The ARC is excited to announce that Beachside Church, a church plant in Palm Coast, Florida has joined the ARC. Pastor Chris Magnel is leading the team that has planted the church and shares the following:

“A few months ago, a number of us in Palm Coast heard the call to go out and do something new. Inspired by John 21:4-6 (New Living Translation) which describes Jesus standing on the beach and calling out to His disciples, telling them to cast their nets in a different place, we heard God calling us to cast nets in new places in Palm Coast. Like the disciples hauling in a huge catch, we hope to see fruit, transformation and new life in this move of the Spirit. This new endeavor is called Beachside Community Church, and we look forward to our official launch on April 5th.

We have a ton of great churches in Palm Coast. Yet, like any town, we have far more people disconnected from the Body of Christ than those who are connected. With around 85,000 residents, there are at least 55,000 people waiting to be connected to Christ. It’s our call to go to them. We can’t wait around in our buildings hoping that a slick marketing campaign is all that’s needed to “bring them in.” That certainly doesn’t seem to be how Jesus or the disciples did it.

So we’re going to go out into the community, build relationships, and see what the Spirit has in store for us. Going out will be a learning process that we’re just beginning at this point. I’m not sure there is a program or path that compares to trusting in God and letting Him lead the process.

So why has Beachside chosen to join the ARC? First of all, it’s the relationships. For me, as Lead Pastor, I owe a lot in my own faith development to a few of the places I hung out at during seminary, and the people I got to know. As a first year student at Luther Seminary, my time at places like North Heights and Hosanna! were foundational to my own discipleship. Along with hanging out at those places, and then interning at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, I saw that there are pieces of our faith that felt lacking in certain parts of mainline Christianity. That’s not meant as a ‘better/worse’ statement, but more of an expression of gratitude at the people and communities God put in my life.

After being ordained into an LCMC church in 2001, a small group of us formed what would be the Evangelical-Renewal District in LCMC. As the ARC came into existence, there has been a huge overlap in the people and churches affiliated with both, and I’m excited we’ll have that at Beachside. There are a ton of people I love and respect in the ARC and I look forward to deeper partnerships. In addition to relationships, the ARC is a home for us in terms of the ways its people talk about, and live out, their faith. It’s a fit and a home.

The next few months will be exciting. We have a great planting team here in Palm Coast. We’ll be meeting in a local charter school right in the heart of town, but not close to any existing churches. It’s amazing to consider that God is starting this church for people we don’t yet know, and I personally look forward to meeting them and walking this journey together.

We ask for your prayers. Go to our website, www.beach.church, check out what’s going on, and pray for us specifically. Pray for protection, as we know the enemy is going to strike out at us, and pray for provision in every way. Pray that God guards our hearts and keeps our focus on His agenda. And for those who have walked the church-planting road, I would love to connect with you, and learn from your mistakes and successes. Any relationships that I, or our planting team, can build will be awesome. Thanks for bringing us into your fellowship in the ARC. Blessings to you all in Christ.”

Welcome Pastor Chris and Beachside to the ARC! You can contact Chris at: chris@beach.church

We are very excited and humbled to announce that a pastor and his church from Cuba have joined the Alliance of Renewal Churches (ARC) network. Pastor Richard Lemus Diaz first reached out to ARC Director Mike Bradley over seven months ago, seeking relationship with a network that embraced the evangelical, sacramental, and charismatic streams of the faith, as well as desiring a relationship with a spiritual father or mentor. After months of communicating back and forth, Pastor Richard requested membership in the ARC. We’ve asked Richard to share a bit about himself, his family, and his church with you. He writes to us the following:

“Dear ARC members, my name is Richard Lemus Díaz. I am 31 years old and have been married with my wife, Lariza for almost 9 years. We live and minister in Cuba, a country that needs to experience the love and the power of God. I thank God He saved my family from Santeria, my grandmother was a spiritist medium and my mother was a fortuneteller. But the Lord arrived to my family and saved all of us.

I felt God's call to pastoral ministry early in my life and at 15 years of age I began to serve as a missionary in the mountains of Cienfuegos. After Lariza and I got married, we went to the seminary in Havana and we served in pastoral ministry in several churches located in Havana, Trinidad, and now in our own city—Cienfuegos, in the center of Cuba.

When we returned to Cienfuegos we had nobody, so we planted a church from scratch, walking on our city's streets, preaching the Gospel of Jesus. It was a hard work but now there is a church here with people who have given their lives to God. We named our church Gate of Heaven because our desire is that people experience the same thing Jacob experienced when he arrived at that place. He arrived alone, poor, defeated, hopeless and confused. But in that place he had an encounter that changed his destiny. He was exposed to the Almighty's glory.

A gate of heaven is a point of contact between God and men, a place of supernatural events, a portal that allows Heaven's atmosphere to pour into the earth. That is our desire as church, to experience God's glory in our generation.

That's why we are so thankful to God that He allowed us to find the ARC. We know we have joined people and leaders of God who desire this same atmosphere and work together to honor and celebrate the person who creates this atmosphere—the Holy Spirit. We believe when people like this are connected in love relationships and serve and worship God together, great things happen. We thank the ARC's National Leadership Team very much for allowing my wife, me, and our congregation to be part of this.”

Welcome Pastor Richard and Lariza, and Gate of Heaven church to the ARC!