****** HOT OFF THE PRESS! ******

1.)  GOOD FRIDAY SERVICE:

We are going to have a GOOD FRIDAY service on Friday night, April 2 at 6:30 pm. It will be a time to have your children with you in the sanctuary and remember what Christ Jesus has done for us on the cross. The service will last an hour and we will have nursery care up to 3 years old. If any of you would be willing to help in the nursery that evening we could use your one-time help. We will also need ushers and greeters for that night.

2.)  We are going to have a SUNRISE SERVICE EASTER MORNING!

This special Resurrection Day service will be held outside in front of the sanctuary at 6:30 AM. We will have coffee and water available (maybe some snacks as well). The service will last an hour. We WILL NOT be having any childcare for the sunrise service. If you would like to be on the set up team to put out the chairs and the portable sound system, please contact PASTOR JESSE at the church office. We will still have both of our regular services at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM.

3.)  WEDNESDAY NIGHT BBQ’S STARTING AGAIN MARCH 24TH!

We are starting up our weekly spring BBQ’s before the Wednesday night service. The time will be 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm. Sign up in the foyer to let us know how many hamburgers and/or hot dogs you will be wanting for dinner. There will be other food items as well. Remember it is offered on a donation basis per person. If you would like to be on the serving team, the clean up team or the cooking team, put that down on the sign up sheet and/or contact PASTOR JESSE at the church office.

***** AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM *****

There are several new families that have begun to make our church their home church. It is important for all of us to remember what it was like for us when we first came here. Don’t be shy about asking if someone unfamiliar to you is new to Calvary. That is the only way to know how to best minister to one another. Just go for it!

With these two new services around Resurrection Day celebration, it opens up a great opportunity to invite coworkers, neighbors and friends to attend. Offer to pick them up and bring them to church if you can. This might be the open door God uses to begin new life in Christ to them!

I want to personally thank all of you who have been praying for God’s grace in my going out more often to minister to different congregations around Arizona. It seems from the feedback of those pastors that God is really using it. This is part of your fruit. Pastor Jesse has been doing a great job feeding you from the Word on Wednesday nights and on the occasional Sunday mornings. Please continue to keep this new venture of outreach in your prayers.

The Wednesday night series I did last fall entitled WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? has finally been put into manuscript form. We are going through some editing of the book and giving it the title of TRUE LOVE BEGINS WITH GOD. This is an in-depth look at 1 Cor. 13. Lord willing, it will be done and published by the end of summer.

Thanks for your prayers concerning the paving of our parking lot. We received a special bid (below $3000) that blew away the previous bids ($7000). We had the money in savings and went for it. They did a great job!

Remember that April 3rd, Saturday morning, is our next church work day to clean up the campus. This will be especially important since the next day is Resurrection Sunday and there will be many more visitors on the campus. The sign up sheet will be available on the counter in the foyer.

Let’s keep the main thing the main thing! The main thing is JESUS!

Pastor Bob Claycamp

Yet His promise to us is to be WITH us, to take CARE of us, to meet every NEED as we seek first His kingdom and righteousness. May the Lord work in us to be more grateful for the little things. The sacrifice of thanksgiving is precious to Him and needful for us.

God has shown His great love toward us by sending His only begotten Son into the world. He did this so that forgiveness might be offered to those who believe on the name of His Son, Jesus. Have you received His gift of love?

Pastor Bob

As an update to my previous note, we are NOT going to cancel the LIVE feed of our services on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights. We discovered that we were still under contract with Qwest for those T1 lines for a couple of years. The cost of cancelation was not worth it at this time. So we will just continue with what’s already set up. If you have a Mac computer, you cannot view the live service even on Flip4Mac program unless you go to our website through a side Windows OS [those of you with Mac computers understand most of this ]

Pastor Bob Claycamp

There are a few changes that will be taking place. Our office hours will go back to Monday through Friday, 9 am – 4:30 pm. My office days will be Tues-Fri., Pastor Jesse’s office days will be Mon-Thurs, Pastor Chris’ office days will be Mon-Thurs noon.

We are looking for more volunteers to help out with landscaping and maintenance of our campus. Also for those of you currently unemployed, may I suggest coming down to the church and just offering to freely serve the Lord in whatever need comes up during the week?

If you would like to be put on the emergency prayer team listserver for 2010 to faithfully pray for urgent needs that arise within our congregation, please send a note to prayer@calvarynorth.com and our host, Dale Peterson, will send you the guidelines.

In our continuing effort to work within the funds given to the work of the Lord here at Calvary, we will need to stop the Live Webcast of our services. The video of the Sunday and Wednesday services will still be available on our website, though, as will the audio of the messages.

The Women’s Bible Study will be starting back up Tuesday, Jan. 12. Jeanne Claycamp will be teaching through the Book of Ruth. The morning study with childcare begins at 9:00 am and the evening study without childcare begins at 6:30 pm. These studies will be held in the Fellowship Hall (Bldg. F).

Beginning Wed. evenings, Jan. 13 (Micah Claycamp’s birthday!), Pastor Jesse will be taking over the service. He is going to start off teaching through the Book of Jonah. Pastor Jesse is also going to be taking over the youth ministry for the next three months and working with other volunteers and leaders to prepare for a future youth pastor.

Don Hodges will be taking over the Men’s ministry and the Men’s study will start back up Thursday, Jan. 14. Dinner will begin at 6:00 pm and the study will start at 7:00 pm. The men will meet in the Fellowship Hall (Bldg. F).

We will be having a “State of the Fellowship” night on Sunday night, Jan. 31, 6:30-7:30 pm. This will be my opportunity to share how the Lord has used our church and the vision for the future. I believe this is more than a ‘business meeting’. It has to do with communicating our purpose and goal as a church in these last days.

We have many more opportunities to serve the Lord and become involved here at Calvary. Home Fellowships, Children’s ministry, Missions, Local outreaches, are just a few of them. Please check our weekly bulletin for more information.

I will be expanding my ministry to include helping out other Calvary pastors around the state this next year. I ask for your prayers as I believe I need to take my many years of ministerial experience and be more available to others in ministry positions. I also will be working on putting into book form the WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? series on 1 Corinthians 13. Also I want to give specially focused studies on marriage, household financial management, and other teachings.

I give thanks to the Lord for all the prayers you have offered up to Him in behalf of our church and for my family personally. May the Lord pour out His grace and mercy upon your lives and show you His love in fresh new ways this coming year!

Pastor Bob Claycamp

Here’s the Scripture:

2 Cor 1:8-9
8 We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. 9 In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

The part that struck me was when Paul said: “But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God…”

When the bottom drops out of our plans, our patterns, our purpose God is right there by means of the Holy Spirit to help us if we will call upon Him.

As a church body, we have families that are doing better than they have in years, and we have families that are ready to fall apart…and all points in between!

It’s easy to just get by and ignore what others are dealing with because “its taken so long to finally get things settled in our own life”.

Being a disciple of Jesus means following Him every day, not visa-versa. When you get up in the morning, ask the Lord to go before you that day. Ask Him to open your eyes to the situations that come across your pathway.

Its not that we ’second-guess’ everything and spiritualize all of it; its just that we all need to bring Him into all that we do on a conscious level throughout the day. Amen?

May the Lord continue to pour out His grace and blessing upon your lives.

“in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”        1 Thes. 5:18

You may have seen chaos in your family, or turmoil in your financial future, or devastation of your hopes and dreams.  How has it effected you?  Is there peace from Jesus guarding your heart through these times, or grudges growing in the depths of your soul?  Are you resting in His will and control, or throwing tantrums over what you can’t control anyway?

In everything we can give thanks simply because God is worthy of our thanks.  Circumstances may be hard, suffering may be our lot, but God is still worthy to be thanked.  Our challenge in difficulties is first a choice of faith.

Will I choose to thank Him for salvation which is secure?  Will I choose to thank Him for riches in heaven that don’t rust away?  Will I choose to thank Him for His love for me?  Will I choose to thank Him for being my Savior from sin and death?

Will I choose to thank Him for His will when I don’t understand it at the time?  Will I choose to thank Him for His past cares, His present faithfulness, and His future promises?

See, when we choose to be thankful today, we aren’t ignoring the pain of the present, we are facing it in the power of God.  A thankful heart finds the Lord in the storms, rests in His care, and chooses to stay close to Him until the storm passes.  He is our refuge and our song!   Thank Him today for His love endures forever!

God bless,

Pastor Jesse Claycamp

There are many challenges facing the families in our society and even in our congregation as we come to the close of 2007. All of the commercial marketing methods and cultural expectations (especially at this season) bring a tremendous demands upon us.

These things can cause us to alter sound thinking and go way beyond what we can really afford. They can really take away from focusing on what this season is truly all about: rejoicing in the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

So let me put this additional challenge before all of us: Live simply on purpose. What do I mean by this? Willingly cut back on services and outings that we can live without as an individual or a family.

But there must be a higher purpose that motivates us than just seeing if we can live without these things. There needs to be an inner directive that living more simply will open up avenues of being more sensitive to help out others.

And for the believer in Jesus Christ, they have that special person of the Holy Spirit to give them unique prompting to step forward and offer aid.

Here’s what living simply on purpose might look like for some of you: rather than going out to eat so often, how about limiting those events to one special time a month?

Can you reduce your Starbuck’s intake in half? What about going to the movies less often? Instead rent a classic movie and making a special night at home with popcorn and soda? Take the difference monetarily and set it aside. Ask the Lord to give you direction on where it should go.

Living simply on purpose as a Christian has as its basis this reality: every single thing we have or will ever receive comes ultimately from the hand of God. It is put into our hands by Him as a stewardship.

I would encourage you (if you haven’t already done so) to set up a simple budget of your income and expenses. Give God the firstfruits, and then be faithful to follow those directives by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes God cuts back our resources so that we will turn to Him afresh and renew the reality that all resources come from Him.

Yes, He uses our work, our wisdom, our efforts; but the income and benefits ultimately still all come from His hand.

For the believer in Jesus Christ, living by faith on the promises of God is something we too often buffer ourselves from. But in this uncertain economy, there are going to be new opportunities to be schooled in this discipline of living by faith. And this is where we are going to learn new lessons about His faithfulness.

I would encourage you to sit down in a quiet place and ask God to take control of your finances. Ask Him also to change any of your habits and desires that seem to undercut what He’s trying to do in your life. May He give you the ability to live simply on purpose.

May you be open and ready to share with others who you know are needy. May the Lord be strong in our behalf as individuals, as families and as a church body.

Pastor Bob Claycamp

But as Bob entered his teen years, he began to stray from these Biblical values established at home, and progressively entered the world of rock bands, drugs and immorality.

When Bob was a sophomore in high school, his mother died of cancer. This further drove him to find what was the true meaning of life.  He opened his mind to the occult and the paranormal, and his drug use increased.

A few times he almost killed himself in his quest to find answers.  But after graduating from high school, he met a few Christian young people who were very zealous for Christ.  They attended a black Pentecostal church in N.E. Portland.  Since they were renting rooms in the big three story house the rock band had rented, this put the gospel of Jesus Christ right in his face night and day.  After weeks and weeks of debate and discussion, the Holy Spirit began to draw him into a saving relationship with Jesus.  He and his high school sweetheart, Jeanne, prayed to receive Christ as their Savior.  Things in their life started changing immediately.

An elderly white-haired saddle maker named Nick Gray introduced himself to Bob and Jeanne one Sunday night at church and began to disciple them in the Scriptures.  He told them about a youth ministry that had recently moved up to Eugene, Oregon from a church in California (Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa), and took them down to meet this group.  From this point on this youth group (Shiloh Youth Revival Centers) became the greenhouse for Bob and Jeanne’s Christian growth and ministry.

Bob and Jeanne married at age 18 in the beginning of 1970 and lived in several of the dormitory-style Christian youth houses that were springing up all over the country.  This was the beginning of an eight and a half year involvement in Shiloh.  Then in 1973 they moved out to the main Study Center in Dexter, Oregon where Bob became one of the teachers of the foundational Bible School for the youth ministry.

In 1978 Shiloh closed down.  Bob and Jeanne and their two sons, Micah and Jesse, moved to Arizona.  After about three years selling insurance, and a third child later (Christopher), Bob began pastoring a small group of believers (1981) in the north part of Phoenix, which became known as Calvary Chapel North Phoenix.  Since this church began, fourteen churches and ministries have been planted, and many worship leaders raised up and sent out.  Truly this has been entirely by the grace of God and the obedience of the many brethren that have been members of our church.

You can e-mail Pastor Bob if you have any questions.