Our key word for 2025 is JOY. Specifically, we’re learning how joy comes in relationship, through our commitments to God and each another.

If you’re ready to go deeper, we’d love for you to join the conversation online with Dave G. in March. This month, we’ll be digging into a book that connects with our current sermon series:

Revelation for the Rest of Us by Scot McKnight – and the author himself will be joining us on Zoom!

We’ll read the book in advance, then Dave will be hosting a discussion on March 25th at 11am PT.

We’re excited to invite you to this important gathering for updates and connection. We’d love for YOU to join us!

Please save the date for this special time together. It will be an opportunity to share the latest news and stories of what God is doing at Newsong.

You can register below in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Join online as Dave G. connects with JS Park, an author, chaplain and influential voice about grief. This intimate conversation will address how to deal with loss, pain, death and suffering, especially as it comes to grieving. Don’t miss this hopeful webinar sponsored by Newsong.

The Lenten Season commemorates the forty days that Jesus went into the wilderness where he fasted and endured temptations by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Throughout the world, followers of Jesus prepare themselves for Easter Sunday by identifying with Jesus’ wilderness experience in which he cultivated intimacy with the Father and prepared for his public ministry.

Susan Snyder, spiritual director and long-time Newsong prayer team’s leader and Ed Salas, Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Newsong will help us to delve deeply into the rich significance and transformative power of Lent.

Join us for the discovery!

The season of Advent can elicit joyful and difficult feelings and thoughts. We invite you to join us in connecting with God’s heart through contemplative exercises to hear His promises for you in this season. Led by Spiritual Directors Rema Cheng and Melody Mak, this 2-hour interactive experience will offer opportunities to breathe in God’s presence through prayer, Scripture, visual, and somatic practices.

Join us online for a soul-refreshing time.

Sixty-five million adults in the U.S. have dropped out of active church attendance and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Faith After Doubt was written for the millions of people who are in the process of examining the relevancy of their faith in today’s world.

The Faith After Doubt Book Club is a four-week, ongoing discussion of the book’s premise that doubts are not the enemy of faith, but rather a portal to a more mature and fruitful kind of faith. We will take a careful look at the author’s four stages―Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony― to see if they might offer a path forward that can help sincere and thoughtful people leave behind unnecessary baggage and intensify their commitment to what matters most.

The conversation will take place on Zoom across four Mondays: August 1, 15, 22, and 29. Participants are responsible to purchase their book in whatever format they choose – here’s a link!

Facilitator bios

Rick Sims
Rick Sims has been a writing lecturer at UC Irvine for the past 10 years. He holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature and a Masters in Poetry from UC Irvine as well. His passion, not so surprisingly, is book reading…and talking about those books with others. He enjoys good coffee, being a husband and a father, and thinking critically about language and its impact on how we see the world.

Ed Salas
Ed received his undergraduate degree in Intercultural Studies from Biola University. After graduation, he worked in the corporate world for the next 12 years and also studied at Fuller Seminary where he received a MA in Theology. For the last 31 years, Ed has served in the local church and for the last 17 years he has been serving at Newsong Church in Santa Ana, CA as the Spiritual Formation Pastor.

Pastor Ken Wilson continues to support us as we walk through experiences of loss during this season. These gatherings are a time for us to process grief together. Please don’t feel like you have to commit to all the meetings, just come when you can and get the care you need – the link to join is below.

__

About Rev. Ken Wilson
Shortly after receiving Master of Divinity seminary degree, Ken and his wife Louanne served on the mission field in Latin America for 4 years. Upon their return to the US, Ken served as local church pastor and for the last 17 years served as a hospice chaplain and facilitator of bereavement groups in Orange County. As a member of Newsong for 14 years, Ken serves in a leadership role on the healing prayer ministry team.

If you want to hear the latest Newsong family happenings, please join us for our Community Update Online Gathering. Dave G., Rehana & the Leadership Team will be hosting this time full of news and inspiring stories – zoom link below!

The past two years have presented some enormous challenges to our families, especially in regard to the mental health of our kids. Please join us for this crucial conversation on how the pandemic has affected many of our children and how we can help them to overcome. No matter what we’re facing, there are ways we can understand, equip & encourage our kids to thrive in their mental health right now. Let’s engage in this important discussion together!

Alexandra is a mother of 3 and a licensed Marriage Family Therapist. She is also a volunteer in Newsong Kids and a mentor to counseling graduate students. Her professional focus is treating a wide range of mental health disorders, familial problems, and relational issues within minority populations and marginalized communities. She loves going on family outings, DIY home projects, and watching documentary series.

Join us this Lenten season as we partner with CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice) to reflect on our Orange County jails — the people living in them, the people running them, and the entire families outside that are punished when one of their loved ones is incarcerated. This 3-week online course will help us understand the current crisis, and how we can be part of making a difference.

The past few years have been full of nonstop tensions. Political tension, cultural tension, generational tension, racial tension, and the list goes on. These tensions have caused separation, division and have led us to what feels like a new depth of relational brokenness. I believe that we at Newsong were made for such a time as this. What if we hold the key the unlocking the antidote our world truly needs? The beauty of knowing. The beauty of empathy.

This Black History month gives us yet another opportunity to strengthen our minds and our hearts as we step into what it really looks like to embrace and love the margins. Join us for two online sessions led by our Director of Sound and Justice, Jalen Seawright, as we dive into discovering what the heart of empathy holds for us all.

SACRED JOURNEY
Hearing God in Everyday Life

Virtual gatherings, January 30, Feb. 6, 13, 20, March 6, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
In-person gathering: March 15, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

This 7-week, interactive workshop is designed to equip you with practical tools that will help you to learn the ways God speaks, how you can recognize His voice, how to see and sense His presence so that you can be led by Him and develop greater intimacy with Him in the process. Additionally, this workshop will help unlock your spiritual gifts so that you can increase your influence and impact in the world. Workshop topics will include:

• Hearing God, Introduction to the Revelatory Gifts
• Hearing God in Scripture Meditation
• Rightful Identity and Releasing Blessing
• Restoring Your Image of the Trinity
• Encouraging Others Through Prophetic Words
• Processing Prophetic Words
• Increasing Your EQ and Empathy for Ministry

Sacred Journey is led by Pastor Ed Salas and Encouraging Word Prayer Team Leader, David Gripenwaldt. Requirements for workshop participation are a personal relationship with Jesus and a desire to grow in intimacy with God. This workshop serves as required training for participation on the Encouraging Word Ministry Team (Newsong partners).

The journey begins virtually on Thursday, January 30 – March 6, from 7:00-8:30 PM. Additionally, there will also be a bonus, in-person gathering on Saturday, March 15 at Newsong Church from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM.

Learning Cohorts are part of how we create community within our Online Academy. It’s also another way we get to partner with World Relief – they will be leading us through an amazing 3-week course called “Welcoming the Stranger,” helping us learn how to be a neighbor to immigrants and refugees in our community.

If you’d like to learn more about World Relief, please check out the November Forum through newsong.net/academy!

Newsong’s RECESS team is proud to partner with Dr. Nefta Pereda to host this workshop, “Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences.” The goal is to help to build self-healing communities – we’d love for you to be part of it!

Join online as we exchange ideas and engage in the most important conversations of the day. Once a month, we’ll dive deeper into the Sunday message, discuss current events, and hear different perspectives on the issues that matter in our world. We need your voice to be part of it!