Categories: stories, stuff to pray for
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After we took the church to the people at Easter, our spiritual sister Hannah,* led by the Holy Spirit, initiated a 40-day period of prayer and fasting.   Here are some of the things God did during this church-wide fast:  

• First of all, we learned how pathetic we are at praying and fasting.  But look what he did when we cried out to him more… 
• Hector, Roxy, Hannah* and their kids have been urgently sharing their faith, and doing it without us! 
• God enabled me to train these disciples to share the Word through Discovery Bible Studies.  Ed, Katie, and Meri are providing life-on-life mentoring and training during the week and as needs arise. 
• God allowed us to share His Word through oral and written Discovery Bible Studies with three more neighbors.  One man said he dislikes religion but since he met us, his family has been praying for their meals.  “We want to spend more time with you because we want our family to be more like yours,” he said.  The next day we went to the park and started studying the Bible together.  This family joined us for a special Mother’s Day breakfast, and we’ve continued to share life and God’s Word together. 
• Some neighbors went camping with us, including a family who have given up on church.  At the retreat everyone played and told their stories, and we shared God’s Word.  The dad participated in a group prayer, giving thanks for the experience.  Since then we’ve been building friendship and discussing faith with them.
• In total, during the fast God blessed us to be a blessing to 28+ households and groups (and counting) – praying for them, serving them, listening to them, eating meals with them, building relationships with them when others would not, sharing God’s Word with them, and building spiritual relationships with some of them.
• God granted us favor despite our many inadequacies.  We are learning to cross several cultures in a day.  Katie & Meri felt prompted to ask God for more influence among Muslim women here.

Please keep praying for God’s Word to go forth in LA. Ask for protection for us and the new believers, for spiritual warfare has increased. Beg God’s Spirit to bring a church planting movement. We serve a merciful and powerful God!   

*[Names have been changed.  All other details accurate.]

Categories: stories, stuff to pray for
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To our supporters:  

I want you to come visit us for a few days.  I want you to have the experience of walking the streets and going from house to house with us, so that you can engage, love, and learn from the future leaders of Christ’s church – the urban poor in our city.  But there is something I desire more than a visit from you.  No, not your money.  My prayer is that all of Jesus’ followers will become way-of-life-missionaries wherever we are.  Indeed, some of you already are living this kind of life.  You were our inspiration for giving up our old way of life, and ‘church as we knew it’ to be here today. 

On a related note, here is a must-read for our suburban supporters: 

Is anyone else noticing the suburbanization of poverty?  Check out a thoughtful post on this topic by Bob Lupton, author of Theirs Is The Kingdom (Harper and Row, 1989), and president of FCS Ministries, a community development organization serving urban poor neighborhoods in Atlanta.  In March 2008 Lupton wrote about how the poor are migrating to the suburbs. Here is an excerpt:  

“It was the first meeting of this kind I have had – four pastors, a county commissioner, three community leaders, all suburbanites. They had invited me to breakfast at their favorite local watering hole, for me a full hour drive north from the city during morning commuter time. Their issue, the one they felt I might assist them with, was the appearance of “my people” in their suburban community. In the past, suburban church folk – those with a social conscience – have commuted into the city to serve the poor. They have partnered with our urban ministry to build houses, tutor kids, donate used clothes. They journeyed into the city because that’s where the poor were concentrated. All that is now changing. There are still plenty of needy neighborhoods in the city, to be sure. But poverty is gradually, relentlessly suburbanizing. The poor are gravitating to the periphery of the city where more affordable housing can be found – like 40-year-old rental complexes, yesterday’s class “A” apartments that now show signs of aging. The “disadvantaged,” once confined to urban ghettos created by the out-migrating affluent, are now “out-migrating” themselves. And suburban pastors along with their parishioners are not quite sure what to do with their new neighbors.”

To read more of Lupton’s post, go to http://www.fcsministries.org/up/ and click on his March 2008 archive of “Urban Perspectives.” The archive is entitled Suburbanization of Poverty.

And while I’m on this topic, here is another helpful link just posted on May 20.  It is the reason I’m posting these thoughts today: “Looking for the poor in the Suburbs: Ten ways to engage mission in the suburbs” by David Fitch.  

Categories: stuff to pray for
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I love this sign!

Door to Griffith Observatory in Hollywood.

Categories: stories
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Tuesday mornings lately have been a precious time when I get together with my wife, Katie, and another Jesus-follower I’ll call Hannah, to train them to facilitate (and teach others to facilitate) group Discovery Bible Studies (also called simple, inductive Bible studies).  We do this because we want to reproduce more disciple-makers, and because this is becoming a crucial skill for what we do when we encounter a Person of Peace, someone who is ready to to expose himself or herself and his or her family/friends to the Word of God.  (I’ve done the same with a couple I’ve been calling Hector and Roxy on this blog.)

However, today the Holy Spirit had another plan in mind.  Hannah showed up to our training session and very quickly tears began streaming down her face.  She was crying for God’s treasured missing ones.  Oh, if you could have heard the pain in her voice, your heart would have ached, too.  Included in her ever-growing list of friends she is sharing Jesus’ love and message with are two women living on LA’s streets.  Hannah and her sons have been not only sharing meals with these precious women; they also have been sharing their time, their hearts, and their lives as mutual friends.  One of the women recently told Hannah that she and her boys have made her “feel human again.”  Hannah, like Jesus, is teaching her sons not to be afraid to reach out and touch the ’social lepers’ of our nation, but to genuinely love them.  So Hannah asked if, in lieu of a Bible study today, could we please pray for these two rejected women and all the lost and hurting people God is leading all of us to show his love to right now?  For the next hour we poured out our hearts to God.

Categories: stories
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Last Friday night was one of those moments you couldn’t plan any better.  A God moment with Ed and Katie and one of the families we’re discipling.  We got together for dinner and a spontaneous Bible study, which was initiated and facilitated by Hector.  A beautiful conversation  in which Hector and Roxy* expressed their sense of urgency about sharing their newfound hope with the people around them.  Sometimes the best church gatherings are the ones that aren’t planned when no one is worrying about how we’re doing church we’re just being church.  When the church just is, and these kinds of gatherings flow out of everyday life circumstances and hearts living in sync with God’s Spirit of love. 

—

Sunday we celebrated my oldest son’s birthday with a ‘water fun’ party.  Imagine lots of squirt guns, water balloons, and splash balls and 15+ little kids and their families on a hot SoCal day.  Ed cracked me up with a story from the party.  He recounted that in the middle of one of our very fun water battles, a little kid shouted “This has got to be the best day of my life!”  Then the boy stopped and thought it over.  “No,” he corrected himself.  “It’s the second best day of my life,” then resumed his water battle with squirt gun in hand.  Ed didn’t ask what the first best day was.  He said he was content to have made it that high on the boy’s list!

—

Met three more tough-looking youths today who live around the corner from me.  The interaction began when I reached down to scoop up my son to protect him from a giant unleashed pitbull that was trotting toward us on the sidewalk.  Its owner told me not to worry, that it’s very friendly (it was) and that we could pet it (we did).  This sparked a conversation and out of the guy’s apartment stepped two of his homies.  All three in their early twenties, covered in tattoos, dressed like gangsters.  Given their responses to things I said, I’m 99% sure they are members of a gang that claims this neighborhood.  I told them about the gangs I encountered in my old hood in Hollywood, and the story of how I prayed with a young man in this hood after he got shot until the ambulance arrived.  I was not surprised to discover they know the victim, he is their homey.  That story still opens doors.  I’m finding my children also open doors.  One of the young men has a little girl who will be starting pre-kindergarten next year at the same school where my son (the one with me for this conversation) attended pre-kinder this year.  We were able to connect on a ‘concerned dad’ level that was refreshing.  I’ll go back later in the week and visit again.

Categories: stories
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["I lost my family.  Because of Crystal I lost everything."]

— 

I remember when we first moved here a young man in his early twenties was sitting on the trunk of a parked car.  As I walked up, he asked loudly into the air, “Anybody want to buy some crack or crystal meth?”  From that day on I noticed that each and every day people from different communities in LA drive real slowly onto our street, and stop in front of the same apartment buildings to buy drugs.  This is in addition to the numerous pedestrians who live nearby and walk up to do the same.

One day I asked a neighbor how much he pays for his weed since he was out of a job.  “I don’t pay full price.  I get it homey love.”  (He explained this means his gang sells it to him at a discount.)

A different day: “Ah man, this is good s—,” a man in his late thirties remarks as he blazes.  Red-eyed, he says he gets his weed with a doctor’s note at one of the nearby medical marijuana vendors.  “Hey, don’t smoke it all, fool!  Leave some for me,” somebody complains.  The man passes the giant joint to his younger friend.

Earlier this week: I’m walking past some young men.  “Hey, Phil.  You want a hit of this?” one guy offers me.  I refuse, but we talk for a little while under a tree by the sidewalk.  As I’m leaving, the guy shouts again, “Anytime you want some weed, you got it.  Let me know.”

Yesterday: I walk up and greet two familiar faces sitting on the front steps of a multi-level apartment building.  White clouds are puffing out of one man’s mouth as he lights his bong in broad daylight.  “We don’t have to leave our apartment building to get stuff, you know.  You can buy weed, crystal meth and crack on every single floor.”  He is frothing at the mouth.  A group of teenagers walk by and tell him half-jokingly, “Hey save some for me!” 

The other man sitting next to him looks sullen.  I ask him what’s wrong.  He laments, “I’m using crystal meth again.  Not as much as before, but it’s so hard to quit.  It’s so tempting here.  It’s everywhere.” 

I see it, too.  What I also see everywhere is hope. 

Categories: stories, the why
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