You Are The Mission

Union Rescue Mission is facing both a tremendous opportunity, and an overwhelming challenge.  We have just completed the Sycamore Building at Hope Gardens Family Center thanks to a capital gift from the County Homeless and Housing Prevention Fund approximately two years ago.  Renovation is complete, and we plan an exciting move of 12-14 families, moms with children,  directly from our 4^th Floor at downtown URM surrounded by the mean streets of Skid Row, to the peace, safety and beauty of Hope Gardens Family Center.

To add to that exciting news, we just received word that the Ahmanson Foundation, without even an official ask from URM, stepped up to provide the much needed funds to completely renovate our final building, the Concord Building at Hope Gardens, and we expect another move of 12 to 14 families, moms and children, from URM to Hope Gardens in March.  This great news, along with plans to open a Los Angeles Homeless Authority funded project for nine families at 83^rd and Broadway, and a move of our year round shelter for 8 families to a site just off of West Adams, has us on the brink of carrying out a long awaited hope and plan to finally succeed in moving every child and mom away from the mean streets of Skid Row and out to a much more child friendly environment. 

This has been the plan of the Board of Directors and staff of URM all along, and frankly, it is one of 3 legacies that I had in my heart when I came through the door of URM nearly 6 years ago.  

We have the resources to complete the projects to pull this off, and we are so thankful for this, but here comes the overwhelming challenge.  We have a $750,000 gap in our operating funds to pull this off.  We hoped to fill this gap with a continued County subsidy of $62,500 per month to Hope Gardens, believing that they would support our carrying out of their mandate to get every child off of Skid Row and out of Union Rescue Mission, but to date we have been unsuccessful.  I have reached out to the County Board of Supervisors, and we have asked our faithful donors to reach out to their County Supervisor in hopes that this vital funding would come through, but to date, we have not been successful.  I have assured the County that if they do not respond and we fall short in funding, kids will be left on Skid Row, and that will be their decision.

Your amazing heart and faith is our final hope of accomplishing this tremendous history making goal this year.  If you could respond in yet another unprecedented way, and we could raise an additional, unexpected, $750,000 by December 31^st of this year, we could move ahead with plans to get every single mom and child off of Skid Row and to a beautiful place of safety and hope and a ladder out of homelessness and poverty. 

Thank you, for your amazing faithfulness to this Mission, especially during these last few very difficult years. Do you know that together, we have rescued more than 1800 precious children from the streets of LA since the recession hit families so hard in December of 2008?  Amazing!

Now it is time to move these precious children from URM on LA’s Skid Row to a place that they deserve!  If we fall short, moms and kids will be left on Skid Row. Please give what you can!  Thank you!  Andy B.

For my blog this week I’d like to do something different. I heard my friend Roddy share his story last Saturday night at a fundraising event.  He was to share, and then I would be the keynote speaker. When Roddy finished sharing his story, the saintly Pastor turned to me and said, “How are you going to top that?” I assure you that I did not top it!

I was struck by a theme that I have encountered many times from men who experience homelessness, men who I have talked with, over 300 men that I have surveyed, and even my own Dad. That common theme or denominator is often the loss of their mom at an early age.

Please read Roddy’s story. I believe you will better understand the struggles of a significant number of precious people experiencing homelessness.

By Roderick Rose

Ezekiel 17:24 (New International Version)

24 All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. ”‘I the LORD have spoken and I will do it.’ ”

I am here today to provide testimony about a remarkable, transformative event. Some of you may have heard my story before…

For the majority of my life I struggled with a poor self image. At the age of five I was abandoned by my mother and raised with a single father and two brothers, and we moved around from place to place because my father was in the military. I found it difficult to make the strong emotional bonds that are so needed in childhood. Socially, I was confused about how to fit in with my peers and suffered a lot of rejection. The most potent rejection I experienced was from my peers in my own race. Many of them told me that I was just too different. I wasn’t acceptable to them and I never could figure out why. I lived my life as an island floating through the oceans of the changing times and spaces. Abandonment and rejection left a deep spiritual and psychological wound that took many years to overcome.

The injuries eventually took their toll on me and when the opportunity to erase that pain presented itself, I took advantage of it. I became a drug addict and alcoholic. I was in my addiction for 8 years. I grew accustomed to being destitute, needy, and unstable, and emotionally disturbed.

In the worst years of my addiction, I came in contact with the Lord’s Lighthouse. As my face became more familiar to some of the staff and volunteers, I got an opportunity to build a relationship with people like Amie Quigley and Pastor Chuck.

Just the fact that two people of God were willing to have a decent conversation with me, with sincerity, I might add, was very encouraging for me. It was like they psychically knew that I longed for a meaningful connection. Their concern for me was evident when they would either take me out for coffee or visit me at my camp site across the street from the Lord’s Lighthouse.

And it was at that campsite, when two years ago, I made my next move. It wasn’t to another city or another state. It was a move downtown to the Union Rescue Mission, where I ran into another servant of the Lord, who I met previously during my time in the streets…Andy Bales, the CEO of the Union Rescue Mission. I enrolled in the Christian Life Discipleship Program there. Two weeks after arriving there, I went to God in prayer, and I asked him this: “Lord, will you save me? Will you take me back into your family? I will follow you now, but I have just one thing to ask of you. Will you please take away the self-hatred that I’ve had my entire life and will you give me joy? Because even though I’m here, I cannot do this program unless you remove this thing from me. If you do that, nothing will stand in my way from serving you”…And guess what? He did!

And after saying that prayer, I had the strength to do the program, graduate from the program, and nowadays I’m completing a one year apprenticeship at the URM. Right now I’m in my second semester of college, I’m starting my own business this coming spring, and I even have a fiancée (her name is Michelle) a woman who truly loves me. It is definitely a wonderful thing to find the woman that God has made for me… I now have more than two years clean and sober.

But I would have to say that my most cherished accomplishment is that I finally realized that God has always loved me and it was God who protected me, even if he had to discipline me, but nonetheless, He loved me and accepted me and brought me into his family. He loved me before I even loved myself. And I thank God now, that the love I have for myself, I can give to others. Thank You and God Bless!

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17

I love these particular scripture verses.  I just heard my friend, Enock De Assis, the Missions Pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church preach on them last Sunday.  He shared that at a critical time in his young life, when his mom ended her own life, he found faith in Jesus Christ as His Savior and that faith is what rescued him from a life of despair. I can’t share his whole message in a blog post, but wanted to reflect on the words nonetheless.

Union Rescue Mission, myself, and our staff often get questions on why we are a faith-based ministry, why we ask employees and Board members to sign a statement of faith.  At times the discussions are quite critical –we’ve even lost grants and funding support because we are a faith/Christ-based ministry.

Despite the questions and objections and even the loss of funding, we remain a Christ-based ministry, because as the passages above say, the Gospel is where our power comes from.  The Greek word is dunamis, like dynamite!

Lots of people do good things for many excellent reasons.  We at URM do good because of our faith in Jesus Christ.   We are compelled to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.  And yes, we believe, we do all that we do with the superhuman power given to us by Jesus Christ as we believe in and depend on Him.

Some say, “Well can’t you do good without sharing with your guests what you believe?”

We could, but then we would be remiss in not sharing the good news of why we do what we do and who we are. When personally asked this question, my answer is:

“What good is it, if I feed and provide houses for folks but don’t share my faith –the core beliefs that give me purpose and hope and not only keeps me going, but at times, miraculously deliver me, and as we have seen at URM, transform others?”  (I will get to those miracles in my next blog that will focus on “The Righteous shall live by faith!”)

When I first started working at a Rescue Mission 24 years ago, I walked unaware into a controversy.  A Mission with a Christ-based ministry had allowed friends to come onto their board of directors who did not share the same belief in Jesus Christ.  I was a young 27 year-old, brand new to the organization, and seated at the Board of Directors meeting.  I was probably expected to keep my mouth closed which is very difficult for me!

A motion was made and seconded to strike the words Jesus Christ from being mentioned at this Christ-based ministry. The Executive Director, a Chaplain, turned red in the face. I was in shock. I knew Romans 1:16-17 by heart from memorizing it in my youth.  Without hesitation I declared:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes!”

The meeting erupted for a moment.  Some around the table spoke to me in anger.  But the cool calm Chairman of the Board quickly called the meeting back to order.  There was a vote, and it was a draw, 6 to 6. 6 to continue as a Christ-based ministry, and 6 to discontinue speaking the name of Jesus Christ at this particular mission.  A rare tie at a Board of Directors meeting could cause an issue to be tabled for further discussion, or could go to the Chair for a deciding vote.  Our cool calm Chairman, courageously decided to cast a vote.  This man I will never forget voted to continue as a Christ-based ministry, which allowed us to keep preaching the Gospel of Christ, the dynamic power, to those who would volunteer to hear.

This testimony to my friend, the Board Chair, really displays that dynamic power in itself.  I shared this story at his funeral and his family members approached me after the funeral, upset, and proclaimed “that faith thing, that is not what Dad was all about. He was more involved in Union Organizing and you hardly mentioned that!”

So here it was, a man whose closest family didn’t even recognize his faith in Jesus Christ, at a critical moment in the life of a Christ-based ministry boldly cast the deciding vote to keep the ministry Christ-based! Where did that kind of courage come from?  It came from the same source that has kept URM alive and well for 119 incredible years of Christian ministry.  Why would we ever, for any reason, funding or not, withdraw ourselves from that dynamic source of power, the power that comes from our faith in Jesus Christ.