At City Light we’re right in the middle of a class on Calvinism. We’re talking about election, infant baptism and the whole nine yards. In the coming year we’re starting one on Social Justice. We’ll talk about issues like immigration, homelessness and racism. In recent church history these two topics were handled exclusively by two different kinds of churches. The Calvinistic churches majored on theology but minored in outreach. The “liberal” churches focused upon social issues but seemingly lost the gospel along the way. But the one nagging question we should ask is this: Isn’t there a way to wed these traditions together or are these views mutually exclusive?

I believe that the answer is that they are compatible and that social justice flows out of the gospel. Calvinism itself shouldn’t cripple our attitude to the world and the lost. Calvinism exalts a glorious God who plucks us from the grave and seals us for heaven. Many argue if God predestines everything, what is the use of evangelism? But Calvinism properly understood never insists that God doesn’t use means. Instead of making evangelism unecessary, Calvinism actually gives us confidence in evangelism: God’s elect WILL come. Calvinism also shouldn’t cause us be these pious religious people with no love for the lost. It propels us upward and outward to serve the city in the name of our glorious King.

The Old Testament is bursting with themes of God’s love for the widow, orphan and immigrant.The whole story of Ruth exemplifies these themes. Jesus’ love for the outcasts is apparent in his treatment of prostitutes, tax gatherers and his telling of the story of the Good Samaritan. When you really understand the gospel, you have to understand that the gospel is not just for religious people trying to live a comfortable life. God calls us out to the streets, to the brokenness of life in the city and to serve as peacemakers. Christians should be at the forefront of trying to solve problems like poverty, eduction, racism and crime.

At City Light our vision is to go deep in theology which will lead us to go deep in our love for the each other, the lost, the city and the world. The goal of theology is not to feel smug and secure. It’s to worship and to let that worship propel us forward to serve as His people in a broken world that God is redeeming.

God is starting to move and awaken His people to this glorious mission.

Los Angeles is the forgetful city. We don’t often think too much about the past or much more than a few years in our future. I’ve been meditating the last few weeks on the forgotten biblical truth on hell. Hell is one of those things that has been dislodged from the modern pulpit and much more so from modern conversation. If it’s not mentioned in the pulpit, there’s no way it’s going to gain a hearing outside. If the church doesn’t preach hell, the world sure won’t!

Jesus portrays hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12). It’s a place devoid of the presence and glory of God. A lot of people think that hell is unfair. But think about this: Hell is simply God saying, “no” to being in His presence. Everybody claims that they have a right to reject God in their life. Everybody intuitively believes that they can walk away from God. But how can you say that you have a right to say, “no” to God and then say God has no right to say “no” to you at the end of your life? Or would you say that you have rights that God doesn’t?

If you accept the premise of hell a lot of things follow:

Only when you understand what you have been saved from can you really appreciate the significance of the idea of salvation. If you don’t have hell what exactly are you saved from? But with the idea of hell we fall on our knees in gratitude that we have saved from the depths of destruction unto a life eternal.

The doctrine of hell also gives us perspective on what is at stake in this life. In Philippians 3 Paul speaks of “enemies of the cross” whose end is destruction. But he never says this casually. He says this with tears in his eyes (vs. 18). So often we have all these relationships with people who are going to hell but we don’t say a word. Instead of weeping for them we laugh with them. Instead of warning them we talk about the last sports game. There are family members and friends who stand on the precipice of disaster and we speak not a word.

I think about these ideas and it drives me to repentance for the shallow and insignificant ways I spend my time. May God revive this truth so long forgotten to his church and his people.

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.

A few weeks ago our ministry had our very first art show around our services on Sunday mornings. We were hoping to display the work of many of our resident artists in our ministry. A lot of people ask me about the emphasis on the arts at City Light. At our church the gospel takes the central role. But the idea of centrality presupposes the idea of a periphery. The arts aren’t central to our ministry but is one of the things in the periphery which comes out of our conviction of the gospel. The preaching of the gospel declares God’s power and brilliance but the display of art shows people that beauty in a tangible way. Art doesn’t save anyone but it points people in the direction of a transcendent Creator. Art celebrates His Creation and shouts His praise. But in contrast art can also reflect life in a fallen world and echo the lament of the unredeemed. We’re hoping to build an arts community that can show the beauty of Christ in the city and in all of creation.

A couple of weeks later Tony Hong also exhibited his work at the monthly Downtown Los Angeles Artwalk. If you’ve never been it’s one of the best things going on in Downtown. It’s the second Thursday of every month. Amidst the cool crowds, street food vendors and noise  you can see some very good art for free. Check out Tony’s work at tonyhong.net.

I’ve been gearing up for the next year of preaching here at City Light. I’ve been reading, thinking and praying for inspiration and direction. Sometimes I go back to “older voices” for inspiration. I love the puritans and older preachers who bring us back to fundamental temptations and realities. Here’s Phillips Brooks:

“The great danger facing all of us… is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel [that] life has no meaning at all – not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life’s greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to tender the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God – and be content to have it so – that is the danger: that some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with (husks and) trappings of life and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one’s friends may be spared – satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle or thrill that comes from a friendship with the Father.”

I realized that’s the great temptation for so many of us. The greatest danger is not that we’ll make a failure out of life or lose our faith entirely or that we’ll become miserable. The greatest danger is that we’ll miss out on God’s greatest blessings. The biggest enemey of the great is the good. The greatest danger is that we’ll settle for having a good marriage, a good career and good friends. Those are good things but not the greatest thing. The danger is that those good things will keep us from the greatest thing – LIFE ABLAZE with the glory of God.

One of the most broken things about our city is the public education system. It has one of the lowest test scores in the country and varying reports have over fifty percent of those who enter into the system dropping out. The problem is compounded by the budget crisis. This coming year we’ll have less teachers, larger class sizes and no summer school for students below High School. It’s no wonder that many parents are opting to either 1) move to the suburbs where the public school system fares much better or 2) go to an expensive private school.

But as Christians we’re called into the city. What does this mean in the realm of education? I see three possibilities here:

1) Help reform the system

This would mean placing your children into the education system and working for change. But one of the problems I see with this is that the LAUSD is simply too massive to seemingly tackle. We’re dealing with a powerful board, unions and tenured teachers. If this were to happen it could only happen on a really massive scale of concerned parents bringing change from the grass-roots. I’m also not sure how many parents would be willing to place their children in a system when change dangles on a string.

2) Begin a Private Christian School

This would seem like a good alternative. There are enough excellent Christian teachers in Los Angeles to bring together a really excellent teaching staff. What greater testimony would there be when one of the highest performing schools in the country is in the middle of the city, diverse and Christian. It would have great Christian values, high academic standards and really engage the city. But the big problem with this is capital. Where would the capital to start the school come from? Land is massively expensive in the city. If you wanted diversity, you would also need to offer a lot of scholerships for underserved people in the city. The only way I see this happening is a massive financial push from churches in the city, parents and donors. This could take a while.

3) Begin a Secular Charter School

The third alternative would be to begin a charter school in downtown. A charter school would take public money which would eliminate the capital problem. On the downside, it would have to be completly secular in order to take public funds. But there still can be a lot of translatable values in education, ethics and love for the city. It would also appeal to a broader demographic of people and be theoretically open for every child in the city. This to me seems like the most practical choice right now.

What are your thoughts on this issue? What people do you know that can begin the push to make this a reality?

When you think about Los Angeles it’s astoundingly divided among racial lines. The city can almost be defined along racial boundaries. There is South Los Angeles which is historically black. There is East Los Angeles which is primarily hispanic. There is West Los Angeles which is largely white and Jewish. Within miles the city has a multitude of ethnic enclaves as Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, and Filipinotown. But beyond the diversity lies a history of racial tension and division.

One of the great wake-up calls for racial tension was the race riots in 1992 after the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the assault on Rodney King. Estimates of damages range from 800 million to a billion dollars. Many of the Korean American stores were targeted during the riots. The riots brought national attention to the tangled racial tensions in Los Angeles.

But 17 years later not a lot of dialogue and reconcilliation has happened. There continues to be tension amongst Hispanics and African Americans in the growing turf wars in what was once predominately black areas. Korean-American have largely left South Los Angeles but continue to hire many Hispanic workers for their businesses. Meanwhile people in the upper-middle class have fled to the suburbs which although is in some sense ethnically diverse, are often economically homogenous.

One of the questions that I continually ask myself is, “What is the churches role in bringing racial reconciliation?” When you think about the four main ethnicities that are entangled: (African American, Hispanic, Korean-American and White) they are all parts of communities that are heavily faith-based. Shouldn’t the church model racial reconcilliation both within the church and between churches? What would that look like? What community projects could be done between churches seeking to bring needed peace?

Wouldn’t it be an epic testimony for the church, the Bride of Christ, to show an unbelieving world the peace that faith can bring?

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9

My favorite poet of all time is George Herbert. He’s moved me and encouraged me time and again. One of my favorite poems is entitled, “Bitter-sweet.” It exemplifies his ability to seek to capture the range of human experiences and emotions as someone seeks to encounter the living God.

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

I’m working on a semon this week about sexual purity. It seems like there is no more relevant message today than Jesus’ call to purity. I think it’s such an important issue because lust threatens to keep us from truly seeing and experiencing the wonder of the gospel. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

John Piper, Future Grace
We must fight fire with fire. The fire of lusts’ pleasure must be fought with the fire of God’s pleasures. If we try to fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone – even the terrible warnings of Jesus –we will fail. We must fight it with the massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction.

Dr. Al Mohler
Men are tempted to give themselves to pornography – women are tempted to commit pornography. If a couple is driving down the street and they both see a seductive advertisement, they can both be tempted to lust but in different ways. The man might be tempted toward sexual pleasure with the woman in the ad. But women want to look like the woman in the ad because we know men want that.

At our church we’re going to be reading through the New Testament in 60 Days. So many people base their Christian walk on:

- Their feelings

- Christian books

- Advice of other Christians

But often we negelect the very words of God Himself. So for sixty days we’re going to seek to saturate ourselves in God’s word and prayer. We’re going to be doing in not as individuals but as a community. We hope to enhance this experience by sharing our thoughts, prayers and experiences on the City Light Church Facebook page. I’ll also be twittering at twitter.com/denniskang along the way. If you want to follow us log onto our website at citylightchurch.org or Facebook page.