Summer is in full swing and all I can say is, I much prefer spending the summer in Los Angeles than in Atlanta. The heat and humidity in Atlanta, even this early in the summer, made me appreciate the amazing weather we enjoy here. So I promise I won’t complain (as much) about the heat this summer.

General Conference (GC) was such an interesting experience. I’ve been to the last three GC sessions but this time, with a press credential, I had moments of being closer to the “action” as it were. There are so many changes that took place this time. If you would like to know more about what’s been happening there are a couple of websites I can recommend for news and analysis. One is the Adventist News Network. Another is Spectrum Magazine.

I did have the chance to meet our newly elected North American Division President, Dan Jackson who was previously the President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada. He replaces Don Schneider who has been NAD President for 10 years. His comments during the his press conference gave me great hope for progressive leadership in North America.

Upon returning to Los Angeles earlier this week, however, one impression is lasting. The things that really matter in the church—the work that has the most impact for God’s Kingdom—happens in local churches embedded in communities all over the world. Nothing will ever change that. Much of the work that happens in the upper echelons of the church organization is important, but the most important work is here, where Sabbath after Sabbath we do our best to bear witness to the Jesus who came vulnerably to this earth to redeem the earth and all its inhabitants through radical acts of love and grace. It is this that should be our focus.

Peace be with you,

Ryan

I’ve been in Atlanta for just about a week now. Aside from the fact that it’s 97 degrees and incredibly humid, things are going really well. The first few days I was here I attended a pastors’ conference, the highlight of which was reconnecting with some Seminary friends that I haven’t seen in nearly 10 years. I also facilitated a Q&A session after a screening of Stained Glass: Hollywood Blvd with about 50 pastors. In case you haven’t heard of it, Stained Glass: Hollywood Blvd is a documentary made by one of our members, Melody George, about the early missional transformation of our congregation. It’s always rewarding for me to interact with other pastors around the story of what God has been up to here.

In between the pastors’ conference and General Conference I took a few hours and visited the home where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. Just down the street from his home is the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr’s father and grandfather both ministered. I also snuck in a quick trip to Southern Adventist University to visit with Melody, who’s staying there for the time being. It was my first visit to Southern and contrary to some rumors, I think the campus is incredibly beautiful!

The opening of General Conference has been interesting. Amidst rumors about whether our current General Conference President, Jan Paulsen, is retiring, or who the next GC President will be, and other discussions about policy, I’ve been helping set up the Spectrum booth. New Name Pictures has a small portion of the booth and it’s been great to share our vision for NNP with the visitors to the booth. This weekend will be the SONscreen Film Festival and our two social justice PSAs will be among the films screened there.

Please keep these proceedings in your prayers. While the decisions made here might seem far removed from the missional life we are living in Los Angeles, they really do have an impact on our congregation and others who are trying to live faithfully as God’s people in our postmodern world.

And of course, I miss you…

Five years ago, one of the very first things I did after moving to Hollywood was to leave for St. Louis for the General Conference Session. Every five years the Seventh-day Adventist Church sends delegates from all the world fields to one location to do the business of the church. This is the 59^th such gathering in the history of the church. This the time when our General Conference President, Vice Presidents, and other Division level leaders are elected and changes to our Fundamental Belief and the Church Manual are made (if necessary).

Theoretically, General Conference Sessions are times when the church’s official position on things can change. There is a deep conviction in the Adventist psyche that God is present to lead and guide church leaders during GC Sessions, but this has not always been the case. Ellen White herself indicated that at times the men in leadership (always men) did not heed the voice of God in the decisions that they made.

Honestly, I’m not sure if any major decisions will be made this year during the GC Session.

Many people, including me, would like to see some official steps taken to ordain women to pastoral ministry, but that will not come up this year, I’m told. Please keep all the proceedings in prayer. I believe we have a very good General Conference President, but there could be change in this area, so please pray that God will lead in all the decisions.

As for me, I’ll be attending a pastors’ conference in Atlanta before the GC Session official starts. While there I’ll have the chance to speak to a group of pastors after a screening of our “Stained Glass” documentary that Melody George created. Later in the week I’ll be helping out with the Spectrum “Big Tent Adventism” booth in the exhibit hall. As a part of the “Big Tent” I’ll be representing our church’s production venture, New Name Pictures.

Thank you for your support and prayers while I’m away!

Peace be with you,

Ryan

Every week I am reminded how fortunate I am to serve this congregation. This past Wednesday, New Name Pictures  held a very successful fundraiser party. Approximately 50 people came together to celebrate the first six months of our media ministry and also the 30th birthday of our media ministry director, Julia Alty. Everyone had a great time and we raised nearly $2000 toward New Name Pictures. Special thanks to everyone who came out to support and especially those who but so much effort into making the event happen!

Tomorrow is the LA Voice Immigration Action at the Westside JCC. Please see the announcement here in the bulletin for all the details. Whether Comprehensive Immigration Reform is something you understand well and you’ve formed your opinions already, or if this is an issue you don’t know much about but would like to understand it from a faith-based perspective, please join us tomorrow at 3:00 pm and hear powerful testimonies and research reports about how immigration reform would impact our community and the families we represent.

We’re about midway through our year. In the next few weeks I want to give you a progress report on where we stand as a congregation. In the meantime, please prayerfully consider how God is leading you to support the work of the Hollywood Church with your gifts, talents, finances and prayer.

This is the final week of Easter. This concludes what I think of as the high seasons of the Christian Year, from Advent to Easter. Next Sabbath is the Pentecost Sabbath and we enter that long season that takes us back to Advent in late November. It also signals the beginning of summer. This hard to believer we’re back at summer! It’s been an amazing journey, hasn’t it?

We are rapidly approaching what is possibly one of the biggest weekends of the year—May 1 and 2. What is amazing about this weekend is that it is a perfect balance of what makes our congregation amazing and unique. May 1 is a celebration of the artistic community that God has brought together in this place. May 2 will be a beautiful example of the justice and community service work that has been a hallmark of this congregation for years.

So, here’s what you can look forward to next weekend (and more details can be found inside the bulletin):

May 1—Join us at 2:30 pm for a dress rehearsal performance of a play written and acted by the members of Artists’ Workshop entitled, “40 Days of Lent.” Then, at 7:30 pm come back for the main performance and bring a dozen of your closest friends, too. There is a $5 suggested donation at the door and there will be refreshments for sale as well. All money will go to support our arts and media ministries of the church. So please come and support this amazing production. You will not be disappointed!

May 2—For years our church has participated in Big Sunday but this year we are hosting a project. I wish I had the space here to tell you all the doors that God has been opening, but let me just say this. We have the backing and support of our Councilmember Tom LaBonge, who came out the other day and looked at the project with us, the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council, who donated $500 to the project, our State Assemblyman Mike Feuer, and CalTrans, who owns the property. So, needless to say, we’ve hit on a great project. Please visit my.bigsunday.org and search for Project #86 to learn more and sign up. You can also sign up with Kori or Nathan.

I really hope you can make it out to these two major events next week. I look forward to seeing you there!

Grace and peace,

Ryan

Easter lasts for six weeks in the Christian calendar and our goal this year is to focus as intensely on Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for our community in Hollywood as we focused on Lent - our journey with Jesus to the cross. During Lent we spent almost 6 weeks asking ourselves, “What am I laying down for the sake of my walk with God? How is God pruning from my life things that are in the way?”

Now we turn our attention to a slightly different question: What is God birthing in my life? What new thing does God want to do in me and through me?” I hope you will carefully consider these questions. This is the heart of the gospel! This is the question which, I think, will open the door to “what’s next” for us in Hollywood.

To help us on this journey we’ll be doing a short series of messages in worship from the book of Revelation. This week I’ll be giving a message from Revelation 1:1-8. I encourage you to read it a few times before you come to church and allow God to begin speaking to you about it.

With you in seeing resurrection in our world,

~Pastor Ryan Bell

Today is the Sabbath each year when we remember Christ’s fateful journey into Jerusalem for the final time before his death. The traditional name for this journey into the city is the “Triumphal Entry.” It was triumphant in the sense that Jesus was rightly hailed as King by his followers—what we might call today his “entourage.” And what an entourage it was! People waved palm branches, laid their cloaks, or outer garments, in the road, and sang praises to Jesus!

On the other hand, there is a dark irony about calling it a “triumphal” entry. Jesus’ triumph lasted but a moment. According to Luke’s narrative, Jesus wasn’t even in the city yet before he began to weep over the city and pronounce judgments on it. Then he enters the temple and drives out those who had turned that “house of prayer” into a “den of robbers.”

Jesus’ “triumphal entry” is something like a staged protest—like a march! He marches into the city with his followers, speaks truth to power and executes justice on behalf of the people who are with him; those that had been excluded from access to this sacred “house of prayer” by the unjust actions of the wealthy and powerful. Up to the last, Jesus was weeping over the city he loved and the people in it while working to right the wrongs that were destroying people’s lives and raising unnecessary obstacles in the path to God.

Our God is a God of justice and mercy. Jesus, as we see from this story, was an activist, who paid for his convictions with his life. This begins our remembrance of the final week of Jesus life. Today we are faced with the question: Will we follow Jesus into the city as these disciples of old did? Will we declare with our voices that Jesus is truly King over all the world while at the same time following him with our feet—our actions? This is the call of the gospel this Holy Week.

Come! Let us follow our Lord to Jerusalem—to the cross!

Grace and peace,

Ryan

Today we have the privilege of spending time with one of the most beloved stories in all the Bible—the story of the Prodigal Son. But the classic prodigal is not the only character in this drama. There is the Father, the older son, the younger son’s fair-weather friends, and a whole host of “extras” to round out the scene.

Today we have a chance to ask ourselves where we are in this story and to examine, once again, our relationship to God, our Father (pardon me for a quick aside: I use the male imagery of “father” because that’s the imagery of the parable Jesus tells, not because God is somehow male). How are we relating to God? How do we imagine God relating to us?

This story speaks powerfully of God’s grace and mercy that is inherent in God’s character. We love God because God first loved us, John would later write in his gospel, perhaps reflecting on this story he heard Jesus tell.

Whatever the case, I want to ask you to think, today, about where you need grace in your life. This is really a continuation of the question I asked last week, related to the fig tree that wasn’t bearing fruit. If you remember, the gardener (Jesus?) asks the owner of the fig tree for one more year to coax figs from this barren tree. I asked you, “Who could use one more year? Who could use one more chance?” Today the words are different but the question is the same: Who needs grace?

If you’re as desperate for grace as I am, I hope you’ll hear in this story an invitation to forgiveness. And then a calling, to offer your forgiveness to someone else who, but for your grace toward them, might be living in total despair.

Grace and peace,

Ryan

I’m writing today from a very cozy little coffee shop in College Place, Washington. I’m looking out the window here at a grey landscape that reminds me a lot of suburban Philadelphia in winter, actually. I have never been to Walla Walla before. Believe it or not, there’s a big thriving Adventist university here. Last night two students took me to a wonderful little restaurant in downtown Walla Walla (population 31,000). It was inspiring to talk to this Junior theology major and his girlfriend about the work they’re doing on campus. John runs the collegiate worship service called The Awakening… all while going to school full time. Melissa is a math and physics double major (interestingly, I started my college career as a math and physics double major), but her primary concern now is how she can use her education to serve people. When I meet people like John and Melissa I feel much more optimistic about the future of the Adventist Church. We need give all the space and support we can to young people like this.

This afternoon I’m having lunch with Dr. Jon Dybdahl. Jon is one of the spiritual giants of the Adventist Church and I am so honored to call him my friend and mentor. I haven’t seen him since he was in Hollywood speaking for a joint service with the Thai church back in 2006. So needless to say I’m looking forward to catching up with him.

Then, later tonight I’ll be speaking to the University students here for their Friday night Vespers. I’m looking forward to interacting with these students, sharing with them a little bit of our life in Hollywood, and catching a little of what God is up to here in this part of the country.

I should also mention that after today, Nathan is off for three weeks. He and Christina are headed to Italy with their families where the two of them will be married. So, the next time you see Nathan, he’ll be a married man! Please give him a little love today and wish him God’s blessings as he head off on this journey of a lifetime.

Grace and peace,

Ryan