LIFE COMMUNITY YEAR-END LETTER
JANUARY 2025
Dear Life Community Church Family,
“Well, here we are!” This is something my family teases me for saying on every family video clip I take. A while back, we started a family tradition of documenting events and meaningful moments throughout the year with short intentional video clips and pictures. Then, every New Year’s Day, we sit down and watch the past year on a big screen. So much happens in the course of a year that we tend to forget.
I feel like it’s similar in church life — so many things are constantly happening that it’s easy to forget the impact being made on individual lives — unless we take time to pause and reflect. Throughout the Bible we are often instructed to remember what God has done. So, ‘here we are!’, already into 2025, but before we leave last year in the past I want to pause to remember and celebrate some of the many things that God has done. And most importantly, to say THANK YOU!
As I think back, I am amazed at what God has done in the past year in and through you. YOU are Life Community Church, and the Kingdom of God is advancing through YOU! So many people were impacted and blessed because of your faithfulness, generosity and support. Whether you are relatively new or have called Life Community your home for quite a while, THANK YOU for all that you have done and continue to do. Your impact is reaching the local community as well as blessing so many people around the world.
This year we were blessed to see children, youth and adults make decisions to follow Jesus for the first time, get baptized and rededicate their lives to Him! It would take too many pages to share all the stories, but here are a few of the 2024 highlights:
Every week hundreds of kids and youth in our church learn the Bible, grow in their walk with Jesus and are encouraged to share their faith. A single mom wrote me to express her gratitude (especially to our kids’ team). She was new to our church and had been nervous about her kids connecting but said that the staff and volunteer teams made them LOVE CHURCH. Meanwhile she has been able to heal and grow. Thank you for giving and serving to make this possible!
More than 50 amazing volunteers led our ‘Hometown Nazareth’ VBS, where nearly 150 kids were loved and learned the Good News of Jesus!
Our youth ministry has expanded this year, both in students, staff and in volunteer leaders who disciple our youth each week. Our youth pastoral team launched a leadership program where our kids are being developed in leadership and communication skills with opportunities to teach peers. Through your generosity, many of our students had the opportunity to attend White Out and a regional youth camp that our team planned and led.
More than 260 individuals found community through Life Groups this past fall, and we enter 2025 with around 60 people being discipled and making disciples through Replicate Groups.
Women’s and Men’s Ministries grew and impacted many lives through events like The Table, IF Conference, Fall Retreat, Breakfasts, Daddy Daughter Dance and Axe & Ember.
Family Ministry hosted The Art Of Marriage, where many marriages were encouraged. Zeo, our college and young adult ministry, developed community and dug deep into scripture.
Amazing volunteer teams helped created a warm and welcoming environment as they brought cookies, greeted at front doors and helped newcomers connect.
Weekend services welcomed many newcomers over the year. At our holiday services, we ministered to more than 1400 people and the gospel was preached to many! Lots of people received prayer through our ministry team over the year, and we saw God answer and meet people in their need. Around 40 were baptized at our July 3rd river event alone!
2024 was also a year of great impact outside the walls of the church:
This past fall you raised more than $60,000 at the Chili Cook-Off for world missions, allowing us to complete a building for Father To The Fatherless in Uganda, feed orphans for a year through Outpour Movement in Thailand and see the gospel preached around the world!
Our church supported the work of Youth With a Mission, Navigators, Young Life, FCA, AOI, Community Food Bank, our local homeless shelter and multiple other ministries throughout the year, to meet needs and spread the gospel. During the past year, our church was able to invest almost $190,000 in missions and outreach both locally and around the world!
You cooked LOTS of turkeys for Thanksgiving Together! Our church partnered with several other area churches to prepare and deliver 1,800 meals to people in our community.
We took many of you down to Ensenada, Mexico, for the first time on our largest ever Homes Of Hope mission trip. Families received shelter and security in new homes that you helped finance and build, and it was so encouraging to hear how it impacted everyone that went!
Your Angel Tree gifts impacted and personally blessed so many local foster kids. I was blown away by all the gifts under the Christmas tree this year!
You helped serve and impact men, women and children on the Apache Nation.
Many people in our community were blessed with clothing because of your donations and service during our annual Clothing Giveaway! One mom asked, “Do I have to pay for this?” and had tears in her eyes when she was told it was a free gift.
As I reflect on the last year, there have been many blessings! There are so many new faces at Life Community. We’ve welcomed lots of new babies into the church and more are on the way! I’m also reminded of some lives we have lost in recent years, we remember them with gratitude for the lives they lived, their love and the impact they made. We won’t forget them.
As our church grows, we continue to seek God for what He has for us in the future. This year, He provided an amazing 32-acre property just west of our current location that we were able to purchase, thanks to your ongoing generosity. As we we enter 2025, we are beginning to dream and plan for what God has in store for our church long term!
As our church leadership looks back on the previous 12 months, we are so grateful for your generosity, faithfulness and support of the many ways Life Community serves and reaches out both locally and around world. If you would like more detailed information on how our church is investing in Kingdom ministry, please reach out to me directly and we can set up a time to connect.
We head into 2025 with anticipation of all that God will do through our church! YOU are the church. Thank you so much for all the ways you are saying YES to God and partnering with Him!
-Tim Nutting
Lead Pastor
Life Community Church
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 1:3-6 (NIV)
