One thing that defines Los Angeles is the freeways. People commute miles upon miles to and from work, social activities and even church. But our freeway culture has a lot of negative consequences. First it’s harmful to our environment. Thomas Friedman in his book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded” says its like every few miles you roll down your window and throw a big bag of garbage onto the freeway. That’s what you’re doing to the environment when you drive. But secondly our freeway culture makes us increasingly disconnected. We’re disconnected from our home because we’re rarely there. We’re disconnected from other people because we hardly see them. This commuter culture makes genuine community very difficult.
One of the great visions for our ministry is to have a church where people can live, work and worship in the same geographical location. By living this vision you would simultaneously 1) gain more time from not commuting 2) do your part for the environment 3) make inroads to forming a genuine community with people you live, work and worship with. When our ministry started out this seemed like a distant reality. Even though many people worked downtown, very few people would even consider moving downtown because of its crime or lack of amenities. But in the last couple years we’ve seen a great number of people moving downtown. Currently downtown is the primary place where people in our ministry live and more and more people are considering moving. Now more than ever we can start to glimpse what a really deep, local and intimate community can look like. Can you imagine needing help or counsel and just knocking on the next door?
The next step I guess would be people selling their cars and donating it for kingdom work! If Downtown got zip cars or pay-per-drive cars I think this could be a reality in the not too distant future. But in the meantime there’s still so much work to do to make Downtown a truly beautiful community for all people. Now that we have people downtown it’s time we start deepening our community to be all that God envisions for us.
The picture above is by Tony and has a city growing into a tree. It was done for our anniversary service a couple year’s ago. Here’s to making that picture a reality.
Filed under: City, City Light, Uncategorized
