When talking to another person/s about Merced and LifeSpring, it is important to be able to say more than “We’re really nice people, and you should move here.” Clearly, that is not enough of a rationale on which to build a decision as important as the decision to move.
Here are ten reasons that I think Merced is a good place to work in the kingdom of God. These are a few of the reasons that I find LifeSpring and Merced to be such a winsome and magnetic place to live.
1) As of 2021 Merced is home to a, now, fifteen-year-old campus of the University of California. There are currently about 9093 graduate and undergraduate students in the year 2021-2022. UC-Merced brings a wonderful dynamism to our city, and it makes Merced a magnet drawing people here. What a great place to be with the gospel!
2) The next pastor at LifeSpring will bring a completely new set of gifts and abilities to the LSC family. Continual refreshment and variety are important for the good health of any community. Without such refreshing, communities grow stale.
3) Merced is on the West Coast of the United States. California is known for its diversity of people. In Merced alone there are Hispanics, Hmong, African Americans, and a host of other ethnicities. This bodes well for the diversity of the church and for the strength that diversity brings. Churches have, generally speaking, failed at diversity, and this must be addressed.
4) LSC is a wonderful place that welcomes others, no matter what their station in life may be. LifeSpringers are well-read, intelligent, curious people that allow for transparency, honesty, and openness.
5) LifeSpring Church is a place where you will find people with a deep hunger for growing in wisdom and knowledge. In fact, LSC is looking for a person who is well equipped to teach and mentor and help LSC as it grows in its own maturity. LSC is a place where you will find people actually taking God’s word seriously, seeking ways to enact it in their lives.
6) A pastor will find, uniquely, a family of people at LSC who are not there to “punch their ticket,” but rather to take away something worthwhile and useful.
7) At LSC there are no artificially produced barriers to creativity and energy. LifeSpringers can just do stuff provided it does not violate something Jesus taught. If it works – great! If it fails – look at what we just learned.
8) LifeSpringers have not become “fat and lazy.” Nor do they ask a pastor to do for them what they can do themselves. LSC believes the playing field of the Gospel is level and that everyone has something to contribute to the good of the whole. LifeSpringers believe that each of us has to flex his/her muscles and live for Jesus “the hard way.”
9) LifeSpringers have great respect or affection for the wisdom of age and experience. In outposts where people don’t know Jesus, maturity and competency are ideal virtues to possess.
10) Drum roll. There’s something about having to rely on your wits and your faith that makes work like this exciting and full of good risk. LSC has a big field in which to operate, and LifeSpringers are not afraid to try out new ideas that may work in surprising, beneficial ways. You never hear, “We’ve never done it that way before” at LifeSpring.
LifeSpring is an incredibly good place to work for the Kingdom of God, and Merced is an exciting hub for LSC’s future. Join us!