Woman's Dream Gathering Becomes Real at Grace City LA Church

Kimberly Yu’s dream from more than a dozen years ago to hold a gathering that highlights the transformative life stories of women who have suffered much and gained hope through Jesus becomes real this Saturday (May 12, 2018).“I know God can heal broken hearts and broken souls and that’s really what this conference is about,” said Yu in an interview with TogetherLA about the upcoming HOPE Conference to be held at Grace City LA. “We want women to know that they are not alone and that there’s hope.”Yu, who said she experienced a myriad of difficult times and bad choices, believes God clearly showed her a dream or a vision of a meeting in which five “regular” women walked up in front of a gathering of women, one at a time to speak about how their lives used to be and what God has done in their lives.Pastor Steve Cha of Grace City LA, a young church in downtown LA, said the HOPE Conference is the church’s first ever. This is a women’s conference designed to exhort women struggling in depression, anxiety, hopelessness, lack of purpose, and sin issues that can only be healed in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the church stated.“It is also a great equipping day for women desiring the practical tools to help exhort other lost and hurting women in the faith,” organizers said.The guest speakers include Marlene Barba, Kimberly Yu, Hope Delabar, Cynthia Shutt, and Liza Uriarte. A time of worship, fellowship, Q&A, and prayer will also be included. The free conference is scheduled for 10 am to 4 pm.Yu, who will also be one of the speakers, described the speakers as not necessarily experts in the sense of having a professional identity. “We are experts from the school of hard knocks. In the street game. How to survive when you don’t have a choice,” she said.“There’s lots of stories I can tell you right now about how I shouldn’t even be alive right now,” Yu said. Testimonies of transformation will include periods of homelessness, prostitution, addiction, physical and mental abuse, and the loss of loved ones.Yu said she was shown through attending a recent marriage conference that it’s okay for those giving testimony to still be going through a process.She said that she heard from people that “still need healing and [their testimonies] are still very real and raw.”“That’s what God wants to bring to that stage. He wants those testimonies not to be powdered up and read from a paper word for word. He wants it to come from the soul of those women just like the vision he gave me more than 12 years ago,” she explained.This conference is FREE. Please RSVP here to reserve a spot for you and your guests.

Free Drinks For LA and the Birth of Grace Cafe Outreach

As a church planter in Los Angeles I am always looking for creative and effective ways to reach the community for Christ. Since launching Grace City LA last September, I have had the privilege of exposing people in my congregation to the beauty of expository preaching, Christ-centered praise music, and fellowship that mixes people of all age and ethnic backgrounds.Since day one, we also started evangelism, which is one of the pillars of our philosophy of ministry. We have had an exciting door-to-door ministry in which we systematically visit houses, apartments, parks, and even religious establishments next to our church to proclaim the good news of the gospel to our neighbors. We have also experimented with creative ways to connect with Angelenos in the community. The most recent idea was a Sushi Night in which we served free sushi to our neighbors and used that as a platform to preach the gospel to the visitors.Just recently, we decided to do something called Grace Cafe Outreach. The whole idea behind this was giving out free coffee from our little booth to people walking down the streets of Downtown. Our first occasion was on April 14 in Little Tokyo outside the Japanese Village Plaza.We weren't going to give out just any cheap coffee. We wanted to provide some of the best quality stuff and to give it to people at no charge. The menu of the day was simply Peet's Medium Roast with homemade chocolate and oatmeal cookies individually wrapped. Even our half and half was freshly bought and our sugar was organic. Talk about work and dedication! We made everything beforehand at our church campus before bringing it over to Little Tokyo.The goal of this outreach was twofold:One, to demonstrate the charity of our Lord. By giving onto people freely (and giving great stuff!), we wanted people to see the love of Christ in the church, the same love which He showers upon people so freely in His common grace. In some ways, you can say that it is a picture of Jesus' compassion when He provided for the 5,000 with fish and bread (Matthew 14:13-21). Giving free drinks that makes people glad causes them to ask us about our church and our goals.Two, to proclaim the gospel. This testimony is intended to open up doors for gospel proclamation. At times, we were able to have conversations with people about the hope of eternal life in Christ, or at least to invite them out to church so that they can learn more about Jesus. It was a great way to connect with non-Christians, but also with Christians who are searching for a new church in the DTLA vicinity.We had no idea what the reception was going to be. This coffee idea was something that I heard as a suggestion when I was at an old church a couple years ago, but nobody ever acted on it. It turns out this test run was a success. Many people came to our station to grab some free coffee - both hot and iced. All the business cards ran out. People asked about the whereabouts of Grace City LA. AND three people even prayed to receive Christ as Lord and Savior!This has definitely been one of my most enjoyable outreach events. It was a hot spring Saturday, but our enthusiasm to connect with people and witness for Christ made it all worth it. There are a few things we will modify, but Grace Cafe is something that we plan to be a permanent, ongoing ministry for Grace City LA. We see it as an excellent way to serve the community, bring smiles to many faces, and to expose them to Christ.Our start date will be May 5 (Saturday). We will experiment with new drink options, such as Ice Coffee or Thai Ice Tea, made from scratch and from the best quality ingredients. We want to be able to replicate the quality of the drinks you find at cafes and refreshment shops in the area. And to offer it all at no cost. The best way to keep updated on our schedule - time, location, and menu - is to follow our Instagram and Twitter pages, which is updated constantly.If you are in the Downtown area and are looking for a complimentary Thai Ice Tea and to connect with some great people, then visit us at Grace Cafe. Events like this don't come around too often. We delight in serving the city and giving back to the community.Steve Cha is the teaching pastor of Grace City LA.PHOTOS: Grace City LA.

Los Angeles Church Hosts 'Sushi Outreach Night'

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - The story goes that Los Angeles was the first city in America to successfully embrace sushi, a cuisine phenomena that skyrocketed when the first sushi bar outside of Little Tokyo opened in 1970 in Hollywood and catered to celebrities.Sushi was never considered a “poor man’s meal” — until now. Pastor Steve Cha of Grace City LA told TogetherLA that the recently held “Sushi Outreach Night” was never part of the new church’s strategy or planning meetings for 2018.“This idea wasn’t originally part of our plan,” Cha said. He explained that a restaurant owner, who had been to the church at the time of its opening in September, “one day just out of the blue” approached him and said, “Hey, I want to donate a whole bunch of sushi to you guys. Why don’t I come to make stuff and cook’” and suggested the church “just invite all the neighbors, all the poor people, anybody that wants to come to the church to come eat with you guys.”Cha told the chef, Chiva Neo, from Ramen Senya in Sherman Oaks, that he’d never heard of anything so “fancy” done for a whole neighborhood before.“We are always looking for ways that we can use events like this for evangelism and outreach because last year, when we were planning for our 2018 goals, one of the things we were thinking about was possibly doing barbecues or some sort of dinners,” Cha said. When this opportunity came up the pastor and its leaders asked themselves, “Who don’t we do this as an outreach?”“We looked at it as a way to get Grace City known as well as use it as an opportunity to proclaim the gospel as well, and possibly get them plugged into a church or a home church,” he said. “It was one of those unexpected things for us, but we said this was one of those once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities so that’s why we decided to take him up on it and just roll with it and see how everything was going to go. It turned out pretty well actually.”Cha said that before guests filled their plates from the sushi buffet-style table, he gave a brief introduction to what his church was about and prayed a blessing.Guests for the dinner appeared to be of various socioeconomic backgrounds and not necessarily poor, according to Cha. It was an evening enjoyed by everyone, amazed that the free dinner was not standard fare.To end the evening Cha said he spent a short time giving his testimony about how he “came to a saving faith in Christ” and hoped people would reflect upon it and “challenge them in a small way to think about the message of everlasting life.”“We were able to use the food event as a way to point to the food as physical sustenance but use that as a way to point to the spiritual food that is in Christ,” he said. “Like the verse, ‘I am the bread of life that he who believes in me shall never hunger,’ (John 6:35) that Jesus used to show that we care about them physically — to feed them physically but most importantly we want to feed them spiritually.”Plans for another food outreach night hosted by Grace City LA may or may not include sushi.