As a pastor in Hollywood, CA, I’m in a context that was post-Christian before it was cool. We make no assumption of church background, biblical familiarity, or felt need for a Savior. Sometimes we have to serve for years to reach square one with our neighbors.
I love it.
AND! (most importantly) God loves the city. He loves these people. He envisions the possibility available only in Jesus. He’s been here working long before Ecclesia Hollywood set up shop.
I don’t know where you influence, but let me encourage you from the valley of dry bones:
God is moving. God is transforming. God is healing. Salvation is here.
If you’re like me, you believe that, and you want to be a part of it. But you struggle with where to begin breaking into a culture that believes Jesus, Christians and the Church aren’t just wrong—they’re irrelevant.
If I may, let me suggest a few initiatives we’ve seen God use firsthand. Maybe they’ll awaken an idea in you.
1. DISPERSE THE MINISTRY
Whether you organize in “missional” small groups (however you define that) or you form small teams to focus on projects, make sure the culture of your faith family is one of shared impact. Real change happens when everyone pitches in.
For us at Ecclesia Hollywood, we made a decisive move last year to turn away from most “large blast” service projects, and started encouraging our small groups to come up with their own ideas. We help them discern where God is already up to something around them, help them organize, then kick them off the dock. It’s uncontrollable, even chaotic, but I think this kind of chaos is beautiful. I’m finding the best ideas are the ones I’d never come up with. We’re re-engineering our organizational model to reduce bureaucracy and give space to creativity at all levels, in order to free up more of this organic movement.
2. SERVE FIRST WHERE THE GOSPEL INTERSECTS THE NEEDS OF YOUR CONTEXT
Most Christ-centered faith communities default to responding to homelessness. I minister in the homeless capital of the United States, so this is a leading effort, to be sure. But you may not have the same pervasive need. Where you influence, for example, there might a high infant mortality rate, a lack of civic and political involvement from underprivileged voices, or elderly citizens isolated from the world around them.
Does Jesus have anything to do with this? Our suffering Savior? You bet. We’ll find Him there—at the feet of the exhausted, the bedside of the dying, the pub table of the depressed, the classroom of the underserved.
One peculiar way we serve is “Midnight Coffee”—an idea that sprang out of a night we spent walking Hollywood Boulevard and praying. Every so often, we invite everyone in our church family to show on a Friday night, 10P until 2A (you read that correctly) to simply offer free (really great!) coffee and conversation when thousands of people are walking from one club to another, right in front of our church building.
On Midnight Coffee nights, hundreds stop by. Sometimes they just get coffee and move on. Sometimes we get to talk to them. Sometimes we get to pray with them. Sometimes they show up on Sunday, and start asking bigger questions.
3. PARTNER WHERE THE GOSPEL INTERSECTS THE VALUES OF YOUR CONTEXT
This takes a lot of listening. You can start by web searching local NGO’s or service organizations, but I’d also encourage talking to local elected officials, law enforcement, and your neighbors. Ask them what they feel is the biggest need in the city. Ask them what they would help out with if there was only someone doing it.
If there’s a group, team or organization already addressing those needs, look for ways to reinforce their work with people or resources. If not, then create non-proselytizing contexts for the whole community to come together to meet a need.
I theologically assume God’s already doing something good in my postal code. And He so often does that through people who don’t give Him a second thought. He builds an altruism bridge into their habits. Then, as I’ve found, they discover the only reason anyone is worth helping is because of intrinsic value—bestowed on all of us by a Creator in whose image we function. When we sacrifice and covenant with another, we’re modeling our Maker—whether we like it or not. This has led to amazing conversations with nonbelievers and given us opportunities to address false paradigms in our culture that Christians want nothing to do with the environment, or HIV/AIDS relief, or science education (to name a few).
4. MODEL KINGDOM ETHICS
Through teaching Scripture and encouraging each other in Jesus-centered living, we naturally begin to behave differently. By God’s Spirit, our capacity to eliminate gossip, to forgive first and ask questions later, to be free from identifying with our achievements or bank account, to make room for everyone in our churches and friendship circles, radically increases as we work out our faith.
What if there was a small nucleus of people in your city that honored their bodies, never cut corners to get ahead, refused to malign anyone, and exceeded expectations of creativity and excellence?! I wonder if someone just might see those good deeds and try to give credit where credit is due. It just might be the revolution you’re praying for.
5. TRAIN IN FRIEND-MAKING
I’m fascinated with how good I can be at talking like a Christian, and how simultaneously awful I can be at being a neighbor. It seems that the longer I run in the Christian circles, the less equipped I am to be myself and have a good time with people outside my worldview. Without practice, the art of incarnational friend-making can quickly fade.
You have people all around you right now, as you read this, that don’t have any friends who follow Jesus. They wouldn’t know how to make one if you forced them to. But that’s OK. We can initiate. We can bring the presence of God into normalcy. Be a great listener. Be an encourager. Be punctual. Be conscientious. Be compassionate. Do some forensic work: most Jesus followers you know were likely reached by someone they already knew.
Before, during and through all of this, pray like the future of your city depends on it. Beg and plead for God to use you for those good works He’s prepared in advance for you to do. Then, be on the lookout. God’s restoring your city, and you get to join Him.
Flickr photo (cc) by e_walk
