My entire ministry has been a collection of cast offs. Maybe it’s someone in a church that’s failed and they don’t want them around anymore. Maybe it’s been someone whose own family didn’t want them. We’ve always received the call that says, “Can you take this fallen person?” We stood up for Jim Bakker after he got out of prison, and we will stand by our friends for the rest of our lives. One man said to me, “How does it feel to get all the discarded people?” My answer? “Wonderful.” I am grateful that churches and families would give us broken pieces.

Give me the cast offs. Give me the person who’s in fresh need of regenerated grace. Give me the person that hasn’t kept the religious handbook (Regarding sins that send you to the island of broken parts) and give me those broken parts. I’ve grown to love cast offs because they have shown me an entire new way to see life.

I’m a pastor’s son who has been changed by these broken people. The only people that I had when starting my church were the people that nobody wanted. Addicts, leaders whose churches didn’t want them anymore after a personal failure, etc. My greatest honor is to be known as the pastor of “cast offs.” Please don’t think I’m mad at anyone for sending them to us for I have no right to judge your decisions. I’m just thankful for these “cast offs.” The cast offs helped me build the church while many “church kids” left me when the church wasn’t growing fast enough. They left me when the dream wasn’t matching their expectations. My staff literally started from the streets of skid row. It was there that I found that people who had nowhere to go, nothing left to give, could become amazing assets in the kingdom of God. I realized quickly that I didn’t come to LA to change them, God sent me here to change me. He took me to the streets of Los Angeles to show me what God can do with radical grace. I never dreamed that my calling was to be the pastor to the “cast offs.” That wasn’t my plan. But I’m sure glad that God allowed me to fall in love with the idea of what hurting people can become…something special and useful in the kingdom of God.