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Love in Action

Faces of EKKO, Jan. 13, 2019

She gets the call just as she is preparing to leave to see her family in Big Bear. Two girls aged four and five years old are in desperate need of somewhere safe and warm to stay that night. The family, in the throes of getting evicted, has nowhere else to turn.

Within two hours, Jamie meets the mother at a Del Taco parking lot. Aside from the dual car seats, recently gifted winter coats, and one juice box, the daughters just have the clothes on their backs. There are no toys, no backpacks, no underwear or toothbrushes.

Their mother is quiet as she helps set up the car seats in the back of Jamie’s car. Once she finishes, she helps the girls in, says thank you, kisses the girls goodbye and drives away. The whole exchange lasts less than 10 minutes.

Jamie climbs into the driver’s seat and clicks her seatbelt on. She looks into the rearview mirror at the girls silently sitting in their seats. They don’t say a word as they kick their tiny feet up and down on the elevated car seats. For the next several days, she is temporarily their legal guardian. Taking a deep breath, she begins to drive.

Jamie has wanted to partner with Safe Families since the third or fourth time she visited EKKO on Orphan Sunday. “That Sunday was so impressionable to me as a visitor and spoke so much about what the church cared for,” Jamie says. That day, she began to catch the heart of orphan care and the mission of the Mary and Joseph Initiative. “I wanted to be a part of it as much as I wanted to be a part of EKKO.”

At EKKO, the Mary and Joseph Initiative exists to empower the local church to love the orphans and vulnerable families in our communities.

As she started to get plugged into EKKO, Jamie experienced herself being steeped in community for the first time. She found belonging. In the summer just before she entered Orthopraxis (EKKO’s introduction to discipleship), Jamie’s life was shaken to the core. Her sense of comfort and stability stripped from her in just a matter of days.

“In that humbling time, the community at EKKO was so present. Not everyone knew that I was on food stamps and claiming unemployment, but people would invite me for a meal,” Jamie says. Through their faithful generosity, God provided for her. “I never had to worry,” Jamie continues, her eyes bright. “I felt such a sense of conviction of how true and faithful God is.”

While Jamie weathered one of the hardest seasons of her life, God remained constant. Through Ekko members providing simple and tangible acts of love, Jamie experienced God’s faithfulness in true and profound ways. “It meant so much to me, and I was inspired to do more in response.”

So as Jamie watches the mother drive away with her two children harbored in her warm car, she feels the weight of brokenness. She knows what it feels like to lose your footing overnight. To be unsure where your next meal would come. To not know how to pay your bills as they begin to pile in the mail.

That night, when she and the girls arrive in Big Bear, Jamie begins to realize that the girls are not necessarily shy, they are nonverbal. And during the ride, they had soiled their pants. Over the course of four days, Jamie tries to communicate through food and pointing. The girls, in a state of confusion and stress, oscillate from peaceful moments to violent tantrums.

In a particularly difficult evening in the bathroom when the girls refuse to be bathed, Jamie crouches down on the damp tiles to meet them at their level. “How can I show God’s love right now?” she prays to herself. Gently taking a damp cloth, she begins to wash their hot, tear-stained faces, recalling her own memories of feeling anxious, insecure and stripped of her stability.

It is in a phone call with their mother when she finds out that both of the girls are on the autism spectrum. While it is rare for families not to disclose this information, their parents were so scared no one would take their children if they were informed of their special needs. The sleepless nights and the difficulty communicating started to click into place for Jamie.

A blurry image finally shifted into focus.

While hosting is much harder than she anticipated in regards to laundry and the physical and mundane acts of cooking and feeding and playing, it is also richer in the quiet but moving acts of love and understanding. She begins to catch the heart of the Father in these moments. She recalls the many times that she cried out in anguish and confusion, to be met with His gentle and reassuring touch that He is safe.

That He is faithful and He sees her.

In those moments when she feels she is at the end of her abilities, frustrated and exhausted, still, she is able to give back in abundance what she has been given.

On the day Jamie returns the girls to their parents, their mother refuses to pick them up at the church where Jamie is serving that day. “Wait, is this an address to a church?” the mother asks. “No, I don’t want to pick them up there. Can we meet somewhere else?”

When they decide to meet at a parking lot away from the entrance of the church, their story unfolds to reveal the pain lying just underneath the decimation of their current situation. The mother, a freelance web designer, has not been able to find a job in eight months, and as she was actively trying to find a job to support their family, they got evicted. While Jamie watched the girls for a few days, their parents went around Orange County to find shelters that accepted children. Not only had they lost the roof over their home, but they also had been abandoned by their faith community and their biological families.

“I’m so sorry you were hurt by your faith community,” Jamie says, “I know this is a hard time, but I’m going to pray for you and believe that God will provide.”

They embrace and hold one another until their faces are wet with tears. “God loves you. God sees you,” she prays into her ears, her spirit is full of faith while her heart continues to break.

The mother looks back at Jamie with tears in her eyes. “I’ve never heard a Christian say that to me.”

Jamie waves goodbye to the family, ends her first hosting and returns to church. Her body weak from exhaustion, but her heart deepened — stretched with love for God’s people, with anger against injustice, with frustration about a broken system that perpetuates homelessness and poverty.

“It was hard giving these girls back knowing that they were going to go to a shelter. But, the love the mom had for her kids is so palpable. The circumstances were just terrible. They were trying all that they could to survive, just trying to maintain custody,” Jamie explains.  “It’s not comfortable, and it’s not easy. Committing as a member and as a Safe Family is hard work.” Through the experience of her first hosting, Jamie learns that yes, God is her provider, but He isn’t about her contentment. “God isn’t about my comfort. But His love is tangible, and I’m learning that it’s truly a privilege to be His hands and His heart to love His people in this community.”

“I may be living paycheck to paycheck, but I can feed another mouth. That doesn’t need to be a worry for me.”

Since she became a member in 2017, Jamie has hosted five different times with different children finding solace in her home as a Safe Families Host. “There is so much joy to be learned from a child’s heart. To be brave, to embrace joy in the little things, to lean into vulnerability…” she says. “I didn’t anticipate the joy these children would bring.”

And through these experiences, our church is changed as well.

As a body, we get to catch the heart of God through our Safe Families hosts by having the opportunities to walk alongside Jamie as she opens her home. As Ekklesia leaders, MJI members, friends, and pastors, we get to partner with our hosts emotionally and financially to help foot the cost of gas, food, and activities. 

It takes the body to love God’s world. 

“Jesus said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’”

— Matthew 22:37-40 (MSG)

“Love is not a feeling, it is a decision and an action,” Jamie says, “Safe Families is an opportunity to radically practice love and allows our fellow communities to experience not only our own love for others but God’s love for them.”

The Mary and Joseph Initiative (MJI) at Ekko Church exists to love on the orphans and vulnerable families in our communities. We strive to educate our church about orphan care issues so that we can equip ourselves to be able to support those in our tribe who adopt, foster or serve as a host family. We want to participate in the mission that God calls us to care for the orphan and to carry the spirit of adoption. 

Contact an MJI Team member to learn more about how to serve or support those partnering as a host family for Safe Families.

Safe Families for Children is a unique family preservation program that collaborates with local churches and volunteers to support children and parents navigating difficult circumstances such as unemployment, homelessness, hospitalization and addiction. Safe Families is a positive alternative to the child state welfare system and allows parents to arrange for their children to stay with a host family while they work through the issues that led to instability without the fear of losing custody. The program’s goal is to reunite children with their parents in a home that is healthy and stable. 

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The Secret Ingredient

God wants us to grow up. (Ephesians 4:15 MSG)

Our mission statement at EKKO addresses a problem we face as Christians: that most people feel weak in their faith.

We often feel defeated or weak.

We’ve lost sensitivity to the Spirit.

We indulge in impure actions (like anger or fornication…)

We live lives of greed and are unwilling or unprepared to give of ourselves to others in our world.

We’ve been controlled by deceitful desires, instead of shaped by godly disciplines, rituals or habits.

Our feelings and attitudes dictate our days.

How did this happen? Why is our faith weak?

We have weak faith due to the hardening of our hearts. Apostle Paul explains it this way in Ephesians:

Our hearts have become hardened. So, how do we stop our hearts from getting hardened against God? The secret ingredient is: The-Fear-of-the-Lord.

What does it mean to Fear the Lord?

“It means to have God’s attitude toward sin, and to have a deep and healthy respect for his character and holiness.”

– Joy Dawson

The first ingredient to making sure our hearts don’t get hardened is the fear of the Lord, not love… nor obedience.

“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul.” (Deut. 10:12 NLT)

The Fear of the Lord includes reverence and respect, but it also includes actual fear and trembling. Yes, God is our loving God and Savior, but He’s also our Judge.

This isn’t just Old Testament or Old Covenant teaching. Jesus says this in the Gospel of Matthew, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

God cares enough to bless and reward us (Hebrews 11:6), but he also cares enough to discipline us like a father to a child (Prov. 3:12).

In the book of Acts, we read about the first church that grew not only because of miracles but also because of the fear-of-the-Lord. It tells of a couple who drop dead because they lied to the Holy Spirit. Ananias and Sapphira claimed to have given all of their profits to the church.

“You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!” As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died.” (Acts 5:3-5 NLT) 

As followers of God, we want miraculous healings and for God to intervene, but we do not want miraculous disciplines or God judging us.

If we desire His miracles, we must be open to judgment as well.

We cannot pick and choose God’s intervention. 

The Word for this Year: For us to become God-Fearing Men and Women.

Before we become God-fearing people, our tendencies are selfish. We often ask questions like, “How does this make me feel? Look?” “How does this affect relationships with those I like?” “How do I benefit?”

But as we become God-fearing people, our questions turn toward God’s heart and His desires. We begin to ask questions like, “How does this make God feel? How does this make Him look?” “How does this affect my relationship with God?” “How can I use this to benefit others?”

“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14 NIV)

While the non-fearing person is conscious of self and man, the God-Fearing person is conscious of God.

Their biggest concern is grieving the Holy Spirit.

So how do we soften our hearts?

We must have a correct vision of Christ. We must cast away our false idol of Jesus. We must get into the Word of God.

The Lion & The Lamb

We often place too much emphasis on the loving, gracious and gentle side of our Savior. We focus too much on our Savior as the Lamb. But, Jesus is also wholly righteous and Holy. He is decisive and confrontational. We must see the dual nature of Jesus. To focus on one at the expense of the other gives an incomplete, and ultimately heretical, view of him.

This year, let’s ask God for the fear of the Lord.

“Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” (Psalm 86:11 ESV)

Pray this with us:

I  love and fear You.

You hold eternity in Your palms. 

And my life is like dust.

I love and fear You. 

It is You who weighs the breath in my lungs.

And yet, You care for me. 

I love and fear You. 

For You are wholly both. 

You are the Lion 

and the Lamb. 

I love and fear you. 

You are God. 

And I am not. 

You are my God. 

Let’s get into the Word this year. Below you’ll find a number of resources and devotionals you can use to help you dive into God’s Word.

Devotionals:

  1. The Message Solo New Testament: An Uncommon Devotional
  2. The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in Daily Life
  3. ESV Devotional Psalter
  4. New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

Tools to Read the Bible Daily:

  1. The Bible Project: Read the Bible in One Year
  2. YouVersion Bible App

Books:

  1. Intimate Friendship with God: Through Understanding the Fear of the Lord
  2. Joy of Fearing God
  3. What is the Bible? How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything
  4. Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

You can listen to the sermon The Secret Ingredient from the Ephesians series that inspired this post here.

All images and materials are copyright protected and are the property of EKKO Church unless otherwise noted and credited to their maker. Please do not copy or distribute without permission.

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To Be a Blessing

“Our mission is to belong and become,” Pastor Bryan reiterates in his sermon at the beginning of the night.

“But.” He pauses. “The question is: what are we becoming?”

And how do we know if we are going in the right direction?

When we look around the sanctuary on the night we celebrate our tenth anniversary, we look around to see familiar and unfamiliar faces. Faces of those who have been at EKKO since the humble beginnings in a small apartment and others of those who have prayed between the tight corners in the warehouse we eventually outgrew. And there are the new faces of those who have just stepped through the borrowed doors of our building just months, weeks, or days before. It’s a beautiful mosaic of new and old faces, belonging together under one roof commemorating what God has done in and through our church in the ten years EKKO Church has existed.

For most of us sitting between these walls in the sanctuary, we’ve found home here.

At EKKO, we found more than friends. We found co-laborers and we have together been equipped to become the people God intended for us to be.

Belonging to a tribe provides a safe place for us to be transformed.

“We belong here. So what kind of people are we becoming?” Pastor Bryan asks us again.

In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes to the church, “And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

We are becoming a dwelling in which God lives.

We are becoming a church.

In an adapted story that Pastor Bryan shares that night, he tells a story about a woman named EKKO who receives a vision from the Lord to build a church in her city. Throughout the story, we listen as she painstakingly gathers the resources to build this dream that God had given her, only to give it all away when disaster strikes nearby towns and communities.

Not once, but twice does she end up relinquishing all of her gifts for the sake of others.

While we listen to the story, it’s easy to wonder why God had given her this dream to build a church, when circumstances for it to come into fruition keep derailing her plans. It is only at the end of her life when she is able to see the dream come to life in the shape of a building being built and used by the people. If God gave her this vision to build a church, why is it that she is only able to see it come into focus at the end of her life?

As the story closes, it ends with this:

It is said to this day that Ekko had actually accomplished her task of building a church three times during her life rather than simply once—the first two being more beautiful and radiant than the last.

This parable illustrates this idea that it’s easy to think of a church as a tangible building we could call our own. But in the end, the church that God desires is not necessarily a wonderful building, but rather a people who are attentive, mindful, responsible, and response-able to the needs of His heart.

The church God dwells in is made up of a people who desire the things that God desires and cares for the things that God cares about.

And like the character in the story, we build a church that God wants to dwell in when we become who we were meant to be: a blessing.

God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you. I’ll make you a great nation and bless you. I’ll make you famous; you’ll be a blessing. I’ll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I’ll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12: 1-4 MSG)

For our tenth anniversary, we planned to give 100% of the tithes and offerings received that night toward blessing the world. We did this intentionally to remind ourselves that we have been blessed in order to be a blessing. At the start, we partnered with charity: water to fund a $20,000 piping system that would provide clean water for a school of 700 students in Rwanda.

Photo from charity: water

But that night, we actually tripled our goal by raising $60,000, securing clean water for 2,100 students in three different schools in the Gicumbi District of Rwanda. These systems allow students to drink clean water in their schools, use running water for toilets and handwashing, supply potable water to the students and teachers, and thereby improving overall health.

While this act of radical generosity continues to astound us, we are reminded that the success of the night isn’t in how much money we raised.

It isn’t even in how much we’ve grown as a church or have survived the last ten years.

Our success as a church is that we are becoming a blessing to God’s world.

In the weeks leading up to our anniversary, we also introduced a new expression of giving at EKKO: our Missions and Outreach Fund. (Read more and find out about which organizations we gave to this year here). As we enter into the new year, we plan to introduce more opportunities and channels that we can give our time, money, and gifts towards to bless the world.

We are becoming a generous and kind people that are mindful of the things God cares about.

We are living out the blessing He is making us to be.

“Building a Church”
By EKKO Church, adapted from Peter Rollins

“It has been said that many years ago there was a church called Ekko who received a vision in which God spoke to her as a dear friend. In this conversation, God asked that Ekko dedicate her life to the task of building a church in her city.

Ekko began to grow and the desire to build a beautiful new building, a facility that would accommodate its growth, began to be pressing. Now, at this time new buildings were extremely costly, the only facilities being built were by well-to-do churches in well-to-do-cities. Ekko was not birthed with a silver spoon in its mouth, hence the task seemed impossible. She would have to raise a vast sum of money to purchase the land and acquire the help of architects, get permission from the city and deal with contractors. All to build a beautiful building, a lasting church, in the city.

However, the impossibility of the task did not sway her in the least. After having received her vision, Ekko sold the few items she possessed and lived a minimalist’s life, working hard with her hands, so as to make and save as much as possible for the funds needed to build this church. But raising the money proved to be a long and difficult task, it took longer than initially planned to save, and the job market constantly shifted, requiring Ekko to work different jobs and sometimes even part-time gigs to make it through the month. But gradually, over the next ten years, the money began to accumulate and enough was saved for the initial phases of the building journey. The new church was in view!

Shortly before the commissioning of the first set of blueprints, a dreadful fire ravaged a nearby town, destroying many people’s homes and livelihood. When the news reached Ekko she gathered up what she had raised and spent it on food for the hungry, material to help rebuild lost homes, and basic provisions for the dispossessed. Eventually, the town began to recover from the fire that had befallen it and so Ekko left and returned to the city in order to start over again, all the while remembering the vision that God had planted deep in her heart.

Many more years passed slowly, extracting their heavy toll on Ekko. But there were now many who had been touched by her love and dedication, so although people were poor, the money began to accumulate once again.

However, after nine more years, disaster struck again. This time an earthquake devastated the city, stealing the lives of thousands and leaving many children without families or support. But now Ekko was tired and very ill, yet without hesitation, she used the money that had been collected to buy medicines for the sick, homes for the orphaned, and land where the dead could be buried safely.

Never once did she forget the vision that God had imparted to her, but the severity of the earthquake required that she set this sacred call to one side in order to help with the emergency. Only when the chaos from the earthquake had settled did she once again take to the drawing boards, driven by her desire to build a powerful and beautiful church so that many people could belong and become who God had intended them to be.

Finally, shortly before her death, Ekko was able to gather together the money required for the new church building. Although she was, by this time, close to death, Ekko lived long enough to see the first church being built and used by the people.

It is said to this day that Ekko had actually accomplished her task of building a church three times during her life rather than simply once—the first two being more beautiful and radiant than the last.”