On August 18th, 2024, King’s Cross Church hosted its first-ever End-of-Summer Celebration for the community! As a last Summer hurrah, we invited the La Jolla and PB community to come join us at 4747 Soledad Mountain Road for some carnival fun! Over 150 people attended our celebration.
We had a bounce house, carnival snacks, arts and crafts, games, temporary tattoos, food trucks, and the very popular slime creation room. As a church, we’re passionate about being on mission with Jesus in our city. So, in hosting this community event, we hoped to love our community and invite neighbors who might not step foot in a church otherwise.
It was awesome to see the kids in our church get involved in ministry. They invited their friends from school to the event, and many came! Kids in our church also volunteered to help run some of the booths at the celebration, helping make popcorn, snow cones, and cotton candy and even helping other kids make slime.
King’s Cross Church loves the party trailer. There was nearly always a line for cotton candy, popcorn, or snow cones, and countless kids in the bounce house jumping off the sugar we had just filled them with. Like other churches, we strive to be responsible with the finances God has graciously given us, and the generosity of the SDSBA and access to resources like the party trailer make it possible for us as a church to host awesome events like our celebration responsibly! And we love hosting free events for the community. Running a free event in the La Jolla and PB area is always fun because it’s frankly shocking to the community! Without fail, community members will ask how they can pay for something or donate to cover costs, and we’re always stoked to tell them that everything at the event is entirely free!
We have the privilege of partnering with the larger church community to offer these events free to the community, and the look on some people’s faces when we turn down their money and say, “We just want to love as Jesus loves,” is priceless.
One family who received a flyer at their door for the event had just moved to the area on Saturday (four days before the event). They told us that moving is always a trying experience because you have to uproot your kids from their normal community. They said that when they saw the flyer at their door, their kids were really excited to come; it was a nice midweek celebration to break up the emotions of having just moved.
