intersections

The new Fire Station 82 breaks ground

A photo essay

This morning I walked across the street to join the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Fire Station 82. For the past 8 years the LAFD have been trying to locate and build this station. They finally settled on the lot across Van Ness from our church a year or so ago. There has been a lot of debate in the neighborhood about it, which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say, I'm happy that it's finally moving forward and there won't be an empty lot across from our church for very much longer.

My take on The Good News

My friend, JR Woodward, who is the pastor of Kairos Los Angeles and lives just down the road from me in Hollywood, has an incredible blog called Dream Awakener, which if you haven't seen it, you really need to check out. During the season of Easter he's asked 50 different writer to contribute a 300-500 word piece about the "good news" written for their local newspaper.

Here's how I start my piece off. You can see the list of all the contributors here (some pretty prestigious people) with links to their pieces.

My friends John and Aileen serve breakfast to about 150 hungry people on a relatively quiet sidewalk in Hollywood. They do this every weekday. They naturally have help from friends in the neighborhood. The only way you can distinguish the volunteers from those being “helped” is by the rubber gloves worn by the volunteers. I, too, look like I’ve just rolled out of bed. Some of those in line look more prepared for a job interview than I do. That’s probably where a couple of them are headed next after they finished their turkey sandwich, fresh strawberries and yogurt.

To me, John and Aileen embody the good news.

Read the whole thing here.

Stained Glass: Hollywood Blvd. (Episode 1)

I just realized that the first episode of the four-part documentary that the North America Division is doing about the Hollywood Adventist Church is now online at the Vervent website.

I'd love for you to have a look at it and tell me what you think. This was written and directed by one of our members, Melody George. (As an aside, you will be hearing a LOT more about Melody in the coming months...just sayin').

There are three churches that are a part of this project and each church will have four episodes. Stay tuned for the rest of these in the very near future.

Now, have a look at Episode one...click here and look under Featured Resources for "Stained Glass: Hollywood Blvd - Episode 1."

"With Friends Like These"

Tomorrow night, March 6, Dateline NBC will be airing a program called "With Friends Like These." (check your local listings). This is the story of the two women pictured above (Helen Golay, 77, left, and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75) who were convicted last year of murdering two homeless men. These women were Hollywood residents as were the two homeless men they murdered. My friend, Charles Suhayda, who is one of the pastors at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, was interviewed for this epidode of Dateline because the homeless men were part of the ministry his church offers.

So, this touches me and my community personally. I hope you have time to watch this or tape it and watch it later.

2008 in Review

There is so much I could say about 2008. It has been, by far, the biggest growth year in terms of the Hollywood Church. And I don't mean primarily numbers (though the church grew by 20% this year). More people found faith, more connected to Christian community as something healthy and life-giving who never thought that would happen for them. We have more leaders in the church this year than last year. We've also had our setbacks: our mural project got stuck in the city-wide legal problems surrounding public art murals (it's a long story). We've had key people move out of town and some hit hard by financial and other life challenges. But I would say that overall, our life in the city as witnesses to God's reign is stronger than a year ago. More on this later, perhaps.

Our children are in a new school that is working out much better for them. We are all VERY pleased that Sophie started Kindergarten and Zoe is now in 3rd grade at Franklin Elementary.

In addition to this here are some other highlights of our year...

Travel

Obviously, the traveling Elysabeth and I have been privileged to do has been probably the #1 highlight of our year. In addition to traveling to Moscow (here, here and here) and St. Petersburg in October and Israel (here and here) in December, I went to

• Washington, D.C. in January for research meetings about PICOs ongoing work around health care reform.
• Princeton, NJ in June for the Envision '08 conference. (Also here).
• Orlando, FL in September for the annual Spectrum/Adventist Forums Conference.
• Columbus, OH in October for the Innovation Conference.

Community Beautification Grant
The Hollywood Adventist Church received a $10,000 Community Beautification Grant from the City of Los Angeles to paint an art mural on the wall of our church that faces the freeway. (More here and here).

Interfaith work
2008 was the year I got deeply involved in interfaith work. Some of the highlights of this was participating in the Memorial Day Interfaith Service at All Saints in Pasadena, meeting Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad from the Parents Circle Families Form and being elected Treasurer of the Interreligious Council of Southern California (website).

Community Organizing with LA Voice/PICO
We have had another amazing year partnering with LA Voice in local community organizing, mostly around the crisis of affordable housing in Los Angeles. My participation in the national work really dwindled this year as I had so many other travel commitments, but I'm looking forward to getting back involved in early 2009.

Adventists Against Prop 8
I am so proud of the work our little group did in speaking out, as Christians, for the rights of gays and lesbians in California (website). This is a fight we temporarily lost, but our work united many good people who have either left the Adventist Church, have been on the fringes of the church, or who just never imagined that anyone in the church would stand for religious liberty and human rights in the way that we attempted to do. I am also very grateful to the leaders of the local Conferences and the Pacific Union who worked with us to allow a different voice to be heard in this debate. I'm glad my church can tolerate diverse viewpoints.

And of course, for me, one of the greatest highlights of the year was...

the election of Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States

BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2008

I've read a lot of books this year, as usual, but I really haven't read that many good ones. I'm not sure what that means. And I can't tell you how many I've started but never finished. Here are the cream of the crop from what I read this year, in no particular order. As usual, these are not books that necessarily came out in 2008 (though some are).

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson

The Fidelity of Betrayal, by Peter Rollins

Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, OSB

Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright

Evangelism After Christendom, Bryan Stone

Here's to a healthy and joyful New Year!

Talking about Hollywood on SpiritFlash

My friend, Rich Dubose, who runs the website, SpiritFlash, came to Hollywood recently and videotaped a short interview. It's now online. You can see it below or at the SpiritFlash website here.

            

Looking in the Mirror

Cross-posted at the Spectrum Blog

It was while getting my hair cut last week that I was reminded again of how we Christians sometimes come across to our non-Christian counterparts.

I was there to get my hair cut. That’s it. Sometimes the conversation is great, sometimes not. My “salon” of choice is called Rudy’s Barbershop. Rudy’s is a unique place, even though there are more than a dozen locations around Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland. The one I go to is in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, very near to my apartment. There are more stickers and images cut from magazines pasted to the walls than I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s one huge collage of humanity. The whole place has an air of hipster coolness that some people despise and some people love. Either way, it’s, as we like to say, “So L.A.!” It seems every hair stylist has tattoos. I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s part of the job description. I’ve never really had a bad haircut there. But truth be told, I go there for the people.

On this particular occasion my stylist was a young girl in her mid-20s with, you guessed it, tattoos. Though in this case I could still see most of the natural pigment of the skin on her arms. We began to talk about the weather, how the summer is going, how it’s been unseasonably mild this summer. The conversation always seems to turn to how much we love L.A. Most of these stylists, like most people in L.A., are from somewhere else. So, we got to talking about where we’re from.

“I’m from the Midwest,” I offered. “Cleveland, Ohio. But I mostly grew up in the IE (Inland Empire). What about you?”

“I’m from Santa Clarita,” she said.

“Oh, wow, my dad and brother live in Santa Clarita. Canyon Country, actually.”

“Yeah, me too! Canyon Country is so different from the rest of Santa Clarita, isn’t it?”

We spent the better part of the next 10 minutes parsing the uniqueness of the different communities around the Santa Clarita Valley, all incorporated into the City of Santa Clarita in the late-1980s. My stylist expressed disdain for Santa Clarita and a sense of freedom being in Los Angeles. If you don’t live in the Los Angeles area, you need to know that the Santa Clarita Valley is only 35 miles north of Los Angeles and still a part of Los Angeles County. We’re not talking about massive distances here. But that’s how Los Angeles is. Each community, even within the city limits, has a unique character. It’s all part of the wonder of Los Angeles.

Anyway, she has been cutting hair since she graduated from high school eight years ago, she tells me. For a while she cut hair in Santa Clarita. It was at this point that the conversation took a very interesting turn.

“You know what I hated about Santa Clarita?” she said. I was pretty sure she was going to tell me. “It’s so Christian!”

“Really?”

Griffith Park Fire...again!

No sooner was I reminded of last year's fire than we had another one, yesterday, in basically the same place. Fortunately it never got out of control. There is an amazing photo of the LAFD helicopter dropping water at the LAist blog. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

There's a cool series of pictures at the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council website.

A year ago today...

...Griffith Park was on fire and threatening the community of Los Feliz, including our apartment. Here's the picture I took 2:42 pm that day (10 minutes from the time of this typing, so literally one year ago).

Here are my posts from last year:
LIVE...from my driveway | May 8, 2007
We Survived! | May 9, 2007
What's Left | May 10, 2007

Armenian genocide march in Hollywood today

Today, Valerie and I went out on Hollywood Boulevard to hang out a bit with the Armenian community as they held their annual demonstration about the genocide of their people in 1915 at the hand of the Turks. Though many nations of the world officially recognize the genocide of the Armenian people, the United States and the UK are among the countries that do not (though 40 of the 50 states in the US have officially recognized the genocide, according to Wikipedia).

As you may know, Little Armenia is one of the important parts of the Hollywood Community and their website claims that it is "Home of the largest Armenian diaspora in the world."