The Vegas Missional Outpost

Jesus is the Answer

Being back in Vegas my wife and I have had the opportunity to catch up with many friends. We have been burdened by how many have chosen to stop walking with Jesus. Now I want to make a distinction when I say walk away from Jesus. I do have some friends who have walked away from a church environment due to many different reasons. Some have walked away becuase they have been forced out by a pastor with an agenda. Some have simply found the church culture here irrelevant to their life. A small group of my friends have regulated themselves to meeting every Thursday (aside from some weeks when they cancel church due to a table that needs sanding) to talk about Jesus and drink beer. They call it: Beer Church. Now the big travesty here is that beer made in St. Louis is often the beer of choice. Choice of church name aside, I am more concerned with my friends who have looked at a irrelevant church culture as an excuse to not love Jesus.

"Christians are supposed to be loving. These people aren't loving, and they have the Holy Spirit!" This came out of the pious mouth of a good buddy of mine as we watched Monday Night Football the other night.  My friend uses the excuse of Christians "suppossedly" not loving him as a reason for him to not love Jesus anymore. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if people sin against me, I am still a sinner. Right? And if people don't love me, I am still loved by God. Right? And God showed his love for me that while I was a sinner, that deserves to spend eternity away from him in hellfire, Christ died for me so that I could spend eternity with him in heaven. Right? So unless people not loving me produces a tomb with Jesus' decayed body, how does Christians not loving me justify my not loving Jesus?

You can get the sense of how I feel about my friend's decision. It deeply saddens me that many of my friends have simply waited for the first thing to go wrong in their life as an excuse to opt out of following Jesus. But, as I talked with my buddy I was deeply saddened by something else. My response to his many comments was simply this:

"Have you prayed for these people? Does it grieve you when people don't love you, becuase you realize that they haven't been touched by the love of God? Do you pray that God would reveal his love to them by the Holy Spirit that lives inside of them? Sure you get mad, people not being loving sucks. But has it made you sad? Due you love the world around you so much, that you realize that when people don't love it has a negative impact on the world? Or are you simply pissed that they have wronged you, and desire some sort of retribution? Have you been so deeply touched by the fact that while you were a sinner that Jesus died for you? Has this humbled you to realize that every bit of good about you is due to God's grace?"

My friend told me he was going to be firing these questions at me all night. Yet after being confronted with the gospel truth of the matter, he didn't ask me a single question the rest of the night. After being confronted with his lack of humility, and reception of the gospel for that matter, he couldn't muster the self-righteousness to put God in the dock anymore. After being confronted with the convicting, loving, and end-all mesage of the gospel as the answer and reason for his problem, he couldn't think of any more problems.

This makes me sad again becuase I wonder how much the gospel has been used as the central point of everything when my friend entered church. I wonder what his preacher said when talking about not sleeping with his girlfreind, or not getting drunk, or how to love. I wonder if his preacher made his and others sin the number one problem, and Jesus life and work on the cross the answer? I wonder if he even had ears to hear it.

The thing is that many people will come up with many reasons not to love Jesus. Even with as many reasons as you can find, YOU ARE STILL A SINNER, and as much as you may ignore it, JESUS DIED FOR SINNERS. So here's my plan for Vegas: keep telling people that they are sinners and this is their biggest problem in life. This is what hurts their relationships, their life, and keeps them from the best relationship of all: God. And keep telling people that Jesus died to destroy sin, and that this is the solution to their biggest problem. Through Jesus they get restored relationships, eternal life, and a relationship with God. that no matter what happens in life this is a truth they can hold as an anchor. When the world is against them, they can eb comforted that no one can separate them from the love of God in Jesus Christ. I'm hoping this catches on.

Matt

To Love a Whore

No passage of Scripture has been as influential to the call to be back in Vegas than Hosea 1:

In the passage God basically tells Hosea to marry a whore, and to have children of whoredom. This has confused theologians for years. They have a hard time figuring out how God could command something of this nature, but as Bono says about the Holy Spirit, "She moves in Mysterious Ways". When you think about it, this is absolutely crazy right. How would it look today.

Imagine your friend Jimmy shows up to the company Christmas party with a hooker as his date. At the end of the night most people at the company write it off as a joke, or they just assume Jimmy had a few too many Zima's before the party and wasn't thinking correctly. The next day at work you remind Jimmy that stunts like that will hurt his chances at dating any respectable girls. Now, a few weeks later you see Jimmy holding hands with this girl while walking down the street. The next day at work you freak out on him, "Jimmy those are not the girls you hold hands with. Jimmy, you don't date those girls." Now imagine that a month later you get the invitation to "Jimmy and Jazmin's Wedding".

Honestly, were not talking about a girl that's made a couple bad choices. Were talking about a hooker. The kind of girl that gets hepatitis shots, has sores on her lips, uses a can of hairspray each week, refuses to believe that high-heel leather boots never go out of style, snaps her gum loudly, and says, "Hey there sugar" to every guy she passes on the street. THIS IS THE GIRL GOD TELLS HOSEA TO MARRY.

Now if this were your friend you would assume that he is either; 1. Crazy, 2. Blind and Deaf, or 3. A Huge Pervert with a Sexual Addiction. The problem is that you know he can see and hear, he's never been sexually active before (and he's waiting until marriage for Jazmin), and that he is a exemplary worker and public servant. When he tells you that the reason he loves her is that God told him to, you don't freak out. You think to yourself, "Well, that's about the only explanation that makes sense. Well, kinda."

Now think of the city. What is the city full of, more than anything: PEOPLE. All of these people, created in the image and likeness of God. But what have they done to the image of God. People were created to be in relationship with the one true God, their creator. But like Hosea, they have traded a relationship with a noble husband to be used like a piece of meat. Used by Satan, to diminish God's glory, people have become a whore. At what is the apex of her whoring: the city. Think of the city, it's where all the bad things happen. It's where all the bad people live. The good people retreat to the suburbs, to protect themselves from the evil of the city. God loves the city, in the end of time its a His great city that He's bringing down to earth. But, the city looks nothing like it should. It looks like a whore.

Well, here's the thing, God's in the business of telling men to go love and serve whores. He has told me to go love and serve Las Vegas. Why would anyone love and serve Las Vegas? Nevada's population boomed in the 1950's and 1960's because it had the shortest term for divorces. Las Vegas in particular blew up when a few mob guys decided that what was just a train stop between the rockies and L.A. could be used to propagate a lifestyle that could be lived for a fews days in the desert, and forgotten about by all parties days later. Does that sound familiar? Las Vegas actually means, "The Meadows" in Spanish, and you can actually see old silos still standing in a couple neighborhoods. Now all of the natural resources have been used up, and half the town is flooded every July when the thunderstorms hit. For decades men have unsuccessfully tried to keep green lawns, only to see desert landscaping become the trend. The town doesn't exactly sustain life well. Not to mention the strip clubs, or the county commissioners they used to own. There is no reason to love Vegas. Well, unless God told you to.

"Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, 'Children of the living God.'And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel." - Hosea 1:10-11

May God do the same in Vegas.

Matthew Hudgins

Las Vegas or Bust

Las Vegas or Bust?

By the fall of 2005 my wife and I were certain that God was calling us to plant a church in Las Vegas. In fact we put it into a four year plan. No kidding, we set up a four year plan that would have us in Vegas by the fall of 2009 planting a church on or near the strip to help reach all of those crazy young adults. One of the items on the plan was to get as much training as we could from Acts 29, the church planting organization run by our church Mars Hill. By January, I had the opportunity to even get training by working with the church under the idea that I would eventually plant. The first step was being assessed by the Acts29 network as a church planter (note: this is the equivalent of a Junior High kid trying out for the High School football team). The next step was an interview with Pastor Mark Driscoll regarding what would be the next step.

The day of the appointment my wife kissed me on the cheek, told me she was praying for me, and off I was. We were both really excited, because this interview could possibly mean me getting trained by a pastor of the 22nd Most Influential Church in America. We even drove down to Portland the day before to meet with our Campus Crusade for Christ mentors for wisdom and advice about our direction in ministry. My great friend and mentor Adam specifically prayed that Mark would speak wisdom, and that it would clarify where God was leading us. We had no idea what exactly would come of that prayer.

At the appointment Mark asked questions about my time line for planting a church in Las Vegas (fall 2006), and when we plan on having children (we're trying our hardest, we promise). What he said, we never saw coming. He said that because of the time line for planting, and the fact that our family all lives in Vegas (grandparents love to be by the new babies) that we should move back to Las Vegas. After talking awhile, he even agreed to give me a letter of recommendation. So I walked back into my house, kissed my wife on the cheek, and said, "How about Vegas this fall?"

If it were up to us we would stay in Seattle until 2009. They have four seasons here, something we had never experienced in the desert. We live right by campus and get to hang out in frat houses sharing the gospel. We get to drink great coffee by the lake in the fall, and see the tulips in the spring. But Jesus has called, and starting this fall we are back in Vegas sharing the gospel with the young crazy people.

soli deo gloria

Matthew Hudgins