Posts with the category “mission-and-the-city”

My name is Mariana, and I’ve been a member of Cornerstone for about five years. I'm originally from Brazil and grew up as both a missionary and pastor’s kid. I've always had a heart for mission work—s...  Read More

When it comes to multiplication as a church, there is excitement and also some fear. Multiplying means change and often reformation. So why would we want to multiply, and why is multiplication at the ...  Read More

Every time we go out of town to travel or visit family, my kids look at other parts of the country with their slower paces and wide-open spaces and inevitably ask why we live where we live. I sometime...  Read More

If you’ve been at Cornerstone for very long you’ve probably heard us talk about The Discipleship Pathway. Born out of a desire to help bring simplicity and order to the principles of our faith, The Di...  Read More

Jeremiah 29:11 is a well known passage.  In the NIV it reads: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”...  Read More

It’s been hard not to think about July 31st or August 8th of 2019. Those days play in my mind over and over again. The experiences I had those days can best be summed up as traumatizing. I’ve cried mu...  Read More

C.S. Lewis once said, “In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.” People fr...  Read More

“I felt less in control, and simultaneously more at peace, than I have ever felt.”...  Read More

As a child I was the pastor’s kid, a regular Sunday School attendee, and there long after the janitor had locked the doors. I’ve always felt a little camaraderie with Jesus who called the temple His F...  Read More

It seems to me that only rarely does someone follow up “Hello” with “How are you doing?” Perhaps it’s because this is the age of therapy. Perhaps we fear that it’s not going to elicit a simple “Fine.....  Read More

To learn more about this issue and things we must consider before moving to gentrifying communities.I didn’t grow up in Venice but I connect most of my childhood memories to that area. My grandmother ...  Read More

Undocumented immigration is a very complex, multifaceted topic in our nation. It is a subject so controversial, that even mature believers can find themselves holding biblically opposing points of vie...  Read More

On a recent visit to a local short-term residential treatment center (formerly called a “group home” in the Los Angeles foster care system) — I made the mistake of momentarily taking off my metaphoric...  Read More

In recent months there have been various Los Angeles communities that have been plagued by violence. In one section of our city, around 15 people were shot in roughly a 2-week span. Another small comm...  Read More

"The church is so much more than a building, but it is also so much more than a program."What do you think of when you think of “the church”?  Some people think of a building.  They equate the church ...  Read More

“Moving through necessary justice towards a spirit of compassion, mercy and forgiveness, even for the most vile of perpetrators, is what allows us...to display the scandalous, beautiful, life-changing...  Read More

“How can you tell if you are mastered by your money?”    We are a camping family. So periodically we pack down the car with our tent and sleeping bags and head out into the middle of nowhere to enjoy ...  Read More

“We are called to consider more than our personal convictions to ask what might best love our city.”When I went back home to Texas for the summer after my first year at USC, I had a conversation with ...  Read More

The good news narrative of God’s engagement in this world should render Christians the most hopeful of all people. Not a gee-willickers kind of hope, but the sort of deep-in-the-gut, grounding hope th...  Read More

I was out to dinner with a group of non-Christian friends one evening when I was suddenly and unexpectedly put on the spot.“Alina, if an atheist is really, really good his whole life, can he go to Hea...  Read More

“It’s true that some people can’t ‘do that’ themselves—if by ‘that’ they mean take in a child in their current season of life. But orphan care is much larger than taking in a child. If by ‘that’ we me...  Read More

In my first post I encouraged those who have never read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his own words to read “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”In this post I’d like to give 8 reflections on this letter and...  Read More

It has been almost 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. One of the unfortunate byproducts of time is that the words of historical figures become less and less ...  Read More

“How do you navigate the practical aspects of balancing the high calling of a wife and mother with the constant phone calls from the office?”In Parts One and Two of this series, we have looked at the ...  Read More

“In discussing this highly complicated topic, I would like to pose two big-picture questions. The most important—how can I best serve and love my family? And second to that, what opportunities for min...  Read More

“The historic Christian position is that man’s dilemma has a moral cause. God, being nondetermined, created man as a nondetermined person. This is a difficult idea for anyone thinking in twentieth-cen...  Read More

In conjunction with our “Letters to a Healthy Church” sermon series, each pastor has written a letter to Cornerstone in a similar style to Paul's pastoral letters.  We pray they will be a blessing and...  Read More

“The topic of workplace ethics necessarily covers more than just the way in which we treat the people that we work with, but our entire goal in what we are trying to accomplish and the way in which we...  Read More

I have never understood the idea of collective guilt, not really. Considering how engrained the American value of individualism is in our society, I suspect that I am not the only one. I have never be...  Read More

As we looked at in my previous post, adoption is a powerful concept. I'd like to look into a passage that touched me lately as an example of how God's powerful use of language shapes our understanding...  Read More

I didn’t grow up adopted. I had a few friends who were adopted, but it didn’t leave a huge impression on me. When I first attended church as an adult I didn’t know any other adults who had adopted. Bu...  Read More

In a world (and in a city) in which remnants of a Christian worldview continue to deteriorate, it is incredibly important for Christians to be well equipped to answer the questions that arise from the...  Read More

"When we live out the gospel by letting Christ break down that wall of hostility in our relationships, attitudes, interactions, and assumptions, we live as the New Creation that God has called us to b...  Read More

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Galatians 3:28    God sent His Son to save us from these sins. Tha...  Read More

"While you are in Los Angeles (however long that may be), God is speaking through you to a city that desperately needs the life-giving hope found in the gospel of Jesus Christ...Here are two open lett...  Read More

"We should not fear literature, nor avoid it, but embrace it."    I am always surprised and somewhat heartbroken when I meet people who say they don't read fiction, or don't read at all.Even more surp...  Read More

"I want to seek first His kingdom. I want to seek the city that is to come! I want to seek the things that are above, where Christ is. Don’t you?"    One of the most controversial topics I could write...  Read More

"As Christians in Los Angeles we are not called to consume or fear Los Angeles, but we are called to love the city."    As Christians, we are to consider how God would have us live in Los Angeles, wha...  Read More

"Because of Jesus’ death, justice is upheld, and grace is offered. God is both just and the justifier."    God is a god of justice.The psalmist in Psalm 99 states: "The King in his might loves justice...  Read More