Misfits Welcome: Find Yourself in Jesus and Bring the World Along for the Ride
240
Misfits Welcome: Find Yourself in Jesus and Bring the World Along for the Ride
240eBook
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Overview
Being a misfit does not disqualify you from a dynamic life—it prepares you for it.
Matthew Barnett knows a thing or two about misfits.
As founder of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, a twenty-four-hour church that ministers to thirty-five thousand hurting people a week, Barnett has seen a little of everything. Gangsters, addicts, orphans, taggers, cutters, the sick, the suffering, the hopeless—all the misfits of the world come through the Dream Center’s doors in search of hope.
But when Barnett first arrived in LA, it was he who felt like the misfit. In Misfits Welcome, he shares the simple, life-changing lesson he has learned from twenty years of ministering to the forgotten: Being a misfit prepares you to do the work of the Lord.
Have you found yourself in a jarring new era of life? Have your circumstances deviated drastically from your plans? Maybe you’ve felt like a misfit all your life, or maybe you’re still haunted by yesterday’s mistakes. Whatever the case, rejoice! It is at your most broken that you are most ready for what God has in store.
Misfits Welcome is not just about embracing the misfits around us—it is about embracing the misfits within us and using them for the glory of God.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400206575 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nelson, Thomas, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/14/2014 |
| Sold by: | HarperCollins Publishing |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 925,440 |
| File size: | 446 KB |
About the Author
Temple and the Dream Center in Los Angeles, CA, the first of 150 Dream Centers
launched around the world. He is also the bestselling author of The Church That Never Sleeps and The Cause
Within You. Barnett is married with two
children.
Read an Excerpt
Misfits Welcome
Find Yourself in Jesus and Bring the World a Long for the Ride
By MATTHEW BARNETT
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2014 Matthew BarnettAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4002-0657-5
CHAPTER 1
THE MISFIT IN US ALL
Uniqueness is a powerful thing. It's a wonderful thing. The thing we often think is a liability to the world is the very thing God can use to change it.
Right now focus on the greatest liability you think you have. Not smart enough, not talented enough, not creative enough. Stop right there! If you feel disqualified—in any way—to be used by God, then you need to know right now that your feelings of inadequacy are actually a qualification of usefulness. The Bible is a book of misfits. It's what intrigues us, inspires us, and allows us to see God at work through people who were totally unqualified. We can often identify with people's failures even more than their success.
Everything about my life screams, "Misfit!" The neighborhood where I pastor had been abandoned for years. I came right after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, so things were still very intense. Also, many churches had moved out of the urban community for the safety of the suburbs, creating a void in the community. At any given moment there were more people in the bathroom at the church my father pastored in Phoenix than there were in my entire church on a great day.
"God, I can't do this! I can't relate. I don't have any experience with the needs of this community. Why did You send me to the one place where I have no foundational knowledge of what to do?"
I hated that about my life then.
"Why did You send me, God, to a place where I clearly don't understand the culture, poverty, or community?"
But then God began to speak to me: I didn't call you to the inner city to be relevant, but to be revolutionary. You can honor Me in a greater way by being simply available than if everything came easily for you.
When I showed up in this city of millions, I had it all planned out. I would preach great sermons and people would come to hear me. If I could just do things perfectly, God could use me to build a great church. There was only one problem. God never wanted that. He didn't want my perfection. He wanted my availability.
I struggled for years trying to figure out if momentum would ever come my way. Have you ever felt that way? That the wind is constantly in your face, in the face of your family, and in the face of the vision God has given you? It's a dangerous place, a sad place, and it can sometimes feel endless. It took me five years being a failure of a pastor to realize that God never wanted my perfect plans. He wanted me, the imperfect me.
Brokenness is the greatest gift we can give God. It's a gift that God can work with; it's a gift that moves His heart.
One day I stopped trying to figure out how to crack the code of reaching a city and realized it was time for God to crack me open and reveal the beautiful rough edges that were in me. What I found was beyond astonishing. I began to discover that embracing the unknown in myself was a wonderful thing that unleashed creativity and vision.
Embracing our misfit status is realizing we don't have to be perfect to be used—just willing to be uniquely who God made us. Life doesn't have to be predictable to be wonderful.
Often there are quirks about our lives that we see as weaknesses or even embarrassments. Maybe it's a big personality that dominates a room; maybe it's a quiet personality in the midst of a big room. Maybe it's a discouraging past that won't let you go; maybe it's a future that seems elusive. Maybe it's taking on a task that is greater than your understanding.
In my case it was being a kid from Phoenix who had no clue how to reach the cold, urban streets of Los Angeles. One night changed all that. I decided I would give God my inabilities and allow Him to reshape this flawed kid with no street ministry experience. I presented my clueless self to God, and in the middle of rock bottom I discovered rock bottom is not where people go to die but where people go to be recreated.
Suddenly I didn't have to figure out how to get through my limitations. I decided being out of my comfort zone was perfectly fine. The greatest prayer I prayed was, "God, use this kid who has no idea what he's doing."
God delighted in the fact that He had a young man who didn't have it all together but was flexible enough to allow God to send him on a journey that would radically change his life. When you feel that all you have left is to rely upon God, get ready for the journey to take you anywhere the Master chooses.
* * *
Twenty years later, the church I pastor is based out of a hospital open twenty-four hours a day to serve some of the most broken people in Los Angeles. The vision is nothing like what I had when I came to this city. Honestly, I thought I would just come to church and people would naturally show up because I had it all together and that was it. The road didn't take me down that path.
God decided to give me—a pastor who is totally out of his league, out of his level of understanding, and a total work in progress—a four-hundred-thousand-square-foot hospital to help people. Another prayer I often pray is, "God, help me to stay teachable, never having it all figured out, but perfectly fine with the fact I don't understand the next step."
Now I pastor a church of misfits: girls who are victims of human trafficking, homeless families, people in rehab who have had lifelong drug addictions. It's a beautiful collection of people who are realizing day by day that God doesn't throw away leftover pieces. He redeems them. He collects them to reuse.
You are unique! Don't live in self-doubt. Realize that whatever you see as a flaw or a lack is an opportunity for God to use that beautiful place of vulnerability for His glory. We are all out of our element in some way. We are all in need of God's grace and His miracles.
Realizing you're a misfit means you understand you have more questions than answers. Maybe you feel out of place because of the way you were raised. Perhaps your parents pointed out your flaws. Or maybe in high school people noticed something about your personality that was different. Life simply has a way of breaking us down to the point where we feel our uniqueness is a curse to this world instead of a blessing.
Jesus loved working with rugged fishermen, prostitutes, and people whom nobody wanted. In fact, He loved misfits so much that He placed Rahab, a known prostitute, in His hall of heroes. David, whom He warmly called "a man after my own heart," also made the list (Acts 13:22). The same man who committed adultery and orchestrated a murder plot known as a man after God's own heart? This guy is in the ministry hall of fame? Yes, and it's an amazing picture of just how much God loves us.
He doesn't condone the mistakes in our lives, but often, when misfits realize that they need God for everything in their lives, it's a glorious connection. A life so perfectly attached to God's heart. Do you feel incapable? Then go ahead and pray sincere prayers. Those are ones that say, "God, I need You to show up because You are so much bigger than me." Misfits tend to pray for things that require God to show up.
* * *
Let me tell you about some people God used. When my church finally started to grow, we were hitting an attendance level of around fifty people. The challenge is that more than forty of those fifty were people who came on our buses from Skid Row. Skid Row is a place where people line both sides of several streets in the Los Angeles business district, sleeping around bonfires, cardboard boxes, and tents. Sadly, women and children occupy these cold, dark streets. There are pockets of Skid Row where people line up against walls and practically inject needles until they die—hence the name Skid Row.
Many years ago, our church received its first donation of a brand-new bus. We were so excited. We took that bus down to Skid Row, and during the course of a few months forty homeless people began regularly meeting us for rides to church. Can you imagine looking out on Sunday morning and nearly every person in the church being homeless? I was a pastor who didn't understand anything about homelessness, and I had a congregation of homeless people who just came for the free food after every service. A misfit pastor and a misfit congregation. We were all out of place.
Shockingly, the people started to come to church and bring their friends. Since 80 percent of the people in our church were homeless, we didn't have many volunteers, so God gave us an idea for a position called "Street Deacons." (Don't judge. You have to work with what you have!) I appointed these guys as church staff to help me get as many people on the bus to come to church as possible. You should've seen the smiles on the faces of some of these men.
They couldn't believe someone would love them, believe in them, and give them such a great title. One man cried when I told him that he could be a Street Deacon. Several of the men stopped drinking because they were so honored that they would have this chance. Many of the guys sobered up, dressed up, cleaned up because a pastor had given them a chance to have a role in the church. They went out on the streets and gathered up friends. Every week they would check in with me and give updates on their progress.
They lived for this chance and they made the best of it. They just needed someone to believe the best in them. The first staff members who joined me were an interesting collection of individuals. However, they were the seeds that would later grow into the miracle we now call the Dream Center.
We are often put in places where we know we are called to do something but really don't know how it's going to be done. Give God your limitations, tell Him about the ways you feel unqualified, and then give Him whatever you have left even if it feels like it's just a big bag of burdens. It's all God has ever wanted. That's why the Bible says in 1 Peter 5:7, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."
God loves uniqueness. He loves you. Upon this foundation, we continue by saying, "Welcome, misfits." God's been waiting to use you.
CHAPTER 2MISFIT IDEAS
I will never forget a day that changed my life. It was the day I of my nineteen-year anniversary of pastoring the Dream Center. A few weeks before the anniversary, in prayer, I felt impressed to do something that would shake up the church.
One of my greatest fears for Christian people is that we will start valuing safety over danger. God never called the church to be safe but to be dangerous. It's like something in football called the "prevent defense." The prevent defense is a strategy that says, "Don't try not to make a mistake; just try to survive the rest of the game. Sit in your protective shell and hope to ride out the clock."
When I watch football it seems that the prevent defense never works—same with life. The prevent lifestyle gives way too much attention to the possibility of failure. The entire book of Acts was about a dangerous mission and living on the edge. It was about people who took a risk for God and who succeeded, but sometimes failed. I rebel against any form of faith that says, "Just try to survive." I rebel against any level of a Christian walk that must play it safe.
One day I had an idea that grew into something we call Serve 24. The idea was for the church to do a twenty-four-hour nonstop outreach throughout the entire city of Los Angeles. We would invade the city all hours of the day, doing nothing but serving and extending radical grace. No sleep; no break. The people could choose an hour to serve, maybe two, and—if they were really hard core—they could serve all twenty-four.
We kicked off the outreach by giving away hot dogs from our hot dog cart on Skid Row. After passing out nearly a thousand hot dogs, we went to Long Beach to put on a children's church service and clothing store for the kids and parents. We delivered hygiene kits and blankets to the people on Venice Beach. Two hours later, we raced over to Hollywood Boulevard and listened to teens share their stories of running away from home and of the horrors of sexual abuse they endured as kids. These were teenage kids fighting to survive in a city that swallows up victims.
The city of Los Angeles looks much different after midnight than in the glittering daytime. At night the City of Angels becomes the city of broken hearts—full of people trying to fit in, runaways who believed they could make it in Hollywood only to find their fates trapped by a city that destroys more dreams than it builds.
It was tough going. As the clock ticked, I started to feel I couldn't handle much more. We learn a lot about our faith when we have to battle fatigue and the flesh that demands to have its way. I wanted the outreach to end, but we were only on hour fourteen. Ten hours left to overcome the flesh and to overcome the tears flowing nonstop from my eyes.
We have a home for girls who are victims of human trafficking at the Dream Center, and our staff wanted to show me the "track" the girls take in the middle of the night. It's the route the prostitutes are forced to work every single night. Driving through the streets at night and seeing girls everywhere forced to sell their bodies, I was shocked by how young they were. I couldn't make out the ages of the girls, but they were each somebody's daughter. Not long ago they were probably just doing the things children do.
Our team drove me down the street, and I saw the power of love. Our ladies who run our trafficking ministry, Project Hope, boldly approached these young ladies and asked, "Would you like a free gift?" Sitting in the backseat, I thought, These girls are probably going to tell us to go away or be too embarrassed to take the gift. Wrong. The girls were so overwhelmed somebody wanted to give them something that they literally jumped up and down. Some of them cried. It was the most moving experience to see those girls get that flower, the free lip gloss, the food, and just beam that somebody cared.
It was such a simple idea. Never did I realize that driving down a road, handing out flowers and lip gloss to prostitutes could mean so much. It was a simple idea. Some of the greatest ways we choose to serve are often the ones that do not make sense. Whenever those girls looked at that lip gloss, they saw a rescue number printed on the tube, and a reminder that someone cares.
* * *
Misfit ideas are often off-the-wall. When an idea comes to your mind and it has something to do with simple acts of service, here's my advice: do it! Don't overanalyze kindness. When an idea comes to your mind that has something to do with helping others, that means it is an idea from God.
I almost talked myself out of Serve 24 because it sounded crazy. Now I'm glad I didn't because it transformed so many people inside and outside our church. We actually started several different long-term outreach ministries because of it.
Misfit ideas require faith, and that might scare a lot of people who want God to work within their perfect, well-scripted boxes. The beginnings of great ideas and transformational concepts usually come in short bursts of inspiration. A safety mechanism within the human mind will often try to force them away to protect itself from taking a dramatic course in life. The secret is to let that crazy idea run wild in your mind for a while, to the point where you start visualizing great possibilities. You start seeing the people who could be helped from your willingness to think outside of your comfort and ease.
Misfit ideas are all over the Bible. Just take, for example, these incredible verses and the ideas that didn't make sense.
The masses were flocking to hear Jesus speak. Well out of town, they had no place to get food. The disciples came to Jesus and suggested He send them back to the villages to get food for themselves. They were thinking logically. Nothing wrong with that. "Send them home. It's not our responsibility to feed them. They can buy their own food."
But Jesus had an idea. "They do not need to go away," He said. "You give them something to eat" (Matt. 14:16). Often an unconventional idea is one that comes in the middle of a predictable problem. It's easy to say a problem is too hard to solve. It takes a hopeful idea to see the potential within the problem.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Misfits Welcome by MATTHEW BARNETT. Copyright © 2014 Matthew Barnett. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION, vii,ONE: THE MISFIT IN US ALL, 1,
TWO: MISFIT IDEAS, 11,
THREE: LOOKING FOR MISFITS, 29,
FOUR: EMBRACING MISFITS, 45,
FIVE: MISFITS AND ENCOURAGEMENT, 61,
SIX: MISFIT DREAMS, 75,
SEVEN: MISFITS HELPING MISFITS, 91,
EIGHT: MISFITS REDEEMED, 107,
NINE: MISFIT LOVE, 121,
TEN: MISFIT OBEDIENCE, 139,
ELEVEN: MISFITS AND MESSY MINISTRY, 159,
TWELVE: MISFIT EXPECTATIONS, 177,
AFTERWORD: CARRYING CHRIST'S LOVE TO MISFIT PLACES, 195,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 215,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, 219,