Just as important for a revivalist as sounding the warning call for error is the identifying and bolstering those people who are doing something radically good for God. People doing passionately cool things for God was what I found on Monday, July 25 in Los Angeles California when I was invited to come to the LA Mission Music and the kickoff of the Skid Row Revitalization Project with a free live concert by Maverick City Worship.
The last census from 2020 showed that 66,436 homeless people were living on the streets in Los Angeles. There are many more now. I had been around other homeless encampments in New York City and other places. What amazed me about LA were the countless camping trailers of all different types and sizes with large tarps stretched out and tied down to street signs and light poles all over the area. In one busy intersection sadly a very sickly middle-aged woman partially clothed in a torn dress covered with dirt staggered through the busy traffic crosswalk. Many intersections had people selling things or asking for donations.
It was in the middle of this part of America that few people like to think about that Scott Free, CEO of Maverick City Music, agreed to bring his entire worship team, three tour busses, and several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stage equipment and setup to perform on the streets a free concert to the homeless people of LA.
I had the privilege of interviewing Scott, but not until I had what was an equally important to me side conversation with one of the young men who travel with the group. As my youth background connected with his heart, he began to share with me one of Maverick Cities’ Music Ministries in Atlanta Georgia’s inner city. He, his wife and their young children have a combination home and alternative school for young people who have found Christ and need one on one discipleship and God’s love in the early stages of their Christian growth. He told stories of looking out his window and seeing drug sales going down with men with assault rifles standing guard over the activity. He said trusting God with his wife and children in that violent atmosphere is a 24-7-365 necessity in order to do what God has called them to do. Their alternative school program provides the safe and loving environment that these young people have never known nor could know within the culture of the violent streets of inner city Atlanta. As he directed me to Scott Free to answer more questions about Maverick City, I had no idea the kindred spirit both of our years of youth ministry would generate. I had to hold back tears from my eyes several times as Scott began to share what to me today is so rarely found anymore, namely, examples of Christ’s true love, birthed by His Holy Spirit.
Scott Free and Maverick City Worship break the mold of other traveling worship teams by doing free concerts in places which most people would not consider going to. With God-given faith and a team of young talent who share the same heart, Maverick City Music felt completely at home doing a kick-off concert for LA Mission Music Matters and the Skid Row Revitalization Project. As Scott began to share his heart about finding marginalized young people with incredible talent and plugging them into his ministry, it was like someone was reading my heart. He went on to say that one of their most recent burdens was to do free concerts in prisons and to recognize inmates who had musical and writing talents and plug them into the actual concerts that they were doing. Scott said, “Often tears of joy would flood down the inmate’s faces as their seemingly hopeless lives found the joy of music again!” In one of their most recent recordings, the song “Kingdom” was actually filmed inside a state prison utilizing inmates in their music teams, inmates who they had also plugged into songwriting classes. Maverick City Music does not just sing about the love of God, they demonstrate it in a form of harmony only God’s Holy Spirit could maestro!
