By Hugo Torres

Pastor Hugo has served part-time as our Spanish-speaking pastor but recently came on full-time as our Local Outreach Spanish-Speaking Pastor. Hear more from him as he enters this new full-time position.

How do you feel coming on full-time at Evergreen?

First, I want to say thank you to our church family for having received me and my family with arms wide open. After seventeen years of being a tent maker (bi-vocational pastor), the Lord in his grace has opened a great and effective door for full time ministry here at Evergreen. This opportunity fills my heart fully with praises and thanksgiving to God.

Also, being always a solo pastor and now joining a great team of pastors and staff it gives me a sense and a place of belonging where everyone shares responsibilities for one common goal: Discipleship.  

Please share your responsibilities now being full-time at Evergreen

My main responsibility as pastor of local outreach is to lead in the execution of the vision of our church, with a special attention on evangelizing and edifying (making disciples) our local community of Avocado Heights. This means that I am responsible for developing and implementing strategies for the church’s local community’s discipleship, building up leaders for local outreach ministries, develop a Spanish speaking ministry as part of Evergreen Baptist Church, and help to incorporate the Spanish speaking group into the larger communal life of the congregation.

Besides the local outreach ministry, I am also responsible for overseeing and supervising our church’s facilities care under the oversight of the pastor of administration.

Please share how that has impacted your responsibilities at your previous church in La Habra

I think the greatest impact this has had is not being able to be there every Lord’s Day service to preach, since Sundays are generally a mandatory office day for our church staff and be available to meet upon request. Along with this, the other impact this has had is that I need to schedule guest speakers for every Sunday of the month to preach in La Habra congregation except the last Sunday when I am there to preach. Also, because I am not there every Sunday, there is the need to be one day a week in La Habra to attend whatever needs there are and be available to the members to meet upon request. Thanks to the flexibility on my schedule, I can do this by working remotely from La Habra office on Thursdays.  

What are you most excited about now being the full-time Local Outreach pastor at Evergreen?

I must be honest about it, there is so much work to do ahead of us. For instance, developing a Spanish speaking ministry at Evergreen and integrating the Spanish speaking body into the larger community life of the church is a big task that will demand hard work and bring its own challenges. However because I know that this is God’s work and not mine, I am excited to see how the Lord will use Evergreen church to make it happen.

How can we be praying for you and your family?

Coming to Evergreen church is a new chapter in my life and the life of my family, please pray for this transition process from La Habra congregation to Evergreen congregation to provide for the right man to take over at La Habra church and that the Lord use this transition to disciple every member of my family including myself. You can also pray for Jackie’s health that the Lord provides a good treatment for her stomach issues.

By Shaun Ho

Since 2020, our church has directed families to participate in Kare Youth League, a Christian sports league for children PreK - 6th grade. Hear from one of our parents share testimony of his family's experience being in Kare Youth League.

Just before the pandemic, our kids were starting to get involved in sports, even taking semi-private lessons for basketball.  Like with everything else, this venture was cut short by the closures.  As things opened up again in 2021, we wanted to find an inexpensive avenue (like some city community centers have) to have them re-engage in team sports, but still receive a decent level of coaching.  We weren’t looking for anything as advanced as club/travel teams (we were not that intense about it) and we wanted something that we could reasonably juggle our schedule around.  Pastor Victor invited us to check out KARE Youth League (KYL) in Irwindale (they have other branches in Covina and Upland), so we signed our son up for soccer in the summer of 2021.

Our son really loved playing at KARE and we were really impressed by the quality of the facilities as well as the warmth of the community.  As the summer closed out, we were thankful that the next sport offered for the girls was volleyball.  Our daughter was willing to try it because of some spontaneous volleyball play at church and because she has always known that I have played and coached the sport.  It was during this fall season that we really got to know more of the parents as well as the staff, and this set off a new era in our family’s lives.

Our entire family has found a great community at KYL and I became a participant in an unofficial “Dad’s Club” while watching our kids practice and play games.  Our daughter and our son really enjoy playing with their teammates and I love how the environment fosters a general level of respect and warmth even in the parent community.  Having coached and known many coaches, I have felt and heard from most of them how difficult the parents can be sometimes, but I have not witnessed much of that at KYL.  In fact, it is not unusual for a parent to say encouraging things to kids from the other team, win or lose.  I believe much of the reason for this is set by the tone of the coaches.  They will call out, give directives, and even gently discipline the kids, but never in anger.  Even during a game when they feel a referee made an error, they will point it out without anger and do not continue to make an issue of it.  They do not merely preach good sportsmanship. They exemplify it.

But the coaches do not just focus on the sport with our kids; they have weekly devotionals with them and work on character building.  I have witnessed on several occasions a coach gently pull a kid aside, if the child was not exhibiting care and/or respect, and compassionately speak to them about the issue without making the child feel bad.  Even the assistant coaches are great.  They are youth that have gone through leadership training in the Rio Hondo Prep program and they all are great leaders and role models for our kids.  Essentially, I believe that all the staff demonstrate a great meld of healthy competition in sports combined with the heart of Jesus.  Even in Paul’s exhortations, he doesn’t call us to shy away from competition, only to compete in what matters.

“24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”  -  I Cor. 9:24, 25

Although the kids aren’t exactly competing for the crown that will last forever at KYL, they are shown the heart of healthy competition so they know what it looks like.  Additionally, the kids are given good exposure to a variety of sports so they have the chance to discover what they are most passionate about.

In the midst of this family atmosphere that we have come to love, we discovered that the Rio Hondo Prep School (RHP), which this program is connected with, could also be a viable option for our own kids.  With my wife and I both being public school teachers, we never seriously thought that we would want to or could afford to send our kids to private school.  Well, the Lord has opened up the doors in a variety of ways and we discovered that, compared to most private schools, RHP is actually quite affordable.  We are truly excited that we have found not only a sports program that will also guide the characters of our kids towards Jesus, but a school environment that will continue to partner with us in such character-building until they become young adults.  We are so thankful for the doors the Lord has opened up in our lives and are excited as we venture into this new chapter in our lives.

For more information about KYL or RHP, feel free to contact Pastor Victor or visit www.kyl.org and www.rhprep.org

(And We’re Giving It Away!)

By Pastor Victor Chen

Do you ever wonder what church post-COVID-19 should look like?  

What aspects of church would look the same as before? What aspects of church should look different?

The book, “Rediscover Church” by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman, addresses those very issues. Every church has faced challenges in “reopening” and I believe that “reopening” is proving to be more difficult than “shutting down”.  

Perhaps this time now allows churches around the world to rediscover what it truly means to be the “Church”. This book aims to help us discover that.  

This book gets back to the basic core understanding of what a church is and its essential characteristics and practices. The illustrations are timely, speaking specifically about coming out of “stay at home” orders due to COVID-19.

If there is any chapter I would recommend reading, it would be chapter 3, “Do We Really Need to Gather?”. This is a timely chapter addressing many of the questions our church has faced and is facing since reopening.

I’ll close with a challenging quote from this chapter to encourage you to read more in this book:

“Sometimes people like to say that “a church is a people, not a place.” It’s slightly more accurate to say that a church is a people assembled in a place. Regularly assembling or gathering makes a church a church. This doesn’t mean a church stops being a church when the people aren’t gathered, any more than a soccer “team” stops being a team when the members are not playing. The point is, regularly gathering together is necessary for a church to be a church, just like a team has to gather to play in order to be a team.” (pg. 48, Rediscover Church)

Due the generosity of Crossway publishers, our church has received a limited number of the books, “Rediscover Church”, to give away for free. Please contact me at vchen@evergreensgv.org to receive your free copy.

By Jim Kagawa

The following is a testimony by Jim Kagawa shared on Discipleship Sunday, September 17, 2021.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is an honor to thank and welcome you on behalf of our brothers and sisters at the Monday night Spanish Bible study, 7pm in the Café.  

Pastor Hugo welcomes everyone, Spanish and non-Spanish speakers alike.

You may recall in Pastor Hugo’s personal address to us as Evergreen church, he shared from Revelation chapter 7, the Apostle John’s vision of the church’s eternal home serving Our Lord in His Kingdom

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all the tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb (who is Christ), and they cried out with a loud voice, saying,

 “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

We have been blessed to have a small glimpse of Our Heavenly Father’s Kingdom in Revelation at our Spanish Bible study with members from several nations – El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Japan and the U.S. and several languages – Spanish, English and Japanese.

Pastor Hugo has taken the time to accommodate non-Spanish speaking members like myself, my wife Mari and brother Hide with Microsoft Translator so we can receive simultaneous translation from Spanish into our native languages on our smartphones.

And these past two weeks, Pastor Hugo has led us on the topic of “The Assurance of Salvation” with study guides prepared in English and Japanese.

During Bible study where volunteers read scripture, you’ll often hear a brother respond with a reverent, “AMEN”, before he reads.

Prayer time is Holy Spirit filled, heartfelt, and often with tears of joy and pain, and shared responses of “Hallelujahs” and “Amens”. We pray for each other and our families, the Pastoral leadership of Evergreen and for you, the congregation.

The Bible study is blessed with two prayer warriors in his joy-filled wife Jacquie, and our dear brother in Christ, Eduardo “Eddie” Juarez. 

Last Monday evening, I asked the Spanish-speaking members what message they would like me to say to all of you brothers and sisters.  

They said, “Please thank them for opening up the church and giving us a place and opportunity to gather and study the Bible.” 

And from Glendes and Negli, mothers of young children, Genesis and Naomi, they expressed their hope, that someday, their English speaking children can study, worship and fellowship together with ours.

You know… I remember Pastor Mako a few months ago during outdoor service, sharing that as he biked into Evergreen from home, God gave him this thought. It was something like,

“Would the local community miss Evergreen church if we disappeared?”

At our Spanish Bible study, I think there are several brothers and sisters in the local community that would miss us.

We ask that you continue to pray for us and please come if you can.

Gloria a Dios en las alturas.
Glory to God in the highest.
Thank you and God bless you.

John 17:20-23 Jesus’ prayer before going to the cross, for His disciples to be reaching out to us:

“I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.”

by Pastor Victor Chen

With the new year comes various resolutions that can be easy to start but difficult to sustain. For Christians, the new year can mean restarting a Bible-in-a-year reading plan or attempting to read the Bible everyday.

And like other resolutions, we can start well with Genesis 1, yet sputter at Exodus and give up entirely at Leviticus. Or we keep up through day 15 yet give up somewhere around day 40.

If that’s you, you may think, ”Why should I even try this year?”

Reading the Bible consistently is a difficult discipline to keep (I speak from personal experience). It doesn’t help that reading is becoming more of a lost art, as social media news feeds have relegated us to speed skimming (or scrolling).

The last thing we want as Christians is to view reading the Bible as a chore or assignment we just check off, but engage very little with.

So if you’re having trouble reading the Bible everyday, try starting here.

Try reading a Psalm a day.

Psalms are easy to read because they are songs

What can make the Bible difficult to read, is how many different genres there are in the Bible and their corresponding difficulty. Narratives read easier because they read like story. Genealogies … not so much. The apocalyptic presents a whole range of questions and the laws can read like …. laws.

The Psalms are songs to the Lord meant to be sung, recited and memorized. There’s great emotion captured in the psalms intertwined with great truth about the Lord.

Psalms are easy to read because they are prayers

When we crawl out of bed and crack open our Bibles, we are often searching for something to grasp onto to help us through the day. That is why we can be discouraged when we open the Bible and read laws or genealogies and even narratives. When there is nothing apparent for us to take from the passage, we can make the mistake of trying to “spiritualize” what we read and draw out something that was not intended to be there.

But when we read a psalm in the morning, what we read becomes our prayer for that day. It becomes less about what we can get out of the psalm and more about aligning our hearts with the prayer of the psalmist.

Psalms are easy to read because they come in manageable portions

Reading the Bible regularly according to chapters can feel arbitrary because the chapters or verses don’t always follow the train of thought or movement. That is because chapter and verse designations were put there later by people to help break up the Bible in specific pieces.

The psalms on the other hand, are self-contained units, often with helpful introductions. Aside from a few long psalms, most psalms come in manageable portions. Psalms don’t feel daunting to get through.

But what about the rest of the Bible?

Reading a Psalm a day is not meant to discourage you from reading the rest of the Bible. If anything, it will encourage you to read the rest of the Bible. (The book of Psalms is the most quoted OT book in the NT!)

This suggestion is merely meant to help get you started each day in the practice of daily Bible reading. After reading a psalm in the morning, you can proceed to read a portion of the Bible during your lunch break, afternoon break or in the evening.

In other words, reading a Psalm everyday keeps you reading the Bible everyday!

For those who enjoyed the book, “Gentle and Lowly”, author Dane Ortlund has written a book with a daily Psalm accompanied by a reflection, “In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms”. Feel free to contact me at vchen@evergreensgv.org to order a copy.