Diving Back In

Eleven years ago today, I got baptized at the Angelus Temple, after spending a pretty intense week serving the urban poor at the Los Angeles Dream Center. 

Tomorrow morning, I’m headed back, and this time I’m taking a few clients with me.

The Backstory

This is Matthew Barnett in the picture baptizing me. He was 22 years old in 1996 when he purchased a decrepit 400,000 square-foot former hospital in the heart of Los Angeles intending to build a church without walls - one that would act like Jesus did.

I was so lost at that time, just desperate to find my purpose and I’d read his book, The Cause Within You.

It seemed his church/mission, rather than being a political apparatus for the right wing, was dedicated to feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, helping the widow, the immigrant, the addict, the trafficked, the incarcerated and kids aging out of foster care.

I was so pissed at the church then. I still am, because Jesus was never selfish, self-interested, politically-invested or power-hungry.

But I didn’t really know that until life drove me to my knees and I picked up my old Bible and read the whole thing.

That’s when met the Jesus I know now.

And how I wound up playing with kids in Compton, sorting a giant bin of bruised persimmons, feeding people living under a bridge in Long Beach, and spending a long, late night on LA’s Skid Row.

That’s how I really want to follow Jesus, and I want to show others too.

You Do You

Today, I run an online and retreat-based life coaching company - but not a Christian one.

I tell everyone I work with, I’m a Jesus-follower but they can be whoever they want to be. I just ask them to stay open to the life and teaching of Jesus because I talk about him a lot. I also tell my Christians to be open to others on their chosen path because I work with Atheists, Jews, Buddhists and spiritual but not religious people.

Folks love to tell me this is a dangerous approach.

Good. Jesus was a danger to lots of things.

And with all my failings, hypocrisies and f-bomb dropping tendencies, I never want to be an impediment to the gospel. I meet people, whoever and wherever they are, and help them go forward. That’s it.

I tell them who I am and the why is always Jesus.

I learned this from the guys at the Dream Center the night we went down to Skid Row. I asked one of them, as many of us would if we’re honest, where’s the line between feeding and enabling. He said this to me and I’ll never forget it.

“Erin, to catch fish you have to go fishing.”

What those volunteers were doing that Friday night on Skid Road, amid the smoke and sirens, was fishing. Handing out cards to people, letting them know about the Dream Center’s year-long residential recovery programs...and the mercy of God.

Incidentally, we’d been down there earlier in the day serving soup and bread, something that makes hungry people a lot more receptive to getting help with addiction.

And I don’t know if it still does, but the Dream Center bus swings by Skid Row on Sunday mornings, picking people up for church at the Angelus Temple.

Fishing and Learning

Our culture’s love of privacy and individualism can make the paths to serving seem difficult or remote. “Oh I just don’t know what to do!”

Find a need and fill it is the Dream Center’s approach. Daily. Locally. Prayerfully.

Plus, belonging somewhere, being needed, having others rely on us is a sure fire path out of loneliness, ennui, midlife malaise etc. which is probably one of many reasons Jesus told us to do it.

I believe when you want to do something well, you go learn from the available masters. So that’s what we’re doing all this week in Echo Park. You can follow along if you like, here. 

Every month the LADC provides free services to 40,000 people in the greater LA area. If you want to help them do that, you can donate here.