PURA VIDA CHURCH News & Noticias
Our Vision is to be a relevant church in our community…

Authentic Relationships-Community-Servanthood -Unity -Simplicity -Dependence on the Holy Espirit -Multiplication
“Bringing Christ to people one authentic relationship at a time’

Refocusing:  Pura Vida Church
A call to Simplicity and action…

Dennis always quotes Mark Twain when he says the only person who likes change is a wet baby!  That has been the case as the leadership of Pura Vida Church has prayerfully considered combining the morning and evening Sunday worship services.  The beautiful facilities and faithful members of Café con Leche (worship band) made the decision to have services only on the Eastside a hard one.
The Vision of Pura Vida Church

is to be a relevant church in our community and the only way to do that is to be part of the community where we minister, in other words is to know the need of our community and seek practical ways to meet them.

The way we have done that is through home-groups which build relationships.  These discipling relationships have strengthened the leadership of Pura Vida and we are seeing the results.
One of Pura Vida’s main tenets is to be a blessing to the community and the Hispanic (Spanish/bilingual) community which is our mission field is mainly on the Eastside of Santa Barbara.  It is difficult to know how to bless someone if you do not know them and their needs.
Some of the ways in which we as a church are being a blessing is by blessing and partnering with flourishing ministries in this community such as Eastside Kids Club and Eastside Young Life both of these ministries have a huge representation from Pura Vida Church, (Young life meetings are hosted in the home of a member of our church and the coordinator of KidsClub is a member of our church as well, not to mention a lot of the volunteers including ourselves).  There are hungry people on the Eastside and we feed them.
Have we seen a great spiritual harvest from these “outreaches”? No, but we have seen our leaders and people in our church come to a deeper understanding of what it means to love and live like Jesus.  And after all God did not call us to fill our churches he called us to love our neighbors.
When Jesus commissioned His disciples in Acts 1:8 he did not say to just go to the ends of the earth but to start in your own back yard (Jerusalem) and then branch out from there.  I was thinking about the training ground that having Mesa services has been for our church.  In the safety of a familiar place we were able to grow and learn and now God has called us to leave that comfortable place and depend on Him which is the last and key tenet of Pura Vida Church.
Please pray for us as we venture out.  As a church we want to do what Jesus did.  The Message sums it up perfectly, it says,

The Word became flesh, and move into the neighborhood.” John 1:14.

Love, Familia Leon