and cleaned up our picnic. Chatted and finished conversations and then walked back down to the parking lot together.IMG_5944

Good to be church together. Let’s do it again soon.

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We’re ready to Feed and be Fed | Just add people

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Work gloves and compostable trash bags for park clean-up? Check.
Stainless steal Communion cup and plate for outdoor worship? Check.
Picnic blankets for shared community picnic? Check.

Yup, we’re ready to do what the Garden Church does when we Gather: work together, worship together, and eat together.

All we need now is the people!

This Sunday, September 28th at 3:00 p.m.

Come one, come all, invite your friends, feed and be fed.

More information here or on Facebook