Hallelujah in the City I

And unlike El Suave Stevens, I have a really serious subject that actually Scott did a great job with the subject, but I have a subject that all of us actually own because we're all part of it. You're part of it. And I want you to begin today to set the tone for where we're going in the next four weeks by welcoming three dedicated folks who represent life change that's happening at North Way in the inner city. Come on up, guys. Let's give a great hand for them. I feel like a midget among trees right here. Have Brian McCabe and Lafayette and Brian's dad, Mac. Brian, as many of you know, is the director of our LAMP program, which I'll discuss more in a moment. And we wanted to begin this four-week journey together by listening to the heart of just one person. Because, see, we can talk a lot about big things and visions and, you know, all this stuff, but if it doesn't really get down to hearts and changing lives, it doesn't really matter, does it? And so I had the opportunity to meet Lafayette, oh, maybe four, five, six months ago. And then I saw him again when we had the Halloween gathering. And so, Brian, I'm going to toss it over to you, and you can just share and have Lafayette and your dad share whatever's on their heart. Great. Well, about three years ago, North Way embarked on an amazing adventure into the city, into Homewood, on the east end of the city. And we started providing mentors for children who are living in that community. And Lafayette is one of those children that are being mentored. And we first started an after-school program at the Faison Intermediate Building, and he was one of five boys that we picked to be in the program for our after-school mentoring group. And we had a lot of great adventures. Since then, he's still in that group, but he's also now has his own one-to-one mentor, who happens to be my dad, Mack McCabe. So we just have a few questions we wanted to ask Lafayette, since the best way you can hear about LAMP is probably from one of the mentees. So my first question for you, Lafayette, is you have been in the program for three years now. Why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the mentoring activities that you've participated in? There was a couple that I liked the most. It was when we went boating with Ms. Julie's father. And we went in Ohio. And Mr. Sam, because we rode the Sea-Doos, we got on the, you know how the boat pulls you? The tube. Yeah, the tube. The tube. And Mr. Sam tried to hit me, then he flipped over and fell in the water. It was funny. I like how they showed me many different things. I never went ice skating. They showed me how ice skating, I never did nothing like that. I never did golf. They showed me a whole bunch of things that I never did before. So I was really grateful. Out of all the boys in the group, who is the best at fishing? Stephon, but he laughs at me. So you're number one. He's the best fisher. All right. So this next question, I'm going to ask his mentor to ask it. Well, obviously, here I came along, some five or six times your age, different race, different culture, different neighborhood, looked a whole lot different. That must have been a little bit intimidating to you at first or to me. But what were your feelings when you first got involved with or met people like me who you weren't used to that didn't do your kind of music and your kind of culture and activities and so forth? Was that hard to adjust to? It wasn't really hard to adjust to because it really didn't matter to me what race you were because we're all people and it really didn't matter. They were nice people. I'm nice, so we get along perfectly. And the neighborhood, the way I'm living, it's different from theirs. Like you said, the suburbia or whatever, what's this called? I like y'all house. Yeah, I like the house and I can't really explain. Okay. So you said a little bit about coming out to our house. So you like coming to the house? Yeah. Because every time we go to your house, it's fun. There's like many activities to do at your house. It's like, yeah, it's fun. So one of the points there is that we have mentors that drive into the Homewood community and spend time in the schools and also in the kids' houses. They interact with their families. But also we bring the kids out here to suburban experiences, to different activities around the city. And it really is kind of a unique experience culturally for both the mentors and the mentees. So my last question is, you have had a chance to become a part of the fabric of the church here. You've been attending church when you come out to the house over at the worship cafe. And you have had a small group who came to your house and they helped you with the Christmas blessings outreach. You started attending a men's Bible study with my dad. And also that's where you received your first Bible. And you've been reading that Bible since then. So why don't you talk to us a little bit about what your experience is with North Way. Like, the men's group, I'm like really thankful because like they gave me the knowledge of Father Yahweh. And like now I get to learn and like I get to read my Bible. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And like, it's just like I'm taking it all in. Like, I'm a sponge and I'm absorbing what the knowledge y'all are giving me. So like, it's not really different. It's like I'm just learning like y'all's my teachers. Very cool. And that's one of the things that mentors get to do is this work that's in the schools, spending time with kids in the school buildings. But also, we're getting to learn a lot from the mentees too. We're learning a lot about the homeland community and just everything that's going on there. And especially how God is moving there. So I just wanted to make a special recognition. Tonight with us is Lafayette's mother and younger sister. Right over there. Would you stand up please? We're very happy to have you with us tonight. Lafayette, do you have any final things that you would like to say to the congregation? Hello, Oakland. You love Oakland? All right. Well, we just want to say how proud we are of you, Lafayette, and everybody. Because it takes a lot of guts to step out of the comfort zone and do what you're doing. And we're proud of you guys. And keep on going. It's worth it, right? All right. Praise God. Let's give him a great hand. We'll see you. Thank you, guys. I wanted to have you have some sense of just what it was that these folks experience week in, week out. And I hope you caught the fact that Brian said this is our third year. One of the things that hasn't happened in the LAMP program or anything like it, actually, in the inner city. People usually come in for a season and then they just go back because it's too hard, too difficult. And I was planning on talking about this later, but I'll just mention it now. We, at the end of this school season, will have finished three years. And that's going to give us an incredible amount of what they call cred or believability in the city and with other churches. And so part of our mission, there's five other churches that are involved in LAMP right now. And part of my goal as we go through the next season is to work with Brian and recruit other churches. Remember, our goal over the next five years is to have a church for every inner city school adopting it, just like we have here at North Way. Won't that be an incredible thing to the glory of God? Not to man or to people, but to God, to have a church that cares for people the way this church is caring for that community. And I want to say, as Brian said very well, we're learning a lot about ourselves, too, in this whole process. So just wanted to start with that little picture of one person, Lafayette. And I mean, he wanted to tell stories. I've seen some of the things that he does to Mac McCabe, keeping Mac youthful in his old age, which is kind of fun for me to watch. Now, all this started some 25, I'm sorry, about three years ago on our 25th anniversary. Because what had happened, if you recall, let me just take you back real quickly. We were celebrating 25 years of God's faithfulness. And it became evident to the elders and pastoral team that God wasn't saying, OK, have this celebration. And then just really kind of hunker down and enjoy life together. But he said, I've got more for you to do. And that's when we began to seek him out and say, all right, Lord, what is it? What's in our future? What are we supposed to do that's beyond what we've done? Where are we supposed to go? And how is this supposed to look? And we launched out in a really, I mean, a heartfelt, ambitious, you know, earnest search for what God wanted us to do. And it reminded me, most of all, of what happened with Nehemiah. And I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles and grab your outlines out of your North Way notes. And we're going to look at the book of Nehemiah right now. Because in that book, in that one city that Nehemiah cared for, huge things happened because he cared for it. Now, on your outline, it starts right there. And here's what it says. It says, change begins when we care. In other words, we've got to care enough to initiate some kind of change. And let's look at the text of Nehemiah. All right, let's just read it together. It's on your notes or you can read it on the screens if you don't have your reading glasses with you. Here we go. A little background. Nehemiah, he was held by the Babylonians. He was a captive of them. But he had a pretty posh job. His job was to be the wine bearer of the king. And so all he had to do was make sure that the king's food and beverages weren't poisoned. So he'd take a little sip and if things turned out, he just had a merry old life. And here's what happens. In the midst of that, someone comes up, a messenger from Jerusalem, the hometown of his people, the Jews. And the messenger says, Jerusalem is in ruins. Everything's burned to the ground. And this city of your ancestors is no more. And let's look at the response. It says, when I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. And then I said, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and obey His commands. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night. Notice, he entered into a season, day and night, of seeking God because this broke his heart. Notice this. Two things. Number one, I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. Listen, Nehemiah was not blaming anybody else for the trouble that Jerusalem was in. He said, we didn't obey you. We deserve the judgment and we're getting what we deserve. And loved ones, let me just pause and say, I'm not so sure that some of the things that are happening in America today are because we have forgotten God. And we point our fingers in political ways and in all these different people that we think have different points of view and values. But the truth might well be that we've sort of abandoned God and some of the things that He believes are important. Nehemiah said, no, we were wrong. We've acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. Now, notice this. In the same prayer, at the same time, he says, remember the instructions you gave your servant Moses, saying, if you're unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. That's what had happened. They were all now scattered amongst the nations of the area and he was with the Babylonians. But if you return to me and obey my commandments, then if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, God says, I will gather them from there and bring them to a place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. In other words, it doesn't matter how far scattered out they've been. If you repent and come back to me, the Lord says, I'm going to rebuild the city that bears my name, the city of Jerusalem. And so change, loved ones, begins when we care enough to say, Lord, speak through our hearts, convict us of what we need to change and help us to take seriously the things that are before us. I identified with Nehemiah because I felt like we've been blessed by God in enormous ways. I don't know about you, but I also know that there are parts of what's happening in our city that break his heart. And if Lafayette and Brian and others had talked for a while about some of the things that are going on in our city, less than 50 percent of the students graduate from high school. There's lots of crime and lots of heartache and lots of things going on, and not just in our city, but also in some of the nice homes that many of us live in around the suburbs. There's lots of things that aren't where they're supposed to be. But you see, when you pray and you ask God to burn your heart with that, he gives you something specific to do. And because he owned that responsibility, God spoke to him. And here's what he said. He says this, no matter how far you might feel for me, and this is for some of you tonight who maybe just came in here to be part of the service, and maybe you saw the sign, and you feel far from God. Listen, no matter how far you've wandered from God, no matter how much you think you violated his commands, you've never gone too far that he can't bring you back. And the very first step of your return to God is the acknowledgement that, Lord, I've sinned. I've been living for myself. And most of what we're going to talk about today has to do with corporate things, things we do together. But there's some individuals that need to hear God say to you today, you haven't wandered too far. You're not in so deep into sin that I can't pull you back if you just acknowledge that you need me. And that's the beauty of the God that we serve. And I praise God, and we all do, for what he's accomplished. It's been amazing. Amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God, hast died for me? So Nehemiah cared enough to seek God and to pray. And let me say something clearly. I don't know any church that really cares more for people than this one. I want to repeat that. I know most of the churches around. There's some wonderful churches all around our city and certainly in our area. But friends, there are ministries that happen here, not on the weekends. I don't know if you fully appreciate it. Ministries for people who are out of work, unemployed, or out of resources. There's ministries for people whose marriages are falling apart, disarray, or need strengthening. There's parenting tools and resources for people who want to be better parents and meet the needs of their kids. I just can go down a long list. I just started thinking about this, and I come in here in the evenings, and I see these support groups gathering. I see people with addictive problems gathering regularly in small groups. I see people who have struggled with you name it, and it's a problem. We've got some kind of group, some kind of ministry to help it. That's been a tremendous gift to this community. People once told me, they said, What would happen if your church closed its doors? Would anyone in the community notice? Here's my answer. Way more people would notice than we have any idea because way more people are affected than just what you see here or in Oakland or in the cafe on a given day. That's the gift that you give because you care enough to be involved. Now, like Nehemiah, something needed to be done. So let's take a look at the next part of this whole thing. Nehemiah had to come up with a plan. If things are going to change, if we're to see our city changed, if we're to see our community changed, it requires a risk. And so here's what Nehemiah did. Look at this. In the month of Nisan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. And here's what it says. I had not been sad in his presence before. So the king asked me, Why does your face look so sad when you're not ill? This to me, nothing but sadness of heart. And I was very much afraid because he used to see, look, Nehemiah knew that he was about to risk his position. And I want to say to you, what I'm going to be sharing in the next weeks is a bit risky. But change doesn't happen without risk. It says, May the king live forever. Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers were buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire? The king said to me, Well, what is it that you want? See, instead of saying, Hey, well, that's not my problem. Instead of rebuking him for being sad, he said, Well, what do you want? And I think, listen, look up for a second, church, listen. When you've been walking in the will of God and something is lacking, it's an appropriate thing to do to say, Lord, this is on my heart if you'll do it. And not to be afraid, not to fear that somehow you're going to, you know, upset the apple cart. God wants to hear our prayers. And I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king, If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah, that's Jerusalem where my fathers are buried, so that I can rebuild it. And then the king with the queen sitting beside him asked me, Well, how long will your journey take and when will you get back? It pleased the king to send me, so I set a time. He said, This is how long it's going to take and this is what it will be. And notice what the king does, verse 7. I also said to him, If it pleases the king, and he's getting bold now. May I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so they'll provide me safe conduct. He's saying, I need some goons to go with me here, king. I can't have you, you know, I don't want to be wiped out of my way over. By the way, can I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest, so he'll give me some lumber to make beams for the gates of the city. And he starts asking the king for stuff. Because he realizes, and this is so key, now watch. He realizes that he has the favor of God. Everyone say favor of God. The favor of God on his life. And I want to say to all of you that are here today. God brought you here to let you know that if you'll reach out to him in faith, you can come into the favor of God. Because you know what the favor of God translates? It's the Greek word grace. And if you come to God humbly and say, Lord, I need your favor. God is a God of grace. And you can ask him for what you need to be all that God wants you to be. And to rebuild the parts of your wounded soul and wounded life and your broken dreams that have yet to be fulfilled. And so Nehemiah is on the way. And I love his boldness. And he asks the king for all these things. You know, back in 05, and I just want to do a real quick synopsis of how Lamp got started. Let me just tell you. I went to the mayor of the city of Pittsburgh. Who am I? I'm just a pastor of a suburban church. And I said, Mr. Mayor, O King, what could we do for you as a suburban church? And he thoughtfully said two things. He said, well, number one, we have serious economic concerns and we need a lot of stimulus in our economy because a lot of people are out of work. And he said, and the second thing is our city schools are in dire straits and we need help there. And I said, well, let me pray about that. And I thanked him for his time. And I went out and I prayed. And the first one seemed to be just not what God was leading me to. And I'm not saying we couldn't do something about the economy. God can do anything. But he put on my heart to call one person who I knew was in the mayor's office. Turned out that person left the mayor and started to work for the superintendent of schools about a year before. And her name is Erica Jones. And if you've been here at all at North Way for a while, you know Erica. And Erica and I met and we began to talk. And she said, she looked right at me. She said, Jay. And she actually called me Pastor Jay. She said, you are an answer to prayer because we have been stuck and we've been unable to move. And we've been partnering with this group called Family Guidance by Bob Jameson. And they've done a great job of trying to get people. But in total of the last three years, they've had like 40 volunteers. And I said, well, let me take this back to our church. And we paid the division. And you responded. And I want to say you as a church did more than I ever could have imagined. And it started with having the right leader. And Brian McCabe is the right leader. He has three things going from, he had gone off to get an education, got his master's degree and was working in California. So he was well-educated. He came back. He had a passion to do this for the city. I mean, he really cared about going to the city. And number three is he's big. I mean, he's just like the kids love him. I mean, he's like the big teddy bear, but the teddy bear that can knock the guys off if he needs to. He has a wonderful heart for this. And Lamp, loved ones, has been so well-received. And I wish you could have heard. And I'm not exaggerating. When I was down there at Halloween, the parents thanking us for the difference that we are making. There's 150 volunteers from this church that go into that city. And when I share that with people from other parts of the country, which I've done, I don't know anybody that's doing it like we're doing it. And I'm not saying we're doing it perfectly. We've got a long way to go. We have to keep fueling it. And some of you need to hear me say, it's your turn to step into this and give some time. It's making an enormous difference in this city. And I'm so proud of Brian. His dad and family have committed so much of their time. And lots of other mentors and lots of other servants and people who make that ministry so enormously impactful. But you know what? That's only part of a plan. Let's read on. Turn your outline over. Because we understood if we were going to change the city, it wasn't just addressing the schools. There were some other things that we had to get ourselves aligned with and understand. And so Nehemiah went to Jerusalem. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. We're on the back page now. And after staying there three days, I set out during the night with just a few men. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do. You know, see, sometimes it's important when God speaks to you not to blab it, but just let it sit there for a while. What God put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. For there were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on. So he's riding on this mount, which is another word for donkey, okay? And he's riding around the perimeter of the city of Jerusalem and seeing where there used to be these huge gates and they're all burned down and where the walls have been crumbled and knocked down and the city was decimated. And you can't imagine how disheartening this would have been to anybody to see this because this was his home city. This was the place of his ancestry. And by night, I went through the valley of the gates with the jackal wall and the dung gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down and its gates which had been destroyed by fire. And then I moved on to the fountain gate and the king's pool and so on. And I went through, and he goes around and he examines all these things. And then verse 17, then I said to them, you see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and we will no longer be in disgrace. I just want to pause here and say, imagine a handful of people and a guy and a donkey and they walk around this city and it's burned to the ground. He says, come, let's rebuild the city. What would you think of him? You know, nut job, right? What do we have? How are we going to do this? Seriously. He doesn't have like this enormous army of craftsmen and carpenters. No, it's just this guy with a vision and he knows that God's with him. And so he challenges the people, let's do something that hasn't been done. And so they crafted a plan. And one of the things we knew we had to do if we were to affect our city was we needed to have a presence of a church. It's one thing to have a ministry and we love the ministry and there are other ministries that are doing good things in the city by all means. But we said, you know, we need a church to be in the city. And we started to pray about, well, where in the city should we put the church? Should it be right near Homewood? And we looked at some places there. But there were other churches there. And the place that came up on our radar screen over and over again was the little community of Oakland. And I say little, it's not really little, it's just small in terms of its geographic size. It's huge in terms of its influence in our city. And we branched out and said, Lord, this is where we believe you want to send us. And all these signs pointed that way. And I thought, well, what better person to describe for you what's happening in Oakland than the pastor of that church. And so whether you're sharing with us over in Oakland live right now or in the cafe or right here at the service, let's welcome the pastor of the Oakland campus, Mike Arnold, as he comes up. Michael. I heard you needed this. Would it help me just a little bit? There you go. You're good to go? I'm good. All right. Have a seat. That's good. I can take a break. All right. Well, you've been in Oakland now two years. Two years next month. Next month. First of all, and I think some of the folks know this, but not everybody. What made you leave a pretty secure position on the other side of the country to venture into something you really wasn't. It was just a dream. We were living in Henderson, Nevada, and building a college and young adult ministry out there in Las Vegas Valley. And we figured what better weather than Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So why not move? Get out of the sunshine for a while. Now, I was thinking about this, and I remember moments. I don't know how you guys remember your life, but I remember it like in moments. And I can remember a moment I was watching, of all things, it was the Church Disturbed DVD. And just listen to the vision that you had for our church, not to just be a place where people come to, but a church that will actually go into the city, and things like WAMP, things like Oakland, things like even Tibet, and do it at the hospital over there. It was just unbelievably inspiring. And I remember just watching that, and just thinking and praying over it, and going, this is what I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of this vision. Yeah, I hope you're hearing those words. See, vision has a way of cracking our little safe zones. And if some of you are here, and it just hasn't cracked the vault that you're in, it's only because you really haven't gotten hold of it yet. Mike uprooted his whole family, brought them all the way back across country. And Oakland, at that point, we were looking for a facility, and we wanted to rent something, because that was a more inexpensive way to get started, but we couldn't find anything, so we ended up buying a building, gutting it out completely, renovating it, and completely redesigning it to accommodate the ministry that we had there. You've been there two years, Mike, and you've had amazing experiences. I know some of them. Just share, in general, just generally speaking, what's been most gratifying for you? Sure, it's just seeing the lives changed. You know, it's been a neat run. We've had, I don't know how to describe it. Sometimes when we think of churches in the megachurch, like we are here at North Way, when you think of a church that's grown from zero to 400, we think that's kind of, that's cute. It's somewhat insignificant. But when you're down in the city, I don't know of any other city in the last two years that's done what God is doing in our church in the city. I mean, I just don't know anyone else that God's doing something like this, and so it's really unique. And so being a part of just seeing this church grow has been inspiring, but more than anything, in ministry, and you know this, Jay, it takes investment to be trusted. I like to think it takes two years before people begin to, even just begin to open up to you and your investment, and especially if you're a Browns fan, it might take five years. Some of you still don't know about me. And so I feel like, I feel like right now, I mean, we're beginning to see just the fruit of all this investment that we've been putting in for two years. People are coming with just tremendous needs in our city. We're seeing our church kind of branch out, and you just even have fingers into different areas of culture. Yeah. Starting Bible studies in the hospital and on campus, and their places of worship. Yeah, I think it's important. Just talk a little bit about the mix of the people. It's not just students. I mean, there's a lot of students. There is. I mean, there's 70,000 college students within a five-mile radius of that. 70,000 college students. Yeah, graduate and undergraduate students. I mean, there's, what, there's seven universities, I believe, in that area. And so we're about 50-50, 50%, you know, university students. And then we have a number of young families, medical residents, young professionals. And I like to call some of my ex-hippies that just love hanging around with young people and love investing into people, but we have a number of people that just feed off that energy and love being a part of investing in other people. Now, you said something, and I want to just kind of wrap it up with this. You said, and I think it's very insightful, it takes a couple of years for anybody to really gain a sense like, okay, is this going to be sort of a quick in and out? Well, you know, and then they're gone. Because people are very savvy about stuff like that. They sense when something's temporary. But now you've really earned the trust, I believe, of that community. Share with your community, because they're participating right now, and with the folks here, what do you see happening? I mean, as you dream about Oakland in the next three to five years, what do you think is going to happen? What could you see happening? Yeah, I'm excited. I think it's just started. I don't know how to say it other than that. I think it's just started. When I think three to five years, I get incredibly excited, but then I kind of get a knot right here in the back of my neck as far as all the things that we're going to be a part of. I believe our church will continue to grow. I hope we're a church down there that's running four or five services of people that are coming in. I think at that point, in three to five years, I hope that we're a church that's sending young professional pastors out to serve into our city and into our world. We'll have a process that we'll be training them, and more and more young people will be coming into a calling in ministry and we'll be pursuing that. We'll have a strong avenue to train them and send them out in different areas. I'm excited at just the leaking into culture that we will have at that point. We're beginning to see that more and more in our city. Cities are very, I mean, you brush up against people in cities. People are talking. You see them when you eat at a restaurant. You're right next to someone. So the exchange of ideas, it's so easy. So I just hope that we're more and more a part of the dialogue that's going on in our city at that time. Yeah, and I can tell you that people, many of my peers and people that study churches ask me, how in the world do we do Oakland the way it's happened? And Mike's right. It's the only church that I know of in the last, I've been here 32 years in this city, and I've not seen another church planted in that region. Mike's commitment to those people is what's now securing them. And here's the thing. Did you hear him say that he can see a day when it's like we're the grandfather church and you're now raising up and planting your own church in another part of the city? I hope in three years we're looking at North Way, Regent Square, or Square Hill. I mean, we just won't have half our people going out there and starting the next church further into the east end. I think