Responding to Wild Fire Tragedy

6:30 p.m. ::

Friends and Members of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church community,

Together with you, we are heartsick over the devastation of the wildfires. Eager to respond in the most helpful way, we invite you to extend your hearts of care in the following ways:

Be in prayer.

• Pray for all who have lost homes and businesses.
• Pray for those who are evacuated from their homes.
• Pray for the firefighters, police, and first aid & rescue personnel.
• Pray for all those impacted by the various fires around our region.
• Pray for ministry and hospitality opportunities.

Be ready to help.

The church leadership will assess the temporary housing needs within our church family and may need your help.  If you know of a specific family housing need, please let your deacon know so that we can network assistance.   E-mail us at WildFireHelp@belairpres.org

If you have a spare room in your home to temporarily house a congregant displaced by the fires and are willing to open your heart and home, please email us your name, phone, e-mail, and home address to WildFireHelp@belairpres.org. We will contact you ONLY if there is someone we can place within your home.   Please be ready to help.

Be willing to give.

The following links will take you directly to the American Red Cross web site where you can read of specific needs and where to send donations or other needed items:

Click Here to see the Red Cross LA

Click Here to See Most Current Fire Map on Google

Be prepared to fight fire with water.

When you come to the worship services tomorrow, you can easily help by bringing new bottled water.  We will have a table on the patio to receive your donation of bottled water and we will give them to the Red Cross for the evacuation centers.

Undoubtedly in the days ahead we will find other ways for the Bel Air family to offer continued care and support. In the meantime, please check our web site (belairpres.org), or call our Wildfire Helpers hotline at (818) 788-4210 x337, for updates.

Bless you and prayers for safety,

Bel Air Presbyterian Church Leadership Team

Cannibals and kudos

by Rev. Kim Dorr :: I was really struck by Pastor Mark’s (Dr. Mark Brewer) sermon illustration this past Sunday on the Donner party…how the leader was advised to wait until things (the snowstorm) got better. If they had pressed on toward their goal, they, in all likelihood, would have all survived. But as it was, hesitating, waiting for “safer” circumstances and friendlier skies, they either perished or became something less than human.  At the center of what led to one of the most notorious accounts of cannibalism is FEAR. Fear that paralyzes and impedes. I know that feeling because I have been caught in its grip myself. I’ve asked God to show me that fear whenever it appears and let me see it for what it is. 1John 4:18 states that “…perfect love casts out fear.” As I see it, that means it’s Jesus’ job (Perfect Love) to cast out my fear (the work of the enemy). So I show Him my fear as he gives me discernment to understand it, and then I ask Him to toss it out of my life with all His might.

It was just yesterday at our bi-monthly Presbytery meeting that a beautiful example of this was given to us by our brothers and sisters of Malibu Presbyterian.  It’s been just a little over a year since their sanctuary burned to the ground in the Malibu fires of October ‘07.  Pastor Greg Hughes, the head of staff at Malibu Presbyterian, gave a “year in review” report to the Presbytery, including clips of national news coverage in which he spoke of the FAITH and the HOPE that holds all of us at times when things are burning (or blizzarding, as the case may be!).  What wasn’t reported on the news, something that Pastor Greg shared with us, his co-laborers in Christ, is that the night BEFORE the fire, his congregation had pledged a half million dollars to a charity they chose to support.  I can only imagine the wrestling that must have gone in individual hearts and collectively as a congregation AFTER the fire — “Must we be faithful to our promise NOW? Surely the charity and everyone else will understand our NEED to NOT fulfill this promise. They can’t expect us to make good on such an amount. That money (and then some!) will be needed to rebuild, to restore, to rekindle our ministry. We can give at a more opportune time.”

The rationale would have made sense to me. What is counter-intuitive to that “survival” instinct is that Malibu Presbyterian fulfilled it’s pledge completely to that charity by spring of ‘08.  No fear. Just faithful trust and sacrificial giving.  Pastor Greg did NOT report that their sanctuary has miraculously been funded (or that ground has even been broken to rebuild!).  But just as Peter spoke of a spiritual house being built by “living stones” who submit themselves to be built into something unseen by the human eye (1 Peter 2:5), so I believe that the Malibu Pres. sanctuary is, in all likelihood, being built by their own living stones and a Craftsman’s Hand.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”  1 Peter 1:3-9.