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I could describe the impact of the local church in terms of what it had on my own family. My father—his father died when he was 2 years of age. His mother remarried; there were 10 children in the home under 16. His stepfather drank and was verbally and physically abusive, and by the age of 16, my dad was really headed for hell. In 1924, my father came forward and gave his life to Christ. You know, when my dad’s life changed, everything coming after him changed. And the most important thing that the local church can do is to win people like my dad to Jesus Christ, to nurture them, to disciple them.
And if we’re going to see a great move of the Spirit in our country and in our churches, then we’ve got to get back to basics. We’ve got to get back to prayer, and we’ve got to do something. Looking at the 65-minute programming that goes on on Sunday morning, and then our people are gone for the other 143 hours of the week—that is not going to saturate the ground. But somehow we’ve got to find a way, as leaders, to stir our people to call upon the Lord from the depths. Revival has—has got to be full-orbed; it involves the heart, mind, body, and soul, and all of these dimensions are critical for the spirit to touch if we are to truly see a Great Awakening in this country.
We need to recognize that we are the Jesus that other people see, and in some cases maybe the only Jesus they see. Let’s live truly as followers of Jesus Christ—Christ in us—and that in itself is the most attractive way to bring people to the gospel. Well, I’ve determined through the years to produce a church system, not a subculture. For us as a church to lead beyond our walls, we have to have people that will step up and step out. We strive to provide everything we can in our community to meet the needs of the people—firewood. And then it’s—it’s huge in our area; the economy has struck everyone, so we try to step up and deliver firewood to as many homes as we can. And we skid the timber, and we fall it, try to deliver it.
We believe that you can only be a sheep for a little while, and then you have to become a ranch hand. You have to understand compassion is always inconvenient. I’ve never had it convenient when my phone would ring and go meet someone else’s need, but that’s what Jesus did. When we grab a hold of that, we begin to understand that we could be true servants. Hundreds of lives every month are touched in some way by God and by God’s hand extended through this body. And if this body were to suddenly not be a part of this community, I think it would have a serious detrimental effect. God is a major force in this community, and He uses this church to do that, and we’re just happy to be along for the ride. If that church wasn’t there, people on Tuesdays may not have a place to come and gather and have a hot meal, a place where they can shop, get some new clothes—to them. If this church left, then we wouldn’t have a food bank; we wouldn’t have a soup kitchen. You know, there’s a lot of—just a lot of things that wouldn’t get done. I’m a very small part of this equation, and through the years, those—those sheep that have become ranch hands, and they do an exceptional job that immediately meet the need in our community.
God’s taught me that if it’s going to be a bear, it might as well be a grizzly, and that I approach everything with a big idea because God has big ideas. My mother went as a single missionary to Northwest China in 1924 when the summons of God was only ten years of age. The summons of God has always believed that God is an equal opportunity employer and has sent two women as well as men. And I remembered a couple things my mother always used to say to me. I’d be upset about something; she’d say, “Now, Georgie, it won’t matter 100 years from now.” You know, there are some things that we think are important today, but they really won’t matter 100 years now. Because I’m not—matter what kind of car you drive or clothes you wear or how you live—what will matter 100 years from now is whether you really serve Jesus. When we stand before God, He will not ask us if we have been successful, but if we have been faithful.
I think it was Jennifer’s freshman year in high school, the youth group took a trip to the Mexico City dump. It was a 10-day trip. I went to pick her up, and she was in the airport with a bunch of people, and she barely had enough clothes to say she was wearing clothes. My thoughts at the time were one of a little bit of shame and embarrassment. And she saw me, and I saw her, and she ran up to me and she said, “I couldn’t bring anything back.” And in the coming months, I would walk by a room at night, now, here, are crying and praying for these kids. And I remember thinking, “Here I am chasing the buck, and my daughter’s picked the better thing; she’s chasing God.” I’ve always had a passion for the lost, and I never thought people who lived in the suburbs were the lost. I thought they had everything they needed, that they didn’t need Jesus as bad as the other people in the world who had less. And I’ve never met quite as many people who are either atheist or agnostic, and so it just blows my mind that the majority of these people that build these nice homes don’t know Jesus.
I never thought that I would ever be a lead pastor, and God just completely convicted my heart and told me, “Jennifer, you’re being disobedient. Halfway obeying Me is not obedience.” He said, “Jennifer, I’ve told you to plant churches, so get up and obey.” God had something for me that was not the norm, but what I believe God wants the norm to be, and that’s for people—regardless of their gender, their socioeconomic status, regardless of their race—God wants people to step up and step out and seize His call. Because God does the impossible; God does beyond what we can expect, beyond what we can imagine, and beyond what we can think, and He has for you to live a life that is beyond what you can imagine. I see the suburbs now; it’s a wow, “I get to be a part of transforming somebody’s eternity.”
Well, when I was growing up, the focus was upon, “Believe, and then you can belong.” What we’re finding in today’s culture is that people are not coming to a belief in the same way. A lot of persons are saying, “Let me see how you are living first of all.” So we’ve got people coming into our churches who are walking on a journey that is a process, and they’re literally belonging before they are believing. And somehow we’ve got to accommodate both aspects of this—having moments where we distinctly call people to make a decision, but also recognize that there are others that are in the process and will come if we’ll be patient. It was really huge for us to feel like we could come to the church and be a part of the church—to allow us to belong and then believe. And we came to it not by being pressured to fit a certain mold without having it all figured out. I was accepted for, you know, where I was, and then the Lord has brought me, you know, to where I am today. And it’s one thing about our church—we don’t judge people; we just love them. That’s what they did with me.
Let’s pray together today as a church and as—as a community. Father, today we thank You for the awesome experience of being a family. The concept is that the South is full of Southern hospitality. We challenge our church to have biblical hospitality. That root word for hospitality is the same root word for hospital, and the church—there—don’t only be a place where we open our arms to love people, but we also have a place where they could be healed, can be made whole. What happened was I lived for years, built a business, I made a fair amount of money and had a lot of toys. I worked for a Fortune 500 company; I was in an upper management position, and I was chasing the American dream. You know, the world would say, you know, I was having a good time, but I was—I was empty. You know, I was a dope fiend, you know, chronic alcoholic. I really was fixated on suicide for the last three years of my quote-unquote “drugged career,” I guess you could say. I quit chasing what success was from the standpoint of the world whenever I understood that life is about serving others than just about serving myself. I’ve experienced so much joy and peace that I never had with chasing after the Fortune 500 companies.
I remember the night it happened. He said, “You’re forgiven now, so what are you gonna do?” He said, “You know what I want you to do.” I said, “Okay, Lord, whatever. I’ll go to Zimbabwe or Vietnam; just give me some peace and some contentment in my walk with You.” And since that time, I’ve had—I’ve had contentment. The process of redefining hospitality helped to transform our church; it helped them to love their community and—and understand the power of relationship. What we do is connect them with Christ and give them the opportunity to belong to something. A lot of people would be a little critical of us—just dismiss in church all together on a Sunday morning. One of the reasons that is—to connect with our community would be in the church, no matter—you fit the mold and being in the church you’re accepted and you’re loved because that’s what Christ showed me. Just like God places us within certain churches, He places churches within communities, and God places us in those communities so that we can be the hands and feet of Christ in that neighborhood. The old idea that you can point your finger at people and condemn them for their behavior as pagans simply won’t work in most of today’s culture. Friendship evangelism will; relationship evangelism will. We have to have the focus upon, “God so loved the world that He gave Himself.”
She loves to serve; she’s a servant at heart. Everything you ask her to do, she says, “Okay.” She—she’s a woman of prayer; she’s a woman of God, but she just loves to serve. I was raised in New York with my mother and my sister. At the end—at the age of 8, my mom had—had a boyfriend, and I remember when he would—we were left alone at the house with him, and it was just me and my sister at the time. I just felt—I just used pretty much—Jews. I was confused; I didn’t know what was going on; I didn’t know if it was right, if—if I had something to do with it, why it happened. At the age of 10, we moved on to Tampa, and she found out that she was sick with cancer, and I think within less than a year, she—she passed away. Me and my sister ended up living with a close friend, relative. She would hit me to the point where—like once, she—she literally broke a broom on me. I felt hopeless during that time; I was—I was a lesbian because, like, I didn’t feel comfortable being with—with guys or—or, you know, have boyfriends.
We have tried a model after the parable of the Good Samaritan. You have these two individuals going to Jerusalem, but there’s a man laying on the road, and all of a sudden, comes this other guy who—evolved him—it’s a Samaritan, and he’s the one who stops. I feel that prayer makes the church sensitive enough to stop. Also, as a church, we need to stop. I know that we call them sinners, or we call them people that need God, but God sees them as souls that need Him. I wanted to change; I wanted something, but I just didn’t know how to get out of that life. Eventually, I started working at this one daycare center. There—there I met this woman, and she went to church. She was the one that spoke to me about—about God. She showed me—she didn’t only tell me like about God, but she showed me the way she carried herself at work—show me that, you know, that she had a real relationship with God. We’ve walked through—through her—through her journey with her, and she’s persevered through so much because she’s always with her; she’s always serving; she’s doing—she’s always doing something, and we’ve carried her through, and we’ve said, “It’s okay; you know, we’re gonna be here for you.” Well, the amazing things that when you hear a born-again story is that how amazing God’s love is and how sinners come from every walk of life and they are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Have a great regard for those who are in hidden places—names never get in a district bulletin or a general council program—but who are serving the Lord faithfully in their locality. It’s out of the spotlights but seen by Jesus, and on that day you will say, “Good and faithful servant.” The Lord—um—just that I waited—resign your church and goes to Ephesus—go and start the homeless church. It’s not an outreach to the homeless—into their own church. When we first came to the city, but more said, “Why don’t you buy a vehicle and live like these guys are living?” That was about ten years, but what we did—that became our parsonage, and church—could fit a dozen people in there, and then we have my own studies in there, and that’s how it can began that happened. And we have a house church; we have four hours of worship every day in the house, the church. There’s a lot of ministry going on—encouragement and Bible study and food service and showers and laundry. And you can touch your city by small obediences—through the little things that God says to do and just to do them faithfully and see what happens. Doesn’t even have to get big.
Well, I was praying, and I—I have this large prayer; I pray what’s up, Cisco, and I thought out, “Lord, I flee the blood of Christ over San Francisco—49 square miles of church—one great Church whose aisles are the streets, whose troops are the altars, whose buildings and open spaces are praying—the classrooms and fellowship halls and—and his homes are pushing—family homes and healing homes—discipleship homes—and how is the prayer at house churches and—and—and—and He said, ‘Corners.’ One evening, my coin is there on every corner in the city is a cross. I want you to go to every corner and worship.” So I started right away; I started, and that’s of my agenda—just to—a bad guy—what he’s given me at this point is they hunger to get that church outdoors so all can see it and to include the poorest people. Jesus did that, and I think it behooves us to follow—and follow that. I can’t imagine that—that I don’t ever get to get all the corners done, but I’m not gonna stop, and I’m forced enough to believe that because I believe—and believe in what I hear from God—and cuz like I love the city, He’s gonna use that to change San Francisco. We’re believing God for greater things, and I want to challenge you and encourage you to look at your own life, look at your own ministry, look at the church that you work for, the responsibility that—what are you dreaming for? What are you believing God for? What greater things do you expect that the Lord is going to do in your life and in your family and in your ministry?