God is Digging a Deep Well

Hello to the LAUP faithful!

Jenny and I with ever-growing five-year-olds Lucy & Tyler

Greetings from Seattle, from the desk where I now spend so many hours reading, writing, praying, and dreaming of the future!  I felt led, tonight, to say hello and offer a quick update of all that’s been happening in me at the halfway mark of this academic sabbatical.

If normal life is God pouring jugs of water into my soul, and then inviting me to enjoy pouring them into students, this year he has a circle of caution tape around me because he’s initiated an operation of digging a 300-foot well inside me that feels like it contains a geyser!

In contrast to last quarter, where I was taking in 5000 pages of theology about God’s Kingdom and his invitation for us to be a part of his good news to the world, this winter is about me turning ideas into reality.  I’m studying under 30-year World Vision veteran Bryant Myers about how to effectively pursue Christian development among the world’s poor, and I’m spending the rest of my academic hours creating the next generation of curriculum to help students gain God’s heart for the poor, and to help InterVarsity more powerfully offer the good news of God to Los Angeles.

It’s almost as if I can literally feel God scooping my well deeper, week-by-week. 

The deeper I go in my studies and reflections, the more convinced I am of my vocation to be one who stands at the bridge between middle-class America and the world of the urban poor, inviting both into the wonderful treasures of community, love, and partnership that can only happen by God’s grace.

I am aware of what a gift I have received though this sabbatical, and I thank you for your encouragement, your giving, and your prayers.

I hope reading this note gives you as much joy and wonder at our God as writing it is giving me.  I look forward to sharing more with you about the fruit that comes from this sacred time.

Scott

Closing Commitments

I've never seen such sober, powerful commitments from students.

What a summer we had!  Students became friends with ex-gang members.  They became family with undocumented immigrants.  They fell in love with inner city children.  And they are leaving wanting more of this joy in their lives.  Last Saturday, we wrapped up six weeks of shaping students with God's love for the poor, and they left as different people.  They spent two days reflecting on the lessons of the summer and the commitments they wanted to make to live differently.

Worshiping on our last night in front of the commitment cross

We ended our time by having students tear up the previously used posters that captured the web of brokenness in the city, and on those very posters, they wrote out the three to five commitments they were making to live differently before God.  As students wrote them out, we had them come to the front of the room and staple them to two beams of wood lying on the floor.  Once they finished, we lifted the beams up and set them into place...as a cross.

Jesus has risen.  Jesus has defeated the powers of sin and death and brokenness in our world.  But that resurrection power is offered to his people not just to save us from death, but so that we can live differently:  to be the presence of Jesus in our world.  As we worshiped God in front of this unique cross, the feeling wasn't one of emotionalism, but a sober sense of invitation from God that he would be with us if we would live as his people.

I wanted to make sure you could see a few of the hundreds of commitments that students made.  Ranging from sacrificial giving, to abstaining from consumerism, to intentionally relocating to the inner city for a period of time, the themes of LAUP are in the midst of
becoming lifestyle reality as I write.  Please make a point to keep praying for students as they now face the challenge of returning to their "normal" lives, but seeking to live differently.


Thank you for being a part of the LAUP family:  through reading this blog, through your giving, through volunteering, and through praying for us.  I feel honored to be a part of God moving in students so deeply, and look forward to seeing the fruit that comes from our investment this summer.

How to Pray

As I write this, Thursday afternoon, the LAUP students are reflecting on their summer, and will be over the next two days, until they leave Saturday afternoon.

Please pray for them over these next 48 hours:

-that God will clarify what he's been speaking to them about being good news to the poor
-that the Scripture and convictions they've received will go deep in the soil of their hearts
-that God's Spirit will lead them to creative application of the lessons of the summer
-that God will preserve and sustain what he's done in them, that it would bear fruit on their campuses, in our cities, and in their lives.

Thank you for being a part of this journey...I look forward to updating you once we've finished out with the students and taken our student and staff leaders on our three day retreat.

From Stone to Flesh

The Leighton Avenue team singing with neighborhood kids

I realized, this past Sunday as I met with the student leaders of the LAUP teams, that I have been seeing something I've never seen.

As expected, students have been giving themselves to the urban kids and families on their sites, they've been immersing themselves in their readings about God's heart for the poor, they've been embracing the challenge of living on a budget equivalent with their neighbors--they've been faithful to all of their responsibilities--but they haven't let it stop there.  They've elected to go above and beyond.

The Northwest Pasadena team has taken extra time to visit each of the families of the kids in their program and spend time with them.  The Dolores Mission team has decided to spend the night sleeping in the homeless shelter, get up at 4:30 am with the men, and shadow them on foot to experience a day of homelessness.  The Leighton Avenue team hosted a potluck party for the whole block, and had the kids they've been mentoring in the arts present their work in front of everyone.  The Homeboy Industries team has started a weekly "God investigation group" for the recovering gang members to interact over stories of Jesus from the Scripture.  The list goes on and on.

I have never heard of students taking this much initiative to give their whole hearts to the poor in the midst of what's already a rigorous schedule.  This pattern underscores one of the central themes of the summer, found in Ezekiel 36:26:

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

The transformation happening before me is nothing less than beautiful.  These students are different than they were one month ago.  Not only are they more full of love for the urban poor, but they are simultaneously becoming more joyful, more hopeful, and are experiencing personal healing.  They're not just surviving a summer in the inner city...for many it's been the most joyful season of their lives.

And yet is it any surprise that making space for the poor in our lives would transform us?  As the summer comes to a close, I am more aware than ever of the omnipresent gravitational pull of our culture to have us focus on ourselves:  for our hearts to harden, for our schedules to fill up, for the poor to drift from our awareness, for our love to shrivel.

The next two days, students will be reflecting on what God convicted them of this summer, and how they will commit to living differently.  As they consider how to use their time, their money, and their education to be good news to the poor, I feel moved to let God speak to me as well.

The LAUP student leaders praying for the end of the summer

The call to remember the poor is throughout the Bible from cover to cover.  As I witness the beauty of seeing hearts of stone become hearts of flesh, it is clear that this exhortation is meant not just to bless the poor, but is for our own spiritual health.

Please join me in praying that God will preserve the transformation that students have experienced, that they will be strengthened to stand by the commitments they make, and that they will be an inspiration to you and I, that we, ourselves, would be responsive to God call to us to live as good news to the poor.

The Beginning of Breakthrough

Students responding to God's call to give him their future

Just last Thursday we hit a transformational moment with the 85 LAUP participants.

As students spent the week studying Scripture and hearing teaching about money, something broke open inside their hearts.  As students approached the front of the room to symbolically offer their treasures to God, the concept of God’s love for the poor somehow went from a cerebral idea to a heartfelt challenge to which they needed to personally respond.  They began to seek the link between the poor families they are working each day and their own choices of career, lifestyle, and finances in the future.  Students gave God control of their dreams and plans in very specific ways.

I’ve never seen students this engaged with the challenge to live as good news to the poor this early in the summer...I can hardly wait to see how much God will do by the end!

Please pray with us that God will keep moving deeply in students' hearts:  that each and every student will wrestle with God's personal challenge to them to live as good news to the poor, and that they will sweetly, intimately, and specifically hear God's invitation closer to himself.