Twin Lakes Church 50 Years In Aptos

Well, good morning everybody who's happy to be in church today. What a wonderful day of celebration! My name is René, and I'm another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. It's super great to have you here with us on this special day where we celebrate the anniversary of our church's campus here in Aptos. Actually, this is the exact weekend 50 years ago in 1973 that this whole property was dedicated to the service of God, and we're just celebrating that today.

You might have noticed if you came in late, you're like, "Why are they singing 'Lord, I Lift Your Name on High'? I haven't heard that song in a few decades." Hey, listen, we are taking a musical journey back through time—great songs over the last 50 years, new songs, and we have some more surprises for you as well. There's so much fun stuff coming up. So I thought that we'd kind of get the sermon part of this started with some 1973 fun facts. Are you ready for this?

In 1973, a gallon of gas was 59 cents. And you know what? We still complained because that had gone up 20 cents in a year. I think there's a lesson in there for all of us. But in 1973, you want to know the average cost of a house in Santa Cruz? No, you don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway. It was twenty-five thousand dollars, earth tone furnishings not included.

But all was not great in 1973 because, on the other hand, in 1973, no Gales Bakery, in 1973 no Farm Bakery, in 1973 no Kelly's Bakery—no bakeries. So if you wanted baked goods in 1973, you know what you got? Hostess cupcakes is what you got. In 1973, Scotts Valley still had Santa Claus. In 1973, the boardwalk still had truly terrifying rides. How many of you remember the Wild Mouse? That was crazy! In 1973, Willie Mays retired, the Oakland A's won the World Series. Don't applaud, Oakland A's fans. And in 1973, a new church campus opened here in Aptos, so let's celebrate!

So there's a couple of groups I really want to recognize. Just kind of a quick show of hands: How many of you have actually been at Twin Lakes Church all 50 years? Can you raise your hands? We've got a couple over there. Keep them up. Keep them up. Yeah! Let's thank these people for their faithfulness to wonderful.

All right, now I'm going to ask this next group to stand. Listen carefully: If you have served or are currently serving on staff at Twin Lakes Church or any of our associated ministries—the preschool, the school—if you served at Camp Hammer, Cruise Kids, full or part-time in any capacity in any of the last 50 years, would you please stand right now so we can thank you for your service? Look at these people! You are a part of this history that we are celebrating today.

Well, listen, whether you've been here all 50 or this is your very first day, I keep meeting people who are here for the first time this weekend at every single service. Well, you picked a great day to be here because this is a party today, and we even have some party favors! We have all kinds of different stickers that graphic designer Kayla Tobach designed. Some of them are decals, some of them are stickers that you can put on your car or put on a binder, put on your forehead—whatever you'd like. And also, we got two different kinds of coffee mugs for you. We've got a yearbook that we put together that may have your picture in it of all kinds of the different years and some of the many momentous things. We couldn't put anything in here—everything in here of the 50 years in Aptos, 1973 to 2023.

Oh, and we also have free food! We've got Busy Bee in Capitola. They brought quiche, they brought salad, they brought brand-new fresh baked cinnamon rolls, and they're making it all right here in our kitchen. So it is so fresh. It is so good. I was late because I was eating; it is fantastic!

But wait, is this partying biblical? Check this out: 1st Samuel 7. The Prophet Samuel holds a national celebration, and he puts up a stone, a monument, and the Bible says he names it Ebenezer, which kind of sounds funny, but it actually has a beautiful meaning: it means "thus far the Lord has helped us." And what that story teaches is once in a while, you got to stop and remember, "thus far the Lord has helped us." So say that out loud with me: "thus far the Lord has helped us." That is what this weekend is all about. It is a "thus far the Lord has helped us" moment in our church's history.

And you want to know why that's important? Because the key to having confidence for our future is seeing how God has worked in our past over and over and over again. And so we wanted to kick this message part of the service off by hearing from some of the people who have been here and seen this happen for all 50 years in this six-minute mini-documentary film of what got us to this moment.

I've been attending Twin Lakes since 1942. I can remember going to church in the Little Brown Church. I remember when they built the facility on 7th Avenue and the vision that the church had. Pastor Craft had vision, and the church started to grow. That 7th Avenue property was built with volunteers. Through the 50s, the church grew. They did some remodeling; they've added Sunday schools. The church had bought up the block almost behind it, and they built areas out there for Sunday school and stuff that keeps going and kept going.

About 1968, we realized that we could not build anything more there. We needed parking, we needed buildings, we needed essentially everything. The church had grown to a membership of 1,700 people, and there was no place to put anymore. We were growing, and we had to do something. So they started a program called "Big Step of Faith." About 1970, they had a vote to go ahead and explore and build, and we found this property here. It was in its natural condition, other than the fact that there was a flower grower growing some flowers on it. They had open fields—basically nothing. It was fairly flat.

The church had a special meeting, a dinner meeting at Mount Herman. After that dinner meeting and a meeting in the auditorium, the vote was taken that the church would agree to go ahead with the master plan. Well, it wasn't 100%, but it was close. It was in the 90%. The church of 1,700 members had to raise over a million dollars. But a million dollars in 1971 was way different than a million dollars today. It's way, way over that. Roy Careft was very good at explaining to the people how to express your faith and where to go from the challenge before you.

I can remember how excited the community was. They wanted to see what was going on. These three buildings—the little nursery building, the auditorium building, and the administration—were all the first phase. The most important thing is not what we plan to do. The most important thing will not be in the form of buildings. The most important thing that will take place on this parcel of ground is what we allow God to do.

I was impressed with how beautiful it was and what a beautiful place it was. I just thought I was just having the nursery building with everything being new and beautifully done and so welcoming to the parents and to the children. We feel so honored that we were the first ones married at this location. The orange carpet was really nice—orange!

This church means everything to us, and it has for 50 years. We've had people surround us to encourage us in the good times and in the hard times—in the loss of our son. They surrounded us with food and with love and with tears. In every case, Christ was always there for us, feeling the strength coming from not only God but from the people here at church as well.

In 2016, the children's education building opened, and since that time, we've grown from about 280 to 400 students. In 2021, we built our new college ministry center and loft coffee, and since then, we have seen God do amazing things as the ministry has grown to over a hundred every single week. Back in October of 2022, we launched our fourth weekend service, now in Spanish—Twin Lakes en Español. We are growing, we are blessed, and even right now, we are planting a church in Chile. Soon, we hope to replace these old modular buildings with a community outreach center—a permanent home for People's Pantry, our recovery groups, and so much more.

I still remember that day when Paul Spurlock called me to ask what it would take to feed the hungry for a month. I told him it would take 50,000 pounds to feed the hungry for a week, which was 20 times more than Twin Lakes Church had ever raised before. That Thanksgiving, Twin Lakes raised 50,000 pounds of food. It took six trucks to pick it all up. Twin Lakes has done more than any church in America to feed families and seniors, raising over 10 million pounds of food.

I actually think that Twin Lakes is an inspiration for my work every single day. The work that we are doing here is something we're doing together, whether it be through our social net or educating our next generation of leaders. Twin Lakes has a very, very special place in Aptos and our broader community. Congratulations on 50 years, and I'm really excited to know that you will anchor this community for the next 50. I thank God every day that I can be a part of this congregation and be part of the fellowship here at Twin Lakes. I don't know where I would be without it.

Fifty years is a lot of years, but it's been good years. It's been great years. There have been hard times; there have been good times. It seems to get better all the time. Yes, it does! God is good!

You know one thing you may not know, but I know you'll find this fascinating, is that for 50 years, every single building on this campus, we also built a facility overseas on the mission field. In other words, for example, our classroom building that we built just lately for our school and for our children's ministries, we also built a classroom building and a clinic at a children's home, Little Flock, that we work with in India. So when you walk around here, just try to envision that—the ministry of this church spreading literally all over the globe.

But best of all, over the last 50 years on this campus, as best we were able to figure it this last week, about 3,000 people have been baptized, and 200 people have come through here and have subsequently gone into full-time Christian service, usually as a pastor or as a missionary. So let's give God glory for that too! That's what it is all about. Praise God!

And now we have just one more building. If you see on the model yet, I hope you don't leave without seeing the historical displays in the lobby. It's fascinating! We have the original balsa wood and plaster model of this place and all the buildings on the old master plan, except for this one right here. I hope to call it the Craft Outreach Center as a permanent home where the modulars are currently corroded, and we hope to have a permanent home for our most effective outreach ministries like People's Pantry and the recovery facilities and more. If you would like to get more information on that, we've got a little sheet of paper by the model that you can pick up to find out about it, and Lord willing, you'll hear more about that in a few months.

But why are we even doing any of this? Let's stop talking about the building. Let's talk about what God wants to build right here in us. Grab your message notes. You might have noticed that the bulletins today are designed to look exactly like the bulletins back on that day in 1973. In fact, if you open it up, you'll see the message notes of the very first sermon ever preached in this building in 1973 by Pastor Roy Craft. You've heard his name a lot. If you don't know who he is, he was senior pastor here for 47 years.

So when we were putting all this together, we went through so many boxes of slides and photographs and memorabilia. My son David actually started cataloging all these boxes and boxes of tapes—real-to-real tapes and old dusty cassettes that we just didn't even know what was on them. About three weeks ago, maybe he says, "Dad, you'll never believe what I found! I found a tape recording of the very first service in this building." We put the tape on, and I was astonished as I heard unspooling out of this tape words that probably haven't been heard for decades—the words of Pastor Craft's first sermon. I just feel like of all the tapes, of all the thousands of tapes that David could have picked up and listened to, the fact that he was led to listen to this one was just of God.

Because in this message, Pastor talks about the six foundation stones of Twin Lakes Church—like what is it that we are actually built on? He started out with this verse. He said in Philippians 3:14, the Apostle Paul says, "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." That phrase, the upward call of God, captured his imagination because he said, "Yeah, God is calling us to something. God is calling us to aspire to something as individuals and as a congregation of people who claim to follow Jesus Christ." What is it that God is calling us to here?

He said we have plans for this place. We may have our goals and our objectives, but we need to ask, "What are God's goals for us as a church?" And so what he decided to do was look up all the times the Apostle Paul talked about God's call. You hear a lot of people say, "God's called. God called me to move to Phoenix. God called me to start a bakery," or whatever. But in the Bible, what does God actually call you to do? Well, there are only six times that the Apostle Paul, in his epistles in the Bible, uses that phrase. And so he decided to call these six things the six foundation stones. He said, "You know what? This is what our church is going to be built on for the next 50 years." Well, I was riveted as I listened to this because I was asking myself, "Was his prayer answered?" If you call this your church home, let's call this our 50-year checkup. Were we built on this foundation, so as he prayed that we would be? Was his prayer answered by God?

I mean, I'm writing these things down one by one, and what I decided to do is preach this sermon with Pastor Craft from that tape. If you're here for the church for the very first time, this is what this church was meant to be about from day one. So Pastor Craft kicked it off. I want to give you six words—six words that you can remember from today.

First of all, in Galatians 1:6, we are called into the grace of Christ. I want that this church shall be a place that shall perpetually sound out the word, the grace of God. It should be a sounding board for the grace of God. I want to lay that down as one of the six foundation stones of our ministry in this place as we look to the future. God does not call us to a life of worthlessness. God does not call us to a life of slavery. God calls us into his grace, and some of you this morning may wonder what that means. Grace is the loving favor of God, and we want to sound out this truth that we are here to tell men and women of the grace of God. This is the upward call. Amen?

You know, we're trying to do something here. We are trying to build a church on the principle of grace and not guilt. Because you know how long guilt motivation lasts? As long as the guilt. And that's why pastors and guilt-motivated churches have to constantly stoke up the guilt all the time. But when you truly understand God's grace, then you change based on gratitude and not on guilt. Now that sounds awesome. That sounds great, but it turns out it is so easy to turn away from grace and to a semi-religious idea that goes something like this: "Just do less bad things and more good things, and then you'll please God and go to heaven." And I totally get that this is a very personal thing for me because for many years, I was right there.

Now, the problem is you never know if you're doing enough or even what really to do, and so I was so dry spiritually, even though I was trying so hard. I felt the distance between me and my God just growing. I was burdened by these chains of legalism, and then one day my whole life changed when I opened up my Bible and I read what turned out to be the very verse the Pastor Craft quoted in this very first sermon: Galatians 1:6. Paul's writing to a church 20 centuries ago, and he says, "I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ, and you're turning to a different gospel, that gospel based on works." I read that, and it was like suddenly my chains were gone, and I was set free. I realized that grace means God is generous, even though some religious people like to make him seem stingy. Grace means salvation is free, even though some religious people try to add a hefty price tag. Grace means no one is better than anyone else. We are all the same. We are all sinners in need of a Savior. Grace is what it's all about in the Christian life, from beginning to end, from top to bottom, backwards to forwards.

How many of you raise your hand are glad that you are saved and known by God based on grace and not your good deeds? I am counting on grace! And grace is why on the old Twin Lakes bulletins they always have that saying at the bottom of the first page. We put it there again. Do you see it there? It said this: "To all who mourn and need comfort, to all who are weary and need rest, to all who are friendless and need friendship, to all who are lonely and need companionship, to all who sin and need a Savior, and to whosoever will, this church opens wide its doors and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ says, 'Welcome!'" May that always be true here at Twin Lakes Church. Amen!

Because you know what that leads to? When you are steeped in grace, then that leads to the second building block of this church. Secondly, the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 5:13 that we are called to freedom or liberty. There may be some of you today who say, "Oh, that I could just be free from the slavery of myself, the habits, or whatever it may be." My friend, there is freedom! God calls us to freedom. He calls us to liberty, and that's through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen?

The verse he quotes is from later in the book of Galatians. Paul says, "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love." That means you do not have to be a slave to your sins, to your addictions, to your compulsions, to your bad habits, to your character flaws. You can truly, really be set free by God's grace.

You know, I got the female one among many, so like this: what God did in my life during this past year was help me quit drinking. It was a miracle! I asked Jesus to calm my storm and enter my sinking craft, and you know what? He did! I started attending the Monday night recovery group at TLC. It hasn't been an easy road, but God has met me along the way. I'm really living for the first time. That kind of freedom comes from grace, and it leads to this.

There is a third time that the Apostle Paul uses the calling of God as a prize or a goal for the Christian life, and it's in 1 Corinthians 1:9, where he says we are called into the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what fellowship is? We were at someone's home the other night and had fellowship around the table—enjoyed a lovely dinner. That's fellowship! Fellowship is sharing. When you share your home, when you share your food, when you share your faith, God has called you and me to share in the marvelous things that Jesus Christ has for us. God isn't interested in making you a slave. God doesn't want you to become a little puppet. God wants you to enjoy him. Don't you love that? God doesn't want you to be a slave; he wants you to enjoy him, be his friend, not be his puppet. We're called into fellowship with Jesus and fellowship with each other.

And that means no matter what you are going through right now, you are not alone. Jesus is there with you, and we are there with you. I got to tell you, I experienced this personally. Somebody asked me this week, "How come you're still here after 30 years now, René?" And I'll tell you, it's things like this: when my own mom was slowly dying of Alzheimer's disease and we were taking care of her at home—those of you who've been caretakers know how tough that is—and you know what? Her friends and the people, some people who didn't even know her here at this church stepped up, helped us care for her, gave us breaks from caring for her. It was the fellowship together that helped us walk our mom through her last journey.

This is so important. You know, it's easy here in Santa Cruz to hear people say things like, "It's cool that you're a pastor, René," or "Cool that you're a Christian," but I can worship God in the forest, right? And I always say, "I hope you do worship God in the forest. I love to worship God in the forest, but a tree's not going to visit you in the hospital." And that's why you need fellowship also. You know, the Bible says God is faithful and has called you into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and fellowship with one another. And one great opportunity to plug in is this next weekend. We're going to launch our fall series, Explore God—just a short seven-week series. We're going to talk about the top ten questions people have about faith, like how can I even know there's a God? Why should I trust the Bible? And I'll be addressing these in church, but the fellowship happens in the small groups. If you've been wanting to get connected, this is your chance! No prior Bible knowledge needed. These are just discussion groups—just an hour or so, only for seven weeks. You are not signing up for life! If your group is weird, it's just seven weeks, you know? And you can sign up at TLC.org/smallgroups, and Jennifer's out at a table out by the quiches after service.

The whole idea of fellowship leads right into the next point. And then there is another calling of God in 1 Corinthians 7:15, where the Apostle Paul mentions that God has called us to peace. We want to be a place where men and women not only can hear of the grace of God, where they can be delivered from themselves and join the fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, but also where men and women can learn how to live together peacefully, one with another. You know, I was thinking 1973, just like 2023, was not a time of peace. Look at these Time magazine covers—all from 1973: Watergate, Can Trust Be Rebuilt? War in the Middle East, Congress in Crisis. Right? And what about the challenge to our democracy—historic challenges to democracy? Does any of that sound familiar? Has the news changed? Are they recycling news?

People back then were tense; they were divided; they were politicized. And that's why I really love what Pastor Kraft said in an interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel when he retired. He said, "I had to learn people do not need to hear my politics. They need to hear just two things: to be loved and fed—loved by Jesus and fed by the Word of God." Can I hear an amen from the congregation? May that spirit continue here when people walk through those doors. We want this place to be an atmosphere of peace. Why? Because Jesus Christ brings us peace. He died for our sins. He was dead. He rose again, giving us freedom from fear of death, freedom from fear of God's judgment, freedom from fear of the future. And so he gives us peace, and that leads to this point.

There is another place where the great Apostle Paul refers to this great upward calling of God, and it's in 1 Thessalonians 4:7, where he says that God has called us unto sanctification. He's called us to know what it is to have a clean mind and a pure heart—not to be more holy than others but to experience in our lives, by his power and grace, that we can live in a world today that's saturated with sin and yet live victoriously. Amen?

You know, Pastor Kraft put this fifth for a reason. Because if you put this number one, if you start with this, you can completely misunderstand how Christianity works. You really have to start with the grace of God and then the freedom that you find both from legalism and from sin in God's grace. And then you find fellowship in the assembly of other people who follow Jesus, and you find peace with God and peace with others. Then you can understand verses like, "God did not call us to be impure but to live a holy life." And holiness is not about becoming more religious; this is about growth. This is about making progress. This is about getting unstuck. This is about not driving full speed down dead-end roads. This is about making positive change. This is about becoming more like Jesus. Doesn't that sound good?

But here's the thing: the gospel never says just don't do something—do not sin. The Bible, the gospel, always replaces the negative with a positive, and that's how it motivates us to change, which dovetails right into the final building block. And then there's one more little verse: 2 Peter 1:3, where God has called us to glory. God is calling men and women to share in the glory of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. How thrilled we were last week to move into this plant! What a vast difference between this and the little brown church where we started. What a lovely experience to move into a beautiful facility this morning. But my friend, this isn't a drop in a bucket to that which God has for those who love him. Can you imagine what it would be like to quietly slip from this life in just a moment of time and wake up in a place that God has been preparing for those who love him, where he has lavished all of his power, all of his splendor, all of his glory?

Not only that, I want to tell you, my friend, today that God calls you and me into the friendship with the Lord Jesus Christ that you and I may now not only wait until we die but now experience the glories of knowing Jesus Christ and learning to walk and talk with him daily. What a blessing! What a joy! Doesn't that sound good? But how do you do that?

Let me tell you a story. Nicholas Herman was a professional soldier in Europe in the 1600s. He got terribly injured and decided to leave war behind and become a monk. He changed his name to Brother Lawrence, and he had visions of becoming a great monk, a scholar monk, maybe a Bible translator monk. But instead, they gave him kitchen cleanup duty. After 15 years, they called him into the office. They said, "We're giving you a promotion to sandal repair monk." At first, he was really disappointed, but eventually learned to see God's glory, to walk and talk with Jesus in every little thing, even in sandal repair. He wrote a book about it called "The Practice of the Presence of God," seeing God's glory even in the dishes.

You can do it like this: You may not be repairing sandals or doing KP, but you're probably going to be stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 1 this week, I'm just guessing—commuting, doing errands. Do you see the leaves on the trees just over the sound wall? Think of a complicated DNA that the Creator wove into them so they can live. Look up at the birds on the power lines—God's design to enable them to fly. Fly! That's amazing! And keep looking up. What about the clouds overhead? The water they contain is among the rarest substances in the universe, and we get to enjoy it in abundance. Hey, what about the people in the cars next to you? Jesus loves them so much he gave his life for them. And now see it all—it's all a gift! It's all grace! God didn't need to make the leaves, the birds, the clouds, or people, but he did. And the one who brought all those things into existence loves you, and he loves them. You can learn more about him in the Word of God, about his character, his love, his gentleness.

Like the Apostle Paul says in another verse, "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image, his character, with ever-increasing glory." From day one, this church was not about growing by obsessing on the bad stuff you shouldn't do; it was about growing by contemplating the glories of Jesus. And that's why at TLC, we don't focus on all the bad stuff. If you want a bad stuff fix, you can watch the news for that. We focus on Jesus, on his glories, his glorious Savior, his glories he reveals to you every day.

And so I'll let Pastor Kraft bring it home. So although we have plans for this parcel of ground, I want you to know that as we project our thinking ahead, we are primarily concerned that we shall hear sound forth these six notes: the grace of God, the liberty that is ours in the gospel, the fellowship with one another and with Christ, the peace that God brings in our hearts and in our homes, the sanctification of a life that is lived for the glory of God, and the glory that Jesus Christ brings into our lives now. Amen!

Those are these six foundation stones of this church. If you're visiting, that's the DNA of this church. And if this is your home church, you know what I'd love to do right now? I'd love to rededicate ourselves for the next 50 years to those six foundation stones. Does that sound good to you today? Then let's stand together. Would you stand with me? And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to actually pray the very first prayer prayed in this building. I heard it on that tape. This was written by Roger Moore, who was another one of the pastors here. This was the dedication prayer, and listen to how relevant these words still are in this moment. Would you bow your heads with me as I pray?

Father, at this moment, we are aware of all that has been done—the many prayers, the many hours, the oceans of dedication that caused this moment to be possible. Mostly, we stand humbled at your faithfulness to us. And now we look forward, Father, to the days now ahead of us. May we be more dedicated as we serve Jesus Christ to be a people of grace, a people of freedom, a people of fellowship, of peace, of holiness, and of glory. And we give you thanks in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.