Thursday  |  April 14, 2011  |  00:00 AM

The last few months I’ve been working in South LA with an organization that takes student groups on service trips in the inner city.  As a Christian group, we try to identify the areas where the Kingdom of God has already begun to take root, as well as the gross injustices around us, and bathe it all in prayer. Whether working with the homeless or at-risk youth, for many this is one of their first exposures to the convoluted, beautiful mess that is a large urban center.  My favorite weeks are when the group wants to wrestle with questions of race, privilege, development, and our own role in all of the systems around us.  The big question is if so much of this injustice is systemic, how do we find our place within it all?

    This leads to something I’ve been thinking about recently.  The church needs to continue to see the city as a part of its home.  The cities are where many families live, whether by choice or not, and too many of us have the privilege of only going into big cities when it suits us.  For many years, the city has been the church’s “mission field.” Not that this idea is completely wrong, but at its worst it can be patronizing and misguided.  The idea of mission can imply that things here need to be fixed and we can provide that solution.  I cannot say enough how much in a few months I’ve seen how much the city has to teach me!  God is here, God is working, and as a part of the church I’m invited to identify and celebrate those centers of life.  There are solutions here, but they are often small and simple, fighting hard against systems that make it difficult for them to exist. 

    When the city is our home, it’s not just a place we go for special occasions.  It’s a place we live, shop, celebrate, and participate in every part of our daily lives.  Too often the attitude is about getting out of struggling neighborhoods rather than staying around and being a part of the solution.  Many of us are called to commit to the neighborhoods no one wants to live in with the attitude of learner and servant.  And for the few months I’ve been working in LA (and the few years I’ve been living in a city outside of LA) I’ve seen how building these relationships takes time.  Nothing happens overnight, but like Eugene Peterson talks about, the Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction.  Difficult as it may be at times, when we are called to a neighborhood, we have to continue to ask ourselves if how we’re living there is bringing to light the true gospel of the Kingdom and where it already exists in us and around us.  Sometimes we have to call out what is wrong around us and other times we can rejoice in transformation that has already happened. 

    The passage that has surrounded this season for me has been Isaiah’s call to the true fast in chapter 58.  I find hope in how the message translation gives new life to the promises in verses 11-12:

You'll be like a well-watered garden,
   a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
   rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
   restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
   make the community livable again.