A�young man in the neighborhood with a shaved head, baggy shorts and bloodshot eyes asked me once again how things have been going since�we moved in.�
“You need any help?� How are your kids doing?� Anybody messing with you?� You need us to take care of anybody for you?� If you ever need anything, just let it be heard.� Come over to my place.� I live in this apartment right here.”
This offer has been made to me a few times now.� The first offer was made by his friend Lost, the kid who got shot in April and whom I prayed over until the ambulance arrived.� “Thank you so much for praying for me,” Lost said.� “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, call me.� If somebody messes with you, I know people.� We’ll get him.”�� It is both refreshing and unnerving to receive these street-level expressions of hospitality, welcoming me to the hood.��While I am thankful to be making headway with this sub-culture of our community, I am proceeding with caution.� I’m not choosing a side here.� (more…)
Scott Bartchy is a radical. He believes in a subversive system that embraces those on the fringes of our society and seeks to establish a new way of life that goes against the status quo.
Kind of like Jesus.
Bartchy, currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Religions at UCLA, notes a great gap between the original, early form of church in the first three hundred years of Christianity, and the modern concept of doing church today.
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Scott Bartchy is a radical. He believes in a subversive system that embraces those on the fringes of our society and seeks to establish a new way of life that goes against the status quo.