Cullison February Prayer Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

Over the past summer and fall, our Teen Center team leaders visited youth centers all across Los Angeles. We wanted to see what was being done in the variety of agencies and ministries out there focused on high school students. We wanted to examine best practices, ask questions, and see what could be done to take our ministry to the next level. We wanted to expand our influence, relevancy, and outcomes. One of the conclusions of these learning journeys was that no one else is quite leaning into the spiritual discipleship of our youth right here in Los Angeles proper. All the other centers are offering more services, have more staff, serve more youth, and get more grants. The lane we run in though is the intentional spiritual empowerment of our youth. We were completely on board with that vision. We still had to figure out how to do that better though.

Eighteen years ago my roommate, Joe Greenwald, started meeting with some high school students in our living room on Friday nights for simple worship, prayer, and Bible Study. They called it Youth Church. Many of the youth weren’t in traditional youth groups. Some had no other church they belonged to. They met like this for a year, until they grew too big and had to meet at our Los Angeles Christian Middle School. That continued until 2010, when we moved from the Middle School multipurpose room to our own dedicated space in the Teen Center. From the beginning, the DNA of “Youth Church,” or what eventually came to be known as “Kaleo,” Greek for called ones or chosen ones was threefold:

  • be led by youth, empowering them in their faith walk
  • provide a resource to small local churches by being a larger “community” youth group
  • provide a safe place and community for youth to gather and be part of

At some point in that first year I joined them, and I am still on board to this day. This has been the biggest part and most consistent thread of my ministry with World Impact. Other aspects have had their season (church planting, TUMI, LACS), but this has overshadowed those for longevity.

To honor the time, people, financial support, and faithfulness of so many people and organizations and churches for the past 18 years in this unique ministry, we decided to have a “Homecoming.” There have been 17 major donors in that time (at least), dozens of churches, 21 different youth workers, 35+ long term volunteers, and so many youth, I cannot even begin to count (the number is in the multiples of hundreds, but not quite 1000). Entering this new year, we are unveiling our new mission statement, our new branding, and our initiatives as a youth-empowering ministry of World Impact. “Our mission is to be an authentic community of hope for the purpose of expressing God’s love, evangelizing, equipping and empowering students to live out their identity as citizens in God’s kingdom.” Please pray for our team as we press hard into our calling and responsibility to holistically disciple the youth in our community as well as we possibly can.

Trusting Him,

Bryan Cullison