LA Dream Center

See The Why Behind The What – LA Dream Center

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him how can the love of God be in him? I John 3:17

I’ve been hanging out in Watts and Compton all week, feeding people.

And I know I’m supposed to say about something deep about that – like the poor are beautiful and the light of Jesus shines in their eyes. And it does, because Jesus loves all of us the same, from the woman stepping out of her Bentley in West Hollywood to the Filipina grandma rolling a dirty stroller through the food line to pick up her frozen chicken and yams.

But there’s nothing deep to say. Poor and hungry people aren’t always grateful and sweet, sometimes they are demanding and they hustle you, which makes them very similar to rich and well-fed people. And there’s a lesson in that. We all have a story and we are all broken in different ways. Maybe it’s PTSD in the homeless veteran, molestation in the prostitute, illiteracy in the gang-banger or critical selfishness in me. As Nancy Alcorn founder of Mercy Ministries says, “there’s always a why behind the what” and Jesus cares about all of it.

So the LA Dream Center’s idea is a simple one. Go to them, feed them, find out what they need, try to get it, make friends and introduce them to Jesus. People here are clear-eyed about the enormity of the problem – 100,000 homeless people live in LA – but they don’t let it paralyze them, instead they get up, pray hard, load the truck, sort the food, pass it out, hug the people and repeat day in and day out.

Skid Row, Los Angeles

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And it works. One by one, story by story, it works.

This morning I picked through a pallet of persimmons, looking for the best ones to take to Skid Row this afternoon.

Skid Row is home to about 10,000 homeless people and has the highest concentration of violent crime on the West Coast. Yet the Dream Center is there five days a week, feeding hot meals to the drug addicts, prostitutes, homeless veterans, the mentally ill and people who have just come up short.

And here’s what they say about it.

What could be a better place to shine the light, love and hope of Jesus then in the midst of such dark and dismal places?

For sure not everybody is called to do this kind of work. Some people go to Skid Row and some people send them. But if you are interested in helping the Dream Center rescue one life at a time you can donate here.

Don’t Let Him Shake Your Tree.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

My husband Sam loves the word addled. Truly, it’s a pretty good word with great synonyms like muzzy, woozy and befuddled.

He doesn’t apply it to me very often, because I’m usually steady. But in preparing to spend all this week serving the urban poor at the LA Dream Center, I was shilly-shallying and futzing around so badly, I thought I might have dementia. I even threw my wallet in the kitchen garbage and walked away with a soggy paper towel in hand. I worried about it to Sam.

“It’s because you’re going to LA to do something you’ve never done and you’re scared,” he said.

He’s right. I’ve never wandered under a bridge to hand out hot food to a homeless person. I’ve never played with neglected kids in a gang-infested urban neighborhood. What am I doing?

I’ll tell you what I’m doing, I’m climbing out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is, and when you’re a new climber, like me, it’s good to follow the professional climbers. The LA Dream Center, which is the single largest food bank in LA County and serves 40,000 people every month in its 273 ministries, not only climbs to the best fruit, but they pick it and toss it down to everyone else.

The Apostle Paul said, the promises of God all find their yes in Jesus, and I’ve decided there are too many people (Bob Goff, Katie Davis, Matthew Barnett) doing impossible, God-promised things to doubt Jesus’ extravagant yes.

But I don’t want to just pig out on the grace of God until I’m bloated from hoarding it. It’s designed for sharing. Jesus wants me on my feet, darting nimbly through the world as his little cracked-pot, ambassador. As Katie Davis says in her lovely memoir from Uganda, where by age 19 she’d adopted the first six of her 14 orphans, we don’t have to be talented, we just have to be available.

The problem with shouting this manifesto is, the enemy hears it. And when you get halfway out your limb, he starts shaking your tree, hoping you’ll turn back. The devil doesn’t want me learning to serve people like Jesus did, and he sure doesn’t want me telling you how to do it. So he opposes me using the only things he has, anxiety, fear, confusion, rejection etc. The Apostle Paul explains it like this:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6:12.

Yes, it’s tempting to bail out when I’m anxious and shaky, and can’t hold a coherent thought or keep my wallet out of the trash, but then I think, “bail out to where?” Jesus blew up all the bridges behind me. The only way left is forward.

And in this case, it goes through LA.

LA Dream Center Set to Receive $10.2 million

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Whoa! I love these guys and the work they do in LA. I blogged about them recently here. The blurb below is from Pastor Matthew’s blog. The LA Times says the New Market Tax Credit awarded to the Dream Center is $49 million but Pastor Matthew is saying $10.2. Not sure what the difference is, if I find out I’ll let you know.

In either case it is a TON of money and Pastor Matthew talks what it means for the Dream Center here.

“The Dream Center is slated to be awarded $10.2 million dollars through a Federal Government program called New Market Tax Credits.  The funds are available to charities who have invested into disadvantaged communities. The charity must be located in a zone that qualifies as a disadvantaged area of the community. We have invested over 35 million dollars in building improvements over the years….Funding does not come from the government but from the purchase of tax credits by investors.  JP Morgan Chase representatives toured the Dream Center and were so moved that they bid on this project and have worked hard to help this miracle come to pass.”