Maverick City Music performs at the biggest event in Skid Row’s 100-year history: 'Spirit led'
Maverick City Music joined The Musiic Matters “Summer Day of Service” for an outdoor fellowship hosted by the Los Angeles Mission to help uplift people facing homelessness, and the group reportedly ushered the presence of God into the Skid Row community.
Musiic is an acronym for "Maintaining Universal Strategic Investments In Community" and was founded by LA Mission as a way to provide food and essential supplies to Skid Row residents. The mission recruited Grammy Award-winning gospel group Maverick City Music to offer up a free performance.
On Sunday, the gospel group performed to a sold-out audience at the Crypto.com Arena with Kirk Franklin. Franklin, a gospel music legend, also attended the special event with the group on Monday.
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Following the outreach, Maverick City Music, which was officially launched in 2018 and consists of a number of members, including Chandler Moore, Brandon Lake, Dante Bowe and Naomi Raine, posted a video clip of their time on the streets of LA.
“So honored to have partnered with @thelamission for the Music Matters event alongside our brother @kirkfranklin,” they captioned the video. “We had an incredible time serving and worshiping with so many yesterday on Skid Row.”
“Forever grateful to be able to bring the Kingdom and be a reflection of God’s love on this side of heaven,” the group added.
LA Mission said in response to the Instagram video, “This was the biggest event in the over 100-year history of Skid Row!”
“This was an unprecedented moment where walls were broken down in ways that are historic to this neighborhood!!” the group added. “When you think that we are less than 1 mile from the site of the Azusa Street Revival - Maverick City Music - you sparked a spirit led moment in the tradition of our community that helped people come home and know they are part of the Kingdom, seen, and most importantly loved!”
LA Mission ended by saying the ministry was “so filled and inspired by what went down yesterday - there is a [fire] in our soul!”
The Musiic Matters “Summer Day of Service'' provided 3,500 meals between seven food vendors. They offered free prayer, free on-site showers, essential supplies, giveaways, raffles and more services.
The following is an edited transcript of The Christian Post interview with the CEO of LA Mission, Rev. Troy Vaughn, who shared his heart behind launching the historic outreach.
The Christian Post: Can you share the vision behind Musiic Matters “Summer Day of Service”?
Vaughn: It is about using music as a backdrop to maintain universal strategic investments and community. In fact, that's what “Musiic Matters” stands for, and really it’s to get us to focus that we can launch something, but the most important thing is for us to maintain the thing that we've put in place and to be strategic about it.
Universally, we need to be engaged, meaning that all members of the community need to have a role in the transformative work that we do. No one should be left out of that – the business community, the people that are impacted, the advocates, the government partners, the police department, fire department, community-based organizations, our healthcare partners and all of us that are members of the community need to be a part of the solution. When we do that, I think that we can get to the end result, which is bringing about the change that we can see.
CP: How effective are events like this for the community?
Vaughn: I think that by being visible and unapologetic about our faith in the space, but understanding that the warfare that we have now is really warfare that is happening behind the scenes for those that aren’t believers. We understand that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities; powers that rule this present age are part of the darkness.
So our job is to be agents of light and to move forward in that light of love and to allow that transformative power of the Spirit to take place. We've got to be very intentional about doing that and partnering with other members of our community that align with that, to see that the greater humanity in all of us come to the surface and be either trained change agents that I believe our Creator meant us to be, to take over our areas of responsibility to be responsible for each other, to be our brother's keeper.
I'm grateful the opportunity started here on Skid Row.
CP: Can you share about wanting to have Maverick City Music join this event?
Vaughn: That partnership started through vision. We envisioned ourselves doing an outreach benefit concert, and it was from there that it evolved to what we see today, which is not just a concert, but more of a festival that is happening in Skid Row to allow us to really begin to bring about real, meaningful change to the members of our community.
I'm excited that we were able to reach out. Funny story is that I went to a concert of theirs two years ago and asked them to come down to Skid Row.
CP: Can you share a testimony about how you've seen God's hand in this event?
Vaughn: We came up with this idea to have this event, and two years later, here we are. I think it was by God's providence that it happened this way because I don't think none of us knew that it was being connected in that way. I released it in faith in God, took that seed of faith and grew it into what we have today.
CP: How important is it for people to unite and help each other with so much division there is in the world?
Vaughn: I mean, it's the paramount thing to do, right? The importance of it is unparalleled. I think that we don't realize how interdependent we are as human beings and that if there's something happening down the street to neighbors, eventually, it can impact us. We should have learned a lesson with COVID because homelessness, poverty, food insecurity and the healthcare reform, all these different things that are happening in our community are eventually impacting all of us.
So even though we may feel as though we're estranged from the process because it's not in our backyard, when it begins to emerge doesn't mean that it won't eventually get to us. For me, COVID has taught us the lesson that something can start in a different remote, obscure place but if we don't address it when it starts there, as being a part of the human race, it's only a matter of time before we're dealing with it in our own backyards.
CP: What was your hope going into this event?
Vaughn: My hope is that we plan to see the possibility of transformation and that it would ignite a flame in the hearts of every person that comes in contact with this event — that they will know that there is an opportunity to be a part of that they can lend their gifts, their talents, their resources to be a part of meaningful change that we can control in our communities. My hope and desire is that it ignites a flame of hope in the heart of every person that participates.
For further information about LA Mission, visit the website.
Jeannie Ortega Law is a reporter for The Christian Post. Reach her at: jeannie.law@christianpost.com She's also the author of the book, What Is Happening to Me? How to Defeat Your Unseen Enemy Follow her on Twitter: @jlawcp Facebook: JeannieOMusic
