Live from Fuller Seminary with Brother Ben, Day 8

Worship: Prophetic Graffiti
Song of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel

Scripture: Daniel 5

Brueggemann: Prophets are to offer symbols that are adequate to confront the horror and massiveness of the experience that evokes numbness and requires denial.

The prophet has only the hope that the ache of God can penetrate the numbness of history.

Group Prayer before entering the urban space of Los Angeles

Exegeting the City: Signs of Hope
Why this trip:
-to understand the urban context
-recognize hope in the city
-how we see our own context
-separated families
-homelessness, economic challenges

Church structures don’t adapt easily from suburbia to metropolises. Theological challenge [Bakke]

Testimony of a prostitute: “people like me don’t come to church; you have to bring the church to me so I can find it.”

Mama’s Hot Tamales

MacArthur Park

Look at structure, signage, space, sounds and smells, SIGNS OF HOPE
Escobar [2003:156]
“Missionaries too must be on guard against practices that 'depersonalize' others, turning them into 'unreached' for evangelism. In this way 'the unreached' become faceless objects we use to fulfill our plans and prove the effectiveness of our strategies."

Spend part of the day in silence…..

The main purpose of taking a field trip downtown LA is to learn to look for and recognize God’s activities and impact (both present and potential) in the midst of spiritual, social, physical, educational, political and economic challenges and injustices that exist in any community. The experience is meant to inform and inspire all of us to seek ways in which God can use His people to be missional and incarnational presence in their communities and to bring His Good News of salvation, peace, reconciliation, justice and liberty to a needy world.

My trip to the central part of Los Angeles included seeing MacArthur Park, a once dicey drug and alcohol haven for much of the homeless in Los Angeles. It was interesting to hear the song "Song of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel that stems from the 1960’s. Have you ever read the lyrics to the song? The song is completely about the 1960 existing national problem in lieu of the park. The neighborhood was deteriorating and this once prestigious part of LA was vanishing. The City Council and area churches and immigrants got together and revitalized the neighborhood into what is flourishing today. Mama’s Tamales serves as a training enterprise for those re-entering the work force and a site training kitchen for immigrants that want to test their product. It was a delicious meal of tamales from around the world. This is the experience of God at work through systems to help His people.
Later in the afternoon, we arrived at CLUE LA, a social justice advocate agency that helps all populations in unfair practices of any manner. The last stop took us to a visit with the pastor of New City Church, an urban missional church serving people from the inner city yuppies to the skid row junkies. It is a multi-cultural, transitional church. LHF is similarly fashioned after the same service/grow vision that they extol, too.

Now the challenge that lies before us at Living Hope Fellowship is to open our senses to the presence of God and find where He is at work in Gladewater. It’s a challenge that we will do together in fellowship. Keep attuned to God’s activities and impact and let me know what you think.

See you on the journey,
Ben

Rev. Ben Bright is the Logistics & Administration Pastor for LHF.