Our Story

ACT 1: PREPARING TO LAUNCH

It all started in Austin, Texas. John Blue and his wife Chris had been given a specific idea of what God desired them to do as first-time church planters. One point which really stuck with them before moving across the country to start a church in Southern California was learning to value and love those in their immediate sphere of influence. Loving God could never be separated from loving others. Get it! Give it! Live it! Learn God’s story, hear the story of others, give your story away when asked, and live it out—“preach the Gospel, use words if necessary.” This is the core mission for what kind of church Pacific Pointe was to be.
 
ACT 2: SECOND TIME IS THE CHARM

John and Chris, four kids, one Suburban… and 24 hours of driving between Austin and Irvine. In July of 2006, the Blue clan headed for sunny California. First things first, they gathered a small leadership team, rented a location, picked a time to meet on Sundays, and chose the church name—Pacific Hills Church. With a simple, but powerful, message: Love God, love people, John and Chris laid out a vision of large numbers of believers coming together right from the start so that, from out of this group, there would be opportunities to plant new churches. Quickly, though, they confronted a growing gap between what they EXPECTED would happen, and what actually DID
happen. A series of events forced John and Chris to replace the worship leader, rename the church and change the service location and time. However, at the end of January 2007, Pacific Hills re-launched with renewed vigor as Pacific Pointe Church of Irvine. To date, we still meet every Sunday from 10:00-11:30 a.m. at Vista Verde Elementary School. This school provides a perfect venue for meeting neighbors and creating a community church. God has blessed PPC in too many ways to count since the then.
 
ACT 3: THE FUTURE IN LIGHT OF THE PAST

Life is a journey; so is our faith. Church life is no different. And at this phase of the process, many of the key lessons learned to date center around what was actually the main thrust for starting a church in the first place—loving God more deeply and loving others selflessly. Only now, this ideal had been tested, weathered by hard times and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. As one poet puts it, often times we “return to the place we began and know it for the first time.”
 
 
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