Lovin' Life Ministries in Los Angeles -- interview with George Kazakos

Edy Iversen
October 2011

George Kazakos is the Lovin' Life Ministries Pastor for Los Angeles

Question: How long have you been leading Lovin' Life Ministries here in Los Angeles?

For about four months now.

Question: What was your motivation in coming here?

I came here because I was one of the first members of Lovin' Life Ministries and I had an opportunity to listen to Reverend In Jin Moon, our Senior Pastor for Lovin' Life Ministries, who spoke a lot about the vision and what she's excited about. She really wants to spread this vision throughout the country. Because the West Coast has so many people, it's a very important part of our national community and she asked me to come here to be supportive and make Lovin' Life Ministries exciting.

Question: Can you explain to us what the central vision of Lovin' Life Ministries is and what your main objective here is?

We used to have a certain organizational culture because for many years we were all full-time members and there was a specific kind of leadership structure that was more like a campaign. Under that context of where we're coming from and where we're going, there's a big cultural shift that's available now to create a real grassroots ministry.

One thing that Reverend In Jin Moon said, that I think is very crucial is, "Are we a movement? Or are we a church?" What we have focused on is the movement side of things. Our Senior Pastor points out that what we've been trying to do so far is tell others how to live without really doing it ourselves. In the past, we thought we were sacrificing our church for the sake of our movement with initiatives such as all the outreach activities, but our Senior Pastor pointed out that Martin Luther King built a civil rights movement based on what? Based on churches. So to her, what we are primarily is a church. From that, it will spill over and then we can grow as a movement. So, by nurturing the wellbeing of people's spiritual lives and really investing into our members -- that's one issue she is always talking about, that's one thing she's always doing, investing in our members -- we will naturally spill out and grow and become big.

Question: What were the steps taken to begin Lovin' Life Ministries here and really pastor this church?

Centered on the worship service and Reverend In Jin Moon's message, which is the center-piece of Lovin' Life Ministries, the intention of Lovin' Life Ministries is to be a comprehensive experience. In the past, sometimes we would go all out with our spiritual lives, and then other times we'd go all out with our physical lives (our education, career, etc.) but we could never quite balance them. Lovin' Life Ministries is not focusing on what we're doing but rather on who we're being. We can weave our spiritual life into our day-to- day lives and this is why our Senior Pastor is always talking about internal excellence and external excellence.

We have 5 modalities for Lovin' Life Ministries, which we use as a guide to building up Lovin' Life Ministries in all areas:

1. Inspire -- This is the worship service. Our worship service is very unique; even though it may look like a Christian service, it's different in that, now we've inherited the blessing from our True Parents so that we are the Temple, not a physical building. Because of this, you can tithe from home, you can read God's words from home and you can pray from home. The added value of coming together now is we can worship as a family, attending the True Family and entering into a relationship with the True Children, who are the best to teachers of how to be an eternal son and daughter of God.

2. Empower -- these are our educational opportunities. In the past we had adults go to worship and kids go to education. This resulted in our kids never going to worship and the adults never getting education. So once a month, on the fourth Sunday, we have something we call "Boost Sunday", where we have fellowship and food, and also introduce the topics of the Family Pledge, which is our modern-day covenant, dive into the depths of the Divine Principle, and facilitate a relationship seminar and a membership seminar. "Boost Sunday" is a catapult for the second week of every month, when we immerse ourselves into those four topics in a one-day workshop.

Question: How do you inspire people to want to come to "Boost Sunday?"

We offer great food, a 30-foot water slide for kids, a lot of fellowship, swimming and fun. This environment is conducive to giving the people a chance to connect in fellowship. We had up to 380 people attending our Boost Sundays. The purpose of Boost Sunday is two-fold: it's for fellowship and for introducing seminars.

Another thing our Senior Pastor began, which I'm really inspired by, is not having one program for new people and another program for members; her thinking is to make exciting programs for families and invite people to them and guests will naturally come. I saw it happening in New York and it's happening here. We're not even asking people to invite their friends and family; we never really push for that. People who have shown up at Boost Sunday, come and see our community and naturally want to participate. This is part of the idea of natural witnessing. That's what we mean by "empower."

3. Connect -- This falls under two small-group categories; one of which is community groups. A community group is made up of families who are living in the same geographic area. We encourage groups to meet once a month, in a smaller environment, connect, and meet as members. We're still building these groups. The second area of these groups is based on affinity and has a time line of 10 weeks. People meet with others they already have a rapport with, based on their passion and their interests and bring others to the ministry.

4. Contribute -- this is a unique modality with two distinctions. It involves our volunteer ministry, but the volunteer aspect, the actual tasks, are really in the object position. The priority is the team building and spiritual growth, where the activity has an internal focus. The second distinction in "contribute" is having a lot of people do a little, rather than a few people do a lot. I often make the analogy: a 500 pound shark is less effective than 500 piranhas, because there are more resources.

5. Inherit -- The final modality is to inherit God's blessing and fortune. The aforementioned helps give us the capacity to receive the true love of God, and receive the blessing when we attend our True Parents. These five modalities create an A-Z approach to spirituality that is weaved into your life. Those are the programs were building right now.

We have two rhythms. One is a four-week rhythm, where we invite our friends and family to church in week one and hold a leadership meeting with the leaders. In week two, we focus on our one-day workshops; in week three, our focus is our small groups, and week four focuses on Boost Sunday. That's a monthly cycle. Then we have a quarterly cycle: we have people participating in a small group for 10 weeks, or volunteering for 10 weeks, for one quarter at a time. The programs are open and closed, so people don't see an endless horizon, and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Question: How successful have you been so far? Do you have a lot of hope for this endeavor, and what are some of the exciting things that have resulted from your efforts so far?

Well, we're opening up one ministry at a time right now. We have two very important things on the burner and the several Boost Sundays we've held so far have resulted in people signing up for the various programs offered. The second thing now is we are completely transforming the way we conduct worship service; we are moving into a movie theater. The movie theater is in the middle of the market place in an excellent location. It has tons of parking, is a multi-million dollar facility, and is going to be half the price of where we're worshiping right now. We're very excited about this and people can feel confident to bring someone to a public place rather than a private place. We are also in the process of developing the volunteer program and the small groups as well.

Question: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Many times we get a direction to do things and we think, "Well, it's either this or that." In other words, we kind of see the direction as only two things but I always think, what's the third option? As the cliché goes, what's the win-win situation? For example, when it came to the question of whether or not we would have Sunday School, I felt this was not the question we should be asking. The real question is: "How do we open up new realms of educational experiences for all ages?" Through that and the wonderful staff we have here, we've invented new expressions of Sunday School that are much more stimulating and creative. When we get a direction from Headquarters, all we have to do is ask the question: "What would make this exciting?" As long as we ask that question, we'll keep inventing new possibilities instead of being constrained by what we perceive as reality.