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