LA Fires - The Church Responds Pt 1 (Live from PPS)

Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at fakely.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Stories podcast. Welcome to another episode podcast on faithly. We are so excited to be joining you. My name is pastor Adam Durso and I have the esteemed privilege of interviewing my guest today, Pastor John DeCure, man. What's up, brother? How you doing, man? I'm so glad to be on with you today, man. Just to decide it to be here with you. Man, I'm super excited to be with you. I was literally with you on the ground and out to Dina just less than a week and a half ago in a suburb of LA where your ministry is right on the grounds where the LA, one of the LA fires broke out and you know, we've done some other podcasts. We have some other rhythms. What we felt like this mattered so much that we needed to take a break from the normal rhythm and bring this up to the forefront. So I'm broadcasting live from the pastor's first summit here in the vicinity of New York City. We're over 350 pastors. I've gone away to pray for 48 hours. You've attended this event, Pastor John. Man, I think that's the first spot we met. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. The first time and we got together was for 3530 at this event actually in New York. And I met you through some friends of mine and just had an awesome time just rejuvenating, meeting some new pastors, people I'd never met before. But most of all coming back here, rejuvenated and kind of restored ready to go. And so I can tell you, brother, we are praying for you. New York has Cali on its mind, man. And so we're praying for you. Let's start here before we jump into why your ministry is where it is and your history. You know, the fact that you and I became friends, not just colleagues, but became friends, West Coast, East Coast, because we're both pastors dealing with similar things and made a difference. It's a relationship. That relationship breeds trust. And so when the call is made literally within 48 hours to go off to Cali, I'm calling you, I'm texting you, Kevin, the past to Albertate, those guys talking about why relationship amongst pastors matters so much, especially when at crisis emerges. Let me tell you just you said something that was really, I think, pivotal. The whole trust thing is I also call it like trust in connection to God's like being his synchronization. God has a way of syncing things in ways that we can't explain. Yeah. And the first relationship that was foster was one between me and pastor Kevin. And he kept telling me he's like, man, I gotta tell you about I got a homeboy named Adam. And and I was like, okay, okay. And then he was like, man, we going, he didn't even ask the trust that that I had established over time with Kevin, because Kevin had given me not just advice and things of that nature, because he's very, you know, a student himself. The thing that I appreciate about Kevin is that he weak, he weakly or bi-weekly called me and checked on me to see how I was doing after the first time we met. So yeah, go ahead, go ahead. So like literally after weeks and weeks of the album, he said, we're going to New York. I said, why are we going to New York? He was like, I'm taking to the space, you got to meet my homeboy Adam. So immediately because I already established trust with him. When I saw you, it was already, it was already kind of nailed and it was already nailed, because me and Kevin had already gotten so close that when I came to you, the trust was already built. And so and then when I got to 30, 30, the first one, my life was changed almost immediately. I never forget, this was my first impression of 30, I come into this hotel, I go to whatever floor it's on and I see this guy just looking out over the balcony, I never forget it. And I go over to him and he looked like a guy who I listened to weekly and that I admire. And so I go, so I say, doing my saying, I said, hey, I said, are you Bishop Runner? And then he says back to me, Adam, he goes, what's your name? I go, my name is John. He goes, are you John? He like said, he says the question back to me. And I think the reason why he was doing that, he was basically establishing like in this environment where brothers, it's not a it's not up and down a hierarchy, like I'm above or nothing. And so it was, it's at that moment that I knew that I was in the right space because it was a space where I could just be, I can ask questions, I can glean, I can get wisdom. And then when I met you, it was the exact same. It was like I already knew you. Yeah, I think relationship is the currency of the kingdom, right? So why is it so important? Before we get into your background, I want to jump there in a second, but why is it so important that we don't wait for the crisis to start establishing trust and relation? Why does it matter that trust and relationship already exists? So when a crisis like the LA fires happens, we've already got the currency to be able to make moves in the midst of devastation. Hey, it's funny. You said that. I can't tell you how many like predatory practices is happening in our community right now, right? Not just from, you know, lawyers and insurance companies, but also from some religious organizations also, right? Where the connections are being made more so for the light, put a line right of the situation, because right now the light is on our city. But when you already have relationship, you don't have to go through all of the the the rigging role of trying to discern the hearts of persons. As soon as you call me, I didn't knew what you was up to because I know you and I know you care about me. The importance of relationship is I don't have to navigate through all of my spiritual giftings to try to discern whether you're for me or not. It's like straight to it, right? As soon as you call me, and you were like, I'm coming. I was like, okay, let's go. Let's do it. Literally, it was like meet me tonight. And I was like, as soon as Kevin said, Kevin called me, so we go tonight. I was like, no, it wasn't even a question in my mind, because I already knew what you were after. And that's I think that's that's the importance I think of really us bridging the gap between pastors in particular, because when you when you build a relationship, it makes it so much easier when crisis happens to just kind of activate as opposed to having to build that trust and trying to figure out what people's more motivations are and all that kind of thing. So I know you have served in this community out to Dina, a suburb of LA. Give us a little bit around both your ministry there. And also what is what is out to Dina as a community? I mean, I know for me, you know, in New York, or everything's so condensed, we're on top of each other here. LA so much more spread out. And every time I'm there, I'm discovering other parts of LA and coming to you. So talking to me a little bit about your ministry background leading up to how long you've been in this community and what this community specifically represents. Absolutely. So I have, I'm born and raised Pasadenaian. And if you come to the Pasadena area, what you'll notice is that Pasadena out to Dina is separated by a street called Woodbury. So really, we call it for, you know, our name for both of it. We just call it the Dina because the Dina kind of includes out to Dina and Pasadena. So because there's really just one city, but it's separated by one street. And my father was a prominent pastor in this area. So I'm born and raised here, pastor's kid at the Holy Deliverance Pentecostal Church, right? That's where I grew up, man. And it's interesting how God prepares you for times like this. And so I had a Godfather that was a pastor on the other side of town named Bishop James Edward Henry. And what I would do because my primary, believe it or not, Adam was, I was a music guy. So I played, I played the organ every Sunday morning from my dad, but I would come over to a church called Victory Bible Church. And I would play for my Godfather first. And then run over to my dad's because the Pentecostal Church started a little bit later, right? Okay. So, so over the years, I end up kind of being at Victory all the time. And then when I graduated from college, I was here. And unfortunate events, my Godfather actually passed away here at Victory. And his best friend took over the church. After his best friend took over the church, I was around 26 years old. And his best friend named Bishop White, he said, I was praying. And the Lord said, you're supposed to be the executive pastor. The issue with that is that I had never preached before or pastor before. So I was like, wow, that's interesting. I got ordained at 26 years old. I am now 48. So I have been, I was actually under my pastor for about 24 years. So I was executive pastor for 24 years. And to date, I'm one year old this month as the lead pastor at Victory Bible Church, which is right in the middle of where everything is kind of happening. So North of us who have Al-Tadina, we're considered to be in Pasadena, right down the street from us, a church burned down, all the devastation is happening above. The reason why that's so significant is because right now, in terms of even getting more specific, we're talking about 7,800 homes that are in businesses that have been burnt there. And from that number, we're talking about well over 1,000 homes burned to the ground. And from our media church, we're saying about 43 people in our church, homes burned to the ground. In addition to that, a total of 90 houses that are damaged. So from that, all 90 of those families have not been able to go back to their homes because of the pollution and the air and all the types of things. So just from our church, we're talking about 90 people misplaced. And I can go on and on with the numbers. But Al-Tadina is such a historic book space for us because 17 percent of Al-Tadina is actually African-American. And the significance of that is in all of Pasadena, it might be 2 percent. So all of our African-American people that actually are our whole population, most of them lived in the Al-Tadina area, which historically was kind of like our black washroom, if you will. It was a place where African-Americans, black and brown folks could purchase homes. So we're talking third or fourth generation, our grandparents and our grandparents grandparents purchased these homes and passed it from generation to generation. So for all of that space, I would venture to say for 70 to 80 percent of that city, Al-Tadina would be to be burnt to the ground. It's not just the homes that were burned down. It's the blood and the sweat and the tears of our grandparents that's in the foundation of Al-Tadina. And that's what makes this thing so significant to us. It's really hard to understand unless you see it. You had the opportunity to have the National Guard and the Sheriff's Office escort us into areas that people have not seen. Media hasn't even entered into these areas, but the entire infrastructure of this community wiped out. I mean, power lines, gas lines, homes burnt to the ground, and you actually had sparks. You're so close to it. The sparks from the fire were literally leaping over your church help to describe that level of devastation for somebody that's trying to visualize what they cannot see. If you can process this, we're used to wins, but the reality is of that particular that we had 100 mile hour wins. So this is what I'm trying to give people to understand. When you have 100 mile hour wins and you have a fire, that fire now is being blown into a space. So you have that one house that gets burned, but that house that's burning now is like the embers now are traveling. The thing is, the travel speed of these embers are going everywhere because the wind is moving at 100 miles per hour. So embers are being thrown all across our city. And most of them are catching, some of them are not. When we were cleaning up our space out of, we were kind of going behind it or we seen all these embers that have been thrown by the wind on our building that just did not catch fire. Write down mystery from us though by McDonald's. There's another church where the embers did catch, and we're talking about 0.5 miles or less away. There's another church that caught fire and burned to the ground. So this fire, I'll try to get into people's minds. I tell people it literally looks like a war zone like somebody came and dropped bombs on us. Wow. And that's kind of how it's out. Pastor, one of the things that struck me when I came to your offices and your church, you're set up as an outreach post. People are able to come there and get food and clothes and water and essentials because they ran out of their homes without any chance to pack or prepare. In New York, we don't get fires. We've gotten hurricanes, but at least for the hurricane, you know two, three days in advance, something's coming. This happens in moments. People are leaving their home. You're set up as an outpost, but the thing that I remarked about was when we walked into your offices on the whiteboard, you had the names of pastors from your community, not your staff, not from your church, but from the larger community that you were choosing to care for. You were saying, hey, we're not just going to pastor our congregation. We're going to pastor the community, man. Tell me, where does that heart come from? Well, you're in the middle of Christ. And most people think I just got to take care of myself. I just got to do whatever I got to do to help me. And all of a sudden, now you're not only helping your congregation and the 40 families that lost their homes. You're helping other pastors and other congregations because you're pastoring and you're you're pastoring the community, not just your congregation. Let me tell you, man. When I was a when I was a kid, I had this aspiration of I had like acquired that I wanted to do. And there was a guy named Pastor Van Alstein. He was my hero as a child. And he was the pastor of Alcidino Baptist Church. And that's one of the churches that burned down right down the street from him. There's a family by the name of the Barrel family. And that pastor Thomas Barrel, he had an organ in his house. He would let me come to his house and play and play the organ. That house, his church was also burned down. Another I can go from pastor to pastor. So the reason why I felt so connected to these pastors is because my a portion of my upbringing and a portion of who I am was made at those churches. I actually went to these schools that burned. Then there were several schools that burned down. My middle school was burned. Like I went to that middle school. So for me, it's not a it's not just a victory thing. It's a community thing. And so it's important to me that we rebuild our city because our memories and what makes us our who we are came from the community not just from one space, not just from this church, but from our community. And that's reason why it's so dear to me is because I'm watching spaces that represent my childhood and my upbringing that made me who I am without those spaces. I can't be even all here with you. So I actually count a lot. I give those spaces a lot of credit. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing with the city. Pass Adam Durso here, broadcasting live for the pastors first. I mean, Pastor John DeCure in Altadena, California, one of the suburbs outside of L.A. that has been devastated by the Los Angeles fires. And Pastor John, it's amazing because really the Christian church from the first century when the plague hit, we've been known as the people that don't run from disaster. We run into disaster to help the needy. Your church is doing that on the ground. And God has done some miraculous things. I mean, you told me a story about somebody randomly showed up to your church, asked about how many families needed help showed up. Come on, I give that story. You give it better than I do, brother. Like literally, man, prior to this miracle, I was helping another organization that I'm a part of called the CCC. And we were attempting to try to raise some money to help all the churches. And so I was using our facility and our infrastructure to help that organization raise money. And after the CCC left, I just came in my office and I said, a prayer to God. I said, Lord, we need some help too. While I'm helping, I just want to be clear. We also need help. And almost as soon as I say, I get a knock on the door, this guy comes off the street that I've never seen before. I don't even know who he is. You don't know him. He's not a member of your congregation. You don't know this, dude. I don't know this guy. He flies in at him from Arizona. He flies in from Arizona. I don't even know who he is. So he, we go into, he said, he looks me in the eyeballs. He says, pastor, he says you're exhausted and you're tired. He said, and I've been watching what you've been doing. Right. And I go, okay. He said, I was sent to help you. I said, okay. All right. He said, how many of your members houses burned down? I said, 43. He said, I'm going to write a check for $6,000 for each one of them. And he, and Adam, he sat down and started writing the checks to the names of it. So, so imagine a, and in trip this, we wrote checks on Thursday. We delivered them on Friday, two people. And bro, you should have saw like their faces. It was like something that I have never experienced to be able to, we, I mean, people that's waiting for FEMA, waiting for their insurance, they don't know how they go and make ends meet because they needed something right now to be able to hand them checks. Yeah. And bro, they were opening the check. I don't, some of them were so overwhelmed, they couldn't even move. They were just, I mean, it was the craziest thing. And that's when I already knew, I already had faith, but let me tell you something when I saw that, it gave me the hope and it also gave me the assurance that God really truly was in it. Isn't it amazing, man? Like, when you put aside even your own needs, your own struggle, stuff you're going through to meet the needs of others, how God comes because he knows exactly what you need and comes to your need with some random guy who you never met before, fluent from Arizona. Dude, this is inspiring leaders that are listening to this, not only in LA and on the west, but all over the globe right now because we need to be encouraged. Man, what we're doing on the front lines, God is cognizant of. And so man, I've been all in Galatius if you do not grow weary in doing good in a due season, this is your due season, my brother, in the midst of chaos and devastation and craziness. This is a due season for victory. It's a due season for passage on the cure and albertate and the gospel to shine brightly and meet the needs of people on the ground there too, man. I have, I'm so blessed to know you and be in a relationship with you. Now, there are people that want to help. How can they help, man? How can they give? How can they get involved? Because we know, look, we know this one is getting to the ground, this one is getting to real people because we've talked about the fraud, we've talked about the real estate vultures that are trying to come in and buy land and shift wealth from outside the community. What do people need to know? Where does they need to go website? Where do they follow you on social? So people can connect with you even right here on faithly so that they can take their faith and move it into action. I would love that. So first thank you Adam for even doing this, man. I greatly appreciate it. We have a, we have a fund that we started called LA fire relief fund.com. If they go to that website, lafire relief fund.com, they will actually be able to give directly to the persons and the people who've lost things in this fire, lost everything in this fire. Also, they can go to vbcpasadena.org. That's our church website and they'll be able to, they can actually give that way too. So either way, they can go either to the lafire relief fund.com, rvdcpasadena.com, they can give either way. And that would be greatly appreciated on our end. Man, we'll make sure that we put the website and the links in the Facebook posts on the social posts so that people can take their faith and not just pray from afar, but get involved, give, get behind you. We want, you know, I'm broadcasting lock and passes first summit in New York City where there are 350 pastors praying for you, passing jobs, praying for the other pastors in the region, the community, that's for devastated because we absolutely love you, man. My brother, I appreciate you. I appreciate calling you brother, being in relationship with you. For those of you that are watching online, thank you for joining us on this very special faithley podcast talking about the LA fires and how the gospel is moving forward through ministries on the ground there. Get involved, click the links, be a help, do more than just pray and believe, be a help and help and action so that we can get behind our brother's sisters out there and out to Dina and the area surrounding LA, man. God bless you. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. Bless you, brother. Thank you for tuning in to the faithley stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the frontlines of ministry on the Faithly podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.