Unity in Faith Written and Designed by Arlene Oriel
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge all the lovely people who helped me in the making of this project. I would also like to acknowedge and thank those who make New Hope International Church a lovely place to be, week after week.
Table of Contents Foreword..................................................................................7 Introduction.............................................................................9 A Close Community.............................................................11 New Hope Leaders................................................................16 For Great Causes...................................................................20 Conclusion.............................................................................25 Works Cited...........................................................................33
Foreword I am no stranger to New Hope International Church in Sunnyvale, as I was introduced to it by extended family a few years back. Unfortunately, prior to taking up this project and choosing New Hope as my location, I have not had many chances to attend recently. I’ve passed by time and time again, spotting it from the freeway and thinking, I should start going again once I get my license. The idea of going there after being absent for way too long filled me with a peculiar anxiousness. For all I knew, everything could be different the next time I walked through the doors. But once I made my return, for my documentary project, I could almost immediately tell that although there were obviously little changes, it was still the same great church with the same friendly, loving atmosphere and tight-knit sense of community. In fact, this was one of the reasons I chose New Hope International Church as my location for this documentary. Every time I go there, I am blessed with getting to meet and interact with new people and old friends. There is a high contrast between the New Hope community and other churches I have visited, where there would most likely be different people in attendance, with no real chance to actually get to know each other. I was impressed by how close the New Hope community is, as most people know each other by name. In this documentary project, I wanted to shine a light on the different events and ministries the church has to offer its members. I also wanted to acknowledge the people behind these ministries and show how their strong leadership skills greatly impact their ministries and the members in them.
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Introduction
If you were a newcomer at New Hope International Church, you would walk in and find yourself in a dimly-lit cafe, filled with people making casual conversation to catch up with each other. You’d navigate the building unsurely to try and find the worship sanctuary to choose a seat for the service. Maybe you’d get lost and have to resort to asking a friendly stranger to direct you to where you need to go. As soon as you walk into the sanctuary, you take a seat and wait for more people to start entering and sitting down for the start of the service. Members of the worship band sing and play music to start off the service. Once that part of the service is over, the pastor asks first-time visitors to raise their hands and welcomes them. He also directs their attention to the New Hope visitor card, which they can fill out with their contact information and how he and the other members of the church staff can pray for them and make their experience at the church the best it can be. Week after week, people from all around the Bay Area come to New Hope to worship and spend time with their brothers and sisters in Christ. Being a tight-knit and welcoming community, the church makes it easy for newcomers to fit in and become regular visitors. All kinds of interesting people with all kinds of talents attend the church; its diversity is something that New Hope is very proud of. New Hope makes great strides to instill valuable and relevant qualities in its members and to give them a place to feel welcome and loved by providing plenty of various ministries and events that members can get involved with.
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A Close Community Friendly chatter fills the church cafe before the 10:15 Sunday service starts. All around you, people greet each other and make friendly chit-chat over coffee. The general atmosphere at New Hope is best described as a friendly and inviting one. Whether you are a first-time visitor or a long-time attendee, New Hope welcomes everyone with open arms and neighborly hellos. The pastors and church staff are always eager to meet and get to know newcomers and are always delighted to see them if they return. People of all different ethnicities and professions from all over the Bay Area come together at least once a week to worship God together. It is this unity under God that makes this community so tightknit and welcoming. New Hope’s ultimate mission is to be “a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-lingual community of faith, hope and love; committed
to the Great Commission: Fulfilling the call to be ‘Living Proof of a Loving God,’” (“Mission, Vision, and Values”). These are the qualities that drive and motivate the church and its services. Its desire to accomplish this mission is evident in their many different ministries, events, and activities. Throughout the year, the church hosts many events including the Harvest Festival and Trunk-or-Treat and BBQ in October, which is an event where church members volunteer to decorate and fill their minivan trunks with candy. They also set up a little mini game at their trunk station for kids to play in order to earn their candy. Families come to this annual event, which was started a few years back, for their kids to dress up and get candy in a fun and more importantly, safe environment. Parents find the safety factor especially valuable considering that “Halloween is one of the busiest
times for authorities” (“Halloween Safety”). This makes parents very anxious at that time of year. Events such as this are not only a good way for the church members to spend time with one another; they are also a good way to reach out and invite people from the community and show them what New Hope values. Amazed with the environment and the New Hope community, a lot of people do decide to come back for a Sunday service, and many decide to keep coming back week after week.
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“In union, there is strength.” ~Aesop
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New Hope Leaders What is a leader? By definition, a leader is someone who leads a group of people. But of course, there is a distinct difference between being a good leader and just being a leader. Well, what are the qualities that are necessary in being considered a good leader? Good leaders actually possess a number of different qualities. According to Holden Leadership Center at the University of Oregon, a good leader possesses respect for their followers, humility, enthusiasm, and the ability to be a good communicator (Leadership Characteristics). Leaders at New Hope International Church possess and show all of these great qualities and many more qualities necessary for being a good leader. Experience also plays a huge role in being a good leader. Lisette Del Rio is the Youth and Young Adult Ministries Pastor at New Hope and is in charge of the 8th grade to out-of-highschool and
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out-of-college age group. Prior to coming to New Hope for her pastor position, she was a youth pastor at the Church of the Cross in Hayward, which happens to be the church she grew up in. Another important leader in the New Hope community is Ms. Donna, who is an assistant teacher to children’s pastor, Sheba Lagasca, (Ms. Donna). On Sundays, Ms. Donna helps Pastor Sheba teach the children during the Discovery Kidz ministry while the adults attend the Sunday service in the sanctuary. According to Ms. Donna, prior to being invited to be an assistant teacher to Pastor Sheba, she was part of the children’s ministry at the church she previously attended. Both Pastor Lisette’s and Ms. Donna’s past experiences with working with kids and young adults in the age group they manage are evident, as they always seem to be able to manage their groups exceptionally well.
One thing they both know how to do incredibly well is letting the youth know how important they are. During an interview, Ms. Donna recounts the story of one Sunday when she asked a little boy what his name was, during his second consecutive Sunday in the Discovery Kidz ministry. She remembers him saying “‘Oh, nobody remembers who I am,’” to which she replies, “‘Angel, I know who you are; I just couldn’t remember your name.’” To which, she also adds, “‘But I want you to know that you’re important.’” Imagine if you were Angel, still relatively new to an environment and not feeling so confident about yourself being in the new environment because the other kids probably haven’t even remembered your name yet. It would make a world of difference for someone to remind you that you’re important and you do matter, wouldn’t it?
Pastor Lisette takes on a similar mindset when it comes to communicating with her student ministry members. In an interview, she states, “I think the biggest thing I look forward to is being able to encourage people,” (Del Rio). It is evident that Pastor Lisette genuinely cares about her students and their well-being. This is especially valuable all throughout the school year, as a lot of stress tends to build up from all those projects, assignments, and tests that teachers are always throwing at their students. If a student is struggling, Pastor Lisette is always willing to encourage them and pray with them about whatever is troubling them. She voices, “I’ve learned that just loving someone can go a long way,” (Del Rio). This is a powerful message that I believe should be spread to all corners of the world. The kind of relationships capable of being built between students and leaders tell a lot about how effective a leader actually is. The manners in which leaders treat their students can make a huge difference in the relationships they build with the ones they lead.
Appreciation notes from the children to Pastor Sheba
New Hope Pastor Lisette Del Rio
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For Great Causes So why exactly does all of this matter? What difference does having a good team of leaders and having a wide array of different activities and events at New Hope make? The truth is that it not only makes a big impact on the individuals that interact with those leaders and participate in the different activities; it also makes a big impact on people outside of the church community. On a New Hope community level, the ministries in action at the church are aimed to instill many good values in the members that participate. The perfect example is the fairly new Manners and Etiquette class, taught by Pastor Sheba and Ms. Donna. Manners and Etiquette are, unfortunately, somewhat lost values in the youth today. This is why the class exists at New Hope International Church. These classes not only teach the young members how to behave at the table, but also how to behave in life. It teaches them to respect their neighbors and
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to be considerate. This is something that they can carry with them as they grow older. It is important to instill good qualities in people while they’re young, so they can go on and carry on those good qualities and teach them to future generations. On the broader community level, the church does many outreach activities throughout the year. Upon being asked what activities and events her ministry participate in, Pastor Lisette enthusiastically replies, “‘This year we’re actually going to go on a missions trip to the Dream Center in LA.’” The Dream Center organization fills the needs of over 50,000 individuals and families each month. They do so “ through mobile hunger relief and medical programs, residential rehabilitation programs for teens and adults, a shelter for victims of human trafficking, transitional housing for homeless families, foster care intervention programs, job skills training, life skills counseling,
basic education, Bible studies and more. [They] work to meet people where they are at, to bring them hope and a way off the streets,” (“Dream Center”). This upcoming missions trip will be a good way for those in the young adults ministry to get involved in a community other than their own. It is sure to be a very humbling experience for them as well, as they will be experiencing an environment that is a lot less fortunate than the environment they live in and are used to. The sooner the students get involved in volunteer work, the better for them and for their community in the long run because “volunteering encourages civic responsibility,” (“Community Service”). This year, volunteers from New Hope are able to do ministry at San Miguel elementary school, which is just down the street from the church, (Del Rio). Daniel Russo, a current freshman at the King’s Academy in Sunnyvale shares his
excitement about being able to volunteer at San Miguel school as part of the New Hope youth ministry this year. “‘It makes me feel powerful,’” he says, “‘I don’t know if that’s the right word to say, but the little kids--they kind of look up to you as a role model and everything, and you know that you influence them in some way.’” While volunteering at San Miguel, members of the youth ministry help teach the gospel and important Biblical lessons to the children. Russo also mentions, “‘A lot of the kids that we work with at San Miguel, they don’t come from very good classes or backgrounds and a lot of their parents aren’t there sometimes, so it’s kind of good to know that you’re kind of helping influence their life later on.’” It is important for young adults these days to be exposed to new experiences, especially eyeopening experiences like missions trips that make them realize how fortunate they are, while also allowing opportunities for them to help improve areas that are less fortunate.
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“What I’ve learned is that loving someone can go a long way.” ~Pastor Lisette Del Rio
Conclusion From its humble beginnings, New Hope has changed considerably over the years. It has gone through location changes, building remodels, pastoral staff changes, and attendance changes in terms of its members. New Hope and its staff has thought of and developed countless new ministries, events, and outreach opportunities for its members to participate in. Through all of these changes, New Hope manages to remain true to the values it’s had since its foundation, and tries to instill positive qualities in its members. The New Hope community is more than just a church fellowship, it is a tight-knit family bound together by God. This family grows stronger, with more time spent together, and more experience together.
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“As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend.� ~Proverbs 27:17
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’s e r e h t and u o y s ” ve . t o i l t d u o o G “ o ab d n a c u o y g n i io R l e noth D e ett s i L r o t ~Pas
Works Cited “Business Etiquette.” Career Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. “Community Service: Top 10 Reasons to Volunteer.” Students.ucsd.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. Del Rio, Lisette. Personal interview. 23 Feb. 2014. Donna. Personal interview. 23 Feb. 2014. “Dream Center.” Dream Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. “Halloween Safety.” University Health Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. “Leadership Characteristics.” Leadership Characteristics. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014. “Mission, Vision and Values.” Newhopeic.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. Russo, Daniel. Personal interview. Mar. 2014. “Teaching Manners.” BYU David O. McKay School of Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
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Arlene Garcia Oriel is a student at Los Altos High
School and Freestyle Academy. She was born in the town of Villasis, Pangasinan in the Philippines on November 24, 1996.
Unity in Faith
She and her family moved to California when she was only three years old. Having only been exposed to the Ilocano and Tagalog languages while living in the Philippines, most of the English she knew at that early age had been picked up from the kids’ shows she watched, such as “Arthur” and “Dragon Tales.” Since then, her English has greatly improved, and she now uses her skills in her work at school and in the writing
Written and Designed by Arlene Oriel
she does in her spare time. Other things she enjoys doing in her spare time are listening to music, hanging out with her friends, and spending quality time with her family. She has a great love for Studio Ghilbi movies, chinchillas, fireworks, jokes, and all the amazing people she’s been lucky enough to have befriended in her life. Someday, Arlene wishes to travel and to make tons of new and unforgettable memories.
Arlene Oriel
all around the world with friends to experience new things
Unity in Faith