and they return
My students come back (the 6 leaders are here in just over a week with the others a week behind them). As I have been getting ready for them to return, I have been thinking and wondering how you go about training people for ministry. Not how to you train people to program or lead a small group or plan a worship time. How do you walk along side students as they prepare to live among others for a year and live an incarnated life? How do you teach them that presence is more important than words? How do you show them that their lives will show (or not) the Christ life more than their devo times together? How do you help them grasp a bigger and more dangerous and demanding vision of Jesus and the gospel than they default to?
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I really have come to love the city (LA is great - but it is fantastic to live just up the coast). The ocean is 5 minutes - from my apartment to standing in the sand. I live on the side of a mountain (I believe the word is nestled). But I live in a very broken place with broken and hurting people. My neighbors are constantly on the front pages of the magazines and there is a chance that they will be standing behind you at the grocery store the same day that they are on the cover. If you live here with star-glossed eyes, you miss the people and then you miss the heart of the town. The photographers don’t make you excited to see who it is, but sad that the person in front of you can’t buy a cup of coffee without another person trying to capture it for the world. You miss that they are parents who are trying to best by their kids. I love getting to be a part of the community in so many different ways. A group of us play softball here in the Malibu city league. Recently some of my teammates have showed me what it looks like, in the midst of great brokenness, to be community. What it means when family and friends have long left - to sit with another surrounded by the darkness, but knowing that there is a way out of the hole. When one who has been sober from addiction for twenty-years loves the one working on a year. This week I have spent a good amount of time home sick. During some quality time with my couch, I got glimpses of these two sharing the story on abc and cnn. I am hopeful that their story will help others. One of the many parts of my Malibu community that I am grateful for - I love the way people find their way to our team. Life together.