I’ve Been Invited Back to Ferguson, Missouri, and I Need Your Prayers

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“You need to take your ministry to the inner city!”

That wasn’t the reaction I expected to hear from the President of Promise Keepers.

I was sharing a lunch with Dr. Raleigh Washington and talking about how God had been blessing New Commandment Men’s Ministries when he suddenly and emphatically blurted that out.

“Well, we have some inner city black churches doing men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents, I think.”

I was trying to be positive while at the same time dodge the issue because inside of me a very loud voice was shouting “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I felt like Jonah being told to go to Ninevah. Suddenly I wanted to search Craig’s List for a ship–any ship–to Tarshish.

“Not me, Lord. Anything but inner city ministry.”

Here’s why I felt that way.

I grew up in a Black community in inner city Los Angeles. My middle school was 90% Black, 5% White and 5% Asian.

It wasn’t fun.

Racial tension poisoned the formative years of my life. The home I grew up in was five blocks from where Boyz N The Hood, a movie about black gangs in Los Angeles, was filmed. We lived close enough to Watts to see the red and yellow flames and billowing smoke marking the locations of disintegrating businesses during the riots there in ’65. My middle school became a makeshift staging ground and command post for the 3,900 National Guard troops that Governor Pat Brown used to put them down.

And that was just the beginning. As the years progressed, racial tension between blacks and whites in Los Angeles grew more virulent. Fortunately, I was quiet and withdrawn when I was young. Had I not been, I probably would have gotten into fights every day I went to school. My Schwinn Stingray bike with the cool banana seat and sissy bar I rode to school was stolen, replaced, and then stolen again. One day at the end of gym class I felt something warm running down the back of my leg in the boys group shower. I turned around to discover a black kid peeing on me. I sheepishly rinsed myself off and slipped through the group of black boys glaring at me. (I guess you could say I turned the other cheek, so to speak.) I felt like Jesus about to be thrown off a cliff and then escaping through the crowd of hometown vigilantes surrounding him.

And then things really got bad. Someone ended my friend’s life with a bullet to the back of his head. Mom and Dad went to the grocery store and wound up getting carjacked at gunpoint in broad daylight. (They eventually got their car back, complete with a bullet hole in it, after it was used in a bank robbery.) Someone thought it would be a good idea to set our house on fire. Dad stopped to help a man who said his car had broken down only to be robbed again at gunpoint. But this time the jerk my dad was only trying to help topped it off with a slug to his face, crushing Dad’s left cheekbone. A determined thief managed to steal my sister’s car out of our garage. He was arrested. But he called our home from jail–presumably the only call he had–and threatened to kill us when he got out. Helicopters at night with search lights, neighborhood drug busts, and liquor store and bank robberies became routine.

And then there were the Rodney King riots…

Los Angeles may be “The City of Angels,” but there are two kinds of angels and the bad ones apparently like sunshine and mild temps. Needless to say, I didn’t shed any tears when I left L.A. at the age of 21 to move to Dallas, Texas for seminary.

But Los Angeles wasn’t done with me and I wasn’t done with Los Angeles.

At the age of ten, back when my neighborhood was a relatively decent place to live, I made a vow to myself while at my elementary school standing on the corner of 57th and Eileen that I would return to that exact corner every ten years and ask myself what I had done with my life up to that point. I know. I know. I was an old soul. But that’s the vow I made and I have kept that vow. Every ten years I have returned to the corner of 57th and Eileen in Los Angeles and spent a few minutes reviewing what I was doing with my life.

The last few decades, though, have made it rather dicey for me to keep that vow, given the tragic turn of events in that community. So to avoid the drug dealers, murderers, gangbangers, thieves, pimps and prostitutes, I’ve been doing this little exercise early on a Sunday morning. The last time was three years ago.

But this last visit to 57th and Eileen was like no other. This time something happened that pierced my soul.

I had finished my little “review” and was driving away from my elementary school. And I must say, I was rather pleased with myself. God was using my ministry to minister to thousands of men, widows, widowers, single parents and others all over the world. I really couldn’t think of much I needed to change.

I drove down Angeles Vista and stopped for the red light at Crenshaw Blvd. I had a clear view of Leimert Park. I knew it well. I walked through that park hundreds of times on my way to middle school. It was still an early, sleepy Sunday morning. There were hardly any cars on the road. But there across the street, standing in front of Leimert Park, was a young black man holding a very large sign with his arms stretched high in the air. This is what it said.

“Jesus saves ganstas too!”

(I’ve included a picture I found on the Internet of an older man holding a very similar sign, also standing on Crenshaw Blvd. near Leimert Park. I’m thinking they must work together.)

“God is at work in this godforsaken place?” I thought. I couldn’t believe it.

The light turned green and I drove away, marveling that a young Christian black man would have the courage and boldness to proclaim his faith like that in such a dangerous neighborhood.

That experience, and my conversation with Dr. Washington, convinced me that there are no “godforsaken places” and I shouldn’t forsake them either, no matter how I feel. So when the current rash of riots broke out here in America, I began to look for ways to take my ministry into those neighborhoods.

My first attempt was earlier this year. After the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, I compiled a list of eighty pastors in the area and invited them to a seminar on men’s team ministry to the widowed and single parents. Only three showed up. But those three gave me a clear picture of the death and destruction plaguing their community. They also invited me to come back. This time they’ll be throwing a dinner on the evening of October 13 and urging their fellow pastors to attend.

And that is why I need your prayers. My ministry began out of a tragic funeral: the death of my brother-in-law at the age of 48, leaving my sister with two teenage daughters to raise. I want to train these pastors how to use tragic, gang related funerals to overcome evil with good. And I want these pastors to be examples to other inner city communities that are plagued by violent crime. It’s not in my natural constitution to do this. But I have to.

Because Jesus saves ganstas too.

This post originally appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

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