Hello First Alliance,
Thank you so much for supporting me and my wife Leah as we serve on the Northside of Pittsburgh in the Inner City. My name is Justin and I grew up at FAC. It is so cool to have part of my call to missions to be from going on short term mission trips when I was in youth group under Tanner, Deb, and Dan.
One Scripture that I enjoy and find meaningful in this season is John 17:3 which says “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
This verse gives life to me because I grew up knowing about God and even passionately preaching about Him, but I never knew Him experientially. The word “to know” means gnosco in the Greek which means that the reason Jesus came was not for me to know about Him but for me to intimately experience Him.
Another verse that speaks powerfully to me is Matthew 22:37, “And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
The word “love” is agape which is God’s love. God has been teaching me that I can only do this if I have His love first. I can’t just try really hard to love others or love God. I was meant to receive and then, out of the overflow of His love to me, I can love others through His power. I cannot give what I have not received.
For those who do not know what I do, I run an outreach basketball program on the Northside of Pittsburgh. We see about 500 kids a year. We run at 6 locations with 70 volunteers. My target is for kids who are tempted by the streets to come engage with us at a local gym and hear the good news of Jesus. The program is geared towards kids who wouldn’t want to come into a church building but would want to come play the game of basketball. Kids get put on a team, eat pizza, hear a weekly gospel message or Bible study, have discussion questions, and play basketball games on their team for an hour. The program is a funnel for kids who respond to get them plugged in our local youth group, put in a Bible study, and hopefully grow in Christ.
We also run block parties in the summers and saw 1,100 people by going to people’s backyards and bringing the church to the community.
One testimony that we had this basketball season was we had a young man who wanted to have a relationship with God, but he really struggled with whether God was real. We prayed and I saw a lamp as we were praying, so a great light. The passage came to mind, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Out of a response to the revelation God gave this young man, He gave His life to Christ. He was weeping in the arms of another coach, and it was such a powerful display of God’s nearness and the experiential life that He provides above in John 17:3.
Thank you FAC for all you do and Merry Christmas!