With the mentoring, guidance, prayer, and love already received from Antioch through the years, we will be able to receive more focused mentoring in the above areas. Our lead pastor and senior staff in particular, have appreciated the vision, modeling and personal investment which Antioch people have made in them. As a church which is innovating in a number of areas, Epicentre feels the deep desire to be in closer relationship with like-minded churches, coming under their covering, authority and wisdom.
Formalizing this relationship by becoming a formal member of the movement will increase this investment, as well as our ability to work synergistically with other Antioch churches and leaders. John and our senior leaders will receive the prayer, support and oversight of an Advisory Board whose role is to help give us wisdom and guidance we need. Our training school will have integration with theirs. We’ll be able to make use of West Coast Antioch resources and church plants, receive better support for our current and future missionaries, mentoring for staff members, and greater support and direction overall. Our church planting teams will join in the benefits of AMI (Antioch Ministries International) support. Our church planting teams will be able to take team members from Antioch churches. Epicentre people can join AMI church planting teams throughout the world.

back to top

Antioch has influenced Epicentre, even before it was officially Epicentre. Jimmy Seibert, the Lead Pastor at Antioch Community Church, has mentored our Lead Pastor John Lo and imparted vision for 9 years. Since then,
Antioch has provided resources including conferences, staff visits, and many hours or labor and love toward Epicentre and our staff and have easily been the most significant source of vision, values, modeling and practical guidance which John and Epicentre leadership have received. Along the way, Some of our key staff joined Epicentre , having been deeply influenced and impacted by Antioch, and excited with Epicentre’s relational partnership with Antioch over the years. Antioch has helped Epicentre think through lifegroups, our training school, missions models, and has been a key influence in our spirituality. Taking our God-given calling seriously has caused us to realize our deep need to come under the wisdom and oversight of those who are walking ahead of us.

back to top

Epicentre just celebrated its 7th anniversary! We’re so grateful to FEC Glendale and FECA for their generosity of heart and their modeling of vision to train the next generation and impact the nations. We feel like we are standing on their shoulders and have always been proud to be FECA’s newest member church. FECA has been the supporter and seed bed for our dreams and have shown us the way to pioneer new ways of serving God.

Because of the warmth of our relationship, we went to FECA more than one year ago with the question of what we should do with our desire to become an Antioch church and they said “Go for it!” FECA understands our calling and our need to learn and grow from Antioch and have made changes to enable us to do it. At the same time, this process also helped FECA realize it needed to make internal changes in order to allow its member churches to be more adaptable and innovative.

Independent of Epicentre becoming an Antioch member church, FECA is giving to local churches the responsibility of creating their own quality control and process of licensing/ordination. Local churches can also sponsor and control their own mission endeavors and funding in addition to FECA-sponsored efforts. And FECA is working to reduce the amount of mandatory joint meetings involving member churches. We feel this is a great step forward for FECA in growing to serve the larger vision and mission of FECA. Specific to Epicentre, the only mandatory meeting is the Delegates Convention, an annual meeting at the end of each year. That gives us more flexibility and openness to determine how we want to partner with, come alongside and serve FECA. We will still remain a FECA member church in addition to becoming an Antioch member church. Because this is an arrangement that is new and unusual, FECA recognizes that there will be challenges. We will review this relationship next year to see if there should be any changes.

In the meantime, we will continue to be involved with FECA in some aspects of missions ministry. Mentoring relationships (from FECA to Epicentre, and from Epicentre to FECA) will continue. Epicentre will be deciding on an event-by-event basis how we will choose to participate in various FECA functions (Social Concerns, spiritual formation workshops, pulpit rotation, etc.)

back to top

Antioch Community Church has a thriving family ministry. From children’s ministries to family lifegroups, we will be able to benefit from their experience, insight, and mentoring in these areas to give Epicentre a stronger family vision as well as initiatives to help us deepen these roots in our church. Many of the Antioch staff have larger families, so we feel we can glean not only from their ministries, but also their personal life experiences, convictions, and how they grow healthy marriages, raise children and serve God together as missional families.

back to top

We are working through a 9-page document called “Antioch Movement of Churches Policy Manual”, which covers five areas necessary to being an Antioch church: (1) Advisory Boards; (2) Financial Responsibility; (3) Distinctives; (4) Template for Boards; (5) Personnel. As elders and the executive team have looked at this document, we’ve been pleasantly surprised at the extremely high degree of overlap between this document and Epicentre’s current practices and values. The changes which we will need to make will be slight and, we believe, helpful. Those who would like a copy of this document may contact Lawrence Huey at lawrence@epicentrechurch.org.

back to top

We don’t foresee any significant changes to our statement of faith. Please see both Epicentre’s and Antioch’s Statement of Faith:

Epicentre Church – Statement of Faith

Antioch Community Church – Statement of Faith

back to top

This pursuit doesn’t impact Epicentre’s vision and values, rather it is the fulfillment and implementation of it. Our vision is to live out the 3R’s and become a church that plants other Epicentre churches throughout the world (vision and mission) actually came as a response to what we’ve seen and learned at Antioch. This is why we believe that becoming an Antioch church is a critical step in our fulfilling our destiny as a church.

back to top

In general, how we do church on a week-to- week and month-to-month basis should remain relatively the same. By that we mean that we still want change in terms of transformation in people’s lives, people coming to faith, multiplication of lifegroups, etc. These are positive changes that will continue to be at the heart of Epicentre’s dynamic ministry. However, how we do church really shouldn’t change but become more effective – Father-loving, Christ-centered, and Spirit-empowered as we live by faith. That said, we are sure that as God continues to lead Antioch and us, longer-term and structural changes may come about in the future.

As ministries which have come from Epicentre, Lincoln Heights and Malawi will continue to be overseen by Epicentre. However, over time, there might be things which we will learn in Antioch circles which will influence us, just as we believe that what we are learning in Malawi and Lincoln Heights may influence how Antioch churches do their ministries as well.

We have just begun a dialogue process with our missionaries in helping them to understand what this change will mean for them. Many are excited to become part of the AMI family. We do not intend to make any changes in terms of our sending structure right away, but will begin a transition process for our existing field workers over the next few years. As this will be one of our areas where we have a lot of growing to do, we realize our first step will just be in getting more education in terms of what our growth process will look like.

back to top

Over the past 24 months, the elders and staff of Epicentre have gone through an extensive process of prayer and dialogue. This included multiple meetings with FECA leaders and dialogue with Antioch leadership as well. At this point, Epicentre leaders, FECA leaders and Antioch leaders have agreed on the direction of Epicentre becoming an Antioch church. Because of the sensitive nature of these discussions, especially within FECA circles, we have not been able to bring these discussions to you, our members, until now.

We are now dialoguing with Epicentre members about this directional change and will hold a confirmatory vote in this direction (which will include the necessary revisions to our by-laws) when we feel that full and adequate discussion, dialogue and discernment have taken place.

back to top

Becoming an Antioch church requires that Epicentre create a board of advisors (trusted men and women of wisdom) which is the main place of external accountability for the church and for the senior pastor and spouse (Epicentre does not have an external board like this currently). Here’s what they focus on:

• Governance oversight for the church, specifically the senior pastor and his spouse.
• Lead decision making body for unresolved conflicts between the senior pastor and the church or staff.
• The board functions as the final authority in decision making for moral failure among elders and the senior pastors salary.
• The board is the primary place of pastoral care for the senior pastor and their spouse.

This is an important role of the board. Board members should be selected with this in mind.

The suggested board membership is 3 to 5 people, 2/3 of which come from within the Antioch movement. Epicentre would provide a monthly report to its board members and they would provide care, counsel and guidance on an as-needed basis. However, they would come to Pasadena once a year for a multi-day board meeting, where the following topics are covered: finances, staffing (focused on the big picture and staff health), strategy, family life, personal purity and life with God.

John is now on the Board of Advisors for All People’s Church (the Antioch church in San Diego) and was very appreciative of the role of this board in providing pastoral support, wisdom and strategic guidance for All People’s senior pastor and leadership team.

At this point, we have not yet formed a board of advisors yet, and the exact details need to be worked out and we will inform the membership as the details become clearer.

back to top

We’d love for you to attend any of the Antioch conferences Epicentre attends which include World Mandate and Ignite (church planting church conference). We also have sermons available to listen to in our links section, under “Antioch Resources”. You can also learn more about Antioch Community Church and their movement by going to http://antiochcc.net/about.php.

back to top

There are two reasons why we did not begin to speak to our general membership about this until late August. The first is that we were not entirely clear on what we were going to present until that point. The elders have been in dialogue about this matter for more than two years, but it was not until about 14 months ago that the clarity of moving in this direction of becoming an Antioch church took place.

At that point, we began dialogue with FECA to see what this might mean. Early on, it appeared as if it might mean we would have to leave the Association. Obviously, at this point, with this not really being clear, we could not bring this to our membership for discussion and discernment, because doing so at this early and preliminary point would cause all kinds of chaos for the Association.

It was not until mid-June of 2010 when the possibility of Epicentre staying as an FECA member church was seen as a real possibility. From this point, a number of other meetings on the FECA-Epicentre side were necessary to confirm that this was indeed a possibility. Final green lights from all the related parties were not secured until early August (when John was on sabbatical). Under these circumstances, August 29th was the first date we could find.

Our hope has been that the information we are providing, and two town halls will be sufficient for giving you the information and background you need to make a prayerful, discerning decision. Please let us know what else you might need (either time, information or dialogue).

back to top

At Epicentre, members actually do vote for large items such as these. In October we will hold a membership meeting where this vote will take place. Under Epicentre’s bylaws (article VI, section 1, D), a majority vote must take place for official action by its membership where quorum is met. Everything we have done until this point is not binding, and the membership vote which we take is the only binding vote which Epicentre will take on this matter.

Until now, our process has been dialoguing and processing with the congregation and our members relationally so that there is sufficient feedback, information, and processing before this takes place. No official decision has been made for Epicentre. The Elders and staff have simply worked with FECA and Antioch to get green lights so that we are able to present this direction to the congregation and members. We are in no rush to change our bylaws, but simply would like to give our congregation and members as much information as possible for a vote, whether it is October or later than that.

Another way to put it is that the Elders and staff have done the legwork and research to provide Epicentre congregants and members with a proposal of vision and direction of becoming an Antioch Church. These past few months are our attempts to present and process with the congregants and members. As we are discerning and processing together, it is up to the members to decide if they (we) want to approve it or not.

back to top

We will not be changing our Sunday service or educational programs as a result of becoming an Antioch Church. Antioch allows each member church to decide how they want to do Sunday services and what their educational programs will entail. For example, Antioch actually only has 2 classes they do for Sundays which they use as equipping and education – Financial Peace University and Love & Respect. Outside of these classes and lifegroups, they do not host Bible studies. In their lifegroups, if you’ve visited them, their content is simpler than ours. They spend about 20 minutes in Scripture and jump straight into how they can apply and obey it. This may vary from group to group, which is also the case in Epicentre’s lifegroups. Our leadership is in dialogue and discernment about how to best meet the needs of Epicentre in Christian education, equipping, and training.

back to top