The LAUP Lifeline

Post-LAUP Devotional...John 21

2014-09-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hello LAUP Alum! God put this devotional on my heart at the end of the summer...an invitation into letting God continue everything he began this summer, or whenever your LAUP experience may have been! (Pardon the jungle animals surrounding me...my office used to be a nursery..:))

Following Jesus, Redefined

2014-09-08T14:09:00.002-07:00

This month marks the end of my role as the LAUP director, and the beginning of my new role as InterVarsity’s Associate Director of Urban Projects. This summer has renewed and clarified my role as one who helps to redefine what it means to follow Jesus for this generation.

The summer team I led into learning about mass incarceration

In my 20 years of InterVarsity staff work, I’ve never seen a summer like this.

In our final LAUP meeting Lydia stood to share that she’d been a Christian her whole life but it took LAUP to help her see what that meant. Feeling the tangible reality of poverty around her, seeing the suffering of her neighbors and experiencing God’s compassion did something to her. In our final meeting Lydia proclaimed that she was now giving her life to following Jesus for the first time. Lydia’s story captures the whole summer.

Students entered the summer focused on how different the poor felt from themselves: they were unable to relate, and thus unable to empathize. But as they saw Jesus’ compassion for the poor in the Scripture, and began to feel his compassion for themselves, they heard God’s invitation to join him in that compassion. Students learned to look for the similarities between themselves and poor people. They learned to lay aside the fact that they didn’t have all the answers so that they could dare to feel the pain of the poor, even if they weren’t sure if they could handle it, or what they would do with it. And God showed up.

Students opened their hearts to the pain of the poor and the presence of God became real. Students were moved into practical compassion: they gave away the little income we have them live on to their neighbors, they fasted and prayed for families around them, they wept over the pain of poor children who have lost fathers to deportation, incarceration, and murder. They followed Jesus into incarnating the love of God to their poor neighbors, and they were never the same.

As we ended students committed to selling their cars to give the profit to urban ministries, to living and ministering in urban poor neighborhoods for two years after graduating from college. Eleven of them pledged to live the rest of their lives ministering among the urban poor. Their poor neighbors who felt so different had become friends, family, brothers, sisters. Students were launched into bringing all of who God is into all of the pain and brokenness of our world. Just like with Lydia, following Jesus became real.

I take this experience with me as I venture into my new role.

It is now my job to develop a generation of world changers who live as good news to the poor across the nation, and to build the foundations of such an experience in Seattle. I will be strengthening our existing urban projects, and helping launch new ones so that every InterVarsity students can experience their faith as something that engages not just the spiritual realm, but every aspect of brokenness in our world.

I’ll spend the next months building a network of ministry partners in Seattle—urban ministries that can host our students, and donors who can fund the work—and getting a feel for what’s happening in urban projects across the country.

Over the next few months, I’m seeking to develop partnership with 25 new organizations in Seattle and to find $30K of new financial support to fund this work.

I need your prayers like I never have before! I need new leads and contacts like I never have before! I need Jesus like I never have before! It’s a time for faith…and a time where I have been invited to see God work as I never have before.

Scott

Compassion

2014-07-14T07:48:00.003-07:00

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

2014-06-27T19:53:00.001-07:00

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.

2014-06-17T20:09:00.001-07:00

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.

2014-04-24T13:18:00.002-07:00

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"

2014-03-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

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

Watching Their Garden Grow

2014-03-13T21:40:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update as I head into leading a LAUP spring break plunge, which will be attended by both Christians and some of their non-religious friends…the LAUP garden is in FULL SWING!

Youth from the neighborhood have begun growing their own food to learn about health, and to help the nutrition of their families since January, and the leafy greens are really starting to pop! It's really exciting to see the beginning of a picture of inner city kids drawn into a relationship with the earth, with nature, and with healthy eating that has the potential to change their world view.

Just one more way that the full range of Jesus' good news is being experienced by the families and kids of South LA through college students and your partnership!

What part do WHITE people play?

2014-01-27T15:37:00.003-08:00

In light of this past week’s MLK holiday, and the upcoming Black History Month, I’ve been reflecting on the role White people have to play in God’s heart for justice. After centuries of being at the center of power in the West, is it time for White folks to take a back seat to people of color? Do we no longer have the right to have a voice in the conversation? Or is there a place for our voices and leadership? Is there something lost without us in the mix?

Catherine (left), a Junior at Pacific Luther University

Last week I asked some of these questions to students at Pacific Lutheran University. A junior at PLU, Catherine, responded to my challenges in an email I have pasted below:

“I have heard a few talks about race and white privilege (some through Intervarsity, some in class, some in church) and I think they have always made me uncomfortable. I resonated well with your description of the guilty-feeling white person. That has always been me: I know that white privilege exists but I never knew what to do about it or how it connected to my faith. When (my staff leader) told our leaders team…that you were coming, I was a bit nervous: first, because it is a topic that I have struggled with in the past, and second because—as you stated—it is an uncomfortable topic for many.

As I'm sure you know, one of our main roles as leaders is follow-up and having dialogue with our small group members after the talk. I was nervous about how I would be able to do this. But after last night I am only excited and eager to talk to my community and the members that I am disciplining.

I loved the way that you started with the scripture from Matthew 25 and the 3 servants stewarding their bags of gold. I have never heard someone connect race and privilege to scripture in such a logical and inspiring way: (that we are responsible to use the power we’ve been given for God’s good purposes…and to have power and deny it is to abuse it.) Last night was the first time that I was able to start seeing the ways that Jesus cares about privilege and wants us to use it for His kingdom.

I think that also in the past I have been stuck on feeling guilty because I could never tangibly see how I could use my privilege to God's glory, but last night God was definitely speaking through you as my eyes and heart started to open and see that that is possible. I loved your story about your dorm wing and how the African American janitor became a part of your community there (through your White roommate befriending him.) I was inspired and convicted while hearing that story.

In Intervarsity we talk a lot about "God's heart for justice", and things were starting to click for me last night as that sometimes confusing and vague statement started to come to life for me. Thank you for your passion about this topic and your devotion to the Lord and His kingdom.

Thank you again for opening many eyes and hearts last night to what Jesus really thinks about race and privilege, and I look forward to having you back to campus so that we can all learn even more.”

As Catherine and I journey down this road, I invite you, too, along: what power do we have as White Americans? How does God hold us responsible to use that power for good? Where can we make the choice to do so?

2013-12-11T15:10:00.004-08:00

A New Path to Jesus for This Generation?

About ten years ago, David Kinneman came out with a book called Unchristian, which polled tens of thousands of Americans, and found that their primary perception of Christians was that they were hypocritical, judgmental, anti-gay, too political, old fashioned, and just trying to convert people. NT Wright says that this comes from a version of Christianity that has wrongly separated spiritual growth from social and civic engagement. Today’s college students have experienced a church that wants to save their souls without doing anything to save the world…they’ve witnessed an impotent gospel.

Yet Jesus himself said that we shall know a tree by its fruit.

The LA Urban Project is more than a place for Christian students to gain God’s heart for the poor, but a place for non-believers to have an authentic Christian experience that integrates faith into Christian activism that heals our world. Students spent the fall turning the LAUP house into a tutoring center and community garden for South LA kids and families. As a result, non-Christian students experienced the authentic gospel that has the power to bring both inward and outward change.

One of them wrote me this message after her weekend:

“It feels great to be part of something like LAUP, especially when I consider what my Friday night/Saturday would have consisted of had I been here, on campus.

…Besides that, it was also a really spiritual experience for me. I think I mentioned that I have never considered myself a Christian or even a remotely religious or spiritual person, but I can’t stop thinking about Friday night’s discussion. The idea that helping others could be a spiritual experience has never resonated with me until that moment…I have always been one of those people in the statistics you read us who stereotyped Christians as having a certain political agenda or have historically used Christianity as a means of imperial domination. But, when we discussed Jesus as a leader of a grassroots movement, essentially, who was concerned with helping the poor and marginalized members of society, I was introduced to a more universal worldview of Christians.

…I definitely broke into tears on more than one occasion this weekend. It was only two days but it definitely affected my entire worldview in terms of my own relationship to others and the way I think about my own spiritual purpose…It was really a transforming experience and I’m so happy I took part. I will definitely try to visit soon and see how the garden is doing and work a little more on it!”

In your prayers and giving to the mission of LAUP, it is my personal belief that you are not only compelling students to remember the poor, but you are investing in the re-evangelization of America by restoring the gospel to its full power, not only to change lives, but to change everything.

It is my honor and joy to partner with you in so critical a mission. Thank you.

From Dreams to Reality...to Revival

2013-10-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

I want to inspire you as God has inspired me.

The LAUP House at the Start of Last Weekend

Last week I had the first chance to test out the new ideas that have been incubating in my soul through the past year of studying theology and learning from historic models of ministry. In the fifth century, Saint Patrick of Ireland launched the most successful revival of Christian mission since the dawn of the Church by bringing the grace of God to communities, not just through words but through actions. His monastic communities transformed all of Europe by allowing people to taste, see, and experience how God’s grace addressed their chief needs.

Youth and college students clearing the yard

Last weekend, a dozen students from USC launched exactly that kind of community in South LA. South LA has some of the worst schools in the nation. Only one in five students in the area are proficient in English; only one of twenty-five are proficient in math. South LA leads the county in childhood and adult obesity at 30% of the community. This is to say nothing of violence, vandalism, and depression. Kids need help in school. Kids need to learn how to eat well. Kids need not just the words of Jesus, but the presence of Jesus to change their chief needs: the vision for the LAUP house is to be a presence of God’s grace in South LA through turning it into a tutoring center and community garden.

College students are perfectly suited to supplement the deficiencies of South LA education. And the LAUP house has a plot of land that can be the literal seedbed of youth and families growing their own food, gaining a taste for vegetables, and changing the course of their health. Last weekend was the first of six groups of students who will spend their fall weekends turning this vision into reality, while learning about God’s heart for the poor and building mentoring relationships with inner city kids. Many of them return three days a week to keep investing in kids while pursuing their studies.

12-year-old Demaurae and Kelsy, Working together

College students know that their Christian faith is supposed to affect people’s character and spirituality. But through the LAUP house, they are becoming a part of Christian faith actually transforming a poor community. My hope is that, in the spirit of Saint Patrick, these experiences will plant a seed in hundreds of college students that would germinate into a revival of church planting and community transformation that reminds our nation the power of the gospel.

I post this vision because I want to invite you more deeply into this journey of hoping, praying, and participating in what God’s doing through LAUP. We need those who are already praying and giving regularly to continue. We need volunteers to help with work projects and offer skilled labor on the house such as plumbing and tiling. And we need generous one-time donations to help us get the house looking and working as a house of God’s presence in a poor community should. Please don’t hesitate to comment or ask questions about how you can do any of the above by emailing me at Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org.

The LAUP House After the First Weekend of Working Toward the Vision, with College Students and South LA Youth

Thank you for what you’ve already done, and I look forward to seeing more of what God will do through us, together!

Scott's Return and Greeting!

2013-09-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Hello LAUP Partners!

I'm BACK! :) I was too excited to write a message...so I recorded one. Enjoy!

God is Digging a Deep Well

2013-01-23T21:50:00.001-08:00

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

2012-08-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

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

2012-08-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

2012-08-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

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

2012-07-18T11:43:00.002-07:00

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.

Poetry on Poverty

2012-07-09T11:00:00.003-07:00

At the heart of LAUP is more than just helping students gain God's heart for the poor. It also involves identifying the competing values already embedded within them through our culture. We are helping students make choices out of a view of the world that's driven by the "survival of the fittest" to make space for a view of the world built on the principles of the Kingdom of God.

Sam Rickert working on poetry at the LAUP house

Last Thursday, at our first weekly LAUP gathering, one of the students from our artist team--Sam Rickert--shared a spoken-word poetry piece that captured the foundation that we've laid. Reading it doesn't do it justice, but you'll still get the idea:

Americans fight hard for freedom, for individualism...let's look at where that's left us.

We love our individual independence, not realizing the isolation conseqence;

We hope to be a self-made man, which probably means a wealth-made man.

This business world lives on competition, so we push the weak down without condition;

We live with a sense of entitlement, though you won't find that in God's covenant.

Most Americans believe "God helps those who help themselves" is biblical, just shows our starvation of the scriptural.

See entitlement leads to love-malnutrition, with western churches dying as the fruition.

The American Dream promises opportunity, but often leads to egocentricity;

We are told "fake it till you make it", God says, "I'll take your mask and break it."

Basically this rhyme's about

not I but we,

about us not me;

We must live in unity

if we will ever be a kingdom community,

and a generation with eyes to see

the sins of our culture.

Let renewal rain down

by our repentance give God his crown.

As you pray for us, please ask God to move powerfully in the short time we have with the LAUP students. As our directors team has sought God, we have felt moved by God to recognize the urgency of what's happening in them: though they have the rest of their lives to live, what happens in their hearts over this next month has a dramatic effect upon the trajectory of the rest of their lives.

LAUP's first week

2012-07-03T16:00:00.001-07:00

The LAUP 2012 interns, discussing Luke

What a first week of LAUP we’ve had!

Starting with Jesus’ inaugural address in Luke 4—the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor—we immersed students in God’s heart for the poor and the city, and challenged them to recognize the brokenness in our world.

The first day, after looking at economic and racial demographic information on the city of Los Angeles, all ninety of us went to Skid Row to let God turn statistics into people. As we arrived, the brokenness and despair were palpable: people passed out on the sidewalk, marijuana being smoked in public, and a smell of urine, trash, and neglect. One of our female students, Maria, shared her difficulty in recognizing the Skid Row homeless as human, and recoiled from making any physical contact. Yet by the end of a fifteen minute lunch, something had begun to change. In saying goodbye, the homeless woman embraced her and gave her a kiss on the cheek…as she did, Maria later shared that she sensed God speaking to her, “You are both my daughters.”

Students discussing issues underneath the "web" of injustice

We also made a point to help students understand the complexity of urban issues. Each time we discussed the brokenness in the city, students identified issues (unemployment, drug abuse, domestic violence, etc.) wrote them on posters, and hung them from the balcony of the church. As they saw links between these issues—unemployment can lead to depression, which can lead to drug abuse, which can lead to prostitution—they tied yarn between the posters. By the end of the week, our sessions were a parable for the true spiritual state of the city: continually living under an oppressive web of interconnected issues of injustice.

We ended the week speaking about God’s coming Kingdom which has been bursting through into our world since Jesus came to earth. As we worshiped and proclaimed God’s good news of healing and redemption, students cut each piece of yarn, one by one.

Pray with me that this will be more than a metaphor, but that students will let God’s love for the poor seep into their hearts, and that through their own lives, they will see his Kingdom coming and his will being done in the city, as it is in heaven.

Off to the Races!

2012-06-23T14:34:00.002-07:00

LAUP 2011 Interns Worshipping Last Summer

LAUP is off to the races!

Tomorrow morning eighty four students and staff will gather in Lincoln Heights and be sent out in fourteen teams to urban communities all over the LA area including Pomona, Long Beach, Boyle Heights, South LA, and Northwest Pasadena. This will be our biggest group we’ve had in almost ten years, and I am really excited.

As we launch the summer, we’d love to have you participate with us in various ways.

1) You can pray for us. I’ll send out weekly updates with specific reports and requests. For starters, please pray for God’s work on students’ hearts this first week. We’ll be in session for 12 hours each day, Monday through Thursday, anchoring students in God’s heart for the poor and teaching about systemic injustice, building relationships, and prayer.

2) You can mentor students at our LAUP alumni day. Saturday afternoon, July 28^th, we’re inviting LAUP alumni or other Christians with a value for social justice to share about how they live out God’s heart for the poor in their various careers and neighborhoods. Please contact Scott if you’re interested: Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org

3) You can join the LAUP for Life campaign. We’re building an army of financial partners who want to see LAUP sustained and expanded through monthly support. The first goal of LAUP for Life is sustaining the lease of the LAUP house in South LA, through which we brought over 100 students this past year. To learn more visit: http://www.laurbanproject.org/laup-for-life.html

Thank you for being a part of the LAUP family, and for your partnership for the future generations of LAUP students. I can’t wait to share how they are being launched into our city and world as kingdom disciples who are living as good news to the poor!

Close to Home

2012-06-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

     Something new is happening with our LAUP summer program that touches me at a deep personal level.

     Lucy’s closest neighborhood friend is a girl named Simi. In November of 2010, Simi’s dad went to work doing construction as he did each morning…but he never came home. He hasn’t been home since. Though she was born here in Los Angeles, Simi’s mom and dad were not, fleeing desperate poverty in Guatemala to come work in this country, illegally. Simi’s dad spent 14 months in federal immigration prison in Arizona before being deported in March of this year, and is now living in Guatemala. Simi is 7 years old, and has seen her dad only once—during a prison visit—in 19 months...but she cries over him every week.

     This summer, LAUP is adding a new component of training our students in urban ministry called “borderlands”. We have assigned three teams of students to learn about issues of immigration, to study the Scripture, and to seek God for the right way—as American Christians—to approach this complex issue. These students will be spend the summer serving at the Guadalupe Homeless Project—an undocumented homeless men’s shelter in East Los Angeles—making a trip to Casa de Migrante in Tijuana—a Catholic ministry that provides 12 days of housing for recently deported men—and learning about the issues surrounding immigration from conversations with published authors, seminary professors, attorneys, and community members. Beyond a political position, we are seeking to empower these students to learn about the layers of complexity related to immigration, to learn about U.S. immigration policy, and to wrestle with what it looks like to live by the call of the Scripture to “love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)

      Today, the plan of Simi’s family is to leave the U.S. to return to Guatemala, and then—because the kids are U.S. citizens—to send Simi and her younger siblings back to the U.S. to attend high school and live with relatives. But…Simi’s 11 year-old brother will not go with them: he was born in Guatemala and came to the U.S. as an infant. When Lucy asks me, “Why does Simi have to leave, Daddy? Why is her family being split up?” I don’t have a very good answer.

     From my past year of interacting with judges, attorneys, and Christian leaders, no one has a good answer. As I have spoken to people with a wide range of positions on immigration, no one seems to like the way our immigration policies are constructed. Both President Bush and President Obama pushed Congress to reform federal immigration policies: Congress wouldn’t touch it either time. Through the borderlands project of LAUP, we’re seeking to raise up a new generation of Christian leaders who can transcend partisanship, and can bring the wisdom, justice, and compassion of Jesus into the conversation in a way that feels right, and makes sense.

     As I watched Lucy and Simi playing in the back yard yesterday, I felt a heaviness in my heart. In one month, this friendship will dissolve, possibly forever: suddenly the issue wasn’t a political one, it was personal. I know that the issues are complex, but I feel compelled to seek God for better answers and to invite the borderlands students on that journey with me. Please pray for me and for LAUP this summer as we lead students into gaining God’s heart for the poor, the immigrant, and our country.

     LAUP begins June 24...in just two weeks! Please be in prayer for students raising funds, and that God will prepare the teachers and interns for all that he has in store! I will post regular blog updates during the summer, for those of you who want to stay current, and to pray specifically.

The Circle is Growing

2012-03-31T21:21:00.003-07:00

Here's a snapshot from the front yard of the LAUP house today.

True to their commitments, over a dozen of the USC students who experienced the joy of bringing the healing, hope, and light of God to the South LA urban community have been coming back every week.

Except now it's more than a dozen.

Today they had Bible study in our front yard before mentoring youth and serving the neighbors. The original five kids from the neighborhood have grown to 10. (If you look, you'll see them all in the Bible Study circle.) The original dozen from USC have grown to 15. The circle is growing.

There is a movement of God growing right here on the grass of the front yard. Urban kids are finding mentors they never dreamed of. USC students are gaining a heart for kids navigate an alternate urban reality. Both of them are caught up in the Kingdom of God...which may leave none of them ever the same!

Pray for God's power to go before this movement: to protect it, to deepen it, and to use it to not just transform 25 kids on a lawn, but to make God's grace, healing, and salvation real to a whole city.

Living the Dream

2012-03-14T14:58:00.007-07:00

Thirty Two students from USC and Occidental College just finished spending five nights of their spring break together in the LAUP house. Their presence here did something that will change this house forever.

The goal of this LAUP "plunge" was to help students gain God's heart for the poor, and to give them a practical experience of bringing the light, hope, love, and generosity of God's Kingdom to the South Los Angeles urban community. All of that happened...and then some.

If you haven't been to the neighborhood, it's dirty. Trash everywhere, overgrown weeds, chipping paint, broken couches on the sidewalk...not to mention a general feeling of danger and depression. So they picked up trash on the whole block, pulled weeds, painted people's fences, planted a lemon tree...and gave the LAUP house itself a makeover.

And as they did that, neighbors came out of the woodwork. Urban youth helped paint, played with the students, and joined us for dinner every night. A woman donated dinner one night. Another loaned us four ladders. The plumber across this street cut us a deal to fix the water main (broken by an overzealous student taking a pick-axe to tree roots). Today, my neighbor across the street came to share his gratitude to the students. "You're here on your spring BREAK?? Are you kidding me? Wow...this is something special." In my seven years of living here, I've never seen the neighborhood react with such warmth, gratitude, and community as I saw in these past five days.

This isn't the typical spring break for today's college student. Yet at the end of a week in the inner city, working hard, sharing three bedrooms with 32 people, one student captured the feeling of the whole group. "We're living the dream."

Another student captured it like this: "I participated in the LAUP Plunge over spring break, and I witnessed so much of God’s work and His love. My heart was transformed, not just temporarily, but for life, to a point where I can’t turn back. I heard God’s calling to serve so clearly and I strongly desire to be part of His plan in whatever way I possibly can. The Plunge was an incredible experience, and I am drawn so strongly to continue working with the poor here in LA."

The USC students are returning on their own, Saturday, to host a neighborhood barbecue. They will come back to mentor the kids on the block every Friday and Saturday. They ARE living the dream: Jesus' dream of the kingdom of God. For these students and for this neighborhood, what was once just a dream is becoming reality.

Hope in the 'Hood

2012-02-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

Written on the wall of the LAUP House after her weekend experience of God’s heart for the poor, Marilu’s testimony reads, in English: "I constantly fight with the lies that tell me I can’t be a Latina leader, but God keeps reminding me of the truth and of his promises: 'And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time like this?' Esther 4:14”

Marilu was one of 25 students who spent the past weekend in the new LAUP house. 21 of these 25 were Latino students from East Los Angeles College, and Pasadena City College. Though they were moved by God’s love for the poor--both in Scripture and on Skid Row--just as other groups have been, something here was different.

The first night my staff partner, Erna Hackett, shared that Jesus himself was born to a teenage mother who became pregnant out of wedlock and who was raised by a man who was not his biological father. As we asked how these things affected their view of God, Matthew responded,

"That’s just like me. I never thought about that before. It makes God feel less distant…more near to my experience."

While we ended with our usual call that students live as good news to the poor and let God’s Kingdom come to the world through them, I sensed that something else needed to happen. “But God doesn’t just want his kingdom to come through you, but to you…to your families, to your pain, to your numbness.” Suddenly you could feel something penetrating deeper. We moved into a time of music and prayer as students renounced the effects of poverty and depression upon their lives. I closed our time praying in Spanish that they would receive the spiritual mantle of leadership I sensed God placing upon them.

It was after this—like others—Marilu wrote upon the walls of the house, testifying to the empowering words God had been speaking to her for the future student groups who would share this experience.

These are the students that mainstream America often forgets, many the first in their families to go to college. They are from the schools that don’t catch much attention. Yet as God chooses the weak to humble the strong, so I sensed God doing something in these young urban leaders that is unsurpassed in all the other students with whom I’ve worked...not unlike the story of Esther.

Thank you for partnering with LAUP to bring God’s Kingdom near to our city. It is coming, and it is good.

My Dream is Becoming Reality

2011-12-13T20:36:00.000-08:00

I am seeing a dream become reality before my very eyes…and it’s starting to gain momentum.

This past weekend I hosted a group of a dozen students in my home for a 24-hour experience of God’s heart for the poor. We ended the night with clarity about what that means for us as Americans: we ARE the rich and need to learn to identify with the poor.

We had students sleep on floors and outdoors to experience homelessness. They went without showers. Each of them was given three dollars and they were sent on foot to local markets to turn that into breakfast and lunch. We traveled by bus.

After a tour of the financial district, we started the 10-block walk from a center economic power to a den of despair: Skid Row. By the time our visit was over we had seen a man smoking crack in broad daylight, two women fighting while the crowd wagered on who would win, and a number of children who call Skid Row home. Students reflected on their experience as we took the bus back to my house.

The combination of teaching and experience brought students a unique clarity about what it means to follow Jesus. We ended by having students write letters to themselves. Judith told herself this:

“It is very evident that God was present at Skid Row. Don’t be scared to approach these people! Remember, God himself has been through this. God made us a promise of a new city, where there is no poverty and all tears will be dried.”

To see students being transformed before my very eyes, and to get to play a part in that transformation…for me it’s the beginning of a dream come true. Never have I felt so sure that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.