Posted in September 2008 …

Sep 29 2008
4 Comments
Evangelism, Missional Living, San Francisco Ministry Plant, Urban Ministry

Metropolitan Fresh Start – San Francisco

A few days ago (in this post) I alluded to another interesting character I was able to spend time with at the ACU lectures. That character was Mr. Kinwood DeVore – a church planter, drug counselor, and lead minister for the Metropolitan Church of Christ in San Francisco (his native city).

Kinwood is a ball of fire! He has a charisma that comes with the gift of leadership, and his passion for serving Jesus quickly permeates whatever room he happens to be in. Kinwood serves as the executive director of Metropolitan Fresh Start- a state licensed, Christ-centered treatment center for men suffering from drug addiction. Here’s a bit more about Kinwood and the organization from the Fresh Start website:

Kinwood DeVore, the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Fresh Start House, a faith-based 24-hour residential drug rehabilitation treatment facility for men.  Although Mr. DeVore has been involved in counseling addicts and their families for the past 30 years, he has also worked as Chaplain for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office at Santa Rita Jail for seven years; five of those years he served as Supervising Chaplain.  His position involved managing more than 300 volunteers from many different religious faiths to work together as a team to share a general message with the inmates that might cause them to never again return to custody.

Mr. DeVore is also a motivational speaker and has presented to audiences all over the United States.  He has also been a gospel minister for the past 36 years, and he currently ministers to the Metropolitan Church of Christ, a church that has received more than 40 awards for gang diffusion and curbing the dropout rate among high school and middle school students in San Francisco in the 1990s.  Mr. DeVore, along with the members of the Metropolitan Church of Christ, started the Metropolitan Fresh Start House, which is now independent, and in its 17th year of operation.

Mr. DeVore grew up in San Francisco where he completed elementary, junior high, and high school before attending City College of San Francisco where he was a track star.  He moved to the East Bay where he graduated from the Bay Area School of Religion in 1974, then moved to Southern California, where he worked as the Minister of Evangelism for the Inglewood Church of Christ, then a Pulpit Minister for the West Adams Church of Christ in Los Angeles.

Mr. DeVore has been married for 38 years, has six children and four grandchildren.  Although his passion is working with people, he returned to his beloved San Francisco in 1988, for one reason: to save lives.

Take a couple of moments to watch this award-winning video to gain a bit more insight into the Fresh Start ministry.

Those of you that know me understand I know a thing or two about drug addiction and treatment, and let me tell you - what I know about Fresh Start is cause for excitement. The Fresh Start program owns three or four houses in and around San Francisco and Oakland that serve as inpatient facilities for men who are serious about ending their addictions to illegal substances, and 80% of those who graduate from the program don’t go back to their old lifestyle!

Men don’t just come to them for treatment from the bay area – they come to them from all over the country. They’re allowing broken men the opportunity to reinvent their identities, and they’re teaching them that Jesus Christ isn’t simply a way, they’re teaching them He’s the way! They teach them they have worth, they help them gain back their self-respect, they reconnect them with their families, and they do it by connecting them with their Savior.

It’s all about Jesus. They’re building Christ-centered men, and I love it!

What’s really cause for excitement (for me) is this – Kinwood’s office and the headquarters of Fresh Start is less than three miles away from our facilities at Lake Merced. He and I have already begun to dream how we can marry our ministries together in the future, and how we can work together to see Christ proclaimed as the end all solution to the problems in the city and in the world.

Since my part in the ministry will primarily be focused on reaching young adults attending San Francisco State, I’m always trying to think of ways to make connections with students. SFSU is an activist school at it’s core. The movers and shakers on campus are highly concerned with human rights, poverty, and social justice. They’re concerned with building up their communities, and with making the world around them a better place to live. Fresh start is producing results, and I believe there’s a story to tell there. Scratch that – I know there’s a story to tell there. The story of men who are coming to a place and finding a person who is changing their lives – Jesus.

SFSU has a film school and I’m highly interested in enrolling. Who thinks I could get a film crew together made up of students to produce a documentary on Fresh Start? Who thinks it could lead to other things? Who thinks I could share my faith with a bunch of students in the process? I do.

Who says the film industry should remain devoid of Christian creatives? Not me.

Film is the literature of the day. If Al Gore can use it to get his message out there, why can’t we?

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 24 2008
1 Comment
Missional Living

From bad to worse!

I won’t normally share things from the news on this blog, but I almost fell out of my chair when I read this today. Talk about things going from bad to worse!

I’ll update you regarding the rest of my trip to the ACU lectures as soon as I find the time. I’ll be out of town all weekend to speak at a youth retreat in central Texas, and am busy putting the finishing touches on my lessons. Blogging will be on the back burner until my work is complete.

In the meantime, I invite you to check out the writings of Michael Hanegan on a new blog he’s created and invited me along with several others to be contributors to. Michael is a very deep thinker, and the articles currently posted there reflect that.

Don’t worry though. Give me time to make a couple of posts, and I’ll bring us right back to the shallow end of the pool. Tell the kids to leave their floaties at home – they won’t need them!

Anyway, add that blog to your favs if you’re into topics surrounding missional thinking and theology. I’m a bit confused about it all myself, but then again I’m just a poor boy from Arkansas.

Tagged
Sep 23 2008
5 Comments
Campus Ministry, Personal Growth

ACU’s Summit was not torture this time.

Last time I went to the ACU lectures I thought I’d died and gone to hell.

Ok, so maybe I just wrote that for the shock value (that would be a joke folks – pick up your jaw and put down your phone), but making a five year old sit still for a single hour long sermon in a day is bad enough. Why in the world would anyone in their right mind make a five year old sit still for five hour long sermons in one day? Mom, dad – what were you thinking?!?!

Back then I don’t remember being thoroughly impressed with the lessons I’d heard, but I was impressed with the real live cowboy I saw at the restaurant in town during lunch. He had a cowboy hat, boots, and a silver six shooter on his belt just in case he needed to kill someone! When I got home and told the story of seeing him I was the envy of my Kindergarten class. That was great until I got a spanking for punching the kid who called me a liar.

Anyway, attending Summit (the formal name of the ACU lectures) today marked my first time on ACU’s campus since 1985. Luckily, people weren’t still teasing their hair and rolling up their jeans, and I didn’t see a single pair of parachute pants on anyone.

I had a wonderful time talking with Roland Bowen (Involvement Minister for the Austin Avenue Church of Christ) on the ride up. I’ve really grown to love the Bowen family in the short time I’ve known them. Not only are they great people firmly grounded in serving God, they’re also wonderful cooks (ask me sometime about the homemade jalapeno poppers Roland made). Roland and his wife, Carol, worked as missionaries in Santiago, Chile, for many years, and I feel blessed to be able to learn from their wisdom.

In addition to spending time with Roland, I was also blessed to reconnect with my friends Jim & Anne Bevis. Jim & Anne are simply jewels – their influence for Christ has been felt around the world … literally! And it’s not because they’re perfect people or better than anyone else – it’s just because God decided to use them in a powerful way (see Romans 9:21). They’ll tell you as much.

In 1965 the Bevis family along with Rex Vermillion and Charles Shelton, attended the Abilene Lectures as young ministers and heard a sermon that forever changed their lives (and the lives of many others through their actions). 

That sermon, entitled The Lost Frontier, was presented by a Houston area preacher named Wes Reagan.

The gist of Reagan’s lesson was this: if we want to change the world, we must take the university campuses in the name of Christ. Hey, now there’s an idea!

I don’t think he had any idea the can of worms he opened by giving that speech. It lit the Bevis’ and their friends on fire! They were intent on doing something about it, and do something they did.

They formed a new organization known as Campus Evangelism (what eventually became Campus Advance) with the intention of seeing the university campuses of the United States reached in the name of Jesus. A foundation generously awarded them $100,000 to get the new work started which afforded them to do some really neat things from the get go (100k is quite a large chunk of change today – even bigger in the 60s)!

In order to learn how to effectively reach the campuses set before them, they looked to the only group doing it in the 60s - Campus Crusade for Christ under the leadership of Bill Bright.

Jim Bevis and Charles Shelton attended Campus Crusade’s nine week biblical studies course believing full well they were the only saved people in the whole bunch, and, from what I understand, the people around them knew they felt that way too.

In spite of that, Bill Bright personally invited them to attend the three week training session just for Campus Crusade staff members after the nine week session was over. Bill also knew their stance theologically, knew they would never be working for Campus Crusade, and knew that the ministries they started would probably be set up to compete directly with Campus Crusade’s, but he invited them to the staff training anyway (in spite of the rest of the board protesting).

Jim describes the time at the Campus Crusade training as a turning point in his life. In fact, he says it was during that time that he met Jesus for the first time despite already holding Bible degrees and five years of ministry under his belt.

“I knew the church, but I’d hadn’t met Jesus until then.” That’s the way he described it today.

I’m not going to ruin the rest of the story for you by typing it all here (actually, I just need to go to bed so I can get up at 6am), but after being tutored by Bill Bright and having a brush with the authentic, real, grace filled, hope giving, peace loving, revolutionary, one and only, King of kings, and Lord of lords Jesus Christ, Jim Bevis and his friends changed the world, and it wasn’t by their own power – it was a movement of God.

Literally thousands of people are Christians today as a result of what happened back then, and those men and women were run out of the Churches of Christ in the 1970s after it was revealed they believed the Holy Spirit of God worked outside of the written word and actually indwelt those who are saved among other things that are widely accepted today (thanks to well intentioned, but very misguided souls attending the Freed-Hardeman University lynchings … err … lectures back then).

Have I peaked your interest?

If you’d like to learn more about the CE movement of the 60s and 70s, visit this blog, and listen to these lessons from the 2007 CMU Workshop archived here:

Jim Bevis - “The Story of the Campus Evangelism Movement of the 1960s” (60:37) ( Outline: The CE Movement of the 60s)
Jim Bevis - “Looking to the Future/Q & A With Jim Bevis” (42:08) ( Click here to visit Rex Vermillion’s Campus Evangelism Blog)

Jim tells a fascinating story – in fact, that’s why he’s in Abilene right now. He’s retelling the story of his work with CE in three lessons at Summit, and I’ll be attended part II in the morning. We were a full year into our work with CMU before any of us even heard of the CE movement of the 60s. The more I’ve learned about it has revealed some fairly striking parallels between what they did back then, and what we’re doing today. God moved powerfully through campus ministry back then, and we believe He’ll do so again!

Anyway, in addition to dinner plans with the Bevis family tomorrow, there’s another interesting character I’ll be spending time with who I believe you like. Like them, he’s a mover and a shaker, and Lord willing he and I will become great friends. I’ll tell you more later.

Just a question for the commenting types – do any of you with CoC roots realize the rich heritage our movement has in campus ministry? If you have questions pop them my way – I’m one of the few that has a fair knowledge of the history, and if I don’t have the answer I can likely find it.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Sep 19 2008
10 Comments
Devotional Thoughts, San Francisco Ministry Plant, Theology

Responding to naysayers

“San Francisco is too far gone. Why bother?”

“You can’t have an effective ministry through that kind of church.”

“You’ll never raise the money you need to make it in San Francisco.”

“Your plans don’t seem to be very well thought out. [insert random church leader or scholar] says [insert random quote]. You should listen to them instead.”

“You shouldn’t plant a campus ministry through an existing church. It will never work.”

 

I was talking to a minister friend on the phone the other day about a new work he’s starting, and when we got into the nuts and bolts of what he plans to do with it I raised a couple of objections concerning his methodology in an attempt to help him in planning. He thought for a moment then gave his thoughts as to why he was going to do what he’d originally said in spite of my objections. When I reitterated that that’s not the way I would do it, apparently I struck a nerve. I’ll never forget what he said: “Wes, I appreciate it, but my ministry isn’t here to make you happy.”

“My ministry isn’t here to make you happy.” Ha!

I like that response, and I like that he said that right to my face. I admit I got a little red in the cheeks for a second, but then I realized his attitude is just right.

I have a tendency to get a bit too caught up in the people pleasing business at times. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to please people, only that focusing too heavily on pleasing people can get in the way of doing what God is calling you to do.

Had I allowed myself to take seriously everything that has been said to me over the past three years regarding the work in SF, I can assure you I wouldn’t be going, and I can assure you that my buddies that are already there wouldn’t be.

I had a flat on the way to the office today, and as I was changing the tire I began thinking about the Old Testament book of Joshua Airiel and I just got done reading (we read the Bible together most nights before bed). I thought about God’s ability to do the impossible – especially when His people are involved.

In Joshua 3 God allowed the Israelites to cross the Jordan River by causing it to miraculously stop flowing when the priests carrying the ark set foot in the water. In Joshua 6, God commanded the Israelites to march around Jericho once a day for six days, then seven times on the seventh day followed by the blowing of their trumpets and shouting. The walls fell, Israel invaded the city and they were victorious. In Joshua 10 when the Amorite kings fought Israel at Gibeon, God made the sun stand still in the sky so that the Israelites would have light by which to strike their enemies down. In addition to that, God hurled large hailstones upon Amorites from the sky, and the Bible says in verse 11 ”more of them [the Amorites] died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.” When the dust settled and the five Amorite kings were captured, it says (starting in verse 24):

“When they had brought these kings to Joshua, he summoned all the men of Israel and said to the army commanders who had come with him, “Come here and put your feet on the necks of these kings.” So they came forward and placed their feet on their necks. Joshua said to them, Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies you are going to fight.”

 

In the book of Joshua, that’s exactly what He did. The rest of the book of Joshua (24 chapters) is an account of the Israelites winning dominating battles and divvying up the land they conquered. This ragtag nation of former slaves routed the mighty warriors of the land of Canaan. Through Israel God did the impossible, and that’s just the book of Joshua!

Stories of God doing the impossible, or, rather, what men claim is impossible, are found throughout Scripture. Abraham and Sarah shouldn’t have had a child – Sarah was much too old and said as much. But what happened? What about the stories surrounding Moses? The burning bush that spoke, the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the cloud and the pillar of fire, the bread from heaven, the water from the rock. Honestly, did anyone see that coming? 

What about Samson and his strength, David and his mighty men, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the lion’s den? And what about the greatest story of all – that of Jesus Christ? A virgin has a baby, the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead rise again. Simply impossible, but the impossible happened again and again, and I’ve got news for you: God isn’t through.

In light of the fact that the impossible is possible with God, the naysaying, whining, and fear all seems very small.

My response to naysayers:

1) My wife and I are going to San Francisco because God has called us there. It’s an act of obedience more than our own planning. 2) We are doing our best to listen to others, learn from their wisdom, and will continue to do so, but just because we listen doesn’t mean we’re going to do what everyone suggests regardless of what Bill Hybels or Rick Warren said. 3) We have well thought out and well researched plans for reaching the lost and general church growth, and will do our best in implementing those. But we don’t believe it’s our well thought out plans that are going to get anything accomplished – mainly because effectively evangelizing a city like San Francisco is impossible.

Yes, I said it. It’s impossible.

But impossible’s not a problem.

Tagged
Sep 17 2008
1 Comment
Urban Ministry

Fifteen Inches to Freedom

Just got this email from a friend:

Lord, I’ve heard it said, “Most people who don’t make it to heaven, will miss it by fifteen inches, that is, the distance between the head and the heart.” I watched you move Mike’s faith from his head to his heart this morning. It happened right before my eyes. His mind was full of faith, but his heart was so bruised, beaten, cut up, damaged, stomped on, that he couldn’t find You there. At all.
 
“I came looking to be with God today. I came early to River City so I could be with God. I got here at 6:30am to be with Him alone,” Mike said. The heaviness of his heart weighed deep in the tears from his eyes.
 
“I haven’t cried like this since I was a child. I‘m burdened, but it’s not the alcohol and drugs that I turned loose of a while back. It’s that I couldn’t get things right with God. I don’t have a friend in the world, and I feel like I just want to be alone. You know, I never sit down and talk with a minister and talk like this,” Mike smiled.
 
“I know God is ashamed of me, that He holds me guilty. I didn’t do what I knew I should, all of my life, and now, will God have me? I know God has His purpose for me, but I turned away a long time ago.”
 
“I just can’t feel God in my heart, deep in my soul, and I want Him back. In my mind I know Him, but I know that’s not enough. I want His power in my life.”
 
Mike’s identity was so tied to the past that he had come to accept Satan’s accusations as his identity.  He couldn’t let You into his heart so You could show him Your true identity for him.
 
A mother who beat him. A pastor who tried to molest him sexually. A father who beat his mother. A thirteen year old Mike who choked his father until he agreed to stop beating his mother. A father who blamed a fourteen year old Mike for his mother’s death. Siblings who believed the father and shunned their brother Mike. They still do. And now, diabetes type two, prostate cancer, and homeless, to boot.
 
“Bro. Anthony, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be,” he cried. “Do you want to know, Mike?” I asked.  “I can tell you, as a start, what He doesn’t want you to be–a man so accustomed to shame, guilt, and the past ruling his life that he cannot become all God intended him to be. God loves you, and wants to free you. Today.”
 
“That’s why I really came. I didn’t know that at 6:30am this morning, but you listened, and I know now that God loves me, and that He will save me. I’ve learned today that God ain’t through with any of us yet. That’s what my grandma used to tell me, and that God had a purpose for me. I want to know that for my life. I’m on his path now.”
 
Fifteen inches. Not very far on a tape measure, but a long way between head and heart. What brings head and heart together?  Healing. It’s about confessing, about trusting You with what You already know about us—that we cannot save ourselves.
 
You healed Mike, Lord. He’s free. And, he’ll tell You that, Lord. He did when he gave his testimony today at Lunch Lesson. He had no shame in telling of Your love and goodness for him.
 
“ . . . I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgression to the Lord”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin (Psa. 32:5, NIV).”
 
Blessings,
Anthony Wood, Evangelist
River City Ministry

 

Mark is the 50th person to give his life to Christ through RCM this year (not that we’re counting :p). Shortly after his conversation with Anthony, Mark was baptized.

Anthony sends out encouraging email stories of lifechange like this on a regular basis. If you’d like to start receiving them in your inbox, send a message to awoodxulon@yahoo.comrequesting to be added to the MissionMessage mailing list.

Tagged ,
← Older posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 399 other followers