Chapter 8

Get It Done

We had been talking for a few months about initiating a live-in program for poor families at the Dream Center. We had gone so far as to identify the people who had a passion for the cause and had talked about what space we might be able to develop for families. We were on track to get that program off the ground in perhaps six months’ time, when we believed the housing space would be ready and we would be able to free up the staff who were passionate about managing the process.

But God rarely respects our calendars, and I believe He often tests us to see if we’re serious about doing what we claim we want to do. One day, without warning and months before we felt we’d be ready to launch a family program, we received a call from the police about a family that had moved here from Boston with six young children. Everything they had lined up prior to their move west fell apart once they were here, and they had no cushion to ease their fall. The police have gotten used to working with us. They knew that other social agencies would take time to process the paperwork and that the downtown missions would have to split up the family.

Knowing the dire realities the family faced, we invited the police to bring them to our campus. We shifted into overdrive and quickly created a place for them to stay. During their time with us, we helped them prepare for a successful reentry into the marketplace by providing job training, babysitting, résumé preparation, and more. The timing wasn’t ideal for us, but poverty and living on the streets weren’t exactly ideal for them, either. Their need trumped our desire for a perfect launch. And that unexpected entry into family assistance triggered a ministry that now houses more than a hundred people from over two dozen families who are working hard to become independent and self-reliant once again.

The launch of our family program is just one of many instances when we’ve jumped into action ahead of schedule. Perhaps that’s why, though I’m not someone who regularly gives free commercial plugs, I am a fan of the famous Nike slogan: Just Do It. It’s a hallmark of our work at the Dream Center. Sure, we want to think things through and be as well-prepared as feasible before we act to ensure we are efficient and effective. But in the end, it’s all for nothing if we don’t put the engine in gear and get things rolling.

One of the phrases I use to motivate our people to action is that we have to think big and act small. What that means is that God has given us a big cause—bigger than we can handle on our own and bigger than we can fulfill quickly. So what we have to do is act small—that is, engage in a series of small steps that add up to big impact. (The truth is that there is no such thing as a “small step”—every step matters, so if it is productive, it is significant. But the contrast of accomplishing a big dream through a series of small steps sticks in people’s minds better than telling them something like “do whatever you must to get the results you want.”)

Every great dream takes a long time and a lot of effort to fulfill, so the keys to progress are courage and consistency. Each step forward may feel so small that it seems insignificant, but when you put them all together, the results are surprising. One of my friends in ministry told me about his efforts to lead churches through substantial change in the way they do outreach. He was constantly discouraged because he couldn’t seem to find the one big thing that would cause thousands of churches to grasp the need and make the required shifts in thinking and behavior. He says he finally woke up to the idea that the best strategy was just to keep plodding along, enabling one church to get it and change, and then a second one, and then a third, slowly building momentum. If he remained diligent in pursuing the cause to which he was committed, eventually an entire movement would be in place. And that’s exactly how it works: you help change one life at a time, and if you are sufficiently persistent, you eventually find that many lives have been changed, one at a time.

That really has been the story of the Dream Center. We started with a big dream and made it a reality by implementing small step after small step. We discovered that people needed food, so I bought food out of my own salary to hand out to people. The needs continued to expand, so I gave more money from my salary. The needs grew bigger, beyond what I could afford personally, so we asked a few stores to help by donating some food. The needs multiplied, so we got a crew of volunteers on the phones asking more stores to donate food. Today we distribute more than one million pounds of food every month, with dozens of stores donating food, from major grocery store chains like Albertsons to some local mom-and-pop convenience stores who want to invest in their neighborhood.

That food program, by the way, grew larger because the more we understood the extent of the need and devoted ourselves to meeting that need, the greater our sense of urgency became to get the job done. Without urgency, it’s easy to be lethargic about the tasks demanding effort. Without urgency, why strain your brain to come up with creative solutions? Without urgency, why turn to God in fervent prayer, begging Him to honor you with the resources you need to bless people? Without urgency, your focus wanders to other, more enticing opportunities. If you don’t feel a sense of urgency about your cause, something’s wrong. You need to do a self-evaluation and figure out if you are really committed to the cause or just playing at it. If you are committed, you should have the passion of urgency burning within you, recognizing that if you cannot get the job done, people will suffer.

Progress and impact are based on consistency. When you are fully focused on your cause and pulling out all the stops to get it done, those small steps accumulate and build momentum, which becomes like a freight train. Once you get momentum rolling in your favor, it’s hard to stop. I look at people’s efforts to fulfill their causes and search for evidence of momentum because if they have it, they’re going to be fine. If momentum is missing or has stalled out, then there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Sometimes a cause never gets rolling because the ultimate objectives or measures of significance are wrong. For instance, many churches never become effective because their goal is to attract a specific number of people to attend their services. Based on the energy devoted to that central goal, one would have to assume that the heartbeat of their cause relates to increasing their attendance. Now who is going to come up alongside of you and get excited about filling seats? Who cares about that? But if you strive to bring together like-minded people who want to exercise God’s power and follow His principles in healing broken lives, then you’ve given people a cause worth disrupting their lives to pursue. Pursuing bigness, whether it’s for a church, a business, a nonprofit organization, or anything else, is a distraction; increased size should be a by-product of delivering something that people really need at a level of quality that respects the intended recipients. Establishing bigness as a goal simply puts pressure and stress on you and diverts your attention from investing yourself and others in the things that matter: changed lives.

Our Adopt-A-Block program is running smoothly and blessing thousands of households in our area. I believe we will continue expanding our territory to the point that someday we will bless every home in Hollywood, too. Every time I look out my office window at that famous Hollywood sign in the not-too-distant hills, my heart leaps with excitement at the thought of reaching every home between our campus and the outer reaches of Hollywood. But I know that to do so, we have to keep taking one small step forward at a time. It’s the consistency of taking the appropriate intermediate steps that will result in a big impact.

Don’t get caught in the cycle of talking an issue to death before you try to solve it. I’ve met with plenty of leaders who marvel at how quickly the Dream Center swings into action. It never dawned on me that we were doing anything unusual, so I used to ask why they hadn’t done the same thing. Variations on the same story were given time after time: the need for multiple levels of meetings, the need to develop procedural manuals and training systems, the need to test the process, the need to raise the budget before starting out, and so forth. I think that such regimented expectations might make sense if you’re creating a new flavor of ice cream or experimenting with a new way of building a carburetor. But if you’re pursuing God’s cause, which always relates to blessing people, often there is no time to lose in alleviating their suffering.

Our mentality at the Dream Center is “first solve the need, then discuss it.” I will concede that this is not always the most efficient way of approaching a task, but when people’s lives are on the line, it makes more sense to learn on the job than to wait until you are capable of initiating a flawless process. Our priority is to help people, and one of our guiding principles is to treat other people the way we’d want to be treated. I know if I were addicted to drugs, or trying to escape from a life of prostitution, or trying to find a way to get my family off the streets, I would not want to wait while a group of well-intentioned people tried to create the perfect solution. In my desperation, even a half-baked solution would probably be better than nothing; it’s certainly a risk I’d take. Knowing there was a group of people who cared about me and would remain committed to working with me as they sought to improve their level of service would be a huge blessing.

A great example of acting on a need before debating its fine points was our involvement with people who lost everything in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That devastation became an international headline for weeks. Churches from around the country sent teams of people to the New Orleans area to help. We had many people travel there too. But the need in Louisiana was overwhelming. There were thousands of people living in temporary shelters set up in places like the Superdome. Meanwhile, tens of thousands stayed in their waterlogged, unsafe homes waiting for help. Those people would never recover any of their things—homes, cars, clothing, family mementos, prized possessions, even friends and family members. Many of them had been on the edge financially before the storm hit. Now they were jobless, penniless, homeless, and in many cases hopeless.

We were able to arrange for several private planes to head to Louisiana to bring back three hundred of the displaced victims. We flew them to Los Angeles and arranged places for them to stay on our campus. We provided free housing, meals, clothing, and medical care. We put together a job fair, where twenty-nine area employers met with evacuees who were interested in pursuing employment opportunities. We arranged for their children to be schooled. Government agencies set up shop on our campus to assist in the provision of benefits directly to those families.

We promised—and provided—this kind of care for twelve months. We did not corner them with gospel presentations or tracts or require attendance at church services in order for them to receive shelter and their basic necessities. Our objective was to love them back to health and stability. It was an offer of unconditional, no-strings-attached love.

Of course, we had no way of knowing that Katrina was coming or how disastrous it would be, so none of this outreach activity was in our plans or budget. We were already struggling to make ends meet financially, but we could not turn our backs on people in need. When the tragedy struck, we did not have an emergency board meeting, followed by executive meetings, management meetings, and operational meetings to debate the wisdom of this involvement. We did not take a congregational vote to make sure church members were comfortable with our participation in the relief effort. There were no interns dispatched to the library to pull together facts about previous disasters and how churches had responded to the need. We did not make a series of phone calls to quiz experts regarding the pros and cons of engagement to determine if we should act. We never sought the support of our denomination nor sponsored a survey to gauge the potential impact on our public image as a means to figuring out whether we should get involved.

People’s lives had been shattered and they needed help. Our cause is to restore broken lives. There really wasn’t anything to discuss.

Of course, once we got the survivors out of Louisiana and into Los Angeles, we had plenty to discuss. But by that time they had a comfortable if basic place to live, new clothing that fit them, three hot meals a day, access to transportation, and they were well on their way to rebuilding their lives. So while my team and I huddled to consider the related operational issues, the lives of our guests from New Orleans were already being put back together.

I can only speak from personal experience, but my history shows that God always provides what you need when you are faithful to Him and the great cause He planted within you. When word got out that we had flown in three hundred survivors, hundreds of generous people lined up to help us assist our new guests. Cars and trucks snaked their way around the block of our campus for several days, filled with compassionate people of all faiths and ethnicities who went out of their way to drop off food and supplies. Many others stopped by or sent in cash donations to help defray some of the costs. Some people called us to sponsor a family for several months.

Pay attention to what your conscience tells you. That’s one of the ways God speaks to you and moves you. Inside you know the right thing to do. The challenge is to muster the courage to move forward and the determination to be persistent. Just don’t waste your time arguing with people about the mechanics of how, where, why, and when. Get on with it. Serve people and listen for God’s direction.

Another example of the importance of listening to God, reading the signs of your circumstances, and then stepping up to do what’s right is our recent work with women who have been enslaved in sex trafficking. This is an issue that has received lots of attention over the past five years. In fact, it garnered so much media coverage and was talked about by so many leaders that I assumed it was a problem for which there were plenty of existing solutions. I used to follow the conversations on Facebook and Twitter about the issue and believed it must be well covered, given all the chatter and authoritative conversation about helping sex-traffic victims.

Boy, was I wrong!

A couple of people in our ministry expressed their desire for us to be involved in rescuing girls from being sold and used as sex slaves, and the facts they shared with me were shocking. Although it is estimated that more than 16,000 people are victims of the sex-traffic industry—and at least 1,000 of those are in Los Angeles—the entire country had only thirty-nine sanctioned spaces for girls rescued from that life. Los Angeles had only a handful of safe, officially sanctioned places for those girls to escape to. There was a lot of awareness but little action.

Not long after our conversation about this social ill, we had an opportunity to rescue our first girl from the sex-traffic trade. We picked her up and brought her to a secret location where she would be cared for and secure. Since then we have increased the number of girls rescued and have become one of the primary sanctioned spots to which sex-trafficked girls can escape.

That first young woman we helped, Karen, told us the chilling tale of her life and why it was so important that we came to her aid:

I don’t remember a time in my life when I was not being sexually abused. My father started abusing me when I was five. At the age of ten, he sold me to someone for $2,000. He gave legal papers to my new owner and everything, just like you would if you were buying a car or some other commodity. I thought it must be normal.

The next ten years were hell. I was made to have sex with all kinds of people. There were months at a time when I was locked in a cage in someone’s basement and forced to have sex with him. Many of these men were middle-class guys from nice, respectable neighborhoods. You’d be surprised how common sex trafficking is in what people assume to be good areas.

By the time I was sixteen, I had learned the whole business and was running a couple of houses for my daddy—that’s what the girls call the man who bought them. I had two houses, each with about twelve or thirteen girls, and I was in charge of breaking the girls and overseeing them. Breaking them means you strip them down emotionally to nothing; you take away their self-worth and self-esteem so that you can build them back up to whatever you want them to be. They become your slave. They’ll do whatever you want them to do. It’s really sick, I see that now, but when I was in it, it just seemed completely natural and normal. It was just business.

There was a lot of physical violence and drugs involved. My daddy, or pimp, used to beat me up pretty bad, and he often used electrical shock on me. I go to a neurologist now because I have a lot of nerve damage and I’m in constant pain. It’s kind of hard for me to walk, but I hope that some of this will heal over time. I’m always tired. My body needs to recover from all the years of abuse it’s been through.

My pimp even brainwashed me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He used the Bible to do it. He would read parts of the Bible to me over and over and interpret them in ways that made him seem like he was being really good to me. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”13 “I created you and formed you and made you who you are.”14 So now, working with the Dream Center, I hear some of these verses and I get really confused. But that was his goal, I guess, to try to keep me from leaving him and being helped by Christians.

When I couldn’t stand the abuse anymore and decided to get out, I met a woman who had been a junkie and a prostitute. She talked to me about getting out. At first when I tried to leave, my pimp threatened my family, so I stayed on. But then one day he brought in a new fifteen-year-old and told me to turn her out—you know, break her down and get her ready—and I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t. Somehow I changed from seeing it as business to no longer seeing the girls as commodities to sell. I started to see us as people and knew I had to get out.

We were blessed with the opportunity to help her escape, and Karen is recovering from her former life and preparing for her next phase of life. She is working through all the abuse and even the brainwashing she received. And thankfully, she has a clear sense of her dream, which is, as she says, “to educate people to know how to help someone like me.” You’d better believe we will do everything humanly possible to support her in pursuing that dream.

But imagine what would have happened to her if we had waited to debate the readiness of our organization to handle a delicate and difficult recovery program that girls like Karen need. Again, as in the case of the Katrina rescue effort, we did not have the budget, the space, or the expertise to make it happen. But we did what we had to in the moment, and we have seen God do incredible things in response.

Our approach will probably never be written up as a Harvard Business School case study. I can live with that.

To be effective in your pursuit of the cause God has given you, you have to earn the right to be heard. Some people assume that because they are seeking to help others—especially people who are struggling—they automatically have the right to a hearing from those people. You’ll quickly find out that’s not the case. Americans are suspicious of the motives of others. We typically assume you have no business butting your nose into our business until you have proved yourself worthy of our attention and respect.

How do you earn that opportunity? By getting involved and staying involved. You cannot hope to win people’s trust unless you stick around for the long haul. At that point you transition from being an outsider to being “one of us.” That’s when you have leverage. Until then your motives will remain suspect and your opportunities few and far between.

Nikki, a young woman who wound up leaving prostitution and completing our recovery program, attended our services every week. Though she has a slight build, one look into her eyes reveals her inner steeliness and strength. In fact, she has seen and overcome a lot in life, and she is not one to back down.

One Sunday I preached about the necessity of dreaming up creative ways to reach people. After the service, she approached me and told me she had a new ministry she wanted to start. I was pleased and asked her what she had in mind. She hesitated and said she was pretty sure we didn’t have this ministry already. Knowing we had nearly two hundred different types of ministry in place, I wasn’t so sure, so I asked her again to describe what she was thinking about. Finally she said, “It’s a pimp ministry.” I looked at her a bit funny and asked, “What’s that?” She said, like I was stupid, “It’s a ministry to pimps.” And I had to admit, that was one outreach we did not already have underway. So I asked her what a pimp ministry would entail.

Seeing that she had both my attention and interest, she lit up and went into an explanation of a pimp ministry. “Well, I used to be a prostitute, so I know where they hang out. I go to the donut shop where all the pimps meet on Friday night. Pastor, this is what I do. I open the Bible, and I teach and preach to all the pimps.” Besides being shocked, I was truly impressed. At a bit of a loss for words, but hoping to encourage her, I asked her if the pimps liked her preaching and teaching in the donut shop. She got an indignant look on her face and said, “Of course not; they hate it. But you told us we’re supposed to tell people about Jesus whether they like it or not.”

I felt the muscles in my smiling face tighten. I felt awful. I didn’t remember saying that, but perhaps I did in a moment when I got carried away onstage, speaking about the importance of bringing people to Jesus, or maybe she misinterpreted something I had said, taking it out of context. Not wanting to burst her bubble or destroy her courage, I simply said, “Well, praise the Lord, Nikki. May God go with you as you go. I won’t go with you, but may He be with you as you go.”

So feeling emboldened by having been granted permission to continue her ministry, Nikki returned again to the donut shop the following week and then reported back to me on Sunday, proclaiming that things had taken a turn for the better that week. I asked what had happened, and she gave me a huge smile. “The pimps know I’m going to speak to them whether they like it or not, so they made me a deal. They agreed to give me ten minutes each week to speak, knowing that at least they’ll get me to shut up after ten minutes.” I congratulated her on her strategy and diligence, prayed for her, and she went happily along her way.

I didn’t see her for a few weeks, then one Sunday she showed up again with another progress report. “Pastor, it’s going so well. They invited me to one of their functions.” After I admitted my total ignorance about the pimp world, she patiently explained it to me. “They invited me to speak to all of them at the pimp convention.” That was a bit much for me; I giggled a bit before getting myself under control and asking what in the world a pimp convention was. All kinds of images were dancing in my head, but I wanted to hear firsthand what this event was.

Again displaying patience with her street-ignorant pastor, Nikki gave me the scoop. “Every year, they honor the Pimp of the Year in Hollywood. It’s a big deal. They also honor the pimp who made the most money.” Stuck in that sensitive place between cracking up and recoiling in horror, I asked, “But Nikki, tell me you’re not going there. Nikki, you’re not going there, are you?”

“Of course I’m going there!” she replied. “I’m going to minister to all those pimps.”

After I stared incredulously at her for a couple of seconds, I again told her I would pray that the Lord would go with her because I sure wasn’t about to.

Before the day of the big event, Nikki did her homework. She visited our men’s home and asked a group of men gathered in the living room how many of them used to be pimps. More than a handful of arms were raised. Then she asked those guys if they would help her compose a gospel tract for pimps, using the language that pimps use on the street. Working together, they made a copy of a hundred dollar bill, because pimps like money, and on the back of it they crafted a message on how to receive forgiveness and new life in Christ, using pimp language. I don’t remember it exactly, but it started out like, “Yo, player—if your Road Dog was knocking at the door of your momo, would you open up? Well, Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart, and He’s the Ultimate Mac Daddy holding the keys to the track made of ‘Bling Bling’—you need to let Him in.”

It went on from there. I had only the vaguest idea what it meant, but it sure seemed like appropriate contextualization to me—the same approach they teach missionaries who are entering a foreign culture.

Nikki attended the convention. Prior to the event, she was waiting outside the building, where the pimps roll up in their fancy cars and make their grand entrance, not unlike the Academy Awards. So the guy who eventually won the coveted Pimp of the Year award arrived and got out of his limousine. As he walked down the red carpet into the building, he was strutting and displaying his fine clothes and massive ego, when all of a sudden it started raining hundred dollar bills on the red carpet. He’s nodding away, thinking, Of course they’re distributing C-notes. I’m da man. The assembled onlookers (mostly pimps and prostitutes who were not in the running for the big award) started grabbing the bills. As they looked at them, they realized the bills were fake. Then they saw the tract on the flip side, describing how God loved them and wanted to save them, even if they were pimps.

After a moment of confusion, the pimps started laughing. One of them ran over and showed the Pimp of the Year what was going on, and he laughed too. One of them yelled out, “That’s got to be from that girl in the donut shop.” They all had another good laugh and then somebody said, “She’s cool,” and another said, “We like her.” One of the significant pimps—no, I have no idea how they rank these fellows—saw Nikki standing on the sidelines and said to her in front of everyone else, “Hey, baby, you’re pretty cool, being a Christian and coming to our event. You just name it, we’ll come to anything you want us to come to.”

That was on Friday night. Saturday morning I received a phone call from Nikki. “Pastor, get ready, make sure you deliver a good message tomorrow.” I always marvel at how people imply that we preachers decide whether to give a good or bad message on any given Sunday. I suppose if I had an ego about this, I’d wonder what makes them think any of our messages are anything but stellar. But ignoring the unintended putdown, I asked her why I needed to be on my game this particular weekend. Sounding a bit like Paul Revere, she explained, “The pimps are coming, the pimps are coming. They’re coming to church tomorrow!” I admit I was baffled as to how to prepare for an entourage of pimps gracing our church.

Sure enough, upon taking the stage to kick off the service the next morning I looked up in the balcony and saw a whole row of pimps taking their seats. I’ve never seen so many purple and pink jackets in all my life. They stuck with us for the whole service. Toward the end of the service, I looked in the balcony as I gave the invitation for people to come forward to accept Christ. To my utter shock, I saw a group of pimps walk down the aisle and come to the front of the sanctuary, where I led them in a prayer to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior. I’ll never forget one of the pimps asking Jesus to come into his life as one of the spotlights above the stage reflected off his gold grill.

Nikki taught me a thing or two about earning the right to be heard. She had endured ridicule and derision, but she loved those pimps into the Kingdom of God, right along with Jesus. And if you’re wondering, a few of them did experience wholly transformed lives and were part of our church for a long time. They even helped us start our outreach to prostitutes. And it all happened because Nikki had earned the right to be heard. Her consistency won them over. If she had talked to them once or simply thrown the fake hundred dollar bills at them as a one-time effort, she would not have gotten anywhere. But she stuck with it, and God blessed her with amazing results because of her consistency and longevity. Some would call it longsuffering faithfulness. Whatever you want to call it, it’s irreplaceable.

One of the people who lived on the block I visited every week in our Adopt-A-Block project was Jake. He was an old hippie who was pretty fed up with life. He rarely left his apartment. The first time I buzzed him on his building’s intercom, it took him a long time to answer. When he did, I began to introduce myself, explaining I was there with my partner (Todd, who visited that block with me every week) to serve him and wondered if we could come up and meet him face-to-face. He listened for a few seconds and cut me off, yelling at me, layering lots of cuss words into his tirade against Christians, church people, pastors, do-gooders, and young adults (I’m probably twenty-five years his junior). Despite his obvious indifference, we returned week after week, and each week he’d cuss me out again, displaying so much hostility it was almost funny.

Finally, one week Jake gave in and said we could come up to meet him. I don’t know if I wore him down or if it was some strategy to get rid of me once and for all, but we walked up to his unit, and he let us in his apartment. It was . . . trippy. He was a real hippie, had long, stringy hair, and was super skinny. His apartment was scantily furnished with very basic furniture. As far as I could tell, he spent most of his time messing around with his music system and a cheap keyboard setup. He seemed to be making some strange recordings for his own amusement, as if he were a radio DJ or maybe a lounge act. During that first visit two other unusual-looking fellows were on the couch and easy chairs in his living room. They were even less friendly than Jake.

Now that we were inside such a bizarre environment, we really didn’t know what to say, so we just smiled and waited for him to talk. Eventually he said something about some bad experiences he’d had in church. I began to tell him about the Dream Center, and for some reason that really set him off. When he paused for a breath, I managed to ask if he’d play me some of his music. I praised his music and asked if he’d write us a song for next week. So we kept up the connection, built around his interest in music. He asked what kind of song I wanted him to write, and once he figured it out, he agreed to do so.

A few weeks later, sensing he was now comfortable with us, I invited him to come to our church. He kept refusing, for about a year or so. Then, to my surprise, one day I looked up from the pulpit and spotted him, this complete recluse, in the audience. And he came a few times after that. When it got close to Christmas, I asked what he planned to do on Christmas Eve. He said he had no plans, that he never did anything on Christmas Eve. I suggested that we go out that night to a movie, and he surprised me again by agreeing to the idea. He was really paranoid about leaving his apartment, but every once in a while he’d go somewhere with me.

So it took a couple of years, but Jake actually became a good friend. Later on, when I got married, he came to the wedding and actually sang at the reception. He was awful! Now, it didn’t help that he followed our friend Lou Rawls, the incredible singer, who used to attend the Dream Center before he died. Of course, Jake thought he outsang Lou; he was really pleased with his own performance, and I was happy for him. We continued our friendship for years, until Jake finally moved away.

Now what was the purpose of all that? My cause is to help broken people heal. Jake didn’t need clothes or food, but he really needed a friend. I could have beat a hasty retreat from his apartment the first day when he cussed me out over the intercom. I easily and rightly interpreted his words and demeanor to suggest that he wanted nothing to do with me. I doubt anybody would have faulted Todd and me for respecting his wishes and never returning to bug him again.

But I could sense that Jake had a need. I knew that my intentions were honorable—I wanted to love and serve him, for his own good—and genuinely believed that if he simply had a taste of that kindness, he’d appreciate it. I felt that what Todd and I were being exposed to was a facade. That he yelled at me and seemed so hostile was actually encouraging to me because I knew at least I represented a place to which he could divert his pain. How did I know he was struggling with pain? You don’t cuss out complete strangers, especially those who express their desire to help you, unless something’s awry in your life. His anger was as much a defense mechanism as anything.

By the way, earning the right to be heard isn’t always pleasant. For months, each week when Todd and I visited Jake’s apartment, not only was Jake less than cordial, but if his buddies were there, they would get verbally abusive. They would try anything they could think of to get under my skin. It was fascinating the way things unfolded. At first Jake just watched as his friends attacked. But after a few months, if they attacked, Jake would defend me! And I noticed that over time, he stopped using offensive language when we were there; he was treating us with greater and greater respect. Every once in a while I’d miss a week—if I had to preach at a church or conference out of town—and when I returned the next week he’d really let me have it. Although it was intense, I could tell that his attack reflected that our visits and friendship mattered to him.

The good that followed happened only because I had earned the right to be heard. I was outside my comfort zone—man, I couldn’t even see my comfort zone from his place! It was a creepy environment, and we had nothing in common besides a need to be loved. And yet I knew this: whoever shows up the most in a person’s life wins the battle for influence. So I kept showing up.

Not to dwell on Jake, but his story brings up another principle to keep in mind as you strive to carry out your cause: to have influence for your cause you may have to change the environment.

When Todd and I first began visiting Jake’s apartment, the atmosphere was one of cynicism, mistrust, and disrespect. The place had a very weird vibe, with a heavy spirit to it. I always knew I had to spend a substantial amount of time in prayer before seeking out Jake. We could not have made any progress in a relationship with him if we had accepted that condition and tried to work within it. To change an environment you have to be so consistent in showing up and in the tenor of your work that the place becomes saturated with love. In other words, the kindness, love, and service simply force out any other conditions. You replace complaints with blessings. You focus on their needs rather than your interests.

A great example of changing the environment in order to fully love people comes from one of the couples who started serving in our Adopt-A-Block program. Soon after Emilio and Karina Cervantes began attending Angelus Temple, they started serving in the Dream Center’s program. For their initial experience they went on one of our buses to a tough area of South Central Los Angeles. That area was centered around an old government housing project known as Pueblo del Rio, located next to the train tracks. The project has been a notorious gang site for more than forty years; the area is riddled with poverty and violence. Emilio loves to talk about their experiences at Pueblos:

As soon as we got off the Dream Center bus, we felt the presence of God there. Right from the beginning we felt that God had something special in mind for that community. Pueblos has more than five hundred housing units in it. My wife and I went back to that place every Saturday, interacting with the people, taking care of them, and praying with them. God laid a burden on our hearts for that place and for those people.

One day my wife and I were discussing how we each felt God moving us to start a small group for Pueblos that would meet every Wednesday night. There is such a big spiritual need there. We felt the small group would allow us to minister to people even more personally. So the Dream Center trained us in small-group leadership, and we began the group. It’s a real commitment for us because Pueblos is an hour and a half from our house. But we believed God wanted it and knew it could help the people.

When we started, no one would come to a small group on a Wednesday night in Pueblos. That’s just how that place is. Many times we made that long drive and no one showed up. But we felt that God was pleased with our faithfulness, so we would return home, rejoicing and happy because we felt that it was pleasing God. We would go out there and just interact with families, and slowly the youth started to come, and then we were able to minister to some of the families. They started to open up to us.

We began taking the youth out of that place during our visits. For example, we’d take them to In-N-Out [a popular Southern California hamburger chain]. We’ve taken nineteen-year-old kids who were born and raised in the Pueblos neighborhood and found out they’d never been to an In-N-Out, they’d never been to a Starbucks. There aren’t any of those kinds of places in the Pueblos area, so we have to drive a long time to get to them. Even if we take the youth to a movie theater, it’s a thirty-five-minute drive outside of South Central.

So we had more and more opportunities to bless the kids and their families. My wife and I began talking about how to adjust our family finances—you know, cutting back on spending and expenses—so we’d have more money to sow into the lives of these kids in Pueblos. We wanted them to have more opportunities. We had seen that when we took them out of that environment, even just by going to a burger place or a theater, those were the times they would open up to us and we were able to minister God’s love and God’s Word. It was very special because they trusted us enough to open their hearts. Many of them shared things with us that they had never told anyone in their lives.

We were praying that God would help us have more seed to sow into the lives of these people. One night, I talked to a young man who was a drug dealer who lived in the neighborhood. He came to the small group. I asked him what the biggest need was in Pueblos because I was trying to figure out what kind of help would matter the most. This young man looked at me and my wife and said, “The biggest need here in Pueblos is love and hope. We don’t have those two things. Society has forgotten about this place. The politicians, the school board, the city of LA, the police department—they don’t pay attention to us. We desperately need love and hope.” I looked him in the eye and told him that Jesus had not forgotten about this place. But that young man’s words got to me.

Several months passed by, and on Thanksgiving weekend I was at home, thanking God for His blessings and meditating in God. And I had an impression in my heart that God spoke to me and said, “Emilio, do you know the biggest blessing a person could receive from Me?” I wasn’t even going to try to answer that! The Lord put the answer in my heart: “The biggest blessing is having the freedom to give it all away.” I stored that away in my heart.

Meanwhile, at Pueblos we were gaining greater favor with the people because we were there every week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We were going into people’s homes and literally coming out with trash cans full of witchcraft items. One of those nights I felt the Lord speak to my heart again and tell me that if a person is willing to give it all away, they’ll have such freedom that nothing can stop them. That led my wife and me to start asking God even more fervently for that kind of freedom. We knew He could change that place and do amazing things. We kept asking Him for more seed to sow and to give away, to bless those people.

Then we heard a sermon about extraordinary grace and extraordinary favor and about believing God for an extraordinary year. My wife and I told God that we believed that the coming year would be one of great blessing and that we would be able to have a big soul-winning event in Pueblos and that He would do amazing things.

The next day, Emilio received a call from an executive of his employer’s biggest competitor. He wanted to recruit Emilio to work for them. Emilio agreed to meet with the competitor. Prior to that meeting, he prayed long and hard about what to do. He received a sense from God of a specific deal he should seek. He went into that conversation resolved not to settle for anything less. The competitor kept negotiating with Emilio, making him four outstanding offers that far exceeded what he was currently making. But each offer was shy of what Emilio believed the Lord had set as the standard. After the fourth offer, the executive requested the check from the waitress, paid the bill at the register, and walked out to the parking lot with Emilio. When they reached their cars and prepared to depart with no deal in place, Emilio played his trump card:

I said to him, “Do you know why I’m fighting so hard for that extra $800 a month? Because that money will go a long way for the kids in Pueblos. It’s $10,000 a year. That may not seem like a lot to you, but it could make a big difference in Pueblos.” And right after that he agreed to the deal. The deal that we struck more than doubled my pay. But I wasn’t doing it for me. I was fighting for the blessing of Pueblos. I knew that the raise was how God was providing the seed we asked for. He had spoken to my heart about what to ask for in the negotiations after ten days of praying. No matter what that man said during our negotiations, I knew that he was going to give me that amount.

Right after that I felt that God was speaking to me again. He said, I want you to put on the biggest outreach event that Pueblos has ever seen. And I want you and your wife to give $25,000 for that event. Realize that we’re in a recession, and that money’s coming from a working guy and a stay-at-home mom. You know, $25,000 for us is huge; that’s a big number, and a huge step of faith. But that was God’s plan, and we did it.

The event took place. About one thousand people showed up; nothing remotely close to such an event had ever been held in Pueblos. There was live music, carnival games, and all kinds of giveaways of clothing, toys, and food. To this day people in that community talk about the event. It has gone a long way toward changing the environment and enabling Pueblos’s residents to adopt a different perspective on life—a perspective of love and hope.

Emilio and Karina are reveling in the expanded opportunities they now have for ministry with the people of Pueblos. They are determined to seek further blessings from God for a resource center for teenagers. That facility would also give them a regular place for their small group meeting. Currently they meet outdoors on a street corner; hopefully they will be meeting indoors before long.

Emilio and his wife had a big dream but started small—they met with the Pueblos people regularly and eventually started a small group. They didn’t spend gobs of time talking about strategies and options; they solved the needs they witnessed by faithfully returning to that desolate place week after week, regardless of how many people (if any) showed up to meet with them. Their diligence impressed the locals and earned them the right to be heard—and to hear what was on people’s hearts.

The residents accept them as people who belong to the Pueblos community, an honor they have earned through the power of their consistent presence and their unfailing interest in serving. And their love and faithfulness to the people, their trust in God, and their excitement about being free to give away what God gave them have birthed a new atmosphere in Pueblos. No, it’s not Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, but it’s not the same dangerous, hopeless place it was two years ago, either.

Emilio and Karina had paid for everything in secret and managed to keep it a secret for seven months—until I spilled the beans during one of our services. They were embarrassed that I told everyone they paid for the event because they simply wanted all the glory to go to God. They will be the first to tell you that the payback for them is the joy of seeing lives changed in that run-down, forgotten part of Los Angeles and knowing that God found a way to use them in that transformation process.

What a beautiful example of how to pursue your cause! You don’t do it for public recognition or private gain. You don’t do it because you believe you will get more rewards from God—more “jewels in your crown.” You do it because God wants to use you in that way and because you will experience the pure pleasure of serving Him by loving people. It doesn’t get any better than that.

What I’ve Learned

• God’s vision for your life is huge, but you accomplish it through a series of tiny steps.

• Influence is achieved by affecting one life at a time.

• Don’t spend your precious time debating the fine points of the cause; identify the core need, address the need, then discuss the situation once you’ve blessed those in need.

• You are not likely to make a difference unless you feel urgency about the need that must be addressed.

• Earn the right to be heard through consistency and longevity.

• You may have to change the atmosphere of the place to which you’ve been called.

• Every little thing you do matters; there is no wasted effort in God’s Kingdom.