The San Francisco Call

1:00 PM

"Well," and "Enjoying God"

Hello fellow friends and supporters! I realize it has been a while since we have given an update on our ministry and what has been going on in Josh and my life, on our blog at least, so here it goes!

Ministry Update:

Currently we are still in Glendale raising support, hoping to be in San Francisco by the end of the Fall. We have 75% of our support raised which means we have 1/4 of the way to go. We cannot fully express how much God has blessed us through your continued prayers and support. The fact the Lord has brought in 75% of our support already is a huge blessing and something we thank Him for daily.

The school year in San Francisco started the last week of August and our directors Chris and Christine had a baby about a week before the first day of school. His name is Nolan and (based on the pictures I see on facebook) he is adorable.

Currently the City Cru team at San Francisco State is 5 strong (well 6 if you count Nolan), with Chris and Christine, interns Matt and Leah, and second year intern Anthony, all of whom I believe you've heard about through our last prayer letter. The other intern Kyle, as well as Josh and myself, are still in the support raising process and trusting the Lord's timing in bringing in the necessary funds.

Please continue to pray that the Lord gives His abundant love, guidance, protection, and endurance both to the team and City Cru students as the school year moves along.

Other Random Updates:

Josh - God has really been convicting and challenging me to Enjoy being in His presence. Often I am content to simply learn about His intellectually and not allow that knowledge to sink in and transform me. I'll be elaborating on this in a post later this week, but it has been super cool to focus on enjoying Jesus in my times with his. It sounds elementary but you'd be surprised how often we can spend good time with Jesus and forget to enjoy Him.

Alex - People ask me everyday, "How are you doing?" Most of the time I will reply, "Well," not having the time or energy to express what's really going on and also understanding this question is most often a civility used to begin a conversation. However, truthfully that is just how I am doing at the moment, "Well." Support raising, I have to say, is not the most thrilling part of doing ministry, though it is a very necessary part. My preference is to be going, doing, and experiencing significant results from my work. Yes, I go, do and see results though the support process, but it is at a much slower pace and the results are very much out of my control. This has been hard for me, but becomes easier everyday. The Lord has been teaching me to sit, rest and be "well" in His presence. Must I always have something going on or conquering some new venture to be well? No, I can be well sitting here typing this post, sitting outside on the ground listening to the rustling leaves or even just even waiting around for a support call. I am learning to be "well" simply because I am His.

On a lighter note, I just finished reading two books, quite an accomplishment for me as I am a slow reader, A Severe Mercy by: Sheldon Vanauken and The Great Gatsby by: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both were great books and gave two very different pictures of "love" idealized and then realized, one beautiful and one tragic, yet I wholly enjoyed both tales. I end with two quotes, one from each book, that particularly moved me...

"...though I wouldn't have admitted it, even to myself. I didn't want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance. I didn't want to be thinking of Him. I wanted to be free- like Gypsy. I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn't want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ."
-A Severe Mercy

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
-The Great Gatsby

8:57 AM

A Thin Place

The old Celtic Christians had this idea of ‘thin places’, places in the world where the veil between heaven and earth (which they supposed to be three feet apart) was particularly thinned, with heaven trickling through the veil so that one could experience and feel the presence of God more tangibly there than other places. The more I have thought about it, the more I think there is something to it and this past weekend I caught a glimpse of just what the Celtics were getting at.

This past weekend Alex and I drove up to the Central Coast to go to a wedding of an old friend in San Luis Obispo. The Central Coast has a special place in my heart for various reasons: I love the openness of the landscape compared to Southern California, I love the rolling hills, green or golden depending on the season, sprinkled with gnarled, ancient looking trees, I love the clean air coming off the wild ocean, colder and more dangerous than the waters down south. I have countless childhood memories of Morro Bay and Cayucos, so many they tend to blend together into a distinct ideal, a particular picture with a tangible atmosphere.

The ‘thin place’ (if I may be presumptuous) I’m referring to is an old house on a dry grassy hillside in Cayucos overlooking the ocean. This house belongs to Bill and Lois Roark who have been family friends my whole life. They knew my dad before any of us, before my mom even and my dad reckons he has spent 1/20^th of his life at their house on the hillside. The memories I have of the house are a bit spotty: spending time in their old redwood hot tub, or picking the blackberries which grew under and along the deck with my sister, watching the surf come in silently below, seeing dark shadows of owls and other nighttime creatures in the evening, but mostly I remember how beautiful and calm I always felt. Something about looking down at the ocean, or up the hill watching random deer or cows grazing, filled me, even as a child with a deep sense of God’s peace.

Going back this past weekend, I experienced the same thing, and as I sat around the lunch table listening to conversation I looked around the house and noticed it hadn’t changed a bit. Bill and Lois have lived at the house for 40 + years and have loved God in it for that time. I believe the fact God has been worshiped and glorified there for so long has left a spiritually tangible mark, one that is easy to miss but not really hard to find if you are looking for it. The house has a palpable tranquility, despite the fact conversation volume tends to be near yelling levels since Bill and Lois are in their mid 80’s. But for me it goes beyond the mere tranquility of the surroundings and ventures into stranger and harder to describe territory. The best word I can think of is depth. The house has an unexplained spiritual depth, a sense that God is not far off, like you could go sit out on the deck and you’d be closer to him than you ever have, like you could hear his voice, soft but clear and he would have a conversation with you like he has with many over the years. I wonder how many times Jesus has comforted someone on that deck, spoken words of encouragement or calling, shared the sorrow of a deep loss or the joy of new life, or simply sat and watched the sunset.

I’ll admit, I’m not sure if the sense I got had more to do with my own family history there or something else entirely, but there was no mistaking the sense of God in that place. I think places like that have marks, residual reminders of the glory of God, of the many prayers uttered and answered, of mornings when the presence of Christ was a quiet comfort and of the days or nights when the beauty and wonder of Jesus was overwhelming, those moments when heaven didn’t merely trickle through the veil to earth but burst through it like a river. Something of heaven remains, subtle but present nonetheless and it is up to us to find those ‘thin places’ and simply be. Be silent, be overwhelmed by the peace of God, be open to the whispers of Christ, and be fully yourself in the quiet presence of the Creator.

10:11 AM

Leaving The City

Well... San Francisco, it's been fun, motivating and challenging. We hope to be back soon and permanently. Now back to LA to finish finding the rest of the support team the Lord has prepared for us.