Networking people and places to be a Net that works

Our Mission and Desire is to create a community of relational networks in Laguna Beach that experience and express the love and power of God.

Net-Works Laguna Beach 501 (c) (3) is both a non-profit and a Christian Community (member of Association of Vineyard Churches).

GATHERINGS

Sunday Gathering

9:00 am Breakfast, 10 am Weekly gathering. We meet at the Womans Club of Laguna Beach 286 St. Ann’s Drive, Laguna Beach, CA 92651. The Purpose of our Sunday Gathering is to:

Re-Unite

Rejoice

Be Re-Envisioned

Be Renewed and Resourced

Be Released into the real world to share God’s love

Monday

Adult Children of Alcoholics group 6:30 p.m. Net-Works “living room” 303 Broadway, suite 107, Laguna Beach 92651

Tuesday

Refuge Recovery Group 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. Net-Works “living room” 303 Broadway, suite 107, Laguna Beach 92651

Tree of Life Support Group for family and friends of those struggling with mental illness We are affiliated with NAMI (national alliance of mental illness)

WEDNESDAY

Bagels and Bible

10:30 – 11:30 am At Net-Works "Living Room" 303 Broadway, Suite 107 Laguna Beach. Each week we look at and discuss the Bible in light of our relationship and journey with God. All are welcome! Healing Prayer

12:00 – 1:00 pm At Net-Works "Living Room" 303 Broadway, Suite 107 Laguna Beach. Every week we pray for those who are sick. Invite a friend who is needing healing.

Stairway to Heaven on KX93.5 - 7:30 A.M.

Each week we look at a song lyric or two and recognize that these lines are HEART-CRIES or PRAYERS that are common to humanity. They are what I call THEMES OF THE HEART concerning our journey here on earth.

Life is a journey that INVITES and DEMANDS US TO FIND ANSWERS beyond ourselves, giving us the love and help we need, to live and love as God intended.

My desire is to give some help and hope in connecting our hearts-cries with heaven. Check out the podcast page for past broadcasts: http://www.kx935.com/category/podcast/stairway-to-heaven-net-works/

Join Us Sunday Morning at Our New Location

Our Mission and Desire is to create a community of relational networks in Laguna Beach, Ca. that experience and express the love and power of God.

Our Sunday Gathering will be at:


Womans Club of Laguna Beach

10:00 a.m. 286 St. Ann’s Drive, Laguna Beach Breakfast at 9:30 a.m. 949.328.7230

Laguna Beach Net-Works

Our Story StartUp

Our journey with God has lead us to this special “missional adventure”.

On June 16, 2009, Don was driving in Laguna Beach and had a vision of Jesus appearing to him with a specific call from His heart. "He had a wire/chain around His neck that caught my attention. I immediately knew He wanted to create a necklace. Then I saw it finished with “diverse shaped and colored stones” making a beautiful necklace. Then He said to me, “I want to gather distinct people and groups in Laguna Beach that will become a community that will reveal me in and to Laguna Beach." After sharing this with Karen and some trusted friends and a good season of prayer, I shared this with our pastor Mike Hudgins. Everyone felt that God was speaking and we began to focus on this new assignment. Wise counsel came to us saying, “we need to live in Laguna Beach if we want to have credibility in Laguna Beach”. We sold our home in one day and got more money than we were asking for. Then we found a wonderful house to rent in one of the highest places of Laguna Beach. We started our first group in mid-January and have had a good start. We know God is with us to enable us to do what he called us to. Our desire is to invite you into partnership with us. Firstly, by praying for us and secondly, by asking God how you can serve. I hope the following info will help you understand who we are, what is our vision and the way we will accomplish it. Our desire is that this info will create a network of prayer, encouragement and financial support that will serve God’s purposes here in Laguna Beach and beyond.

    Then He said to me, “I want to gather distinct people and groups in Laguna Beach that will become a community that will reveal me in/to Laguna Beach.” The Purpose of our Sunday Gathering is to:

  • Re-Unite
  • Rejoice
  • Be Released into the real world to share God’s love
  • Be Re-Envisioned
  • Be Renewed and Resourced

Our Amazing Story

After sharing this with Karen and some trusted friends and a good season of prayer, I shared this with our pastor Mike Hudgins. Everyone felt that God was speaking and we began to focus on this new assignment. Wise counsel came to us saying, “we need to live in Laguna Beach if we want to have credibility in Laguna Beach”. We sold our home in one day and got more money than we were asking for. Then we found a wonderful house to rent in one of the highest places of Laguna Beach. We started our first group in mid-January and have had a good start. We know God is with us to enable us to do what he called us to.

Our desire is to invite you into partnership with us. Firstly, by praying for us and secondly, by asking God how you can serve. I hope the following info will help you understand who we are, what is our vision and the way we will accomplish it. Our desire is that this info will create a network of prayer, encouragement and financial support that will serve God’s purposes here in Laguna Beach and beyond.

His Sunday morning message is delivered at The Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach, starting with a breakfast at 9:30. By the afternoon, he is likely back at his Net-Works “Living Room” which is a place to talk, think, pray, and house group gatherings and events – located in the shopping plaza at 303 Broadway. His “flock” of friends, the poor, and the needy stop by regularly for soul-comforting, or a bite to eat, like on Wednesday mornings when he hosts “Bible & Bagels” (the space is conveniently next to Shirley’s Bagels). By Sunday evening he may be putting on his live KX93 radio show, “Stairway to Heaven” in which he features songs and lyrics talking about a higher love. “I do a little talk, and tie in some rock and roll songs,” says Don. “Life is a journey that invites and demands us to find answers beyond ourselves. My desire is to give some help and hope in connecting our heart-cries with heaven. It makes the Bible culturally current.”
The community of Laguna Beach is integral with Pastor Don’s mission. “I want to be a pastor in and to the city. Then I have the responsibility to love them and care for them. The city is my parish – my flock,” he says. “Embracing all the people – that’s what heaven is going to be like: community, shared life, diversity. A renaissance is coming of people sharing and doing life together.” The encompassing theme of Pastor Don’s philosophy is that humans are connected one to another, and all to God. He has formed The Laguna Beach “Net-Works”, an affiliation with the association of Vineyard Churches, to bring people together for Sunday gatherings “to celebrate and encourage our identity and mission as God’s people” and weekly groups “to help others pursue their passions and heal their pain” as well as other weekly community “We love our city, Laguna Beach,” the mission statement reads. “We love its distinctiveness and heritage as both an artist’s colony and an eclectic marketplace community, as well as being a place of refuge, refreshment and beauty. “Our desire and mission is to live a life of love as Jesus did, making God and people visible.” To keep Net-Works funded, and as another form of sharing some community love, Don has also networked in retail fashion. He has just launched a new shop in town, Laguna Exchange.
Taken from article written in Stu’s News Laguna Exchange is a non-profit retail store featuring fashion and jewelry, and the neat trick is that the customer can buy, sell, or trade. This is not a thrift store, though the clothes are, for the most part, used. “I love fashion and clothes,” says Don. “Plus a place to offer retail with a purpose.” Modeled after the Buffalo Exchange, this retail adventure offers the customer good quality, unique, and vintage items. Laguna Exchange is a buy, sell and trade store that purchases items outright (by appointment), receives them by donation, or pays for items with store credit. Don was thinking up the concept for a good year before they opened. He queried kids around town if they shopped at a Buffalo Exchange, and got a resounding yes. He raised money, and searched for the perfect location. The former bead store on South Coast Highway proved to be the right place at the right time. www.lagunaexchange.org instagram - laguna exchange
Each week we relate to many of the homeless of Laguna Beach. We invite and include them into “what’s ours” as a community. Every Sunday we feed around 60 "street-friends” that come from the shelter and the streets. Inviting them to eat with us has been a way to include them into our community and it’s gathering(s). Laguna Beach Street Art and Helping Hands FROM the Homeless are two opportunities for our street-friends to “come into a new season of life”. Laguna Beach Street Art is an opportunity to both be creative and to make some money each week. The homeless and local artists come together and create jewelry for sale in some of our stores in Laguna Beach. Helping Hands FROM the Homeless is a work program we have begun to help our homeless friends give back and get back into the workforce and move out of homelessness. www.fromthehomeless.org

Mission

“To network people and places to be a net that works.”

To create a community of relational networks in Laguna Beach that experience and express the love and power of God.

Our desire and call is to resemble Jesus in our person and mission. To continue His ministry by following His example (model) of recruiting many to be His followers.

Values

1. We value relationship with Jesus in which our identity, call and commission flows

2. We value relationships that serve to be and build community that will reveal and represent Jesus here in Laguna Beach and beyond

3. We value compassion that connects people to experience relationship and mission with God (our highest calling – what we all were made for)

4. We value God’s mission here on earth that invites men and women to know Him now and forever (the gift of eternal life).

5. We value local and international collaboration. We want to network believers to create nets that will “catch people” to be part of God’s missional family here on earth.

Pastoral Team

Net-Works Laguna Beach Staff.


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Don and Karen Sciortino
Pastors
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Paul and Terry Marchi
Pastoral Assistants

Net-Works Laguna Beach

Christian Church

How We Do It!

NETWORKS, NETS AND NEIGHBORHOODS

Networks that are relational – resourcing and reproducing. Like Jesus we want to invite people into relationship/friendship (with God and us) to bring/grow the resource of the Kingdom of God into our lives so we can be His disciples and reproduce disciples.

Nets –from these relational networks we want to create groups that will serve as “nets that work” (to catch and keep people). Within the contents of these groups we will build relationship, resource (heal and equip) individuals to release them to do more of the same. We will focus on two kinds of groups.

Nets –from these relational networks we want to create groups that will serve as “nets that work” (to catch and keep people). Within the contents of these groups we will build relationship, resource (heal and equip) individuals to release them to do more of the same. We will focus on two kinds of groups.

Community Groups and Target Groups

Community Groups are communities within the community. Our desire is to have many community groups in Laguna Beach where people can experience community, care and commission. To be part of a family that cares for itself and desires to invite many in Laguna Beach to be part. Each group will have a leadership team that will serve as pastors that will commit to the care and commission of each member. Part of each groups commission is to reproduce itself allowing for more groups to be formed in Laguna Beach and more leaders to arise and take their place. Each group will also identify a target mission in the city to serve and invite to be part of the family.

Target Groups -Focus in on specific interests or needs of people. Our desire is to be a very diverse community embracing the wonderful diversity of Laguna Beach. Our relational networks are full of common interests and needs that are waiting to be connected in the good of a group. Recovery groups, (such as 12 step and divorce recovery groups) teens and children groups, prayer groups, compassion groups (caring for poor), marketplace groups, art and drama groups, hiking groups and international missions groups are just a few. The more the merrier!

Neighborhoods - As God leads us to make and grow networks and build nets in strategic areas of the city; new neighborhoods will arise. God’s favor has been with us to love many. Downtown Laguna Beach has become our first neighborhood. Like Jesus, we are being divinely connected to those who are ready for love. We pray regularly for Him to show us “who are our neighbors” and those who are crying out “won’t you be my neighbor”. Our vision and desire is to reproduce neighborhoods all through the city.

Monthly Celebrations - These celebrations will bring us together for relationship, renewal and will re-envision us to be God’s missional family in Laguna Beach and beyond.