Alrighty then…I hope that all my folk are doing well. I got to spend about 11 days in the Los Angeles area and I had a good time. LA is quite a city! It is the second-largest city in the United States (behind NYC) with nearly 4 million people living in the city. In addition to that, the larger Los Angeles metropolitan area has about 13 million citizens. It’s a very large city and very spread out. LA is known for its ethnic diversity. Over 224 different languages are spoken in Los Angeles County, making it one of the most diverse counties in the United States. Los Angeles is one of the few places in the world where it can be said that there is nowhere else like it. This is true because of the entertainment industry that exists in LA. The city is the world’s leader in producing motion pictures, video games, recorded music, and television shows. The city has 2 major universities, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). LA has a reputation for being very polluted and this is definitely still a problem, but great efforts have been made during the past several years to make the city’s air cleaner. Los Angeles has several professional sports teams including the Lakers, Dodgers, Clippers, Kings, and Angels.
There is a great amount of spiritual diversity within LA because of it’s ethnic diversity. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikihism, Judaism, and various forms of Christianity are all significant religious expressions found in LA. Actually, Los Angeles has the largest Buddhist population in the United States. The Church of Scientology has been a significant spiritual group in Hollywood as well.
I got to stay with my high-school friend Preston Vanderslice while I was in LA. It was excellent getting to catch up with Preston and spend time with his roommates while I was in LA. I got to have lunch with Ty Denney who is the pastor of Westside Faith Community in west LA. This is one of Antioch Community Church’s church plants. I’m not going to write about Westside Faith Community, but I encourage anyone who’s interested to check out both of these groups on their respective web sites.
Mosaic was the primary church that I desired to spend time with while I was in LA. The first thing that I was able to participate in was their Awaken Conference, which was held at their campus in Pasadena. Awaken was a movement that came out of Mosaic that is seeking to raise up leaders and equip them to serve in the world. The conference was a 3-day discussion about what it means to be leaders in our current context, both in the church and in the world. Innovative and established leaders from all over the world helped lead the conference by teaching and sharing their stories. I was glad that I was able to attend the conference, though it wore me out. After the conference was finished, I was challenged by the questions that were raised and the desire of these leaders to impact the culture. However, I was also a bit disturbed by the fact that all of the people who spoke at the conference were famous, “successful” Christian leaders. They had all written books, lead large churches, speak at big conferences, and are constantly sought after. I came away wondering and dwelling upon what it means for someone who is serving in a leadership role to be “successful” in the church. It is something that I will always be wrestling through.
Mosaic is one of the larger evangelical churches in the Los Angeles area. It has existed for a long time, but took a very different direction in the mid-90’s when Erwin McManus became the pastor of the church. McManus is a visionary-type leader and began to lead Mosaic towards being a church that challenged people to be authentic, creative disciples of Jesus and to serve in their particular giftedness in the world. The church began to shift towards seeking to engage culture and specifically the culture within LA. There are 6 different Mosaic sites that meet at different times on Sunday’s for a corporate service. I was able to spend time at the Pasadena service, which is geared more towards families in Pasadena, and the service at The Mayan club in downtown LA, which is geared more towards the young people in their 20’s that live around downtown LA.
Mosaic is involved in planting churches all over the world and in many social justice issues in LA. They have dozens of small groups that meet throughout the city and are actively involved in the artistic industry through film, poetry, music, and other artistic expressions. This church is seeking to empower people to serve well in their own context…it is very exciting.
I was excited to spend some time with some excellent people at Mosaic. Eric Bryant is one of the leader pastors, Steve Saccone leads the Pasadena site and leads the protégé program, and I got to meet several folk who are in the Mosaic protégé program.
This is the InnerCHANGE team that is in LA. I also spent time with the InnerCHANGE team in San Francisco while I was there, so look back on my reflection from that group if you want. InnerCHANGE is a Christian non-profit organization that has bases & groups all over the world. Check out their site to learn about other locations that they’re involved in. They are similar to other groups like Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in that they are not a church, but more of a para-church organization that is seeking to impact a particular city. However, many of the values of InnerCHANGE are very different than other organizations like this that I’ve seen. This group started about 20 years ago with John Hayes ministering amongst the poor and marginalized in the Los Angeles area.
At the core of the vision of InnerCHANGE is a passion to see the poor and marginalized changed, empowered, and moved by God’s love. The people who work and are a part of InnerCHANGE live and work in the midst of those whom they are working with…it is very incarnational. In LA, the InnerCHANGE team deeply values pouring into the lives of elementary children and teenagers west of downtown LA. The team runs an after-school mentoring program and seeks to build holistic relationships with the youth and their families. One of the primary leaders of the InnerCHANGE LA team, John Tiersma-Watson, created an organization called LA Street Productions several years ago as a way to engage with the youth artistic community in west LA. I got to go to one of the shows for LA Street Productions and hang out. It was a very cool art show that was held in a local coffee shop…all of the art that the youth had created was portrayed in the shop and several people played music, read poetry, rapped, and created new art. The InnerCHANGE LA team is doing a terrific job investing in their community and meeting foundational needs.
Again…I got to spend some time with some really neat people while I hung out with InnerCHANGE. John Tiersma-Smith, Jude Tiersma-Smith, and Jonathan McCracken spent some time with me and shared their hearts for west LA and their calling in the city.
Origins Long Beach is a church that was planted about a year ago in the Long Beach area. This group is a part of a church-planting movement called Origins that is seeking to plant churches in the world’s 20 largest cities. Long Beach is a city that is located just southwest from downtown LA. The Origins movement currently has churches in New York City, Rome, and the Los Angeles area.
My schedule did not permit me to attend a Sunday service with Origins, but I was able to spend a good deal of time with one of their pastors, Nate Wigfield, and to attend their weekly mid-week community gathering. At the gathering I had the opportunity to meet several people from the church, eat some good food, and get a feel for their community. It seems that most of the people who are currently part of Origins are younger…most are in their mid and late 20’s. The church seems to be shifting in it’s vision and purpose. The church originally understood itself to be more of a regional church that gathered people from all over Long Beach and LA…the intention was to draw people and there was very little concern for the immediate community. Within the past few months, the vision of the church seems to have shifted towards being more of a community church. They have recently started to meet in a new location that is closer to where most of their members live and where there are definite needs within the community. So they are very young and in the midst of a transition, which is exciting but quite scary as well.
Origins has deep roots in the historic Church. They see themselves as part of God’s story that has been unfolding throughout history. Their services & small group meetings center around kingdom of God theology, authentic worship, and deep relationships. I really appreciated the fact that this young community is wrestling through what it means to follow Jesus in their context and culture, but they also understand the importance of knowing that they are part of a deep heritage of disciples…that they are very connected to those who have come before them. This is an important aspect to grasp and wrestle with.
Check out their site…this is a fun group. I got to spend time with AJ Sherrill (lead pastor), Nate Wigfield (discipleship pastor), and several other people from the community.
Dream Center is a ministry that seeks to bring healing and service to their immediate community. The Dream Center location in LA (there are several across the US) is located a few miles west from downtown. Started in 1993, the LA location was the first Dream Center in the world. The headquarters of Dream Center are in an old abandoned hospital building that was bought by Dream Center and is still being restored so that the ministry can better utilize their space. Some of their community outreaches include: Adopt-A-Block, where hundreds of volunteers visit over 5,000 families in the area near the Dream Center headquarters and help meet any basic needs that that the families might have; Mobile Food Truck provides food to over 40,000 people each week, taking the groceries to homes, communities, and schools; and City Help Mobile Medical Clinic, which travels around the community to provide medical assistance to those who are not able to afford medical services or are not physically able to go to a medical clinic/hospital.
This ministry is making a huge impact on inner-city LA. They have been able to gather a lot of support through the media, a mass of volunteers, donors, and a church that the LA site is connected with. Some groups that I’ve spent time with are operating on a much smaller scale because the size of their group and the amount of physical resources that they have available. Because Dream Center has received such a great amount of financial and physical support, they are able to meet an incredible amount of needs in the inner-city. They are being very faithful with what they have been given.
Dozens of groups come to serve and volunteer with the Dream Center throughout the year. This is a great ministry and I would encourage anyone to spend some time serving alongside these guys. They have incredible hearts, passions, and gifts to make this incredible impact on LA. This is one of the most holistic groups that I have come across. Dream Center is seeking to address the physical, emotional, mental, financial, and spiritual needs of people in their community. It’s a beautiful thing.
My time at Dream Center was not incredibly long, but I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose while I was there…they’re doing powerful stuff. Zach was my tour guide for the Dream Center headquarters…he helped me get a great feel for what Dream Center is about.
Fuller Theological Seminary is located in Pasadena, very close to where I was staying. I set-up a campus visit so that I could learn more about what the seminary is doing and how they are equipping people to impact the world. Fuller is a non-denominational seminary that has existed for over 50 years. It has a wide influence because the seminary has expanded and now has correspondence sites located all over the United States. Over 1,800 students attend the campus in Pasadena, which is the main campus. Fuller is known to be one of the most well-rounded seminaries in the world because of their scholarship on theology, missions, pastoral leadership, counseling, and the ecumenical church. Nearly every Christian tradition is represented in Fuller’s faculty. I was very impressed by the broad spectrum of scholarship and leadership at the seminary.
I think that Fuller is doing a good job equipping and preparing people to serve in the present culture and context. One of the biggest struggles that Fuller faces is that the tuition is quite high and it is expensive to live in Pasadena, so many of their students graduate from seminary with a great deal of debt. Another problem (and this is true of most seminaries) is that almost all of the preparation for ministry that is happening at Fuller is academic/classroom-based. There is very little experiential ministry and very little reflection on spiritual formation. In the future, I imagine that seminaries will begin to change the format of teaching to include more experiential learning and equipping. This will be crucial because churches need to be lead by people who are not just academically-trained, but also possess the practical tools and abilities to serve well within their context.
Fuller Theological Seminary is doing a great job and is one of the best seminaries in the country. I look forward to see how they adapt and evolve as the challenges and culture for the church continue to change.
A few key things that I learned & sensed during my time in Los Angeles…
- Equipping & empowering young leaders to serve in their giftedness. Mosaic does a great job at this. What if churches and ministries began to empower people to impact the world in areas that they are gifted in and passionate about? Mentoring others is a big deal and we should be helping people grow into their giftedness.
- Is the church engaging in their community? This is a common thread that I have seen throughout my trip. The church has to be engaging in the lives of people in their community…in the regular, everyday aspects of life. Christians have to see that the regular needs of people and the ordinary aspects of life are just as significant, if not more significant, as getting someone to come to church.
- What if the Christian understanding of success was different than how the rest of the world understands success? What if it was centered around generosity, humility, and the things that seem to be central to Jesus? What if Christian leaders stopped seeking to be popular and instead sought to be faithful to their call? I fear that the Church is not very counter-cultural in how she understands success.
I hope that you and I will begin to sense and understand that personal piety is quite insignificant when it is not combined with compassion for those who have been marginalized by the kingdoms of the world. I hope that we will grasp, as the prophet Isaiah did, that God does not simply desire a day of fasting, but a lifestyle of fasting.
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? – Isaiah 58:6-7
May it be so…peace be with you…
good thoughts…