Good evening. How are you? It's great to see you wonderful to be here and just a great honour

to be part of the story of what God is doing here. This evening we're going to look at the

topic telling others about Jesus, telling others about Jesus. In Acts 1 we read that Jesus says,

you will be my witnesses, telling people everywhere about me in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and

to the ends of the earth. And the question I'm asking tonight that we want to ask together is how

do we tell others about Jesus in this cultural moment, in this city where if we're honest we find

it really difficult. We are facing great opposition and hostility to our faith increasingly so

that we are asking the question how on earth do we be witnesses to Jesus in the face of our own

fears, in the face of the opposition that we endure. I know we endure opposition because when I

first came to Los Angeles I was flying in to plant this church, I was flying in for about five days

at a time to kind of cultivate a community who wanted to plant this church together. We only had

three people in the city that we knew and we thought well I got to fly out there and meet people.

And in one of those weekends I was in Los Angeles, I met someone who said, hey,

Gheb, awesome, why don't you come to this launch event in Beverly Hills with me. And so he told me

where to meet him and I went to this bar in Beverly Hills and waited for him and he didn't show up

but I thought you know what, that's okay, I went inside anyway and got a drink at the bar and started

to talk to three of the people there. Had an incredible conversation with these three people.

Amazing stories about the movies that they wanted to be in, the scripts that they were writing and

all these kinds of things, I was fascinated by who they were and what brought them to LA and eventually

they asked the question which I was dreading. And they said to me, so Gheb, what brings you to LA?

Now I was raised in a secular context in England where I knew no Christians except for those in

my church and so I knew the kind of antagonism that I might face and I was a bit nervous about

...