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| August 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
About a month ago we as a simple church made the decision together to multiply into two areas. One group will meet in the Maywood/Huntington Park area of Los Angeles with seven people, one of whom is Kenneth, one of our longstanding disciples and developing leaders. The other group, which I will remain with, will maintain a presence in the South LA/USC area, and will effectively begin from scratch with all missionaries and a burning desire to reach our neighbors with the love of Jesus. We did this for two reasons. The first was that this was partly our original intent when we decided to form a simple church out of our World Impact Family Group and the five indigenous leaders we were modeling simple church for. The second was that we World Impact missionaries within the church felt like it was time to begin opening up our church to the whole neighborhood and everyone within our circle of influence. The trial period was finished, but we had a taste for how awesome this would be for others, and we did not want to contain it within our insulated group.
This new phase for us has really excited me for the possibilities for our neighborhood. It has been a bothersome little nag in the back of my brain all this time that I have been actively pursuing discipling relationships all over the city, while effectively ignoring my own block. I know that there are many others on my block who are reaching out to my neighbors, and there have been many church plants and church plant efforts that have reached this street for years, but the fact remains that there are still many who are NOT reached, who have not heard the full Gospel account in their entire lives, and who would be transformed by an encounter with Jesus.
I am rediscovering my roots as a missionary. I am feeling about my block and immediate neighborhood what I felt when I first came to this community 12 and a half years ago. I have moved much between now and then, but I feel the desire to get out and rediscover with fresh eyes what my community is all about, what stories it tells, what issues plague it, and what aspects reflect the Kingdom. I want to fall in love with my neighborhood again and not assume I know what is happening in the hearts and minds of my neighbors simply because I have lived here for a while. Things constantly change. People change. Actual neighbors change. Shifts in demographics occur. Gentrification is even happening, which we must be aware of. Many of the open lots that were abandoned for ten years or more are now being developed into restaurants. Storefronts are getting facelifts. USC students, alumni, and professors are moving into the houses where once only the poor lived. Even the name “South Central” has been abandoned by the city for the less baggage-laden “South LA.”
Thank you for the prayers you have offered to the Lord for us all these months and years. Your prayers are paying off handsomely with many open doors to neighbors and brand new sections of the city. We would ask that you pray now for us in this new phase of our simple church, as we multiply into two, as we seek to raise up leaders in these new simple churches that will be able to lead in our stead, and as we seek to reach our goals of 16 people being discipled, 16 new converts/believers baptized, and three churches by November of this year.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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| July 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
From the middle of April until now we have been living out what the experience of simple church can be with five leaders from the community that have been in our Fire and Maneuver training. We decided to do this because church is better caught than taught, and also because for most of us, the classroom is not where our best comprehension comes. In order to fortify what was happening in our weekly formal teaching times going through the five elements of a church plant movement, we decided to open up our World Impact-only simple church to these five leaders as well, with the intention of commissioning them out at the end of the time to start (or continue, as is the case for some) a simple church themselves in their own neighborhood.
As we began to do this, the Spirit brought to our attention a few lessons that we had been slow in understanding. One of these lessons was that simple church is not just a traditional church service in a smaller room. We really wanted to get back to the heart and spirit of what the early church experienced when they met together, and the Apostle Paul’s writings really helped us along. I Corinthians 14:26 is especially enlightening in that we want there to be a freedom and an expectation that the Lord will work through everyone present, from the oldest to the youngest, the most mature to the least, female and male, middle-class and poor, formally-educated and street-educated. We wanted the Spirit to guide our time together instead of pre-assigning set leaders and times for the opening prayer, twenty minutes of worship, a sermon, etcetera. You know the drill. We had been guilty of trying to simply bring the old wineskin in for this new wine. Now we allow what is going on in each participant’s life and what the Lord is teaching them to speak into our time, and the Lord brings songs, burdens for prayer, and His Word to our hearts as we all share. This was an admittedly awkward process at times, and still is occasionally, but it is so cool to see when the Spirit moves us as a group when we trust Him. We are like a livelier version of the Quakers.
Recently, one man in our group began to share after we all arrived about some family struggles he was enduring, and we spent an elongated period of time interceding for him and encouraging him. This led to another young woman sharing out of her own pain, and we in turn lifted her up in prayer. It became clear when three more people after this shared their own battles that we had all been under severe spiritual attack, but had thought we were alone in that. We now recognized our common struggles, and the Lord in turn gave at least four different people very specific and appropriate passages of Scripture that perfectly spoke into our lives. We transitioned very naturally from this to the Lord’s Supper, where the theme we resonated with this time was identifying with the suffering of Christ. That was our time. It was not anything earth shattering or new, but it brought us closer as a group to each other and to the Lord, and it was such a beautiful and spontaneous worship experience.
Please continue to pray for us as we pursue being the Church in the structure of simple churches here in the city. Pray that we will be faithful to God’s Word and a radical force of love in action for our immediate community. Pray that these five young leaders we are training will continue to pursue the vision of being a part of this simple-church-multiplying-movement here in Los Angeles.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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| June 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
There is a famous legend that tells of a wise man in India who so pleased the king (or beat him in chess, as another version goes) that he was offered anything he wanted as a prize. When he asked that he be rewarded with one grain of rice for the first square of a chessboard, two for the second square, four for the third, and so on, doubling the amount of rice for each square, the king readily agreed, thinking the request modest. By the time he reached just the end of the second row, the king realized he was in deep trouble. Even halfway through the board, the king would owe the wise man over 2 billion grains of rice. So as not to forfeit all the rice of India, legend also has it that the king just had the wise man killed.
This fable is an example of why I have been captured by the idea and genius of reproduction as of late. Having reread The Making of a Disciple for perhaps the fourth time, I keep coming back to this powerful concept of multiplication. In the book, Dr. Phillips compares the effectiveness of an evangelist who wins one convert a day with that of a discipler who disciples one person a year. After one year, the evangelist has 365 converts (defined in this example as those who simply assent to a belief in Christ with no further action), while the discipler only one disciple. If these disciples continue to reproduce themselves though, spending an entire year to disciple one other person, by the end of the 14th year they will have nearly doubled the number of converts. Within 34 years, or one generation, the entire world's population would be discipled!
Jesus knew what He was doing when He gave the disciples the Great Commission before ascending to heaven. Would that we would obey it! Even the early church, for all that they did well, and for the wonderful model of community they gave us, failed to consistently make disciples that make disciples. If they had, long ago the world would have been won for Jesus.
I say all of this to challenge you to first be a disciple of Jesus yourself, being careful to obey all that the Lord Jesus taught. Secondly, ask the Lord to show you this month who He might have you disciple this year. Reproduce in them what there is of Jesus in you. I am seeking to do this in Casey, Jonathan and others here in Los Angeles. Please pray that these men and I will all prove to be faithful in this process, and that we be willing and able to do the same thing for someone else next year.
If you ever want ideas or resources on how to go about starting to disciple, please let me know! It is my favorite thing to talk about.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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| March 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
It is not often that you get to immediately apply what you learn in a Bible Study or discipleship teaching. I was just having lunch with a young man named Kenneth, whom I have written about previously and who is being discipled by Terry and me. We were reading through a chapter in Dr. Keith Phillips’ book The Making of a Disciple, and the topic was forgiveness. We discussed how we were doing in the area of forgiving others, forgiving ourselves, receiving forgiveness from others, and receiving forgiveness from God.
After leaving this meeting, I went to go pray with my team in the local World Impact Los Angeles office. Right after the prayer time, a few of us helped to transport some items that the office no longer needed down to our thrift store, The Sonshine Shop. What you need to understand is that the office has been going through some major renovations in the last month for the first time since it was initially used, and so we have been used to seeing major activity and foot traffic in and out of the office at all times, usually with the downstairs door unlocked while we were there to allow people in and out with less hassle. After taking my load of stuff to the Sonshine Shop, literally next door, I returned to the office, and I closed the door behind me. Coming down the stairs was a man I had never seen, but I assumed he had been meeting with someone in the office. I apologized for having closed the door on him, as I had not seen him at first. He said, “No problem. God bless you.” I went on my way. Finishing my climb, I went over to my backpack, and noticed its front zipper was open. Then I noticed my wallet was gone. Not wanting to be quick to accuse or assume, I quickly scanned all the places I had been since coming to the office after lunch. Realizing that I indeed had probably been robbed, I ran down the stairs to the street to see if I could see the man I had so benignly passed. Of course he had vanished. My next thought was, well, maybe I left it in Terry’s Pathfinder, or at the restaurant where we ate lunch. Again, no luck. Within an hour of all of this, I called my bank and my two credit card companies, and found out to my chagrin that almost $500 had been charged between the three of them. Thankfully, I had no cash in the wallet. In fact, the day before I had received a tract from a ministry contact of mine which was a pretty convincing fake $1,000,000 bill with the gospel message on it. This must have been a disappointment to the thief. This is not to mention all the other cards which had Bible Study invitations on them, summaries of the Gospel, the seven basic commands of Christ, and the Nicene Creed.
I tell you this story to demonstrate God’s goodness and ability to redeem good out of a bad situation. Were this not to have happened, this lesson on forgiveness probably would have gone unnoticed, another forgotten lesson amongst the thousands that we hear over the course of our lives. It has forced me once again to evaluate the simplicity of my life and the priorities I give to things and security, and realize the importance of every man’s soul over against our love of money. I do forgive this man. I pray that he gets way more use out of the Gospel cards than he does the credit cards. The Lord knows his soul is worth more than $500.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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| February 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
I have an embarrassing admission to make. I used to listen to a band called “White Heart.” They were one of the big Christian rock bands in the late 80's, and I thought they were really cutting edge and cool. No doubt they were at the time, for what Christian music was. They had the big hair and the big voice power ballads. For all what I may consider cheesy now though, I think back to some of the song lyrics they wrote, and they still affect me. One of the best lines was from this song called, “More Sold Out”, and it said, “Are they working harder at what we think is wrong, than we are at what we know is right?” The basic point of the song was a challenge to us as followers of Jesus not to be outworked and “shown up” by nonbelievers in the area of commitment and passion. Those in the world who are working for a lesser mission than building the Kingdom of God should not be more devoted to their cause than those who are supposedly dedicated to God, especially when we have the Holy Spirit's power within us.
I mention this because I often feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit that I am lacking in my commitment and heart to live out the task He has given me for the time. It is not that I do not try, or am not serious, or do not believe in what I am doing. Quite the opposite, I would not choose to be doing anything else at this point, nor do I feel that I personally could be doing anything more strategic for the building of the Lord's Kingdom with my current gifts and understanding than what I am. When it comes down to the day by day, hour by hour decisions though, often the motivation of my heart is not so sold out to the bigger mission, but is bent towards my own personal comfort and selfish agenda. Sometimes I want to just “get through” my day so I can relax at home and watch the game or eat dinner. How can this be? How can I, knowing what is at stake, be drawn in by these pedestrian activities? It is almost as if I was at war, on the frontlines, on mission to rescue a town of villagers from the enemy, and I am preoccupied with playing cards in the barracks with the other soldiers, oblivious to the cries of the civilians a stone's throw away.
I am committed to try to live out the example of Paul the apostle more in my life. Here was a man of God who was completely sold out to whatever “team” he was on. When he was a Pharisee, he took it upon himself to destroy the people who believed otherwise. When he encountered Jesus, he spent the rest of his life knowing Him and making Him known, at great personal cost and sacrifice. This is the man who wrote my life verse, Colossians 3:23 (NIV), “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” This verse, the example of Paul, a song from a long-forgotten Christian rock band-all of these have been used to instill conviction, motivation, and inspiration for me. Please pray for me that I will persevere. Sometimes the greatest obstacle of commitment to a mission is simply comfort. Pray that I will not be complacent. Pray that I will be compelled by the Holy Spirit and obedient to His promptings to be radically available and active and used by Him. Pray that my priorities will be right and that I will actually live out in real time what I claim with words.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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