God Moving In Los Angeles: A Conversation Worth Having
/In what began as a conversation about the movement of God in the City of Angels a few years ago in the form of a three-day conference continued last summer in a panel discussion with four pastors from four corners of the county. And in light of all that's transpired over the last three years, with God still on the throne, it's important to continue that conversation.BY ALEX MURASHKOLos Angeles, like other major cities in the U.S., has become an even greater flash point for communal voices meeting in such places as City Hall to display a viral sort of anger that has escalated to unprecedented heights. A physical statement at ground zero for all demonstrations (protest and celebratory) doesn't even scratch the surface of the dangerous vitriol taking place online through media of all sorts.That's why we felt it important to republish parts of the discussion from the summer of 2017 with links to other related stories at TLA below.Is there hope for the City of Angels even though it often appears so broken, so filled with spiritual poverty among its people that a diagnosis may very well be — beyond repair? The answer as expressed by the four pastors that met at Metropolis Santa Monica was a resounding: “Yes, there is hope!”The pastors on the panel were Steve Snook of Santa Monica, Michael Mata of Koreatown, Cedric Nelms of Long Beach, and Brannin Pitre of Pasadena, all sharing their heart for the city they not only minister to but reside in.Michael Mata, director of the transformational urban leadership program at Azusa Pacific Seminary and a Together LA speaker, is an experienced urban planner and pastor. He has spent over 30 years in leading and equipping others in urban transformation through the creation of community and church-based programs. His work has focused on community transformation, youth leadership development, public health, intercultural outreach, and multiethnic ministry. Mata serves as community transformation specialist for Compassion Creates Change, Inc., and was the director of Tools for Transformation for World Vision’s U.S. programs.Mata lives in and loves his neighborhood — Koreatown.“Even though it’s called Koreatown, 70 percent of the people are not Asian,” Mata told TLA. “Even with this great vitality of humanity it’s broken in that we don’t have the interaction as we should.“We live in close proximity to each other, almost 200,000 people within two-and-a-half square miles, and we bump into each other and we eat in the same places and we hear each other’s music but we’re not necessarily connected. Rarely do we actually know the name of our neighbors — actually I do, but many people don’t.“[Residents] live in high rises, in homes they’ve invested in, they live with multiple families or extended families, and they are struggling to survive because even though there’s a sense of great economic energy there, the per capita is one of the lowest in L.A. County.”
Immigrants and young professionals consumed with ‘making it’
“So, you have a population that’s come to the United States who are contributing and being very productive but it seems their lives are consumed with ‘making it,’ maybe not so much becoming affluent, but certainly surviving,” Mata explained. “In that regard, we need spaces, we need a way to come together. Certainly in 1992, when our community was the second flashpoint in the riots, our community did come together.”Churches in the area and various religious institutions gathered together, he said, and asked “How are we going to rebuild together?”Within less than a year, Koreatown did rebuild, he said.The infusion of energy and “new life and looking for the future” gave way to a retreat of sorts.“We all went back to our regular spaces of work, relationships, and of cultural identity,” Mata said. “So those spaces or that bridge are sorely lacking and that’s where I think the faith community can come in.“We have great historic sanctuaries in K-town. Beautiful French-Gothic structures, some of them thousands of square feet, but on Sunday mornings they are pretty empty because the populations that once populated the pews are no longer living in the area. We have a new influx of not just immigrant people but young professionals and some churches are being more successful at that.“But that’s the space where God calls us to be reconcilers,” he adds. “We need to step up as a faith community to be that person, or that facility, or that body that brings people together and helps us to know one another even though we may not have the same beliefs or traditions. Nonetheless, we are living in the same space so why not move beyond just residing to becoming members or members of a community becoming neighbors to one another.”In talking about Pasadena, Pitre said, “We have a context in which we are divided racially. We’re divided economically. We are divided by educational bounds. We’re divided by political bounds. There’s just a great sense that at any given block in the city of Pasadena you’ll find somebody that’s completely different and aligned differently from you, which can cause a great sense of brokenness.“My joy in that is that it also provides an endless sense of opportunity.”Videos and photos by One Ten Pictures.Read Pitre’s discussion about how the Together LA conference, held more than three years ago, happened in a two part series at the Christian Post here: Interview Church Planter Brannin Pitre: Los Angeles Is on the ‘Cusp’ of a New Mov’t; How Tim Keller’s Church Supported Vision LA (Pt. 1) and here: ‘Together LA’ Organizers: There’s More to Loving a City Than Planting Churches (Pt. 2)We’d love to hear from you! Please join the conversation in the Comments section below. Thank you!>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<< 4 Pastors Get Real About the City – Together LA Pop-Up Part 1 (Michael Mata)Urban Church Planter: First, What Does the City Need? Part 2 (Cedric Nelms)‘Beautiful’ Westside Striken with Spiritual Poverty a Unified Church Can Cure – Part 3 (Steve Snook)LA Pastors’ Bottom Line: We Want to Help the City That We Live In – FINAL (Brannin Pitre)
“In the past several years, we as a society have begun to understand the seriousness of loneliness to not only our emotional state, but also our physical health,” said Nick Runyon, executive director of CV Outreach. “Through this study, we hope to provide useful information to church leaders so they can be aware of and respond to the lonely in their communities.”Beyond geographical location, the CV Outreach study identifies that women are more likely than men to suffer from loneliness, and millennials are at a significantly higher risk of loneliness than any other age group. Though millennials make up just 21 percent of the total population, they are more than 50 percent of the lonely population.The study also explores common online behavior of a lonely person. For example, by analyzing Google searches, researchers were able to identify common keywords that accompany a search for loneliness help. These include life, husband, time, feel and marriage.“This data shows us that loneliness often surfaces not as a core issue, but as an underlying symptom of another, more immediate issue such as marriage or relationship issues, existential struggles or financial difficulties,” said Chad Hugghins, author of the study and content and marketing director for CV Outreach. “Given individuals often turn to the church for help with their struggles, church leaders should be looking for signs of loneliness as well.”In addition to the study, CV Outreach provides insight into how individual Christians can reach the lonely such as exhibiting healthy online behavior and intentionally getting to know your neighbors. Church bodies can respond by speaking publicly about loneliness and connecting with people online. To see the full study, visit 
So churches absolutely must change and adapt if they will remain relevant to the culture.I realize many Christian leaders don’t like that terminology, so let me clarify that God’s Word, the Gospel, Jesus, and the church as Jesus intended it to be have always been, are now, and always will be relevant without our help. But we often hold on extra-biblical traditions and ideas that severely limit our ability to communicate with a young generation, an influx of immigrants, and a culture being shaped by its technology and entertainment more than its religious and historical roots.In other words, if Satan’s goal is to blind the minds of those who don’t know Christ to the Gospel, we often help by handing out blinders such as inauthenticity, racism, ethno-centrism, traditionalism, and political power struggles driven by fear and selfishness.But if God’s desire to enlarge his family matter . . . if people who are lost forever without the Gospel matter . . . and if the church of the future matters . . . we will embrace the pain of change for the win of seeing more people meeting Jesus.I don’t have all the answers, but I think I have a few, and they are rooted in my understanding of the Gospel’s effect on a community and my experience interacting with thousands of pastors and churches in the last few years. As I look at the landscape of stable or slightly declining existing churches that are fighting hard to stay afloat in the current of a rapidly changing culture, I see some common factors that must be addressed by church leaders. Here are some tough questions I believe every church ought to honestly ask:
Ninety percent of pastors feel inadequately trained to cope with the demands of ministry, according to