Saturday, April 6, Ray Wehri was officially appointed as a ministry leader for our facilities ministry. We deeply appreciate Ray’s commitment and his desire to serve God and the church family. We also asked the congregation to be prayerfully considering Chris Brackett to be part of our pastoral team. We’re excited about the leaders God is raising up in our church and…
Sacramento, CA
Sacramento, CA
We recently changed our tag line, and I know some people are wondering why. Are we just trying to be trendy? When we changed the name of the church to The Orchard, it was important to to us that we identify ourselves as a church (since our name doesn’t have something like “Church” or “Christian Fellowship” in it). We didn’t want people…
EFCA ReachGlobal Crisis Response is uniquely positioned to bring the hope of Christ following Hurricane Harvey. YOUR HELP IS NEEDED The full extent of Hurricane Harvey’s impact on families and communities served by local EFCA churches across the Texas coastline is still unknown. Our goal is to raise $1 million for initial response efforts. Early assessments show almost every EFCA church in…
This is a post from the EFCA Now blog. If you haven’t yet, please read our post: The Gospel, Racism and the EFCA. An Open Letter to Those Who are Struggling Aiming for the kingdom of God through racial strife. Alejandro Mandes Dear EFCA family, This is an open letter to all who are struggling to figure out what comes next or how…
The Orchard is part of an association of churches known as the Evangelical Free Church of America. This is an abridged version of a statement released by the EFCA: We in the EFCA are grieved by the events last week in Charlottesville, Virginia. The EFCA stands firmly on the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are committed to uphold the truth of the…
The Bible makes very clear that certain practices are right and others are wrong. Murder and adultery are always wrong; loving God and loving each other are always right. But there are many practices that aren’t clearly endorsed or prohibited in Scripture. The 14th chapter of Romans warns us not to argue about matters of personal conscience. (And, surprisingly, it’s the believer…
Does the Bible teach distinct roles for men and women in the church? This debate is a frequent and sometimes heated one in the church today. We recognize the sensitive nature of this question. It’s understandably an emotional issue, and one that touches people deeply. Naturally, this subject affects women in ways it doesn’t affect men. But most men under a certain…
Sexuality is a gift from God. We’re wonderfully created with a capacity and desire for intimate relationship and companionship. We’re able to unite with another person in a way that affects us physically, emotionally and even spiritually, and God invites us to be part of the very creation process through reproduction. But Scripture also teaches that the most intense intimacy is only…
Christians receive the Holy Spirit when they place their faith in Jesus Christ and become his (1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 1:13-14; Romans 8:9). Every believer is baptized in the Holy Spirit. We also see in Scripture that God may, at times, specially fill us with his Spirit (Acts 4:8, 31; 13:9), and that we are to continually seek for our lives to…
When a person in the first century converted to a new faith, a common way they would publicly demonstrate to everyone their conversion was through baptism. First century Jews saw this as something Gentiles did to show they were converting to the Jewish faith. So for the Jewish people to be baptized by John demonstrated real humility. They were confessing they needed…