Becoming the People of God

As we train our LAUP interns for urban ministry this summer, our hope is to root them in the biblical story of the world’s brokenness, and God’s choice to enter in and redeem. After beginning with the reality of the world’s brokenness (see previous post) we laid out the role of Jesus, entering into our world to conquer death and brokenness, and giving people access to the Kingdom of God. “Much like a massive explosion at the base of a dam,” LAUP teacher Chris Harry taught, “Jesus’ death and resurrection struck the death blow to brokenness. The dam hasn’t come down yet, but if you look closely, you can see the cracks.” Using this image, we invited students into participation with God in “pulling apart the cracks” to let the power and reality of God's kingdom come rushing into their lives, and into the inner city.

In the midst of this vision, my (Scott’s) hope from the beginning has been to nurture a sense of community that would embody the Kingdom of God: that our group of 60 would be a safe place for honesty and encouragement where God’s grace became tangible.

I put this hope into action--as previously mentioned--by making a point to share very vulnerably about my own brokenness and weakness, even in the midst of leading the entire project. At the end of day one, I went home feeling naked and second-guessing the wisdom of sharing so vulnerably in the midst of establishing my leadership of a group of students for the summer.

To my surprise, day two ended with a spontaneous time of training students in listening to God’s Spirit, and as they did so, a consistent theme of God calling students to be refined by him emerged. One woman saw a mental image of a hand being slowly twisted off, convicting students that in the midst of serving the poor this summer, we ourselves needed to be refined and transformed over a period of time. Students left engaged with their own issues of character.

Fast-forward to our last night of orientation, Thursday. As we wrapped up the week, we made space for students to share what God had being doing in or around them. Having never had a time like this during the week, and knowing that students were drained by the amount of content and input, I wasn’t sure what to expect. As the time was opened, immediately one student shared how he had been feeling spiritually flat and had just been revived with joy and hope, supernaturally, just minutes before. Another man stood and confessed his struggles with lust and pornography, followed by a woman who confessed the same thing. For the next fifteen minutes, student after student shared honestly, vulnerably, and hopefully about God’s work in their own character, and their awareness of his grace.

As I sat, listening, I realized that what had been a fragile hope was actually coming to life right before my eyes. We spent the rest of the evening in joyful worship of God, collectively aware that—in the midst of our own issues, and the brokenness of the world—God, indeed, was present, offering healing, hope, and redemption.

I leave our first week surprised by the depth and potency of what is already happening. I look forward to see what is in store as we move forward into serving the youth and families of urban Los Angeles.

Taking in Reality...the First Days of LAUP

We’re one week into LAUP and I’m already in awe of God’s work…the stage is set for something very significant. Since last Sunday, the 19th, we’ve been meeting with the students daily for the purpose of training them for service in the inner city and giving them a spiritual lens through which to understand their summer.

We launched LAUP by offering the narrative of the Bible as an alternative to our 21st century American culture understanding about truth, meaning, and reality. Much like when the nation of Israel lived in Babylonian exile, American Christians are beginning to be more shaped by our surrounding context than we are shaping it, often just as caught up in materialism, consumerism, and ambition as our secular neighbors. To counter this, we shared the overarching story of scripture: things were not always this way. We told the story of Genesis and had students capture how their hearts yearn for the beauty, peace, and trust of the Garden of Eden through painting white tiles. The tiles were beautiful and the mood was sweet.

But, we continued, humanity didn’t submit to the boundaries of the garden. As we chose to defy God’s authority, brokenness entered the world, from the murder of Abel by Cain all the way through the world we live in today. “Not only is our world broken,” I (Scott) challenged, “but we ourselves are participant in that brokenness.” As I said this I walked over to our tiles and pulled mine down from the board and placed it on the podium in front of me. As the gasps punctuated the room, I raised the hammer I had in my hand, and with each confession of my own participation in damaging the world, I struck my beautifully painted tile. As the tile shattered into more and more broken pieces, I poured them into a bin, and invited students to reflect on their own participation in damaging our world. The next fifteen minutes was a powerful time of taking in the reality of our world, the sharp staccato of steady hammer blows shattering tile adding a wave of grief with each hearing. The underlying spiritual realities of our world were beginning to set in.

But as the mission of LAUP is to engage urban poverty unto transformation, a theoretical understanding of brokenness wasn’t enough.

The following morning we took a walk down skid row. Starting near little Tokyo, and working our way through the financial district at 5th and Flower, we looped back down 7th street as we headed back the the East. As we turned the corner onto San Julian, time suddenly stopped. Life felt like it was moving in slow motion as we walked the two blocks from 7th Street to 5th http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifStreet, seeing hundreds of homeless men and women living in abject despair. The numbers of people, the tents on sidewalks, the absence of cars driving down the street—all in the middle of the day—were other-worldly. Having walked straight from the corporate culture of lunch in the financial district brought a contrast that made the brokenness of our world all the more vivid, and the inequity that our world is so used to all the more repulsive.

We returned to our session and discussed the experience. As we used the lens of Genesis to interpret our world and ourselves, students felt the ache for divine rescue in a new way. It was with this kind of God-informed sobriety that we continued taking in the story of God’s response to the brokenness of our world, and the invitation to us to participate in its redemption.

If you'd like to be praying for LAUP specifically, please see the calendar of topics here...we'd love prayer for each topic each week!

Preparing for a Work of God

LAUP has begun! On Thursday the student and recent alumni who are leading the nine teams throughout urban Los Angeles arrived and began their training.

As a parallel of our journey with Jesus through the inner city this summer, I took them on a literal journey...a three hour hike to the top of a mountain! To their surprise, as the hike began I pointed to a radio tower at the peak of a mountain and told them, “Meet me there,” and took off running. As they figured out their way to the top, they discovered who they were as a team, and how to trust themselves to make decisions. (What they didn’t know is that all paths they could have chosen all led to the same place.) At the top, we took time to look at and pray for Los Angeles as a team, that God would prepare the way for his work this summer. By the end of the day, they had taken away a number of leadership lessons, one of the chief ones being the importance of not losing sight of the people for the sake of the goal.

We've had a great three days of getting vision for where we're leading students, gaining spiritual eyes to see the issues of the inner city, and committing to making space to gain God's heart for the poor.


Today is our last day of preparation before the interns arrive tomorrow!

Pray for God to protect and shape our kick off to LAUP, especially tomorrow as we arrive, and Monday as we launch the content and curriculum of our summer.

From Self-Focus to Significance

What’s it feel like to help students discover their deep yearning for significance, to gain a vision of being a part of something bigger than themselves, and to launch them on a path of becoming the kinds of people God uses to change the world? It feels like my new job.

Last month, as Director of InterVarsity’s Los Angeles Urban Project (LAUP), I led 75 students in preparation and training for their summer ministry experiences at our Student Training in Mission (STIM) conference. It was a weekend of cross-cultural exercises, gaining perspective on global inequalities, and focused prayer. Students caught the vision for meaningful participation in God’s mission to love the world and were inspired toward the character growth required to bring good news to the world in word and deed. (For students’ quotes about STIM, click here.)

One of these students was Claudia, a Latina woman from East Los Angeles College. After our last session, students were invited to approach staff for prayer and Claudia approached me. Weeping, she shared, “Every time I try to hope that God can work through me, I hear a voice in my head say, ‘You’ll never do better than working at McDonald’s’”. My heart broke at the thought of this amazing woman trapped underneath lies about her own significance. It was my joy to pray the truth into Claudia, and to play a part in helping her begin to step into God’s hopes for her life.

For two reasons, Claudia captures the heart of LAUP. Claudia was once very much like the urban Latina youth to which LAUP students minister—youth whose spirits suffocate underneath multiple layers of hopelessness, inferiority, and insignificance—to whom LAUP brings love, dignity, and investment. Yet as a college student, Claudia also represents her generation: today’s college students were raised in a culture of self-focus and materialism and need spiritual leadership to transcend the small picture they have of their future. LAUP pulls students out of the stream of culture for six weeks and places them among ministry to the poor, creating space for them to catch a vision for participation in God’s love for the world, and shaping them into people of character.


The great news is that the ministry of LAUP is too big to be shared just by me! Your partnership is invaluable to the advancement of LAUP, and there are a number of ways you can participate:

-sponsor a student intern by clicking here

-set up a visit to LAUP this summer here

-learn about the LAUP facebook group here

-get instruction on how to pray for LAUP here

-or give to LAUP’s program budget here and type out: Los Angeles Urban Project

Thank you for your partnership, and I look forward to deepening our experience of seeing God work in students and in the city, together.

STIM Quotes from Students

Students shared some of what was significant for them from our recent STIM conference. Listen to some of what happened for them in terms of identity, being outward-focused, and becoming convinced that God's real and can work in them:



“All my life I've defined myself through the things that I do…(but) God has slowly been breaking down my access to those activities and renewing the way I define myself. I want to be able to serve God…in anyway that He calls me to…and I hope that God will continue to show me more through LAUP"


“(At STIM) I…felt like I was being taught how to be peaceful and joyful no matter what situation…LAUP (will be) a time to focus on the people I am serving and not myself no matter what I am going through.”


“(God) spoke to me by reminding me to remember to use my spiritual gifts and to be myself for this project, and not try and be someone else.”


“I ended up having to miss part of the STIM conference because of a school project…I was feeling let down by God because he didn’t let me go to the whole conference…I also had a lot of lingering doubts and fears about doing LAUP because the living conditions would be uncomfortable. I’ve also been going through this huge phase of worrying about the rest of my life, and what I would do if God called me to give up having a comfortable home, etc. I thought that this summer would be the most I would be willing to give up. After this, I thought, I would not be willing to give up another summer or anything bigger. Then (after hearing) all these really cool testimonies about how God spoke to (people) directly through dreams or through other people…I was thinking, “Well, God speaks to other people that way, but not me, because there must be something wrong with me. God just doesn’t like me enough to speak to me.” Then during the worship session I was thinking about all these things, and thinking maybe I should get prayer, when my leader (who was sitting next to me) turned to me and said “God wants to tell you that He really loves you and that this summer is going to be a really good and transformative experience for you and that it’s going to affect the rest of your life,” which was exactly what I needed to hear. I knew for sure that that was from God as soon as she said it, as it addressed every single one of my concerns and was really comforting about all of them. Not only that, but it showed that God did speak to me through other people, which I had been doubting.”