TRANSCRIPT:
Most people know that in America, Christianity
has become this consumer thing. You know, you sit
down, you find people that you know, and you go
and sit there… In rows, and it’s dark, and when you
worship, it’s just you and God. I was used to
going to church on Sunday, sit in the back, and not
really be a part of the body. And you walk out, and
then that’s it. That’s your Sunday. We’ve just
kind of assumed if somebody’s folding bulletins, and
somebody’s a greeter, and somebody’s stacking
chairs that everybody is using their gifts. Just even
the concept of the church that we have… I’ve always
wanted more than that and felt like it should be
more than that. We’re struggling in different
ways. Marriage… Feeling a little bit isolated.
Wasn’t flourishing, I would say. We weren’t
flourishing. If they’re not finding that in the
church, we have to go back to the Scriptures and
go, “Why not? What are we doing wrong?” So many
people are going in and out of churches and
nobody in their church knows what’s happening.
One of our elders calls it “pastoral
malpractice.” Like you’re actually ruining people
by making them consumers because you’re supposed
to be turning them into servants. We don’t come
to be served. We serve and give our lives as a
ransom for many. It’s at the core of what we
understand it means to follow Jesus Christ.
And we’ve twisted it, and it’s evil.
It’s really all these things that cause me to just
start with a blank piece of paper and just start
writing on that paper with Scripture and saying,
“What’s most repeated? What’s most emphasized? What
does God love most? What does he hate most?
What does he command, demand of the church?” And
let’s pursue those things. It’s not about having a
killer sermon with a great worship set. It’s
about us loving each other well, loving Jesus
well, praying together well, studying the
Scriptures together well, and then it’s almost
like our gatherings are excellent, not because
there was a ton of prep work done into it. But
because people are spending time with Jesus,
people are being led by the Spirit, people are
loving each other deeply. That’s what’s gonna make
our gatherings great. And so that’s kind of how we
arrived at the new start, I guess.
There are mornings where I just wanna snooze one
more time, but you’ll like hear the text, and you’re
like, “Alright. Gotta get up.”
Start texting each other when we wake up, and just
encouraging each other with you know, whatever
the Lord’s put on our hearts or what we read
and I just am so thankful for the Lord giving me
this, “Hello, Liz. If you wanna be close to me,
you got to spend time with me.” And since I’ve been
starting to do that, it has changed my walk with
the Lord. My walk with God is so personal, and I
love my time with him. Like this is
success to us: When our people love–really love–
Jesus. They don’t need all of the bells and
whistles in order to sing or in order to
pray or in order to get in the Word. We want them to
be devoted worshippers of God.
So this is where we meet for our house church.
Just here in our living room. So we have a
few couches, but we have to set up plastic chairs.
Everybody’s bringing something. Everybody’s spending
time with Jesus throughout the week. Everybody’s
exercising their gifts. And I encourage people
as God highlights a Scripture, or if a song
comes to mind to sing it out, or if God’s
prompting them with a word on their heart to
share it. And so it’s just beautiful to see
everybody in this room would be
feeling the weight of, “I have something to
contribute.”
We wanted these loving families. Like are we
looking around and seeing these groups of
people that really adore one another? I mean “love”
to the point that Jesus wanted where the world
would look on and go, “I’ve never seen love like
this.”
I remember getting to Francis and Lisa’s house
in the evening, and I was just thinking in my head,
“What in the world am I doing? I don’t
even know these people.”
I was thinking honestly at the time, “Oh
great. I’m moving in with this pastor guy and
his family. I have like this completely
different background. I’m coming out of a life
of crime and drug addiction.” And I’m thinking,
“Are they gonna be too straight edge for me?
Are we gonna have to do this Bible
study thing everyday? Like am I
not gonna be able to be myself?” And it
wasn’t even like that at all. And it was crazy
just to see a godly family.
You get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly when
you’re living with somebody. They didn’t have to
change anything. They didn’t hide anything. It
was just living with them. They just accepted me
in like a family member, and just actually
seeing Lisa be a godly wife and to be a godly
mother… I don’t even think she understands how
much she poured into my life just by
demonstration.
You’re not meant to walk out your Christianity
alone. God never designed it for you to do it
by yourself. Like you’re supposed to have
a body of believers around you, you know? And I
didn’t know that until I was actually able to
experience it.
The church in my mind, and the best I can
understand Scripture, was supposed to be a group
of people that love Jesus. They loved each other
deeply because that was His command. This is our
true family now–more than a family. We are a
body. Like one. You are my arm, and so I will
protect you. And any hurt to you is a hurt to me.
And further to be this godly leadership that
matures this body and strengthens them, disciples
them, and sends them out on mission so that we get
serious about getting to the rest of the world
and making disciples of them.
This restaurant kind of holds a special place
in my heart. I worked here, this place kind of
helped me get my life on track… But it was also the
place where I came to know Jesus. I was baptized
outside… I was always trying to find joy and
putting my hope in like things of the world and
drugs… Trying to find pleasure in stuff like that
you know… Coming here, it was like instant, like a
brotherhood, like this hole I was trying to fill
could only be filled by God. I remember thinking,
“All I did to get here was mess up, and
here these guys are pouring into me. This is amazing.” I
remember, like being right here and then just
knowing I’m in my mess, thinking I’m like this
dirty person, and then here I am in this prayer meeting
around all these like clean people… Yeah, I
remember being really uncomfortable and then feeling
like… Looking at these people being like, “Man, I want
more of this.” So I kept coming back.
Let’s say someone comes to my gathering,
and they’re just understanding Jesus. Then I find
someone that’s further along and encourage them
to help that newer believer.
And so there’s just this natural flow of these
people who show up that become disciple makers,
then become pastors, and then become elders. And then
once we’ve got a few elders, it’s like, okay
let’s even branch that off. “And you three elders
take those churches, you three elders take
those churches, and let’s just keep it going.”
So it was nine months in… They talked to me about,
“We continue to see the Holy Spirit in
your life. Do you wanna start mentoring?” And it’s
like, man… I don’t even have my own life together. How
do you expect me to start leading these dudes? And
so that idea, you know, like your own
sanctification starts to happen when you start
pouring into other people. Like that became very real
to me. Like you know in the book of Acts. It talks
about how the disciples were like uneducated,
common men, but the people seen that they had the
Holy Spirit. Like they walked with Jesus, right? And
so I read it for myself, and I was like, “This is
me!” Like this is me: an uneducated, common dude, and
I still sit on that verse til this day.
A lot of times you think it’s like, “Oh, it’s
teaching, it’s hermeneutics, it’s
theology… It’s this and that…” But where you’re really
gonna get a chance to model Christ is in the way you
serve your brothers. To live in
community together to really demonstrate for
people what it looks like to follow Jesus and how
that looks in my everyday… That’s where you get
sanctified. That’s where you’re gonna grow in
humility. That’s where you’re gonna grow in patience. It’s like a
two-way relationship in that it’s not just the
mentors that are like these holy, spiritual people, but
that it can be mutual and that we’re growing just
as much as they are maybe in different ways and
in different things, but
we’re still growing. We’re still needing more of
Jesus everyday. I think what’s helped me is to
reflect on the way that I was led, what my sin
was like when I first came to know the Lord, and
how people kind of were patient with me, and then
try to demonstrate that to others.
It’s funny, like how God and the universe
will use people like us and add value to
our lives. It’s like here we are just broken,
sinful drug addicts… You know, I’ve been to jail,
done this or that, outcasts, rejects, people society
doesn’t accept anymore… And then Jesus says,
“No, you have a place in my Kingdom. And not
only that, but I can use you now.”
When we’re thinking about mission and we’re
thinking about bringing Jesus’ love
to people, it’s not this sort of theoretical thing
like, “I wanna love the world.” But there are 20
houses here. Like that will be our mission field.
We’re going to try to love this block as well as
we can. The mandate was just really clear: This
house is for the Lord. It’s for community. It’s for
neighbors. It’s for welcoming people in. We’re not
just a community just to be a community, but we
are gathering in the name of Jesus for the name
of Jesus to live this thing called “church” out
daily.
This is where we do have to do the house church.
So people will be sitting around here. So this
building and the people that are in it are pretty
much high-tech professionals. So that’s what we’re
trying to do is try to reach specifically
to the building here. We committed to having a
monthly neighborhood barbecue. Invite
everyone from from these 20 houses out to have
lunch with us, and then start building
relationships where we can go back and check in with
folks and knock on their doors and see if there was
something that we could help with and we could
pray for or other ways that we could support
and love them. And so, yeah, this is not my thing. I’m not
a natural hostess. I would much rather–in my
flesh–just have dinners, just our immediate
nuclear family… In my flesh, I would not like to
clean up after people. And over the years, I think,
as we’ve been part of We Are Church, experiencing
it and seeing it in so many of the commandments…
It’s not “you” singular it’s… To rejoice always, to be
generous, to not have greed, to love your
neighbor as yourself… All those things you can
only really practice in community. And so when
I came to embrace that, it became this more
meaningful communal walk together. So just
simply in unity walking out of our safe house,
safe place, going into our neighborhood and
the intersections in the cities, in the coffee
shops, and talking to the people that live
amongst us and work in our neighborhood. You know,
pray for them and get to know them.
So all of the growth in our church since we
arrived here has come from people who are in our
neighborhood on this block. It’s been a real joy
for us to come and encounter that and find people
who are not just willing to join us for a service
but actually be a part of our family–who are
a part of the body of the church that we have
here and increasingly, we see it’s indispensable.
It’s just this fellowship is going on, and I’m not
pushing it. And I felt like with the old model,
people aren’t gonna reach out unless you create a
program for them to do it. People aren’t gonna
fellowship with each other unless you create
some program for that, people aren’t gonna get
together and pray unless you schedule it for them,
people won’t take communion unless you, you
know, get it, all the elements and everything
figured out, and now it’s just this thing where
people are sharing their faith everyday. It’s just
happening. It’s natural. They can’t help it.
And they don’t need my permission.
The Lord really just confirmed like, “Yes, I’m
asking you to quit your job from corporate
America. Good money. And just be obedient.”
Lisa once asked me, “Do you see
yourself doing inner city ministry?” And I’m like,
“Heck no!” And here I am living in the inner city of
San Francisco. We’ve been married for 6 years,
have been fostering and adopting for 3 and a
half of those years, and like it has been so hard
and then so good and then so hard and then so
good. And over and over, God would check my heart.
It was two weeks before our wedding, and we still didn’t have a
place to live. We were offered free housing, and it
was outside of the community that we were doing
ministry. And I didn’t want to be someone that
was coming into the community and then leaving
back to a different part of the city. Yeah, so
we said, “No” to the free housing in one of the most
expensive cities in the country. And it was only
because we knew we had to be obedient to what the
Lord was calling us to. And so over and over
again, God would like push me and Sean to the brink,
and then He’d teach us and He’d mold us into His
likeness. And it hurt. It hurt so bad sometimes.
But even looking back now, every
trial we went through, God has rooted me in the
faith that He is good. I mean, people thought it
was crazy that we were moving across the street
from public housing. But for us it was like way
better than we could have imagined. Yeah, the Lord
really like completely changed what I thought
my life was gonna be. It’s like one of those
things where you can’t even pray for your life to
turn out this way, and God just does the writing
Himself. He took a beating and was put on the
cross for us, even when we were sinners. So that
is what we are called to do. It’s like, our life…
We’re gonna get a beating. We’re gonna take a
beating. And just recently, God has been like, “I love
these kids more than You could ever love these
kids. So you need to be the hands and feet. You
need to show them who I am.” It’s like, look around
our group. Are they people who sacrifice and suffer
because they so believe in the hope of heaven? Do
they see themselves as just travelers on this earth,
or are they building a home for themselves? Are they
these suffering sojourners that just can’t wait for
the return of Christ?
You know, if I say I get up at 5 in the morning
and spend time with the Lord, they go, “Oh, that’s
great you know… But you’re Francis Chan.” You
know? When Marcus is doing it at 3:30 in
the morning before he goes to work, you know,
picking up needles off the street and cleaning
off the grossest part of the city and speaking to
homeless and caring for them… Or Rob, when you–
an ex-con–tell people like, “I can’t stop
worshipping Jesus. I can’t get enough.”
That’s huge! And so it’s these ordinary people that
are so deeply in love with Jesus that they can’t
help but go and talk about Him when they’re
going door-to-door in their neighborhoods, not
prompted by anyone else–just prompted by a love
for their neighbors and a love of Jesus and
belief in the Gospel. Those have been the most
powerful stories to me because it gets rid of all
the excuses. You know? It’s like, “Well, if that guy’s
doing it, and he’s a doctor… And that guy’s doing it, and
he’s a thug… What’s my excuse why I’m not?”