A lot has happened in these first nine months of being on the mission field, both bad and good.
Bad stuff: Meri’s leg was broken, a neighbor was shot, three families we were sharing Jesus with moved away.
Good stuff: Ed and Katie’s baby was born, a new family is studying the bible with us, God used the bad stuff to open doors for the gospel!
The four of us agree God has been using our experiences in the first nine months to do a lot in us, not just through us. This has been (as a mentor told Ed) a “wilderness time” - something every missionary goes through from time to time.
Having left people and church structures we relied on for so many years, and the communities we used to live in, and with everything being so new to us, we’ve been forced to learn to trust and obey Jesus more fully, live in simplicity and raw community, and share our faith as a way of life. Brings us to our knees. All this has been good for us. Preparation no doubt for what God is going to do through us in the coming months and year!
A young man in the neighborhood with a shaved head, baggy shorts and bloodshot eyes asked me once again how things have been going since we moved in.
“You need any help? How are your kids doing? Anybody messing with you? You need us to take care of anybody for you? If you ever need anything, just let it be heard. Come over to my place. I live in this apartment right here.”
This offer has been made to me a few times now. The first offer was made by his friend Lost, the kid who got shot in April and whom I prayed over until the ambulance arrived. “Thank you so much for praying for me,” Lost said. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, call me. If somebody messes with you, I know people. We’ll get him.” It is both refreshing and unnerving to receive these street-level expressions of hospitality, welcoming me to the hood. While I am thankful to be making headway with this sub-culture of our community, I am proceeding with caution. I’m not choosing a side here.
I have lived in several neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. While I loved each and every place and neighborhood that I have previously called home, if I had to choose a favorite I would choose East Hollywood, where I am currently living. The video I’ve included is called “This is East Hollywood” and was made by my friends in the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council. It gives a great overview of the area and its shops, schools, places of worship, areas of recreation, hospitals, and of course many amazing restaurants. It also highlights many of the reasons why I love living here. I love the diversity, accessibility (lots of places I like to go to are within walking and biking distance, easy access to public transportation (relative to other LA neighborhoods), fewer chain stores and lots of mom and pop shops, and I regularly hear multiple languages spoken including Tagalog, Thai, Armenian, Mandarin, Russian, English, and Spanish. That is by no means an exhaustive list of the things I love about this area but to sum it up I feel like I live in a place that has a “soul and heart” if you can attribute that to a neighborhood. Many places I’ve been to feel like they lack heart and soul and instead appear to me as some type of test tube creation.
Yeah, there are downsides to this place too and plenty of things I would love to see change and improve. The downsides go hand in hand with the upsides though. Part of what makes this area great is that it was not created in a test tube and it grew up and out in a very organic and perhaps even chaotic manner. My hope is to be an asset to this community and to give back in ways that benefit all those around. I am excited to live here as a follower of Jesus and to share His good news. At the same time my prayer and desire is that all people will be blessed by Christ’s presence in this community whether they choose to follow Jesus or not. I really don’t know how that may manifest itself though the possibilities are endless. In a year I’ll likely be able to look at previous entries to this blog and see very clearly how Jesus is blessing this community through those that love Him and are living their lives in pursuit of Him.
Enjoy the video. This is East Hollywood and I’m glad we can share it with you.
A common advertisement in Virgil Village. Many, many residents of East Hollywood work in service jobs or manual labor jobs in the city of Los Angeles. They work as nannies, housekeepers, day laborers, construction workers, mechanics, truck drivers, grocery store stockers, couriers for casting agencies, pizza deliverers, restaurant employees, and a myriad of other blue collar jobs. Some are owners of mom’n'pops and street venders, exhibiting a strong entrepeneurial spirit. Several have a home business such as repairing computers or cutting and styling hair.
You’ll recall Oliver, the conspiracy theorist I met at POPS. He had some interesting things to say about Christianity. In his words, “the Christian God and the Christian Satan must be the same person because they both enslave people”. As I listened to his story I realized this young man was not describing the God I know, but rather his own experiences with church and religion. While I’ve never heard anyone else say God and Satan are one and the same - and I my guess is that he said it this way for shock value - I think there are many others out there who can relate to Oliver’s point: nobody wants our religion. What’s more, when we try to attract people to our religion (not Jesus) we taint their view of what God is like.
Some adapted quotes from the Church Planting Movements workshop I attended in June:
When making disciples, the starting point is not the Bible. It’s you. Some of your non-believing friends haven’t read the Bible. They may not want to read it yet. But they see you.
The starting point is not Jesus or God. They may not know of him yet, or believe he exists. But they see you.
The starting point is not your church or religion. Nobody wants your religion. Religion is about the things we do. When we go in with our religion, they don’t want it. They don’t want your religion because their view of religions is tainted by their own religion. Everybody has their own religion and they don’t want anybody else’s. Not because they’re happy with their religion. They just think theirs is better than anybody else’s. They’re not interested in how and when and where you worship. They’re interested in knowing whether or not your relationships are different and better. People want a connection with God at a heart level. Religion as God wants it will come (James 1:26-27; 1 Timothy 5:4), but we start at the heart level. At the “what difference does it make in your and my life” level.
As you function as a “starting point” for the gospel, your goal is not to be obnoxiously religious but conspicuously spiritual. If you are conspicuously spiritual, you will draw out the spiritual people (that is, people who want to be spiritual), lead them to Christ, and lead them to lead their friends to Christ.
This resonates with me. Perhaps that’s why we value following Jesus as a “way of life” so highly. How we follow Jesus everyday will determine how good we are at joining God in his mission. Today I’m asking myself, what needs to change in my life so that I’m a (not perfect but) effective starting point for other people’s paths to following Jesus?
It is past 3am. Usually I’m asleep but my sick boys needed their daddy to buy more fever-reducing medicine… It is an emotionally difficult thing to drive the streets of LA at this time of night/morning. You see all sorts of things that break your heart, which I won’t describe on this occasion. I’m back at home and what strikes me tonight are the sounds, or rather the quiet.
