Post-LAUP Devotional...John 21

Hello LAUP Alum!  God put this devotional on my heart at the end of the summer...an invitation into letting God continue everything he began this summer, or whenever your LAUP experience may have been!  (Pardon the jungle animals surrounding me...my office used to be a nursery..:))

Following Jesus, Redefined

This month marks the end of my role as the LAUP director, and the beginning of my new role as InterVarsity’s Associate Director of Urban Projects.  This summer has renewed and clarified my role as one who helps to redefine what it means to follow Jesus for this generation.

The summer team I led into learning about mass incarceration

In my 20 years of InterVarsity staff work, I’ve never seen a summer like this.

In our final LAUP meeting Lydia stood to share that she’d been a Christian her whole life but it took LAUP to help her see what that meant.  Feeling the tangible reality of poverty around her, seeing the suffering of her neighbors and experiencing God’s compassion did something to her. In our final meeting Lydia proclaimed that she was now giving her life to following Jesus for the first time.  Lydia’s story captures the whole summer.

Students entered the summer focused on how different the poor felt from themselves:  they were unable to relate, and thus unable to empathize.  But as they saw Jesus’ compassion for the poor in the Scripture, and began to feel his compassion for themselves, they heard God’s invitation to join him in that compassion.  Students learned to look for the similarities between themselves and poor people.  They learned to lay aside the fact that they didn’t have all the answers so that they could dare to feel the pain of the poor, even if they weren’t sure if they could handle it, or what they would do with it.  And God showed up.

Students opened their hearts to the pain of the poor and the presence of God became real.  Students were moved into practical compassion:  they gave away the little income we have them live on to their neighbors, they fasted and prayed for families around them, they wept over the pain of poor children who have lost fathers to deportation, incarceration, and murder.  They followed Jesus into incarnating the love of God to their poor neighbors, and they were never the same.

As we ended students committed to selling their cars to give the profit to urban ministries, to living and ministering in urban poor neighborhoods for two years after graduating from college.  Eleven of them pledged to live the rest of their lives ministering among the urban poor.  Their poor neighbors who felt so different had become friends, family, brothers, sisters.  Students were launched into bringing all of who God is into all of the pain and brokenness of our world.  Just like with Lydia, following Jesus became real.

I take this experience with me as I venture into my new role.

It is now my job to develop a generation of world changers who live as good news to the poor across the nation, and to build the foundations of such an experience in Seattle.  I will be strengthening our existing urban projects, and helping launch new ones so that every InterVarsity students can experience their faith as something that engages not just the spiritual realm, but every aspect of brokenness in our world.

I’ll spend the next months building a network of ministry partners in Seattle—urban ministries that can host our students, and donors who can fund the work—and getting a feel for what’s happening in urban projects across the country.

Over the next few months, I’m seeking to develop partnership with 25 new organizations in Seattle and to find $30K of new financial support to fund this work.

I need your prayers like I never have before!  I need new leads and contacts like I never have before!  I need Jesus like I never have before!  It’s a time for faith…and a time where I have been invited to see God work as I never have before.

Scott

Compassion

Just a quick two notes for prayer:

1.  I'm taking the Homeboy team to a Youth Authority prison in Ventura county this morning.  We'll tour it and meet a number of incarcerated youth and interact with them.  Pray for a powerful time.

2.  On that note, pray for God to move all the interns and team leaders of LAUP into real compassion that moves them to action.  A number of them are struggling to let the stories of poverty and injustice trouble their hearts, but are feeling like they can't relate.  My sense is that this is the critical breakthrough of the summer for many of them.  We'll focus on helping them this week, but please pray for God's Spirit to break their hearts.

Scott

Beauty that Leads to Awe

You know that experience of taking in some natural wonder—a clear mountain lake framed by snow-peaked mountains, or a rainbow in the midst of a rushing waterfall—and then taking a deep breath as if you can inhale the wonder you are seeing as you feel wonderfully small and delighted to be a spectator on our earth?  Imagine that feeling.  And then multiply it by the way in which another human being has the power to touch us in a totally different, but equally powerful, way; through up-close-and-personal, vulnerable, intimacy that is so intensely connective and human.  That is what I experienced today when I met Fabian Debora.

Fabian at work in his studio

Fabian is a sort of artist-in-residence at Homeboy Industries.  On the one hand, he’s another one of the hundreds of Homeboy employees who have made the choice out of gang life, out of drug addiction, and into fatherhood, into sobriety, into dignity.  On the other hand, he is a unique marvel.  I met Fabian this morning, on my first day of volunteering at Homeboy Industries for the next month with a team of college students.

After following him in his car through the crazy traffic of the downtown LA garment and wholesale district, we followed him up to the second story of his downtown LA second story art studio.  Not only are his art pieces—hundreds of them, some of them ten feet by ten feet—stacked up against the walls everywhere, but the space is profoundly intimate, filled with drawings by the students he his apprenticing, sketches by his daughters, and a corner that is his altar of precious memories and mementos.

His art is beautiful.  It is powerful.  Some of his pieces feel like they are filled with layers and layers of meaning and stories and emotions that are hidden behind the canvas ready to burst out into expression.  And when Fabian told us his story, they did.

One of my favorite pieces.

From the pains of catching his father shooting up heroin in a park yard bathroom as a young child to when he was beaten up by a gang at age twelve and went to his cousin that night to join the gang and be protected, Fabian’s story is moving.  And when you consider the sensitivity of his artist’s heart, and project that onto a child, it becomes heart-wrenching.  I was most moved by his attempted suicide while high on methamphetamine, the destructive voices in his head, and his experience of literal divine intervention that saved his life.

As he told his story I beheld a beauty which exceeded that of that mountain lake.  It exceeded that of any painting I’ve ever seen.  It was the beauty of a human life, in all of its glory, being rescued, redeemed, cherished.  It had fallen into the pit of despair…and then had been picked back up, washed, cleaned, and was living and thriving and glowing before my very eyes. 

Awe is not an emotion I regularly feel.  But I felt it today.  In the presence of Fabian.  I sat in awe.  And I marveled.  I worshipped.  I beheld raw beauty and goodness.

Today I was given a gift.

And thankfully, I can give you a little taste of that gift through this short film made about Fabian’s art and his life found here:  http://vimeo.com/93161888. 

I hope you can stand in awe as I am today.

Is This the High Point, Or the Foundation?

Just a week ago, my son stood next to the sunflowers we planted with LAUP students at the LAUP house this spring.  They have grown so powerfully in such a short amount of time...much like LAUP over the past five years.

These past summers, I have had the pleasure of seeing LAUP grow into something that it's never been before.  LAUP has always maintained a wonderful prophetic role of making disciples of InterVarsity students, and calling them to gain God's heart for the poor and the city.  But in the past five years, we have seen the Greater LA Division of InterVarsity--the CAMPUSES--take an ownership of LAUP in an unprecedented way.

Every campus in the Greater LA area fights to get their students at a LAUP weekend dip each year.  For the past three years, we have averaged bringing over 300 students through some kind of LAUP experience every year.  Young staff are visioning for how to integrate love for the poor and ministry in the city into their plans for discipleship and campus growth.

It's been a wonderful season.

And I don't want it to end.

This afternoon, the two front-runners for the LAUP director job--a married couple that has been incredibly excited to explore the possibility of the role--called me with hesitation about how well it would fit them.  I'm not sure what God is doing...but I feel led to PRAY and I want to call all of us that love the legacy of LAUP to PRAY.

1.  Pray that God will speak clearly to whoever the next director is with a strong call.

2.  Pray that God will pour out his Spirit on the students as LAUP begins this weekend.

3.  Pray that we will be able to see the growth that's come these past five years not be the HIGH POINT, but the FOUNDATION of a whole new era of growth.

I'm praying right along with you!

God's Provision for Our Family.

I have been offered a promotion within InterVarsity, and I’m going to take it.  Let me tell you why.

As many of you know, directing the LA Urban Project has been my dream job:  it lets me connect my influence of college students to our ministry in the inner city.  I’ve had the chance to see God give students his heart for the poor, and to become relevant disciples of Jesus in a cynical generation.

At the same time, since moving to Seattle to finish my master’s degree, my family has been thriving like never before.  Jenny’s theatre career has really taken off, we found an amazing school for our kids, and our whole family—including Lucy and Tyler—has had a sense of shared mission that we’d never had.

“How do these two realities fit, God?”  That became my question.  For the past year, Jenny and I have been seeking God with this tension.  God has been teaching me to really see and hear Jenny in a way I never have.  He has also revealed a deeper sense of my own vocation that transcends any particular city:  to fan the flames of what God can do at the intersection of the rich and the poor.

It was in the midst of that seeking, last November, that I was offered a job as the Associate National Director of Urban Projects for InterVarsity.  The job involves developing the 25 urban projects across the country--including LAUP--stepping into more national influence within the InterVarsity movement, and launching in Seattle what’s been build in Los Angeles.  I suddenly felt like God was answering my question by offering me a new version of my dream job, with more influence, that was based in Seattle where my whole family could thrive.

After taking the next two months to pray and seek wise council, I accepted the position at the end of this past January.  Not only am I incredibly excited for this next chapter of life and ministry, but I am deeply grateful to God for providing for our family as we have tried to seek Him above all else.

For now, I am still running the LA Urban Project, and will still spend two months of this summer running our 7-week inner city internship in Los Angeles.  This will also involve training the new LAUP director, and then I will transition to my new role on September 1^st.

Even after September 1st, however, in my new role, I will continue to mentor and train the next LAUP director over the next two to three years.

In this transition, LAUP needs your prayer.  We are in the midst of taking applications for a new LAUP director.  The past five years have seen better partnership between LAUP and the campus work than ever before, and we want to see this continue and deepen.  It will take the right person, and we need God to bring that person to us.  Pray also for a strong finish to my tenure as LAUP director, and that God will give me wisdom to set things up well into the future.

Additionally, I (Scott) am seeking $30K of financial support as I transition out of the LAUP job, into my new national role.  If you feel led to help me in this transition, it would bless me and my family.

Thank you for walking with me and my family through the journey of ministry as the LAUP director.  You are a spiritual family of partnership that have surrounded me in prayer, giving, consultation, and friendship for many years now, and I am grateful to have you behind me as God opens up the next chapter of life for my family, and the next chapter of LAUP ministry.

Scott

"Invited Into Joy"

Last week I led 14 USC students and 1 Harvey Mudd student through five days of living as good news to the poor.

We spent two days on skid row, and then the last three pouring ourselves into South LA. Anchored in three core Scriptures--Luke 4, Matthew 25, and Luke 16--we completed the LAUP house community garden (teaching kids to put kale on their pizza), we completed the LAUP house tutoring space, and welcomed the neighborhood to experience practical good news. Our last evening there, college students partnered with neighborhood youth to invite families up and down the block to a barbecue, and saw some 40+ people come by.

At the heart of the experience was a surprise…it was more joyful than anyone imagined. Whitney described Jesus' invitation into loving the least as an "invitation into joy." There is a secret joy of God's kingdom that is uniquely found in making the choice to pour ourselves out for those on the margins…the same joy, I believe, Jesus had in pouring himself out for us.

We concluded our week with a call to commitment: three committed to living their lives in obedience to Jesus for the first time, five committed to letting Jesus realign their life plans in light of being good news to the poor, and 14 of the 15 committed to coming back weekly to continue investing in and tutoring kids in the neighborhood.

It comes one experience at a time, but God is launching a revolution of young people who are rediscovering the good news of Jesus in a way that demonstrates the grace, power, and love of God not just abstractly, but concretely in ways that the world can't deny.


To see the summary video of our week together, click here: LAUP Plunge, 2014

Watching Their Garden Grow

Just a quick update as I head into leading a LAUP spring break plunge, which will be attended by both Christians and some of their non-religious friends…the LAUP garden is in FULL SWING!

Youth from the neighborhood have begun growing their own food to learn about health, and to help the nutrition of their families since January, and the leafy greens are really starting to pop!  It's really exciting to see the beginning of a picture of inner city kids drawn into a relationship with the earth, with nature, and with healthy eating that has the potential to change their world view.

Just one more way that the full range of Jesus' good news is being experienced by the families and kids of South LA through college students and your partnership!

What part do WHITE people play?

In light of this past week’s MLK holiday, and the upcoming Black History Month, I’ve been reflecting on the role White people have to play in God’s heart for justice.  After centuries of being at the center of power in the West, is it time for White folks to take a back seat to people of color?  Do we no longer have the right to have a voice in the conversation?  Or is there a place for our voices and leadership?  Is there something lost without us in the mix?

Catherine (left), a Junior at Pacific Luther University

Last week I asked some of these questions to students at Pacific Lutheran University.  A junior at PLU, Catherine, responded to my challenges in an email I have pasted below:

“I have heard a few talks about race and white privilege (some through Intervarsity, some in class, some in church) and I think they have always made me uncomfortable. I resonated well with your description of the guilty-feeling white person. That has always been me: I know that white privilege exists but I never knew what to do about it or how it connected to my faith. When (my staff leader) told our leaders team…that you were coming, I was a bit nervous:  first, because it is a topic that I have struggled with in the past, and second because—as you stated—it is an uncomfortable topic for many.

As I'm sure you know, one of our main roles as leaders is follow-up and having dialogue with our small group members after the talk. I was nervous about how I would be able to do this. But after last night I am only excited and eager to talk to my community and the members that I am disciplining. 

I loved the way that you started with the scripture from Matthew 25 and the 3 servants stewarding their bags of gold. I have never heard someone connect race and privilege to scripture in such a logical and inspiring way:  (that we are responsible to use the power we’ve been given for God’s good purposes…and to have power and deny it is to abuse it.)  Last night was the first time that I was able to start seeing the ways that Jesus cares about privilege and wants us to use it for His kingdom.

I think that also in the past I have been stuck on feeling guilty because I could never tangibly see how I could use my privilege to God's glory, but last night God was definitely speaking through you as my eyes and heart started to open and see that that is possible. I loved your story about your dorm wing and how the African American janitor became a part of your community there (through your White roommate befriending him.) I was inspired and convicted while hearing that story.

In Intervarsity we talk a lot about "God's heart for justice", and things were starting to click for me last night as that sometimes confusing and vague statement started to come to life for me. Thank you for your passion about this topic and your devotion to the Lord and His kingdom.

Thank you again for opening many eyes and hearts last night to what Jesus really thinks about race and privilege, and I look forward to having you back to campus so that we can all learn even more.”

As Catherine and I journey down this road, I invite you, too, along:  what power do we have as White Americans?  How does God hold us responsible to use that power for good?  Where can we make the choice to do so?