Assets and Signs of Hope

There are many incredible people and organizations doing transformational work and ministry in Homewood. There are many wonderful assets in Homewood that are currently being built upon in order to bring about positive change in the neighborhood. While there are still plenty of signs of need, there are also many signs of hope that I see all of the time.

When doing service for the Lord that brings about transformation in struggling urban environments, it is important for leaders to recognize assets and signs of hope in the community. As a Christian leader in the community, I know that God was at work for a long time before I arrived here seven years ago. And, the Holy Spirit will be at work in Homewood long after I am gone. For the time being, it is my job as a person who is working to bring about positive change in the neighborhood to discern where the Holy Spirit is at work and joyfully join in.

This is a different approach than many well-meaning Christians take when it comes to bringing about transformation in cities. Many Christians see inner city neighborhoods as defined by needs and brokenness. They mistakenly assume that blighted areas are godless areas, and that someone needs to introduce God into the equation. People come to the city thinking that they are bringing God with them. These types of approaches to ministry are ineffective in the long run. In fact, often a lot of damage is done in the name of God or Christianity.

God is always on mission to redeem every person and place in our world. It's our job to listen to God and join that transformational work where ever it is happening. We should approach that type of service with humility and respect for the context that we are called to. Even though it is possible to overcome mistakes when working toward transformation, it's much better to think strategically through our approaches and check out hearts and intentions before we enter into any type of outreach as Christians.

Missional Church Taking Shape

I have been so encouraged by the way people are so eager to serve the Lord at North Way East End. We believe that God has called us to be a missional church that crosses cultures in order to advance the Kingdom of God, and it has been amazing to see how our church has grabbed hold of that vision in just a period of a few months. I can't wait to see how God will work through this church to accomplish his purposes around the city of Pittsburgh in the years to come. We gather to worship on Sundays so that we can go out into the world and make an impact for Christ throughout the course of the week.

Prayer-focused, Cross-cultural, and Missional

This morning I gathered to pray with several people who have committed to praying for North Way East End every Saturday morning at 7am. The time together is always unique because there are so many details to launching a church campus and new prayer requests arise on a daily basis. One of the things I am committed to as a pastor is that our church will be built on a foundation of prayer. Many churches and church leaders talk about prayer being important, but they fail to emphasize prayer or model it for people and so corporate prayer can become lost in the shuffle.

I've also been intentional about building cross-cultural community in the East End, and Pastor Freedom and I have been out in the community each week building relationships across cultures. I've been encouraging the staff and elders at North Way East End to go out of their way to emphasize authentic relationships across cultures. I wouldn't say that we have "arrived" at being cross-cultural by any stretch of the imagination, but we're making good progress toward that goal. Many church leaders like to talk about being cross cultural, but I want to actually be a cross cultural faith community.

Another emphasis of North Way East End is that we are a missional church community. That means that we serve the poor and marginalized people in our city and across the world. We serve people outside the walls of the church well beyond Sunday mornings. We gather together to worship on Sundays so that we can go out and impact the world in every sector of society and across socioeconomic boundaries. As a pastor, I spent a great deal of my time this week with people living in desperate poverty in the inner city. I also spent a significant amount of time with business leaders who steward a lot of resources throughout the course of the week. Many churches like to talk a lot about serving the poor and being missional, but our leaders in the East End are working toward following God's lead to make this a part of everything that we do at the church and in our city.

Prayer-focused. Cross-cultural. Missional. These are key foundations of the North Way East End church, and we are seeking to live them out in the city so that God will be glorified. We are just starting in the process, and we have a long way to go. We are, however, off to a promising start in these areas!

NYC Urban Immersion - Day Three

Today was one of the best days I've had in a long time. I can't even begin to describe how the Holy Spirit ministered to me today, and how much God opened my heart to new perspectives on his mission to advance his Kingdom. I am truly blessed to be a part of this doctorate program at BGU. On this day I had the opportunity to spend time with some of the most influential leaders in the body of Christ. This morning Ray Bakke gave one of his classic lectures about how most money that is intended to help poor people is actually filtered out of poor urban neighborhoods to middle class urban or suburban neighborhoods. He provided a biblical foundation for why Christian leaders should care about such issues and become engaged as transformational leaders and stewards. That type of thinking is a big reason why I moved my family to Homewood in Pittsburgh. Any Christian serving the poor should go about it in an empowering way. The gospel is good news, and it is empowering. After Ray's morning lecture we visited Dr. Mark Gornick, the founder of City Seminary, a training school for urban Christian leaders that delivers a curriculum similar to BGU in that cities are the laboratories and theory is all tied in practically. A woman named Dr. Janice McClain, an pastor who immigrated to America from Jamaica when she was a teenager, shared with us about how Harlem is being gentrified and pastors like her are learning how to be effective at ministering in complex urban environments. In the afternoon we all went to Bethel Gospel Assembly, a huge multicultural church in Harlem, where Bishop Dr. Carlton Brown shared with us about how his church is doing amazing things reaching many different types of people for Christ in Harlem, in the greater New York region, and in countries all over the world. It is so amazing and inspiring to see the fruit that God is able to bring forth from churches who are missional to the core. Yesterday I visited a Chinese church that is reaching thousands of people all over the world, and today I visited a church made up mostly of African-American and Latino people who are making a huge difference in the world for the sake of Christ. Vision is a holy discontent for the way things are, and good pastors are able to be visionary. Also, there are many different ways to be effective at urban ministry. Much depends on context and vision. In the late afternoon we visited Brooklyn Tabernacle, another huge multiracial church with over 10,000 members that was started in what was once one of the most violent and dangerous neighorhoods in Brooklyn. The senior pastor, Jim Cymbala, spent several hours with us describing how the church started with only a few members and how through the power of prayer God has done amazing things. He shared with us about the importance of prayer in churches. He told us that the church must be about LOVE, or our message will get lost in all of the craziness associated with the institutional church. He encouraged all of us to be real, and not try to be actors as pastors. He also mentioned that the biggest challenge facing the modern church is at-risk youth, and that all churches should develop strategies for reaching troubled urban youth. That made me feel good that North Way has been doing just that in our city of Pittsburgh through the LAMP mentoring initiative.

There is just far too much that happened to me today to describe in this blog. I'll only be able to unpack it all over a good cup of coffee with lots of people back in Pittsburgh. God is so amazing! I honestly cannot think of a better way to learn. We learn deep theories in a classroom, and then we go out into the streets to see how that theology and theory is being applied. I was completely surprised by how authentic and engaged these amazing leaders were today. The Holy Spirit really worked through Jim Cymbala in particular to encourage me that cross-cultural church is not only possible, but essential for the growth of the church in cities in America. He also demonstrated the importance of prayer as the foundation for living out God's purposes.

I was greatly encouraged today in the three things that I am most passionate about in Pittsburgh: working with at-risk youth, missional church, and multiracial church. Today I interacted with pastors who are living out profound callings in all three of those areas, and it is so inspiring to have access to people who have been down the road that I am only beginning to go down in Pittsburgh. My heart is to continue to reach the at-risk young people that I am working with in Homewood, to continue to encourage North Way to get outside the walls of our church buildings in order to build relationships with people who are not Christians, and to remain committed to the dream of leading a multiracial church campus in the East End. All of these things are possible with God, and today my Father blessed me with the gift of encouragement and empowerment. I am ready for the next steps in Pittsburgh!

Living Daily in God's Mission

Every day when I wake up, I have a new opportunity to give myself away to God. By giving myself away to God, I mean that I am intentionally making a decision to try to put myself in the background and prioritize my role in God's mission to redeem the world. So what does that look like for me on a daily basis? As a husband, I know that God has blessed me with Julie and I need to love her and honor her as much as I can. Every single day is a new opportunity to do that. One of the greatest privileges of my life has been to be married to Julie, and it's my responsibility to love her well every single day that God gives me to be with her. As a father, it is my responsibility to love Kyra and Sierra well. My daughters are an amazing gift from God! They deserve much more from me than to just be provided for and disciplined. They need me... to engage them with my heart, to love them well, consistently, every single day. My relationship with my daughters is one of the greatest examples that they have of how their Heavenly Father loves them, so it's important that I engage them with my heart as much as I can. As a pastor, it is important for me to give myself away to others by serving them with all of my heart. God did not give me the influence of being a pastor for me to abuse it by giving people lists of duties and obligations to be met. God wants me to care for people's hearts... a lot of people and a lot of hearts... as he presents opportunities. In helping people to grow closer to God, I'm also growing closer to the Lord myself. Being a pastor is not about people serving me, it's about me serving God and others in order that Jesus can work through me to accomplish his purposes. This purpose is different every single day. I could be spending time with businessmen in powerful places, or with single mom's in the inner city who might be struggling with the grind of urban poverty. No matter who God brings into my life, it is my great privilege to be able to care for their hearts and draw people into a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. As a mentor, God has given me the amazing privilege to be able to spend a great deal of time with some of the toughest kids in the city of Pittsburgh. God has shown me that he wants me to sacrifice for my mentees with my time and attention so that he can work through me to achieve his purposes in their lives. I don't just spend time with my mentees... I am a strong male influence in their lives who helps to cast new visions for them. I am helping my mentees to learn more about God's mission in this world, and there is no greater cause than that. As a neighbor in Homewood, every day God has me looking out for how to increase levels of shalom in my community. God has asked me to serve my neighborhood and my city, so I do. It's that simple. People ask me all the time why I moved my family to Homewood, and the answer is so simple... God asked me to do it so I did it. Sometimes we need to take risks, act, and be obedient when God asks us to do something that doesn't make sense and then we trust God to take care of the details when we get into the adventure. That's where life is found... in those places where God asks us to give ourselves away to others and the calling doesn't make any rational sense. We live in the age of reason, and God is a God of profound mystery. Life won't make any sense if we always wait to make to most rational decision. That's how the world operates... without faith. As Christians, we are not of this world. We belong to God. And that should shape how we live every single day that we wake up to face the world. God is on mission to reach every corner of this world. As followers of Jesus we all have a unique role to play in that mission on a daily basis, and only a heart that is fully engaged with our Lord and yielded to his purposes will be able to discern what God requires of us. We must embrace risk as the central theme of our lives. We must fully engage with others... not just the people we love, but even our enemies. God wants to work through us in all circumstances. There is no better place to be than living right in the stream of God's mission on a daily basis.

Missional Church

One of the things I love about LAMP is that the mentors are people from churches who are living out their faith in tangible ways throughout the week, at all kinds of different hours in the day and night, in places where a lot of people from Pittsburgh are afraid or unwilling to go, with at-risk kids that the world has written off. LAMP is a good example of the missional church. Church is not a what. It is not a building on the corner with lots of programs where people gather on Sunday mornings. The church is a who. It is people living out their faith in relationship to God, with one another, and with people in the world who are not Christians. God did not design the church for us to build church silos for ourselves where we have our own "Christian clubs." Followers of Christ should be spread out throughout society, in all sectors, on a daily basis, whenever and where ever possible... especially in places that may not appear to be very "churchy."

Reggie McNeal writes, "Church as who fulfills the covenant that God first made with Abraham when God created a people to partner with him in his redemptive mission in the world. That covenant indicates that we have been blessed to bless. Simply put, we are the blessing people. That is both our distinct privilege and our distinct responsibility. In our blessing of the world, we live out the passion that God has to bless all people so that they know this about him and are drawn to him. It means that the church does not have a mission; the mission has a church. The mission is God's. It is redemptive, addressing everything that sin marred across the entire bandwidth of the human condition. It is a mission being played out in the world beyond just God's people. In this biblical understanding of the church, we grasp that the church is not the point; the mission is the point. We have been created to be boots-on-the-ground partners. On a macro scale, this view of church means that every community should be better if the church gets the mission right. The scorecard can no longer be about how well our individual congregations are doing. The condition of our communities is the scorecard for how well the church is doing at being the people of God." - To Transform a City