The Aspen Grove

LCOS Community Notes

Note Planted:
updated : 2025-08-26T09:04:45.531-07:00
9 min read

🌱Seed 🙂Agree

Importance: 10%

The Big Idea

This is where I will dump all the random Ideas and information I begin to collect about LCOS and the greater Orcutt and Santa Maria community.

Note

One helpful frame to organize this by is to think of things as centers and begin to describe the interlocking and nested levels as I begin to see them. Physically across the LCOS Campus but also across the community as well. The whole from which all these centers come from can eventually be mapped for a better handle on things.

This is a collection of interesting patterns to propose for use around the facility of LCOS: LCOS Facility Pattern Language

Todo: Eventually I would like to create a centers map for the surrounding neighborhood as well as Santa Maria in general. Also could center make smaller wholes like the sanctuary and preschool spaces.

The tool to do this with is QGIS. Here are my notes on using it: Notes on using QGIS

Basic concepts of centers and wholeness from:

Church Year Decorations

  • Need a nativity scene or something for Advent

Mission and Outreach Ideas

  • Start a bible study in Los Alamos or a surrounding town
  • Send a group of faithful people to Grace to start a kind of bottom up church replant
  • Have a quarterly newsletter that kind of aggregates the best of news and articles from the surrounding church newsletters.

Physical Centers

Indoor Space

  • Stained glass in the sanctuary especially the four windows behind the cross.

Centers

Outdoor Space

Ideas

  • Nativity scene or some kind of Christmas Decorations that are visible from the street
  • Good spots to experience a sun rise:
  • Some kind of seasonal Prayer walk or even just a prayer bench

Centers

Relational Centers

Congregation 💒

Things to improve or Stuff to start

  • Social Media refresh
  • Youth gathering trip
  • music and choirs
    • Short term choir for an occasion
    • Preschoolers sing in church
  • Constitutional review
  • Basic Org chart
  • Apprentice in hard to fill spots
  • Make budget flow less fragile (long term kinda thing)

Church Council

TODO: The idea of constitutional review and documentation

Elders

What do we want to do with elders?

Congregation Members

Details about People

  • Sara Ganachow was active with AA and has recovered from drug and alcohol use. At one point was in prison but has gotten her life back on track and has a heart for people struggling with similar things.

Things people want to do

  • Terry wants to go for a walk sometime
  • Paul DiModica wants to go out for a beer also with Todd Martin and Harold Oliver
  • Eric Davis wants to take me hiking

Lay Volunteers

how can we engage people to do more things

Visitors and Strangers

  1.     What are your thoughts as what we as a congregation can implement to draw in new people?

“New People” is a wonderful and challenging topic. In my experience, current church members often like the idea of new people, but the reality of how new members change social dynamics can quickly become a pain point. This means that a church who truly wants to incorporate new people into their community needs to approach this topic from many different angles. These angles include considerations like: 

How does the physical environment of the church assist or make difficult welcoming visitors?

How can information and opportunities for connection with the church be communicated in accessible ways? 

Is there a clear pathway for someone to move from being uninvolved all the way to being a member? 

What are unspoken roadblocks new people may run into? For example, having a rambunctious two year old or feeling unfamiliar with the church’s worship practices. How does the church help lessen the impact of these roadblocks?

Where and how might an average member of the community actually hear about our church? What are we doing to meet people where they are?

These kinds of questions are the conversations that need to be happening (not only from leadership but around the congregation) to remain aware and identify opportunities for engaging new people as they arise. Specific outreach programs and initiatives will come and go as the cultural context around a church shifts over time. But by cultivating this kind of awareness, a congregation can remain agile to reach out to real life people. So often it is easy for churches to get distracted by programs and “mechanisms” that promise imaginary new people at the experience of noticing the actual real people right in front of us. 

All that being said, I have been blessed to work within a variety of creative and engaging ministry models:

On vicarage I was given opportunities to preach at and lead “The Table.” Which was a weekly homeless outreach consisting of a mobile shower trailer, as well as partners offering other basic services such as a nurse, laundry, etc. that all led up to a meal and worship service. 

These are two good examples from the congregations I have served putting the kind of conversations outlined above into action.

Preschool 🚸

Staff

  • TODO: get Coffee for staff
  • TODO: get favorite things list

Families

Stuff and ideas about engaging with and getting families involved

  • Advent family night with stations and fun music. Katie Idea 🥰

Winkle and Lutheran Connected 🫱🏻‍🫲🏻

Lutheran Connected Places:

Circuit Churches:

  1. Peace Lutheran 244 North Oak Park Blvd. Arroyo Grande, CA 93420-2436 (805) 489-2708
  2. Redeemer 4500 El Camino Real Atascadero, CA 93422-2761 (805) 466-9350
  3. Bethany 135 South E Street Lompoc, CA 93436-6810 (805) 736-8615
  4. Trinity 940 Creston Road Paso Robles, CA 93446-3002 (805) 238-3702
  5. Zion 1010 Foothill Bivd. San Luis Obispo, CA 93405-1816 (805) 543-8327
  6. Our Savior 4725 South Bradley Road Santa Maria, CA 93455-5051 (805) 937-1116
  7. Clear Promise House Church Lompoc Pregnancy center

PSD Circuit 1 and CNH Circuit 5 are both in reasonable proximity to us.

Circuit Ideas

Other Area Churches ⛪

  1. Heritage Evangelical Presbyterian Church(Literally Next Door)
    • Met them outside doing drive through prayer. Very friendly and welcoming.
    • Their Website
  2. Orcutt Presbyterian literally down the road. Orcutt Presbyterian Church
    • Called to set up a meeting
    • Got to meet with Pastor Chris he is super cool and passionate
  3. South Valley Community Church
  4. Element Christian Church
    • Debbie Sherer is a member with her family
    • They are deeply involved with Delta High school and ministry to lower income students from Guadalupe
    • Looking at starting an infant and toddler center
  5. St. Louis de Montfort Church
    • This is Anne’s church
  6. Santa Maria Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church
  7. St. Peter’s Episcopal Church

Immediate Orcutt and Santa Maria Community 🏢

Local Spots to check out

Where do I want to start community office hours? I need to go walk the area a few times

Near By Educational Facilities

External Nonprofits

Broader Santa Maria Community 🏖️

  • Vandenberg village has a current influx of young families
  • California Lutheran Homes
  • Mercy Holistic Ministry

Rhythms

From Marriott’s doing the redeemed world right

  • Invocation - Hospitality
  • Confession and Absolution - Reconciliation
  • Kyrie - Advocacy
  • Reading of Scripture - Submission
  • Sermon - Proclamation
  • Prayers of the Church - Intercession
  • Offering/Offertory - Generosity
  • Preface, Sanctus, Prayer of Thanksgiving - Sacrifice (praise and thanksgiving)
  • Distribution - Communion/community
  • Benediction - Blessing/sending

In a world that can no longer easily see God in the midst of their daily live a major thing to teach is that very skill. How do you see God in your day to day life? Where does he show up in the normal and the ordinary? Where does he show you in the unexpected and the spectacular? In short How does He show up in very single second of ever single day? And how do we foster an awairness of that because it is true no matter what but we often are completely unaware of it.

Even the simple observation that God created light and sustains the turning of the sun means that ever single time you look out the window at the sun shining you can literally see the work of God and His provision. It does not get much more ordinary or every day than that.

From my own personal learning

Meditation as well as study of Scripture Telling of the story to little ones Daily prayer Singing Scripture as memorization

Another possible organization of centers

Level 1

  • Worship Center. Sanctuary, narthex, entrance pavilion, and walkway. Also bleeds into the parking lot as well. All work together as the core worship center.
  • Preschool Center. Both preschool buildings and surrounding playgrounds and also bleeds into big field and parking lot.
  • office center
  • Pastor office center
  • Meeting centers
  • Bible study center
  • Sunday school center
  • Youth group center
  • communal meal center
  • green space centers

Backlinks

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