If you've been with us at EPIC, you know that we've been making our way through the book of James. Last night we found ourselves in the passage of James 2:14-26 where James basically says that faith without deeds is not true faith at all. It's a challenging passage and our creative elements team decided that instead of spending time breaking down this passage and discussing it together, let's just provide opportunities to get out of the church and apply it.
Tommy Morse organized three projects for people to participate in - a visit to a local convalescent home [which turned into a neighborhood prayer walk], an outreach to the homeless at Alondra Park, and cooking a homemade dinner and delivering it to a family which consisted of a single mom and her five kids.
Instead of me [chris] telling you about it, I'd like to introduce Big Drew to tell you about his experience last night.
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Andrew Terrel Abram. People call me “Big Drew”. I grew up in Gardena all my life. Roosevelt told me about this church. I’ve been coming to this church for 5 months. I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters.
What do you like about being part of the family we call EPIC?
I like being around people my own age, people I can relate to. I live not too far from the church so this is my community. I’m a part of the worship team so when I sing, that’s part of my outlet. There’s still some people I don’t know but it’ll come in time.
So what did you do as part of our service project opportunities last night?
I went to Alondra park to reach out to some homeless people. The group I was with [Teagan, Lainel, and Josiah] gave out some blankets, and fed them a hot meal. We talked to a guy named Norman. He’s been homeless since 2004. He used to work as a dispatcher at LAX, and then he became a construction worker. He wanted to work but he got laid off and never found another job. After the unemployment checks stopped coming, he couldn’t pay rent and was forced to make the streets his home. It’s not what he wanted for himself but it just happened.
He said it’s hard sometimes, especially when it gets really, really cold. He makes his rounds through different parks to elude the cops.
We also met a guy named Antonio who also used to be construction worker as well and he’s been homeless for 2 years now. Him and a couple of his friends sleep under the parking structure.
After spending some time with them, giving them some blankets, and buying them a hot meal, it just felt right to treat the homeless as people and not statistics.
What did you come away with from the overall experience last night?
That if you don’t put your faith into works, it makes your faith useless. Also, if you do works for recognition, there’s no worth in that either. It's just good for us to get out of the church building and be the church.
Any last words you want to say?
If you don’t know me, come up and talk to me and we can get to know each other cause we’re family.
