Forgotten Ways are being refound (thanks Alan and Deb Hirsch). You should all really go out and buy The Forgotten Ways, because there is something there. I mean really… I have been doing a class on forgotten ways with a few students out in Isla Vista, and as I do so, I am amazed that it is actually happening.
I did not want to plant a church, I wanted to create a movement. I didn’t want to see a gathering, I wanted to see gatherings. And best of all, we see a bit of justice returning to the poor, neglected, and forgotten – the people God misses. I guess you could say that God misses all of us, because no one on earth has reached that zenith of relationship – yet many in our city have been neglected in friendship, one of the vision marks of the Uffizi Mission Project.
I can see now how God set the table, allowing me to walk into two of largest needs in our city – our friends without houses and our friends on the West Side. Half of it was for my own education, so that I might be able to educate others. As I continually face my own blindness, perhaps I can help others see theirs’ – “I once was blind but now I see.”
But now, we are waking up maybe even to the point of being able to multiply to other places?
Consider the Village Apartments – thanks to the seed planted by the Turner Foundation, we now have a weekly kids club, God experience on Wed night for the adults, churches coming help with finances and parenting, and Westmont coming soon to do hip/hop and break dancing for the kids. Not only that, but on March 15-20 45 Westmont students will be coming here to spend their spring break loving people on the West Side. It is growing so fast that now I can consider partnering with others to begin an outpouring of blessing over at the neighboring Carrillo Apartments (should it be led by God…)
Pershing Park has swelled, and that is good news/bad news. More friends from the streets are coming as well as more friends who come to befriend and share meals. Street Medicine is up and running – I have witnessed them help people get needed operations, mend wounds, involve UCSB pre-med students learning medicine on the streets. We now hope to raise up leadership to help with our Spanish speaking friends and street kids. I have heard reports of people from jails being released soon because of our financial crisis, so that will increase numbers on the streets – pray about that one.
For the church to spread again wild and free like it did in the early church, or is doing in China, we have to be reminded of a few things. Jesus is Lord (we are not just worshippers, we are followers); Disciple-Making (Jesus empowers us and believes in us, that is why He called us!); We are all Equal (God works equally through the ordained and non-ordained, the hired or the riff-raff frazzled every day spiritual novice); etc… (Get the book The Forgotten Ways if you want to learn more!)
Nothing will satisfy me except a movement. That is a troubling thing, for I have no idea how to do that or oversee that, or make sure that a movement has a long term plan except for being the yeast that takes over the entire dough. It’ll be fun, unsafe, rattling, exhausting, meaningful, life-giving, threatening, unnerving, painful, conflicted – just like what we see in the gospels.
Join in the revolution of love.
Your comments desired – are you seeing the revolution or not? Have you read the Forgotten Ways? What do you think?