Finding Momentum

The Regen­er­a­tion interns and I are wrap­ping up our year here at church. What have I learned? This was the year I stopped roman­ti­ciz­ing urban min­istry. I hon­estly came in with the idea that I was going to be really warm­hearted and be an amaz­ing res­cuer and friend of the poor who could really see […]

Chan­nel­ing Ice Cube: 94610 prayer walk with church com­mu­nity. Gary shared that doing these walks builds hope in us… helps us remem­ber there’s hope for Oak­land. Give us eyes and ears and a heart for the city and our neigh­bor­hood. And after­wards I bought a brioche knot + a pizza slice at Ariz­mendi and 2 peaches […]

The most dif­fi­cult (and yet I sus­pect one of the most reward­ing) part of this year’s intern­ship has been to sim­ply sit with some­body and lis­ten. Yes, it’s been mad­den­ingly dif­fi­cult with Betty, the lady pic­tured above. Ask any­body; I’m a busy, hyper-scheduled guy. But to lis­ten to some­one is to really allow your­self to be […]

Here’s a few fun pictures:

I’m sit­ting in the ter­mi­nal at SFO and about to board and it’s finally hit­ting me–here we go. A few of you may have got­ten this, but here’s a quick recap of what I’m going to spend the next few weeks doing: I’m going to Cebu What: Mis­sions trip to the Philip­pines with Regen­er­a­tion, my church in Oak­land. When: April 20th […]

The more I stay here the more I real­ize that I am tired, I am self­ish, I am resent­ful. I am being changed–yes–by enter­ing the lives of peo­ple in poverty and see­ing the grace of being invited into their lives. Yes, I am learn­ing from them a sim­ple faith and a sim­ple life. But it is […]

An info­graphic for Free­dom Sun­day at Regen­er­a­tion. Down­load as PDF.

At about 10AM this morn­ing in the mid­dle of Albert’s ser­mon, Mrs. Hu bursts into the sanc­tu­ary and I hear a flurry of hur­ried mur­mur­ing behind me and the flut­ter of a hun­dred heads turn­ing. “Some­one call 911!” Mrs. Hu, wife of Pas­tor Jack Hu of the Chi­nese con­gre­ga­tion we share our church with, was robbed […]

I just came across this verse (1 Peter 4:8) and real­ized that God was rock­ing me with it. I mailed it to the other interns (text: “bah!”) because they know how hard it is for me to serve peo­ple I don’t get along with. But… like Justin men­tioned the other day, what if we changed […]

On a lighter note, let’s start a series called “Pho­tos of Interns In Places They Should Be” Con­versely, we can start a series titled “Pho­tos of Interns in Places They Shouldn’t Be”