Welcome Kairos Antelope Valley into Ecclesia
Bob Hyatt
November 22, 2012

We are proud to welcome the Stepro family and Kairos Antelope Valley into Ecclesia.  They are in the first year of their new congregation and we are excited to see what God is doing.

Here’s their story in Noah’s own words …

I grew up in the Antelope Valley. The Antelope Valley is a weird place and hard to understand if you are not from here. We are number 2 in meth production and number 1 in child abuse in the nation. It is a suburb of LA that popped up in a rather ugly area because of the post-war military-industrial complex of the aerospace industry. So we have a good number of engineers and rocket scientists as well as an agricultural population that has been around for a long time. However, beginning in the 60’s we saw a great growth of commuters, moving up here to get more affordable housing while driving an hour or more to work in LA. This hunger for more in terms of materialism is a good reflection of the values of the AV. Most people here would rather have a new car or jet-ski’s than live and work close to their neighbors or have more time with their children.

Another proclivity about the AV is the growth of gang and urban poverty that we have experienced over the last 20 years. Families from Pacoima and Compton have relocated in mass adding to the social dynamic of a decentralized, scattered place. During the 80s and 90s Palmdale (one of the main cities) was the second fastest growing area in the nation…behind only Las Vegas. This is the placed that shaped me. I grew up in a fairly poor family here. I dropped out of school in the 7th grade and shortly after came to know Christ at a church around the corner from the trailer park I lived in. I had a pretty radical conversion as I encountered a community of friends and leaders that were sharing life together, experiencing the power of the holy spirit and going on mission with each other. I was sold!

Flash forward to adulthood I began to discern “the call” to serve God by entering into “the ministry”. In order to do this I knew returning to school was probably a necessary step. Entering Jr. College with a 7th grade education was challenging to say the least. But at 19 I knew this was a definite step the Lord was directing me to take. I began volunteering heavily at the mega church where I came to faith. Upon completing a bachelor’s degree in history I started working at the church part time as a youth/worship leader and entered Fuller Seminary to earn a MDiv.

I began seminary in 2005 and the next summer I got married to Jamie, a beautiful, wonderful woman I had been dating for 4 years. After getting married I went through a succession of promotions at my home church while attending seminary – full time – college pastor – jr. high pastor. Then after graduating in 2008 from Fuller I became the Student ministries pastor. I was leading a ministry of about 500 students with a staff of 3 employees and an army of volunteers. I was full on in the swing of attractional, programatic church. I was successfully leading a “successful” youth group…that oddly no longer looked like the youth ministry that I had joined as a teenager and had lost the potency of mission and purpose that hooked me in the first place.

Through several years of painful, honest conversations with the sr. leadership I had concluded I would rather work as a barista at the local coffee shop and serve Jesus with community of friends than be in full time ministry…if full time ministry simply meant fueling a machine that wasn’t producing much lasting fruit. God had some interesting plans however…

As I was writing out my letter of resignation I received a call from a small, dying Presbyterian church…they were looking for a youth/associate/turn-around pastor. They hired me and my wife to come to the church with the goal of reaching their changing neighborhood and connecting with younger generations. Well, after an amazing 2 month honeymoon period in which I saw conversions, works of the holy spirit and the bubblings of community in this fledgling church – the senior leadership of the church resigned and the congregation went into a tailspin.

At the same time, God had opened another amazing door for me to come on staff at our local college as an adjunct professor of American history. We left the Presbyterian church as gracefully as possible and gathered a small group of our good friends together.  I remember telling them: “I love Jesus, I need community, but if we cannot start a church that is free of the shackles of what I have experienced – I don’t think I am going to go any more.”  It may not have been the best way to start a new church…but a church planter once told me…”if you don’t have to start a new church…don’t!”

Kairos Community was birthed out of a lot of prayer, pain and desire to meet God in the context of community. We met as a core team for several months on Friday nights developing a common vision, language and mission. We visited churches of all denominations and creeds together on Sundays and finally began worshipping in a living room at the end of 2011.  We quickly out grew the living room and moved to a coffee shop and then a small church building that wasn’t being used on Sundays.  It was at this time that I connected with Ecclesia as well. I began meeting with Greg Larson and the equippers down at Kairos-Hollywood.

With a firm commitment to discipleship and mission as the core of what we are doing, we were very slow to invite others in prematurely or to grow beyond our capacity. The past summer we got the opportunity to meet on the third floor of a downtown Urban Outfitters-ish type store…since then we have had a strong commitment and presence in our city…prayer walking, serving the needy, creating community where ever we can and with consistency.

This fall, at our one year mark, we launched our pilot Missional Community. We had waited to launch this expression of our church until our leadership was developed and discipleship was at the core of our identity…our DNA. We have seen wonderful fruit in the last year as God has preformed miraculous healings, changed lives from darkness to light and spread hope where there was none. We have seen single mothers, homosexuals, drug addicts, empty materialists, fundamentalists and entire families come to faith…I can’t wait to see what God has in store for the next year!

Somewhere in between getting married and church planting, Jaimie and I have been blessed with three beautiful girls: Clover (4), Paisley (2) and Ember (4 months). During the last year, Jaimie…in addition to teaching piano and leading worship at Kairos has begun working as a Compassion Entrepreneur for a new non-profit called  Trades of Hope …a company aimed at women helping women all over the world start and maintain sustainable business.

We are excited to be part of the Ecclesia family and thanks to all for welcoming us in.

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An Ethical Response to Violence

By By Jim Pace • September 15, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, social media has been filled with perspectives, as is typically the case. I am reluctant to add mine as there seems to be no lack one way or the other. To be clear, this is not just about Charlie Kirk, this is about violence across the board. I did not feel led to write this because it was Charlie Kirk specifically, but rather another in a long and winding line of acts of violence, that my ministering at Va. Tech gives me a bit of personal experience with. But as I have just finished teaching two classes on Christian Ethics, and as I was encountering again the spread of responses from my Christian sisters and brothers, I felt led to look at this event through that lens. Ethics, at its base, seeks to answer the question, “What is better or worse? Good or bad?” As a follower of Jesus, this is what seems right to me… 1. We never celebrate harm. Whatever our disagreements, rejoicing at a shooting violates the bedrock claim that every person bears the imago Dei (Gen 1:27). Scripture is explicit: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Prov 24:17); “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). I don’t love blasting verses like this, but you cannot get away from them if you are reading the scriptures. 2. Moral responsibility sits with the shooter—full stop . Saying “his rhetoric got him shot” smuggles in a just-world logic that excuses violence. As a contextual theologian, I have an enormous amount of respect for the impact our various narratives have in shaping our understandings of the world around us. They are inescapable. But that is not what I am talking about here. Ideas can be wrong, harmful, or worth opposing vigorously, but vigilante ‘payback’ is never a Christian category. My primary gig is that of a consultant for churches and non-profits. Today, in my meetings and among friends, I have heard some variation of “He got what he deserved,” and “I vote for some very public justice for the shooter.” Both of these views speak of revenge; the follower of Jesus is called to lay these down as our Messiah did. Not asked to, told to. 3. Grief and outrage about gun violence are legitimate; schadenfreude is not . Channel the pain toward nonviolent, concrete action (policy advocacy, community intervention, survivor support), not dehumanization. Here are four thinkers who have had a profound impact on the Christian ethic I try to work out in this world. As I share them, three things are worthy of mention. One, I certainly do not claim to follow their guidance perfectly, and at times I do not even do it well, but they have all given me what seems like a Jesus-centered and faith-filled direction to move in. Second, I do not claim to speak for them in this particular matter; I am merely showing how my ethical lens has been formed. Third, clearly I am not dealing with all the components of our response to these types of violence, this is not a comprehensive treatment, merely the reflections in the moment. Stanley Hauerwas : “Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence.” It’s part of following Jesus, not a tactic we drop when it’s inconvenient. Stanley Hauerwas, Walking with God in a Fragile World, by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor N. T. Wright : “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good. In other words, we answer evil without mirroring it. David Fitch : Our culture runs on an “enemy-making” dynamic; even “the political rally… depends on the making of an enemy. Don’t let that train your soul.” The Church of Us vs. Them. Sarah Coakley : Contemplation forms resistance, not passivity. For Coakley, sustained prayer trains perception and courage so Christians can resist abuse and give voice against violence (it’s not quietism). “Contemplation, if it is working aright, is precisely that which gives courage to resist abuse, to give voice against violence.” Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self. Coakley would say that far too often we react before we reflect. This is the problem that Fitch is getting at in much of his writing, that our culture actually runs on antagonisms, the conflict between us. We need to find a better way.