The Church Ought To Be Peculiar – Angelus Temple.

November 19, 2012January 12, 2014 / Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

After hearing my stories about the LA Dream Center, people frequently say:

“That doesn’t sound like a normal church” or “how come I’ve never heard of this place?”

It isn’t a normal church and if you’d like further evidence of that, watch this 30 second video from Sunday’s service at Angelus Temple – the LA Dream Center’s church home. Mind you, this video was taken on a Sunday morning at 9am, not Friday night.

After what may have been the loudest, most fun worship service ever, Pastor Matthew spoke about Christians living in victory. That means even if your circumstances are terrible, you can live with joy because if you believe in Jesus Christ, everything he has, you have, ie: power, love, a strong mind, peace with God, a living hope, protection, confidence, and unfettered access to God.

“So walk in ridiculous faith,” Pastor Matthew said. “Don’t lose what God already gave you. Remind yourself of who you are in Christ.”

That’s how we live with joy in a messed up world.

Christian churches work hard to be relevant in order that the gospel might penetrate those who have abandoned traditional church. But Pastor Matthew doesn’t try to be relevant, he just is. After 18 years elbow-deep in the messy lives of the LA’s poor, homeless and addicted, victory in Christ is not theory. Pastor Matthew knows what he’s talking about, and when he speaks, people listen.

So if you live in LA and want to check out the Angelus Temple, services are at 9 and 11 on Sundays and 7pm Thursday night at 1100 Glendale.

If you don’t live in LA, you can stream it on Sundays and Thursday nights. Remember that’s Pacific Time.

An Evening On Skid Row

November 18, 2012April 22, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Skid Row is a twelve-block section of downtown Los Angeles with the highest concentration of violent crime on the West Coast. It is home to an estimated 5,000 people who ball up under cardboard boxes and plastic tarps at night. Sirens echo off the buildings, and the streets smell like weed and urine.

I’d show you pictures of it, but I can’t. It was too dark. Literally. I spent Friday night there with about 60 people from the LA Dream Center.

I can’t begin to tell you what a bad idea I thought that was.

But Dream Center teams have been showing up on Skid Row, day after day and every Friday night for years. They have so much street cred with the community, the game is entirely changed – even in the dark with sirens and crack smoke.

“Hey where’d all these white people come from?” I heard someone yell as we milled through the crowd.

“‘Dude, it’s the Dream Center,” somebody yelled back.

“Oh, ok cool.”

The residents of Skid Row trust the Dream Center, so they tell their stories and break your heart. When I finally pushed through the fear of going, I got to look in the eyes of a Vietnamese man who asked if I could get him a new tent, because his was broken. I prayed for a babbling woman in a wheelchair and found some Doritos for a 90-lb woman sleeping under clear plastic on the sidewalk.

Yes, many of them were extremely high and about as broken as a human can be, but they all have eyes and you can look into them; and that changes everything. Then, when they thank you for coming and treating them like humans, well…

But the question looms:

Aren’t we enabling people to be addicts and homeless by feeding them on Skid Row?

It’s a hard question. But many in the Dream Center’s army, who have escaped the cycle of poverty and addiction, will tell you – Jesus can fix this. He does it all the time. Furthermore, as the Apostle Paul told the Romans:

But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? Rom 10:14-16 The Message

The Dream Center volunteers, who sit on dirty sidewalks and pray for crack smoking homeless people, do it because Christ died to rescue all of us messed-up sinners, and it doesn’t matter how messed up. And if by offering food to a junk-sick homeless woman, The Dream Center can convince her there is a God who loves her and wants to fix her mess, they’ll keep doing it.

After all, to catch fish, you must go fishing.

To support the work of The Los Angeles Dream Center click here.

What To Do When Life Isn’t Working.

November 16, 2012April 22, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 1 Comment

Last night, a Hispanic girl, maybe 17, wearing baggy jeans got up to speak at the Angelus Temple – the LA Dream Center’s church home.

She was trying not to cry and her hands shook as Pastor Tommy Barnett held her arm. It took her a try or two to get the words out and when she did, her voice broke. Immediately, the place erupted with people hollering encouragement and telling her they loved her and she could do it.

She told us the death of her father devastated her so badly she wound up on a crystal meth spiral and without the Dream Center she wouldn’t be here.

“God is so good,” she said and she walked off the stage.

On Wednesday night, I met with Bob Goff, author of Love Does (more on that later). This gracious and hilarious guy, spent 45 minutes with me, before stepping on stage to encourage the students at Pepperdine University to love people extravagantly.

Bob is dedicated to looking for proof that Jesus is alive, much like a detective dusts for fingerprints. He said, when you deliberately look for Jesus, you find him everywhere.

For many years, I didn’t bother to look for Jesus because I thought I didn’t need to. But when my life began to feel like eating a sleeve of saltine crackers, I decided to look. That’s why I picked up The Bible – even though, at the time, it felt foolish and naive.

Now I’m at the Dream Center, a place that sparkles with Jesus, because much of its leadership is composed of people who came through drugs, and jail and the system. But, just like that brave little sister who spoke last night, they were restored piece by piece by Jesus and the Dream Center’s one-year discipleship program.

The bible calls people like this “trophies of grace” because when you come to Jesus just like you are and he gets you cleaned up and then uses you to clean other people up, you’re a huge prize.

So if trusting Jesus feels silly and naive to you, like it did to me, make a point of looking for his fingerprints. Listen to people who would be dead without him and see if that makes you curious what he’s has planned for you.