A Village Community – From Darkness to Light

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My friend Chris Fukunaga moved to Long Beach, California six and a half years ago to start a simple church called A Village Community.

It’s a small urban church located in the epicenter of downtown Long Beach. They meet in and run 24/7 an art gallery called The Creative Design Lab. There they hold Sunday worship gatherings, offer mid-week Bible studies, and also do a variety of service projects and art show outreaches to the community.

Chris has been a student of the culture he is trying to reach. Just like good Bible study requires exegeting the text, Christ has exegetes the culture in order to reach those around him with the gospel. He reflects,

What I and others found here was what we believe is a peek into the future of American spirituality. We are now seeing a shroud of darkness fall on Christianity in America. There have been scores of scholarly studies, books, and conferences over the past several decades that affirm this one basic spiritual reality: that at the closing of the 20th-century and the dawn of the 21st-century, the church in America is…declining. This is fact from a pure numbers standpoint.

...Today, “informal” and “independent” forms of spirituality are rising to take the place of traditional religion, It is our belief that the final frontier 21st-century religious battlefields are for the American Christian church will be non-aditional forms of spirituality.

Long Beach is a greenhouse for non-traditional spirituality. She is secular humanist (“I can do great things without God.”), New Age (“I am god energy already.”), and gay (“I worship myself as a god.”). It is these aforementioned expressions that represent spirituality without Christ. It is in this sense that Long Beach matters as what might be a sneak peek into the beliefs, morals, and values that will represent the primary future alternatives to the Christian church in America.

God is at work through His church to bring those who are living in darkness into His marvelous light. Check out this amazing video of what God is doing in Long Beach, California through A Village Community – click here or view below. (7 minutes)

Please pray for A Village Community as they bring the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ into dangerous, dark places. Chris and his wife Lorraine are missionaries in their neighborhood. According to Chris, “Before we go abroad to share the gospel, are we not summoned to go across the block first? This is what we are wrestling with, trying to live out.”