Epic Bay Area Project 2006 - End

July 22 - End of the Line

Well, the students (except for Kelvin, who apparently can't get enough of us) and staff are gone now. Carita and I leave tomorrow morning. As I reflect on what has transpired these last 5 weeks, I am amazed at how refreshed I personally feel. I've lead other Projects before and each time, at the very end, I distinctly recall feeling exhausted. It's a good kind of exhaustion that comes with knowing you ran hard and you crossed the finish line...but it's still exhaustion. Not this time...strange. Really must be a supernatural God-thing.

This has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me. I think that, at every turn, God met our Project in special ways. For all of the moments when I agonized PRIOR to Project over having a small team, I don't recall thinking that thought even once since this began. In fact, at our closing banquet last night, what came up over and over again is how perfectly balanced our Project was. As staff, we all were blown away by how open, teachable, and incredibly endearing each of the students were. To think, I was actually ready to cancel the Project in late May (even had an email typed out to let all of the staff know).

We didn't emphasize stats very prominently, mostly because we wanted the Project to maintain the idea that what we were about these last few weeks is meant to fit into a greater context of what God is doing here, through the SF Metro Ministry and others. If we aim to be organic in our methods, we also need to know that night always comes and even the farmer has to go to sleep and trust that his crops will still grow. Likewise for us as leave this place. We did track some things, though.

We ministered on 5 different campuses in the Bay Area. For our 4 weeks on campus, our team of 17 (not counting Angela, who stayed back to care for the kids, or Keoke, who didn't turn any stats in...:) had over 260 conversations with Gospel content. We had 130 separate conversations that included the "whole" Gospel up to the point where the listener decides one way or the other. We saw 13 students trust Christ. What about those tricky G3s? We saw 3 of them start up and, hopefully, laid the groundwork for more to come. While I'm not a huge "stats" guy, I can draw encouragement from knowing that these numbers back up what I have already been feeling, namely that God's faithful hand has guided us. We celebrate the stories and people behind the numbers (and even the ones the numbers don't reflect), but we also give thanks for what is measurable, too, and celebrate all of it together. Here, at the very end, Zechariah 4:10 seems really appropriate, for it says:

"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin..."

Epic Bay Area Project 2006 - Part 9

July 21 - Compassion Ministry and Men's Time

These past few Saturdays, we've gone up to San Francisco and joined with some different ministries to serve the area. The first week, we hooked up with City Team Ministries and passed out care packages to the poor residents of the nearby Baldwin "Hotel". Oh, and by "hotel", I mean the most run-down, rat-infested hellhole you can imagine. One guy on Project said that the place reminded him of the building in the movie Se7en, where Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman chase after the serial killer. It was pretty intense. While there, a somewhat mentally unstable resident, who at one time served in the Army, decided to demonstrate how to break a man's arm...by using my arm as an example! Fortunately, he was drunk and not overly strong. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it very much if he had succeeded. At the end of our time with City Team, we debriefed with them and heard testimonies from many of their people. These were the ones who we got to serve alongside of that day. They were passionate about their mission, for many of them have come through the City Team rehab and reeducation program and now serve as volunteers. It was humbling to see their faith in God's ability to radically change a person. Their lives testify to that. I pray for those guys...

Another time, we worked the Soup Kitchen lines at Glide Memorial Church and served lunch to the homeless. We were all blessed to see the Ebert family bring their 3 kids to serve the lines with the rest of the Project! That's Timothy Ebert passing out a plate. We also helped put on a barbecue grill out for runaway kids at the Page Street Baptist Center. Most of the kids are high school dropouts, live on the streets, have experience with drugs. Yeah, most of them are also homosexual/transgender. This was a really stretching time for all of us because we spent the entire afternoon just talking to them. We couldn't even hide behind our work at the Soup Kitchen lunch lines or our task in passing out care packages. We had to enter into their world in ways that few of us have ever had to before. Is this a little bit of what it means to be Christ-incarnate? We pray that the presence of Christ was evident through our actions that day. Overall, these days in San Fran were some of the most memorable so far.

One of our Men's Time activities was going to the shooting range. We treated it like a rite of passage, of sorts. At first, I thought we'd have to scrap the plans because there is a policy that you have to be over 21 to rent a handgun and some in our group were not quite there. Undaunted, we started to ask around. Fortunately, Tommy Dyo had come to town to visit the Project and had mentioned that he might know some people who know some people...you know how that goes. Anyway, Tommy hooks us up with some AACF dudes that own their own guns and were willing to take our guys shooting. First, I didn't know that Asians even owned guns! Second, if they did own a gun, it would certainly be only ONE. Okay, these AACF guys show up and, well, let's just say that each of them brought multiple firearms to the party. Not just some sissy girl-guns, either. It was quite impressive, actually. For me, it was my first time to fire a gun. That's me in the picture, aiming a Colt 45. Anyway, we all had a great time.

Epic Bay Area Project 2006 - Part 8

July 14 - Laney College, Oakland CA

Something else that happened this week was our "experimental ministry" day. Given the incredible cultural diversity of the Bay Area, we have found ourselves consistently engaging students of other ethnicities besides Asian American. With our "experimental" day, the goal was to push that even more and go to a historically black school like Laney College in Oakland...just to see what would happen. Can a bunch of Asians help launch an Impact movement in Oakland? What do Asians know about African American ministry anyway? Well, that's why we're calling it "experimental"...

Leave San Jose and drive about an hour to Oaktown. Our entire team is doing this together. Laney College is actually quite busy on Wednesday. We set up the same types of stuff around campus and also have a group that will focus just on prayerwalking the campus and intercessory prayer. Off the group goes, acting like this is totally normal! Maybe it should be. Anyway, the visual hilarity of seeing a short Asian girl approach a group of football players was priceless.

Saw a group of football player type guys, hanging out after lunch. I kind of have the idea that it would be good to approach them and immediately wonder where that came from. I'm an ESM Regional Director now...I should be foaming at the mouth to do this! But I'm not. I really start to feel like I should go up to them so, instead, I sit down on a bench and wait for that feeling to go away...which it unfortunately doesn't. Unable to put it off any longer, I go up to them and ask if they'd mind giving their opinions on our board over there. One of them reads the first one asking about "Who was Jesus, REALLY?" and promptly tells me that he's Muslim and can't answer that question. Right about this time, another dude comes over and the first thing I think is, "Wow, I think this guy is from the Nation of Islam!" because he looks like a mini Louis Farrakhan, with the suit, bowtie, and the works.

Not wanting a confrontation with the Nation of Islam, I try to quietly fall back as they're all exchanging greetings. Apparently "Louis Jr." is tight with the group. Forunately, the guy that initially answered my question has broken off from the crowd and is actually reading some of the boards. So I ask him if he had any opinions on the topics NOT regarding Jesus. Apparently, Freedom is a favorite topic of his and so we talk for about 15 minutes about what it means to be truly free. I even asked him how devout he was in his Muslim faith. He said something like, "yeah, I guess". His answer led me to think that, if I was actually friends with this guy, that we could actually have some really great conversations about Jesus. All this took place within 10 feet of his friends and the guy from Nation of Islam. If they would have cared to listen, I'm sure that I wouldn't have gotten 1 minute into that conversation before I had to start answering questions about how the Bible is tainted because it's been translated and other arguements that usually come up when talking to hard core Muslims. Maybe an Asian dude talking to one of their boys just wasn't threatening enough to actually pay attention...I don't know. I'm glad that they didn't, though.

Met a really great female student while at Laney, too. She's the head of the only Christian group on campus and is actually already connected to the SF Metro ministry and knew all about the Impact Movement. What an incredibly driven and talented leader! Some in our group spent quite a long time sharing about our Project, our vision, asking her how they could pray for Laney College and the believers there. It really was a mutually encouraging time. In the end, she shared about a burden that God has laid on her heart to see some type of ministry to reach the Asian students that go to Laney and the nearby Chinatown area of Oakland. To hear this African American student share about a vision that God has given her to help reach Asian Americans was a total surprise and an incredible blessing. To have her affirm our motives (and even our efforts) to share Christ with African American students at Laney that day was sweet, too. I pray that God grows all of our hearts to love and reach out to those who are different from us.

Epic Bay Area Project 2006 - Part 7

July 13 - Week 3 Update and a Change in Plans

Our Evergreen Valley College team has had a tough road this summer. Despite their best efforts, the campus at EVC just doesn't have enough summer school students to get anything going. This is one of those little facts that would've been important to know when we were planning this thing out. Oops. Anyway, we're calling an audible and sending them to San Jose City College instead.

The San Jose State University team is finding things a bit smoother than EVC, but there aren't that many students taking summer school on this campus, either. This school normally has an enrollment of over 25k students, but apparently none of them take summer school. Okay, that's an exaggeration. There are tons of incoming freshmen here for orientation, but we just haven't figured out a way to get in on that. We're going to evaluate at the end of the week.

Things are going off like gangbusters at DeAnza College, though. There is so much going on over there that I can hardly believe that this is the Bay Area...the soil is supposed to be hard here, no? While I normally have no problems stealing other people's stories, I'll just refer you to Aaron Truong's blog so you can read it from his perspective (look for his entries in July). Aaron is a Project student and part of the DeAnza team. God is using that team in some really incredible ways. Even though Aaron is young in his faith (we're talking became-a-Christian-in-April kind of young), he's full of boldness and has some great stories...even though he's a punk kid sometimes. Aaron, if you read this, know that I mean that in the best, big-brother kind of way. :)

Carita, Gordon, and I went to City College with the team this week. The three of us set up a prayer table while the rest of the team did the Graffiti board thing. The problem was that we had a sign about the size of a CD jewel case and NOBODY was bothering to stop and read our pathetic excuse for a sign, much less ask for prayer. Overwhelmed by the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, our little trio strikes out in different directions with the intention of giving away the Acts of Love pins.

I see this Hispanic girl sitting under a tree. I approach her and ask if she's interested in hearing about this new campaign that we're doing. She agrees, tells me her name is Elizabeth. I tell her about the campaign, she responds positively to it and says she'll do something "loving" today. I fish for something to say and just throw out that the idea is to do something nice to someone you don't normally love on...meaning that your boyfriend or sister doesn't count. She's kinda surprised by this and asks, "Do people really go for this?". Apparently, she has trouble with the concept of people being able to actually love someone they just met. So we talk a bit more and I start to wonder how to end this conversation, as she seems to be less and less interested. After a moment of Napoleon-Dynamite-awkward silence, I tell her that it was nice talking to her and say my goodbye.

As I'm walking away, I am confronted with the realization that I was actually quite lame in how I handled that. So I go back to her and ask her if she knows that, even though she doesn't believe that people can love their enemies as themselves, this is in fact the very thing that Jesus did by dying on the Cross for her? Her face goes from annoyance to genuine curiosity in a matter of moments. I share the 4 Laws with her and she, in turn, shares at various points the reason why she's sitting under a tree today. Turns out that she's a single mom, recovering alcoholic, and that she was doing her Alcoholics Anonymous homework and trying to write down her thoughts about God. I asked if she minded showing me what she had so far and she shows me a blank sheet of paper. She laughs and tells me that it is hard for her to have specific thoughts on God because He's so distant. At the end, I point her to the prayer on the back and ask her if she'd like to pray that prayer. She did and prayed silently for forgiveness of her sins and thanked Christ for His work on the Cross.

Here's what else struck me (besides that fact that she placed her faith in Christ) about that: This is the type of student that would never be able to go to our meetings, retreats, and summer projects. I come from a "Big Movement" background and I know that you don't build big movements with single moms who are recovering alcoholics. In the paradigm that I'm used to, I can say objectively that while she has tremendous value to God (her value was worth His Son, afterall), she does not have that much value to my movement. Gosh, Dennis, when you put it that way you actually make it sound bad. Whatever. I think God can and does use big movements to impact people (my own life is a testimony to that), but Elizabeth doesn't fit that grid. But can she still be a light to her community, to her friends and family? If she were to be empowered and released, could she impact people and places even on the City College campus that I'd never get to? You bet and I pray that she does.

Epic Bay Area Project 2006 - Part 6

July 9 - Our Week on Campus

After spending our first week practicing the discipline of prayer and NOT engaging in extended conversations, we divided up into 3 ministry teams, each focusing our campus ministry times on these locations: San Jose State University, Evergreen Valley College, and DeAnza College in Cupertino, CA. Here's the challenge: How do we move from not knowing anybody to launching G3s in 4 weeks? Honestly, I don't really know. But this is what we tried this first week:

1) Graffiti Boards: Get a big wooden board. Pose a provocative question, like, "What does Freedom mean to you?" or "Who do you think Jesus REALLY was?" and let students write their opinions to that question on the board. As opinions are written, the idea is that people will stop and actually read what has been written. The assumption is that Christians have gained a reputation for doing a lot of talking, but not much listening. There are opportunities to naturally dialogue with people as they read the boards.

2)Prayer Boards: A different board...this time, we give people a chance to write any prayer requests they may have. Off to the side, we set up a prayer table where we offer to pray for anyone's need on the spot. The assumption is that students are actually pretty open to spirituality, just not Christianity (for a variety of reasons). This is one attempt at fostering a real conversation through a spiritual, but not neccessarily "Christian", avenue.

3) Quest Surveys: surveys that attempt to gauge a person's thoughts on spirituality and spiritual experiences.

4) Intentional Acts of Love Campaign: SF Metro has started an interesting campaign called Intentional Acts of Love. The idea is to do an act of love for somebody and encourage them to pay it forward. There are pins and small cards that we can pass out to tell people about the new campaign. Wear the pin, tell others about it. The card directs people to the Intentional Acts of Love website, where there is a gospel message and a place to read and post stories of what you did or what someone did for you.

5) Free Giveaways: We also gave out pretty much all of the components to the Freshmen Survival Kits. Also, we passed out free DaVinci Code companion books, written by Josh McDowell.

Overall, I am so proud of our group...especially our eight students. They showed teachability, submission to authority, boldness, courage, and FAITH in excess this week. We had several who applied but wound up not coming (for various reasons). These eight made the choice to come and excercised whatever amount of faith they had to do so. In the days we've been together, we've all heard each others' testimonies. I am amazed at what these kids have had to overcome to be here. It truly is an unlikely team. When God said, "Who will go for us to the San Francisco Bay Area?", they stood up to be counted and said, "Here am I, send me."

I pray, Lord, that You would bless their decision and honor their faith step...that You would multiply the fruit of their faith and that they will never regret having said "yes" to You this summer.

Let Freedom Ring

Taking a break from the Project updates. Today is July 4th. As a lover of history, I find much to reflect on when it comes to our National Independence Day. I love that in this country, we choose our government and that government exists to serve the people. I love that we are free to worship, to gather in places like our Project did last night...on a cliff overlooking the ocean and Santa Cruz, to worship, pray, and watch the fireworks. We still have a ways to go in our country, but I thank God for these freedoms still and for the price that some had to pay so that we can celebrate this day.

This year, however, I find myself thinking much more about spiritual freedom than I do about political. How much more significant is our spiritual freedom from the oppression of our sin than any freedom that we have from political oppression or even social oppression. We were all originally created to be something else, something more. The very real sin in my life tells me daily that I am far from what God must have purposed. Yet, the Cross has given us the freedom to become that once again.

As our Project's staff and students contend for the true, Christ-redeemed, Asian American identity, I rejoice that freedom also means that we are free to indeed become what God has always intended us to be.