Epic Life Church

This week we celebrate our one year anniversary as Epic Life Church. Join us this Sunday (Oct. 3) at 10:00 am for service at the Oak Tree Cinema and 7:00 pm for Vision Night at the Axis Building.



Directions to the
Oak Tree Cinema
Axis Building

We are going celebrate our country’s independence and freedom this Sunday by gathering in the Greenwood Park at 85th and Freemont and not at the Oaktree Cinema. Please join us at 11:00 AM. Bring a picnic for your family, bring something to share and bring some friends. This is a great opportunity to be introduced to the Epic Life family and have a bunch of fun.

This reminds me of the beginning of the Church as recorded in Acts 2:41-47, specifically, “…They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their numbers daily those who were being saved.”

It seems that God is indeed adding to Epic Life’s numbers daily, in many different ways and from many different socio-economical dwellings. This past Sunday I got the opportunity to sit in the audience and listen to Casey share some Spirit filled words on our Identity in Christ. I got to sit by a man from our neighborhood who lives on the streets and smelled like alcohol, we were worshiping together with others from his community as well as those of us who have a roof over our heads every night.

Later we participated in communion together, remembering the Saviors death that he laid down for me and my new friend, equally, because he “qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us (both of us, all of us) from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Col. 1:12-14

Honestly…there isn’t that much difference between me and my new friend. We live in a free country and we are loved by our Father and we both screw up and we are both forgiven.

Our first Easter service at the Oak Tree Cinema is upon us and I can’t tell you in printed words how excited I am for this Sunday. It is going to be such an amazing morning. David has been working with our first worship choir, which is going rock the house! Epic Life is so blessed to be ministering along Aurora in this moment in the history of Seattle. We are committed to being a church for the city, who prays for the city and invests in the city to be a light that cannot be hidden shining a light towards the risen Savior as people discover life transformation through Christ crucified and the power of the empty tomb through Christ resurrected.
I am looking forward to meeting many new people and rejoicing with our Epic Life family who are living life abundantly. John 10:10

I am so looking forward to sharing this talk with Epic Life. John 6:1-15 tells a tale of Jesus feeding thousands of people on a remote hill north of the Sea of Galilee.  But it is so much more than a children’s Bible story, soon to be forgotten and thrown out as a fair tale along with Santa Claus and Mother Goose.

This speaks of Faith and our moments of Situational Impossibilities in which we have two choices.

Turn back in fear and do only what we are capable of as humanly possible or,

Turn towards Christ and see the Humanly Impossible become possible and Done.

It is only in the turning towards Christ that our faith is increased.  I hear so many Christians crying out to God, “Please Lord strengthen my faith!”  But when he brings about a Situation of Impossibility they shrink back to the humanly possible and hence their faith is not strengthen.  Not because God is not gracious enough to give it but because they are to full of fear to receive it.

It’s such a great passage!

We also have a fantastic surprise for everyone…I can’t type it here and give it away, but it has to do with seeing the little turn into abundance.  Oh I can’t wait until tomorrow!

It’s been a fantastic year at Epic Life Church!  I was sitting with my brother just yesterday in Idaho and talking about how fast things change in life.  Even when we think time is dragging on we get to the end of a year and look back with wonder on how fast everything happened.

At the beginning of 2009 Epic Life was discovering so many new things and full of dreams as we followed hard after our Father.  We only had about 25 people worshiping with us and our location was up in the air as God was beginning to show us His purposes here in Seattle and more specifically here on Aurora.

This past year has brought about many opportunities to experiment, to learn, to grow, to minister, to be humbled, to experience, to mature, etc. The growth God has brought about is so beautiful and the new friends and relationships are remarkable.

As I sit here in the Aurora Starbucks writing this and a talk for tonight’s New Year’s Eve party I am reminded of many big things that that we have to be so thankful for. Here they are in a list; if I comment on each item this blog would be a book. Here’s the top 25.

1. Starbucks on Aurora – one of our offices. Everyone knows us here and we get to share Christ’s love here a lot.
2. Relationships with many organizations helping the marginalized.
3. We welcomed three ministry teams from outside of Seattle who ministered alongside us for three separate weeks.
4. Partnering with Campus Crusade for Christ at the Shoreline Community College.
5. Many “Street Sweeping” opportunities along Aurora.
6. Meeting with the Aurora Merchants Association.
7. Building a relationship with the North Seattle Police Precinct.
8. The Block party at the Northgate property attracting 300 some neighbors.
9. The Northgate Property gift from the Northgate Baptist Church. We now call this property the AXIS. It houses our administration and education campus, along with the Northgate Christian Academy, which we have adopted and will soon get a name change.
10. We now have eight employees with the addition of the teachers from the school.
11. The beginning of four House Church Communities.
12. Hiring part-time David Vicchiollo – worship Pastor and Averi Norgard – Office Manager.
13. A developing band that is weekly amazing.
14. The development of the Weekend Journal – Epic’s monthly worship journal for Sunday notes and weekly reflection.
15. The beginning of Reach - Epic’s Youth ministry.
16. The beginning of Grow - Epic’s Children’s ministry.
17. We were blessed with the foresight and generous gifts to have had $30,000 in the bank to advertise and prepare printed materials throughout the month of September, preparing for our “Kickoff.”
18. Favor from the manager of the Oak Tree Cinema and Sunday meeting space for adults and children every week.
19. The sound equipment, children’s supplies, staging, trailer, signs, banners, print, etc. and beautiful man/woman power of a core team every Sunday morning at 7:00 am to 12:30pm, without complaints as we offer this sacrifice of time to God for the opportunity to worship him.
20. October 4th we welcomed 150 at Epic Life’s official Kickoff at the Oak Tree Cinema.
21. October 11th we had 25 in second worship service at the theater, a remarkable difference which was fantastic now that I look back on it. God brought us down so he could build us up. And He continues to do so weekly.
22. Baptized two new believers.
23. The first baby born in the Epic Life family.
24. New people join us every week! I love it!
25. God’s development of many dreams and visions for the coming year, there’s so much coming!  I will blog on that on the other side of the decade.

Thank you Father for letting us to worship you and for considering us worthy to be used for your purposes. It has been a sweet journey throughout the most excellent of years…2009, we’ll always remember you.

2010 here we come! Epic Life get ready for the most remarkable year of your life, it’s going to be purely Epic!

Epic Life’s first Christmas Eve service is just around the corner and we so excited about the possibilities of worshiping our Savior right here in the Aurora Corridor.  Please join us physically if you can and if not please join us in prayer for this very important night. The Savior is born!

It has been a fantastic first few weeks.  Let me recap for you.  Our Launch was October 4th, which was an amazing service with 140 some people, a lot of energy, great music and a great talk. The next week was a total bomb! With 25 people, no energy, so-so music and a terrible talk.

Yep that about sums things up.

No wait don’t go away there’s more.  Since that second Sunday we have steadily grown.

Let’s just get one thing straight, when I say we are growing I mean several things.

1. We are growing spiritually in Christ alone.
2. We are growing in wisdom.
3. We are growing in creativity.
4. We are growing in knowledge.
5. We are growing musically.
6. We are growing understanding.
7. We are growing closer as a community.
8. We are growing in confidence.
9. We are growing in maturity.
10. We are growing in numbers.

I don’t know why it is but in Christian circles it isn’t “spiritual” to tell people we are growing. Everyone thinks we are talking only about counting heads. Well there is so much more to growth than that. Although, growing in numbers just means we are seeing more and more people, real humans with real hurts and desires join our family and experience the transformational power of the Holy God. And to that I say the more the merrier! So yeah it is all about the numbers and big numbers at that!

So we are growing…steadily in so many ways. This past weekend we got the great privilege of worshiping with about 70 men, women and children. What a sweet blessing that was!  Also we were able to start our fourth House Church community. This is so exciting!

So, another recap. Started with a bang, dropped off a cliff and have been steadily climbing ever since. And, hey, the beauty of this is that there’s no top to this mountain we are climbing.

Thanks for climbing with us.

Stand Strong, Live Epic!

Keith Carpenter