Ed, Katie, Meri and I are listening to a series of podcasts and videocasts by David Watson, a missionary whose work is written about in David Garrison’s book, Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming A Lost World.  (I met David Watson last month in Dallas when I attended a Missions Resource Network-hosted workshop that he presented to Church of Christ missionaries and church leaders.)  While the focus of Watson’s talks is on training ordinary Jesus-followers to start church planting movements, almost all of his podcasts deal in some way with helping people draw a distinction between the gospel of Jesus Christ and the “Christian cultures” we have created.  (A very important distinction to make even - or especially - in America!) 

Watson’s stuff is biblically-based, full of real-life stories from the mission field, and yet practical and down to earth for the “average Joe”.  If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself stretched and inspired!

If you grew up in the U.S. and are passionate about joining God in ”redeeming a lost world” (starting in another country or your own), I strongly encourage you to listen to these podcasts and watch the videocasts.  You can check them out here. 

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Categories: Christian culture, books, video
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A family next door (Ed and Katie were getting to know them) announced they bought a home and are moving out of town in two weeks. 

A family just blocks away (Meri was having deep spiritual conversations with the mom) lost their apartment.  Now they don’t know if they will continue living here - costly rent being one of the obstacles.  They indicated they will make their decision by September.  

What would you do if you knew you had only a month or less to share hope with a friend who desperately needs Jesus?

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Some of you will remember Jesús and María and their three children, one of whom has cancer in her eyes.  Just a year old, their precious daughter is showing improvement. After much chemotherapy and radiation the doctors have decided not to remove her eyes for the time being.  We celebrate this good news.

But we have sad news though.  Jesús and María have moved away.  Despite Jesús’ strong work ethic and tenacious job-hunting over several months, he was unable to find steady, gainful employment to support his family here in LA.  Sensing more poverty on the horizon, Jesús took a job in San Diego where they have now relocated.

Fortunately for us, we will get to see this wonderful family from time to time.  They will be returning to visit us whenever they bring their baby girl to Children’s Hospital (located blocks away from us) for routine check-ups.  It is a bitter sweet thing.  We look forward to their future visits because we get to see them and share Christ’s love with them; we are saddened by their reason for returning to this area (the cancer).

Please keep this family in your prayers.  Pray for healing.  And pray they will draw nearer to God through the power of his Spirit – a desire María verbalized to us during their time here.  Steeped in religious rituals, they grew going to church but know very little of God’s story in the bible.  I wish for them an ever-deepening relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ.  I expect good things.  I’m confident God was already waiting for them in San Diego.

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Today while Ed and I are walking through Virgil Village (our section of East Hollywood) we ask God to protect us and direct us to someone he wants us to meet.  We enter a local motorcycle shop / coffee bar to meet the owner of this new business.  He tells us about the stabbing that happened across the street from his business a few weeks ago, and the all-day stand-off that ensued between the LAPD and the stabber who holed up in his apartment.  After this discussion and some more chit chat about motorcycles we tell the young owner why we moved into the neighborhood and offer to pray for his business.  We thank God for this interaction and commit ourselves to come back in a few weeks to see how things are going. 

Our prayer: Who next, Lord?  We go around the block and run into two youth sharing a forty on the front steps of an apartment complex.  After clearing up some initial confusion about who we really are (this is not the first time I’ve been mistaken for a cop), we begin a really good conversation with our neighbors.  One kid is celebrating freedom after 14 days of jail “for crystal meth”.  The other is drowning his sorrows because his mother, who has been on life support is about to die any day.  Ed and I offer our condolensces and offer to pray and give the kid a ride to the hospital in East LA where his mom is located.  The kid gives us his cell phone number.  Ed tells them we’re Jesus-followers and why we’re here to start up new churches in homes.  They say that’s cool.  After a few minutes we leave, thanking God for these two precious kids, and commit to praying for them.  I wonder what will happen when we call tomorrow to offer the kid a ride to the hospital to visit his mom.

Categories: crime
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The focus of our ministry is not on people who are chronically or perpetually homeless (our focus is on the working poor population of East Hollywood).  Still, homelessness is a regular part of life here. 

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Thank you to my parents for pampering me for my birthday!!!

I just spent a much-needed getaway weekend with my family.  They live in a well-lit quiet community of southwest Bakersfield, CA (2 hours north of us).  This evening I arrived home in East Hollywood where the street lamps don’t provide as much lighting as they do in southwest Bakersfield, a car won’t stop honking in front of my apartment, ghetto birds (helicopters) are hovering in the distance, intimidating-looking young people are gathered on front steps and smoking bongs - I nod to one of them as I pass by and pray for an opportunity to know him (never give up on God’s prodigals). 

Meanwhile a grandma is trimming her flower garden and she tells me about her undying love for her grandaughter. 

I give plums (picked off my parent’s tree) to six Guatemalan ladies and introduce myself to them in Spanish.  They love the plums and tell me I look too young to have be married 11 years and have three sons… they also think Meri and I should try for a girl!

I can see multiple Latino families pushing strollers and going for their usual dusk-time walks - I love this tradition.

A family we are sharing Christ with has just expressed their excitement to get back into God’s word together now that we’ve returned. 

…Ah, I’m back in the hood and it feels so good! 

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To U.S.-born Christians visiting their own country’s immigrant-saturated urban centers, I say, “Behold, foreign mission fields.” 

Since we are living and serving cross-culturally among immigrants from multiple countries, we are treating this church planting ministry in East Hollywood, CA as we would a foreign missionary adventure.  What does this mean?

To help me talk about this, I’m using some terminology I picked up from missionary David Watson a few weeks ago…

It is the missionaries’ task to de-culturalize the gospel when sharing the message with peoples of other cultures – that is, we do our best to remove our own cultural biases from the message, thereby reducing the gospel to its irreducible minimum.  We would be fooling ourselves if we said we could achieve this with perfection (but then there is no aspect of our ministry we are doing with perfection).  I believe that just the fact that we are faithfully attempting to distinguish the gospel from our own cultural ways of living it out will convey an important lesson to the new believers. 

Then it is up to the new believers (not the missionaries), empowered by God’s indwelling Spirit, to determine how best to contextualize the gospel – that is, they will decipher how to faithfully live out the message in their own cultural contexts.  Missionaries can guide this process of contextualizing the gospel but never short-circuit it by taking it into their own hands!

Categories: Christian culture, discovery process
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