Ordinary Meals, Extraordinary Exchanges

Remember when you got busted at dinnertime because your brother kicked you under the table, and you couldn't stop laughing?  You tried.  Dad gave a stern look.  But the milk in your mouth had to come out somewhere. It squirted out your nose.  And that made your siblings laugh even harder.

Remember when things were tough for your family?  Rent was due and your parents seemed scared?  That pre-meal prayer was fervent.  Your family needed God to show up that week. So you prayed together.  And you were extra thankful for the casserole that night.

Remember going around the table, sharing your “highs” and “lows” of the day?  You never wanted to go first.  But after you did, you felt better than normal.  As a youngster you couldn’t describe it.  But it felt good to share your day with people who cared about you.

Many youth in my neighborhood don’t have spaces for these kinds of interactions.  A lot of them don’t eat around a dinner table with their families.  Most of them don’t have caring people to share the events of their days with. Virtually all of them seek something like this.

At UrbanLife, we serve 16,000 meals per year.  It’s an extraordinary number.  You wouldn’t expect that to come out of a kitchen that measures 6 feet by 5 feet.  Hot meals in that volume cannot come from setups that lack both ovens and stoves.   In real terms, our kitchen is a plastic-industrial sink, two refrigerators and a leaning closet half packed with food. But somehow, it is enough.

Dining with youth in the neighborhood and providing warm meals is central to what we do at UrbanLife.  Together, we are focused on seeing God transform a neighborhood, from the inside out. Transformation doesn’t happen solely because 80 more bellies are full.  In fact, the food is not the change agent at all. The most powerful dynamic is the interaction around a family dinner, between neighborhood youth and their adult volunteers.  In these mentoring friendships, students know they are listened to, welcomed and cared for.  They begin to experience healthy family interactions.  They laugh and share details from the day. They practice giving thanks and cleaning up after themselves.  They build trust.

This strategy for relational ministry has been employed for years.  Jesus used it throughout his time on earth.  He ate with all kinds of folks: slimy tax collectors (Mark 2:15), ‘skanky’ prostitutes, obnoxiously religious phonies (Luke 7:36-50), and poor folk.  He took a lot of flack for this.  But he also knew that eating with someone expressed deep love. 

This fall, we are working to improve this sacred practice.  We are working against the impersonality of a cafeteria style-food line.  Instead, we are making practical changes to spur authentic relational building events. We will sit in single tables throughout the building. Each table will have a trained adult volunteer. We will train a team of student leaders and adult volunteers to deliver and serve tables of students so that they can remain seated.  Often, we will strategically seat students.   And we will provide activities during dinner to propel conversations and incite good times.   It sounds great in theory, right? I will have to report back on how it goes.

We need people like you to pull this off.  First, I invite you to join us any Monday night at 5:15 PM for the meal.  We can use you to serve tables of students.   We are also looking for groups, of friends or Bible studies, of sports teams or families, to provide food for a Monday night meal. There are a variety of “home run” meals that groups have brought in the past.  Crock Pots, fired up in just a few homes, can generate food that feeds scores of people.   Some groups get each member to bring different ingredients and then combine them together to make tacos, burritos, or baked potato bars.  If you are unable to visit or sign up for a meal, I invite you to consider donating to cover the cost of a Monday night meal.  It costs $250.00 for us to serve between 60-80 students on a given night.  Filling this need will allow us to love and serve youth in this context throughout the school year.   Please contact me if you (along with others you know) are willing to step up in any of these ways.  

We are relentlessly pursing the vision of transforming a neighborhood, one transformed student at a time.   

Extraordinary, God-inspired, unexplainable transformation often occurs in the most ordinary places. In our context, it happens around rectangular folding tables and over warmed plates of lasagna. 

Both Ridiculous and Redemptive

Courtney experienced God up at camp this summer, no doubt.  He can't stop talking about it.  This will be an exciting year of walking with Courtney through his senior year: discipling him, rooting for him, and pushing him.

Today, after church, he shared with me that the new "tail" he is sporting has spiritual significance.  "As long as I am growing in my love for God, I am going to let this tail grow."

He said it with confidence.
I kept a straight face.

I was impressed.  It's an authentic 'setting apart' for God type thing.

But.  If I'm honest.   It's a little ridiculous too.

I love this stuff.

Sights and Sounds of the BEAR

Take 2-3 minutes to see how God moved in the lives of students up at Big Bear.

Ricardo and the Metal-head, Ukulele-playing, Mexican-American, Greaser-Crew

We call them the “Greasers.” They are about five or six freshmen and sophomore students who come to UrbanLife faithfully and call it home.  This summer, with less students around, I finally got to know this crew.  

All teenagers are trying to discover who they are and how they fit in.  It is just painfully and endearingly obvious with this group.  I mean, how many Mexican American teenagers do you see rocking Metallica t-shirts, slicking their hair with a black pocket-comb and strumming Hawaiian tunes on their ukuleles?  They long to be a part of a sub-culture.  And, whether they admit it or not, they long to fit in.

The “Greasers” also long to be known and loved.   

So where do I find a leader that can connect to this complicated crew?

In my own family.

Ricardo.

Ricardo has some chameleon-like qualities himself.

True stuff:  He is Mexican.  He is American.  As recent as last week, he had knotty dreadlocks. He (used to) slick his hair.  He owns a ukulele.  And what really matters: He can connect with just about anyone, anywhere.

Fresh off of 4 months of world travel, Ricardo is in the process of discovering his purpose.  At least a piece of it may be found in loving and serving this particular crew.

I am so proud of Ricardo.  I am proud of the way he befriended these guys.  I am proud of how he led them throughout the week.  I am proud of how he pushed them into new and often challenging and scary experiences.  I am proud of how he modeled confidence and the ability to cut loose.   

Would you pray with me for these guys?  Pray that God will use Ricardo in the coming school year as a safe and inspiring mentor in their lives.  Pray that Ricardo will also discover more of his giftedness through his leadership with the “Greasers.”

There was a moment at camp where incarnational ministry became real to me.  For the 1980’s dance party, the Greasers brought some metal rock music from that era on a CD.  They convinced the DJ to play it.  And I promised to take part in the mosh pit.   When the guitar came in, the dance floor mostly cleared.  In the middle, bumping and slamming into one another, was Ricardo, myself, a couple brave African American dudes, and the whole Greaser posse.   This was their world.  And we got to enter it, if only for half a song.

If the Greasers long to be a part of a sub-culture.

Why not the sub-culture of Christian disciples?

I am praying it goes down like that.

I can see it now:  

UrbanLife’s own Christ-following, Metal-head, Ukulele-playing, Mexican-American, Greaser-Posse.

Single Track Squeals

Courtney's hands gushed sweat the whole way up the mountain.  On the asphalt road, he tried hard to think about other things.  On the bumpy dirt road, the knots in his stomach got tighter and tighter.  If you had looked into his eyes, the fear would have been obvious.   But he wasn't about to admit it.  Not in that company:

Courtney had never learned to ride a bike.

The complication with the scenario, was that our cabin was headed for a single track, double black diamond mountain bike trail.  Once the van dropped us off, the only way back was down the trail.

I rode in the middle of the pack. Guys squealed like girls and brakes squealed like angry mice. Thrill seeped through their pores.

Courtney was more like a drunk driver though.  He struggled to stay on the track.  His near-collisions with  trees and boulders added up.   Somehow...someway...he made it through the forest trail.   He didn't even go over the handle bars.  He didn't even slide out.

At the bottom, he finally copped to one of us:  "I have never ridden a bike before."

Really Courtney?
That would have been good to know.
Dude: you b--a--r--e--l--y made it.
I'm glad you are safe.
I'm proud of you.


Camp is like this though.   This very dynamic is why we take youth out of the city and up into the mountains.   They experience new things.  They are faced with fears.  They overcome them.

And...they realize new giftings.  They begin to wonder who God created them to be.

I'm pretty sure Courtney is not believing God created him to be a downhill biker.  But he is beginning to wonder about his purpose.   He is starting to imagine how God might use his love of athletics (football & wrestling), his knack for busting rhymes, and his welcoming hospitable nature.

Call students to be all that God created them to be.

If this is all we do at UrbanLife, I am all in for a long long time.

Tag Team Back Again

Date nights are important for a marriage.
Quality time is essential.
 Fresh flowers should really show up now and again.
But serving in ministry together is like marital Miracle Grow. Very few things can fuel and synergize connection like being about the work of God, in the same space.  

Last week, Melissa and I served together, and it felt like old times.

Here why our world's collided:
UrbanLife's New Heights Project is one effort to develop young leaders from within neighborhood.   College-aged students are paid as interns to lead emerging high school leaders.   These high school leaders are, in turn, asked to pull off activities and events for the younger kids in the neighborhood.  Vacation Bible School and Refugee Tutoring Day Camps are a couple of these.

As the acting co-director of Refugee Tutoring at Ibarra Elementary, Melissa was asked to share background and advice for working with elementary refugee students in East City Heights.  She may downplay it, but her voice was critical.   It has taken a couple years to establish relationships, build profiles and track academic progress of these 30+ students.  Her advice and experience go a long way.

She surprised a few of them with:
"You will work with students from nearly 15 different countries."
"Some of them never held a pencil until they arrived in the US."
"In elementary (SD Unified) there are few ESL interventions for new arrivals.  Their English skills are so low, many teachers don't know what to do."
"Some may act as if they do not understand any English when you ask them to do something :) "


While Melissa taught a group of students that I work closely with, I sat in the back.
My thoughts went a little something like this:

"Man, she knows her stuff."
"God is clearly leading us, as a family, into this work!"
"I have an amazing teammate."
"Geez... I really love this gal!"

Thankful today for a tag team-mate.

"It was Awesome."

It was a gut-level, enthusiastic response to my wife's text.

  

 

She was blown away with my response.  Up until now, moments with students have been encouraging, conversations surprising, gatherings energetic.  But never awesome.
More frequently the adjectives I use are less positive. Small group conversations are circuitous.  Rides home are rowdy. Evening meetings are both fun and difficult.

But this time, it, "Was awesome."

This day reeked of awesome-ness on a number of levels:

1. 9 of my friends got out of the neighborhood for the afternoon.
2. We experienced a classic summer day in San Diego.
3. 11 people fit in our minivan.   It has a capacity of 8.
4. The event was virtually free (minus the footlong subway sandwiches).
5. Over-the-line (a San Diego originated beach game) was a complete hit.
6. I heard lots of "Thank you coach!" and "That was so much fun!"  These guys are in the beginning stages of expressing feelings of gratitude.  This was huge progress.

While those are worthy of the "awesome" tag, I saw even more after reflecting on the day:

1. Trust is built via positive experiences together.   These guys are beginning to trust me.
2. I am functioning within my own strengths and gifts. I felt my own heart pound with contentment and thankfulness during our time.  This is what I was made for!
3. More and more, I am beginning to see these young men as God does.  I am seeing flashes of brilliance in them.   I am recognizing gifts that God has given them.  And I am pointing them out, as a way to call them forward.

"Was [truly] awesome."