Susy, Louise, Jana, Doug and I spent a couple of hours today praying for North Long Beach. We decided to pray at four locations to cover the community in prayer. We started at DeForest Park on the West side of North Long Beach (facing Locust Street and a breeze behind us) and took communion. We spent time in prayer and symbolic/representative confession/repentance/forgiveness between different races and genders since each of us were of varying ethnicities. Much of the gang tension and violence that has been escalating in North Long Beach has been between those of different races. As we took communion and prayed, we asked for God's blessing on the land and the neighborhoods. We know that this symbolic act is representative of what needs to happen within the community - whether gang members or not. We ask for peace and reconciliation. We proceeded to the North side of North Long Beach at Artesia Blvd and Cherry Avenue and prayed for the city council, administration, pastors of local churches, schools, and businesses. As we drove around we noticed that there were numerous vacancies for businesses. There is room for businesses to come in to North Long Beach! We moved on to the East side of North Long Beach in front of Light & Life Christian Fellowship. We spent time in prayer for that local church, its pastor and wife, and other local churches in North Long Beach. We prayed for life and light to revitalize the community. We went to the South side of North Long Beach near Del Amo Blvd and Orange Avenue. We concluded our prayers for the city and proclaimed the Lord's sovereignty there.
Afterwards we went to the North Long Beach Community Prayer Center to hear from Michael Rutledge McCall. I referred to him last week - he's the journalist that spent 18 months in South Central Los Angeles getting to know Black and Latino gang members to understand the subculture. Intriguing testimony! He wrote a book called "Slipping Into Darkness" and it's currently in production for a movie set for sometime in 2006. His message is typically for men and relates it with scripture and his experience with the gangs. He believes that there is a fundamental need for men to step up in their own families and in the community. [On a side note, i've been speaking to several people recently that feel the same way - that men need to rise up with integrity and character and need to be solid intercessors for their families and neighborhoods. Prayer intercessors are typically women and more men need to realize that prayer is not a "women's" thing. Men need to stand in the gap as well. Men need to have that spiritual strength in order to guard over their families and to raise up their children in the ways of the Lord.]
After his talk, I spoke to Michael and found him to be a real down to earth kind of guy. An interesting thing he pointed out was that in his experience with the gang members, the gang leaders are actually pretty brilliant. They are smart individuals and have much potential. They are leaders for a reason. What if we can invest in these gang leaders so that they can influence the younger generation not to get trapped in the "dead"-end lifestyle of gang banging? Many of these young people don't have much of an alternative - with no positive family context and no one else willing to nurture them - a gang satisfies a need for community. Something significant that Michael continued to talk about is that we need to be able to love one another unconditionally - not because we know the person and not because we are Christians and not because God says so. He says that we need to be able to love someone - regardless of who that person is and regardless of who we are - and that's when we know it's sincere. That's what God is wanting for us. Love. That's the mindset that we need to adopt and apply. The racial divide can begin to close when we can look past the surface of what we look like and love for the sake of being loving - whether its deserved or not. I think programs and community strategies may be necessary to get things rolling so that we can see tangible change, but without genunine and sincere love for one another - the root causes of community tension won't subside.
I also met the Long Beach School Superintendent who is also very concerned about the escalating gang violence in our schools. I offered the prayers of the intercessors of Long Beach. He asked us to pray for the family structure, peace, and for people to make right choices. I met the 9th District Councilmember for North Long Beach, Val Lerch, and offered the prayers of the intercessors of Long Beach. He asked us to pray for his colleagues - fellow councilmembers - in the decisions they make for the city. He also asked us to pray for change in the city.
What will it take for more and more people in the city of Long Beach to see that the tensions in the inner city are real and effect us all? I overheard Pastor Wood in conversation with someone else saying that "it's going to take all of us to stimulate this". I think he's right. If we are going to catalyze our community for positive change, all of us are going to need to be involved and committed. What would it look like if an entire community made a covenant with each other? Business owners, pastors, youth leaders, community leaders, fathers and mothers, teenagers, police officers, judges, council members, teachers and principals and school superintendents, and even the gang leaders - what if we all made a covenant with each other to revitalize the city with life rather than death, light rather than darkness, hope rather than despair. A community united and revitalized - that's a cause worth rallying around!
Last night we hosted an evening of blessing, connection, dinner, and entertainment for pastors and their spouses of the Greater Long Beach area. Enjoying a wonderful dinner at Khoury's Restaurant, pastors and ministry leaders representing 40 distinct churches and organizations had an opportunity to meet and/or reconnect with each other while being entertained by a very funny comedian named Thor Ramsey from Outreach Comedy. Six professional counseling ministries helped to sponsor the dinner and collectively made a commitment to support the marriages and families of these pastors.
Here are their prayer requests: