 Everyone, welcome to Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Kindness is gangster is our conversation for this episode. Our special VIP guest is Callie Williams III, pastor of a Culver City seven-day Adventist church in Los Angeles, California. Pastor Williams started a six million dollar building project to build a gym and classrooms that will help better serve the community. Culver City SEA Church began an outreach called Compassion Sabbath in 2016 where they feed homeless breakfast in Venice Beach. To date they have fed over 6,000 people. One young woman asked a church member if it would be okay to give her a hug after receiving the food. It dawned on the church member that it may have been months or longer since this individual had been embraced in a safe and loving manner. Despite having hit this major milestone, this is only the beginning. The church members want to feed thousands more miles and souls. They believe the saying, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Kindness is gangster. Pastor Kelly, welcome to Sister Power. Thank you Auntie Sharon. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. You're here visiting with your family. I'm here visiting with my family. So who's with you? I have my wife with me, my mother and father-in-law. My birthday was Sunday. My mother-in-law's birthday is today and their anniversary is on this upcoming Sunday. All right well we want to give a shout out and say happy birthday to you. You had a birthday on Sunday and a shout out and happy birthday to your Verlinda. Yes, yes, yes. And you had a special birthday because Take Six was here Sunday. We were at the Take Six concert and they called up all the people who had a birthday and I got on stage and reconnected with my friend Alvin Chia who wasn't expecting me to be in Hawaii but it was an awesome awesome concert. It was and it's so good to see them. I would my they all some of them attended Oakwood University as I did. Yeah absolutely. It was so good to see them. They sound so good. It was great. It was great. I heard them in the late 80s for the first time and they have gotten better with time. They have gotten better with time. They're so talented. Yes they are. They are. Well I know that you preached your first sermon at age 13. At age 13? Yeah tell us a little bit about yourself. Well I grew up in Portmouth, Virginia at the Princess Park Seventh Day Adventist Church and I believe your father pastor that church many years ago. Many years ago. Many years ago. He pastored in Port Smith, Virginia, Norfolk in Newport News. Newport News. That's my home. I grew up in that area. I knew very early that I want to be a pastor and I think I told my grandmother right around seven or eight seven or eight years old and she was an amazing woman. People always ask me after my sermons was your father a preacher and I said no but if you ever heard my grandmother teach the Bible you'll see where I get it from. Wow. And your grandmother is she still with us? She passed last October. Oh recently. She passed last at 96 years old. Yes. Wow. Wow. Wow. All right well let's just talk about what the things are the wonderful things that you're doing. Yes. In Culver City. Yes. In Los Angeles. Culver City happens to be one of my favorite places there. It's a beautiful area. It is. I've lived in Los Angeles for 20 years and so when you said Culver City Tommy's cousin which is my cousin Carol Gilley she lives in Culver City so when we go visit that's where we stay. Okay. Okay. So how did feeding the hungry in Venice Beach get started? Well there's two things that I can say about my church. They love the Lord. Oh okay. Number two they love to eat. So no matter what we celebrate even if it's a guest birthday that's a reason to get a cake. So we we love to eat so one particular evening we were we were having a social and someone said well what should we eat? We always get pizza or maybe we'll do Mexican and I said why don't we do breakfast food? So we cook the breakfast at night. I mean I mean I've spread and hash browns and eggs and pancakes everything. So while we were eating and fellowshiping I got the idea. What if we do this early Saturday morning and take a hot breakfast for those that stay in Venice Beach? And they said let's do it. We were not expecting what that little meeting what that little eating would become. We then got up that morning and you know we have to get up at like 6 30. Oh my. It's hard to get people to church but to get them to come 6 30 in the morning but we got them they came there were more people than we expected they came to volunteer and and you know we're doing some renovations for the church and we'll talk a little bit about that later but it's the small kitchen we haven't gotten our commercial kitchen yet so they did what they could with those four little eyes and cooked cooked we cooked I believe the first time we cooked 300 breakfasts to take to them and we packed them all in and we went out and we set up a table but before that we got these t-shirts now we'll talk a little about that about that too there's a picture that goes with that we we got some t-shirts and and I'll tell you now the t-shirts say Culver City and David's church on the front and on the back it says the church has left the building the church has left the building church has left that's our mission you know okay the church has left the building so every time we go back we tell people look for the blue shirts because we're here to not preach to them but to give them if you study the bible and you realize as a matter of fact one of the most beautiful texts in the bible is when jesus feeding the four thousand and the bible says they had been following him for three days and jesus knew how long it's been since they've eaten and so that's good to know that you know somebody out there doesn't know where their next meal is coming from but god knows how long it's been since you've eaten and so those people who gathered that morning were not expecting us we didn't put out signs there were no flyers we showed up and when they woke up they had hot food and we had we had some lightly used clothes and sleeping bags and blankets for them well how was how was the breakfast funded you're going to fall out your chair okay i'm holding on it's member funded it's member funded people take out of their pockets people just gave donations from the church we told them what we were doing they took that the church did not give any money all of it was donated from people so so those who couldn't come that morning gave funds to buy food for them and it's been going like that since two thousand and and sixteen uh until now you know that just i wouldn't let people know that they're far more kind people in this world than i yeah yeah you know we are all of this evil stuff on tv and on the news but there's so many wonderful wonderful people out there and and i know there's you know here in the united states i think in 2018 there's well over half a million homeless people yeah i believe it yeah and and and when i was coming up you know you call me auntie sharing you know you you're like my son we didn't hear about the word homeless we just heard hobos yes we heard we heard hobos yeah yeah yeah and you know right now i mean los angeles has a lot now i know hawaii has a lot but i believe we we we have more than hawaii even but they're everywhere and when i ride through the streets of la my thoughts are always my god how can we help them you know the bible says the poor you will have with you always but that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to help them always well we have a homeless lady that we take care of our community and she's right under the tree here and a couple ladies in our building we make sure she has food blankets and umbrella chairs whatever it tastes but i i wonder i heard the rumor that the mainland was sending the homeless people over here i don't know how true that may be and i heard that you guys were sending them back to the mainland we can't we can't go with what all right we can't go we don't know what's going on we just know to help we know to help to know to help and and show that i want to i want that picture of you yes with the uh kindness is gangsta yes this this was just a gentleman who happened to be on the beach one of those mornings that we were serving and when i saw his shirt i immediately asked him to take a picture with me because he was there just you know in line and uh kindness his gangster was what he had and i said uh that's so fitting that's so fitting everyone wants to be hip everyone listen kindness is gangster uh and let's make that spread you know and actually we had a write-up in the magazine and i think that might have been the cover story okay with that tell us about that tell us about the write-up in the magazine and which magazine well it was the recorder which is a publication of the pacific union and uh and they heard about our story they heard about our story because by that time i think we were about to hit the 5000 milestone so so so when we when we first started i said listen guys let's let's try and hit the number 5000 so we hit 5000 but if if you study the bible when it talks about the 5000 being fed well they didn't count women and children so it was more like 10 000 people that jesus that jesus fed so now our new initiative is to hit 10 thousand i love it and we have pictures of you in your your church there's there's some there's some more pictures there's clothing there's clothing there is blankets we would have people who are jogging in the morning and they'll see this line and see what they're doing and they will give us they will donate money on the spot there's people jogging about their business and they'll say you guys keep you know most places will try to run you away yes because they say that you're creating an environment where they'll just hang around but no all we're doing is just we're just feeding the people who are there we're we're hugging them if necessary we're playing with them you know nobody's preaching you know we're just trying to see it's hard to hear the gospel on an empty stomach it's hard to do anything exactly exactly it's hard to hear the gospel on an empty stomach and if they want to talk more about it then we do that but we feed them first we feed them first and it's exploded it's exploded so our new goal now is 10,000 people and we've gone from just the small breakfast to lightly used clothes for other trees because we were down at the beach you know there's plenty of open bathrooms there but we have taller trees of feminine projects for products for the for the women and we've escalated from just women's clothes to now it's men's clothes now i mean i'm six seven so i can't donate much of the clothes that i have but we do get men's clothes something that they can wear and and we look forward to it and it's as pastor it's my job to show the vision it's my job to to be a servant leader you know i'm leading from inside the pack you know as we all move forward but this has grown so much now that i'm about to exit and go into another project and start so that this one's up and running on its own and we're going to try and find a new outreach to start at our church oh that sounds so comforting what lessons can some other churches learn from what you're doing in the community in the community sadly to say that um we have taken the gospel commission go ye therefore into all nations teaching and preaching and baptizing we've taken that go ye therefore and we've made it a come ye therefore which means if you come to my church i'll help you if you come to my church will feed you if you come to my church i will wrap my arms around you but it's go the bible says go and so we've got to get out and you know that jesus performed well over 40 miracles uh even the bible says that there were some miracles that they didn't even mention in the script but out of the 40 how many do you think jesus did in the temple was only three only three of that over 40 did jesus ever do in the temple so in order for us to be like jesus we got to get out of the churches and get in to the community i love that and we're going to talk more about that we'll be come back we're going to take a short break okay all right hello i'm melly james host of let's tuesdays every other tuesday from 11 to 11 30 this show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in hawaii i'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories welcome back to sister power and our topic for this episode is kindness is gangster and my special hanai nephew is here in the building pastor callie williams and we were talking about the you've fed over 6000 homeless people in culver city in los angeles and just tell me some of the responses that you've received from the homeless people that your church has fed auntie Sharon it's it's overwhelming and i don't say this because it's cliche but they bless us more than we bless them i mean just the way they say god bless you to us the passion in that um and uh they they have actually now some have actually volunteered meaning they'll take uh some lunches other people maybe in wheelchairs who can't get there you know and and some of their friends down the way or a couple of them may drive up and down with their beach cruisers and let them know there's hot breakfast here they're feeding the churches here people with the blue blue t-shirts are here and so it just overwhelms our heart yeah well let's show that pit kindness is gangster yeah let's just see that picture again right there's a blue shirt yeah yeah there's a blue shirt there's a blue sign i wish you could see the back of my shirt because on the front it says uh it says culver city in the back it's the church has left the bill the old elvis uh uh announcement whenever you do a concert they will say elvis has left the bill right so there you know we and we have to do that and i challenge a lot of churches out here to you know i mean everyone's chasing uh you know social media and everyone wants to get social and that wasn't how jesus operated and i say jokingly to people i said jesus had 12 text messages the disciples that he could have sent into the crowd he didn't do that he went through he touched people right where they are and it's all good if you want to do that social media stuff and but just make sure we don't replace the personal touch to look somebody in their eyes and pray for them and tell them god bless you you know and i think that's so important cali that the human touch you know the human eye um telling people how much you know you care for them and i always tell them can you pick up the phone sometimes to just call this person you know it's so important to hear that human voice that's very healing too it is it is it is i did a i did a study in my church i just walked out and i said um just touch your neighbor and when they did that all of a sudden people were laughing and smiling just from a simple touch just from a certain i told them look at what you're doing i didn't ask you to laugh i didn't ask you to talk to them just touch them and and just by touch endorphins are being released and there's joy and there's there's a feeling that's left over once you're gone you know and that's what we try to leave with with those who were so for so many have forgotten wow love that that makes us feel good those will feel good words it's a feel good yes well let's talk about the six million dollar project that you're working on yes we are building i mean we're excited about this you know uh we're building a gymnasium uh our church uh you've probably driven past and maybe even been took over city but we had a church school there it's been closed for years so we're going to tear that down we're going to build a a gymnasium in some classrooms and hopefully we can get our church as a polling place so that when we're voting they can just come to our gymnasium and do that and and god has just blessed us in this in the short time that that i've been there so are you doing fundraisers how are you raising raising the money to build this huge mission i'm going to tell you how god works i i grabbed one of my elders who's who's a finance guy to crunch some numbers because i said this is what i see for this church and what's it going to take and when he gave me that number i was almost sick can you share the number um well i don't remember exactly what it was but it was far surpassed you know what we had in our coffers yes okay and so maybe about two or three months later a developer came and said you guys aren't using your back parking lot would you think about selling that to us now the vision was there and then a few months later god now sends the funds and maybe we need a lot of people to stand over their property and and pray over it and claim some things that you cannot see uh and they came to us and now we're in this partnership where they're going to build some some luxury homes next to us and build our gym and then give us some money on top of that so so we worked it out to sell just a portion of our land and a part of it is going to come to the church as in the form of of money and the other part is in at cost building of this this gym and this is a major major major project we've got going on wow that is so exciting so how big what is the what is the square footage i mean how how big are you talking about oh this is going to be a it's going to be the court will be a junior college size junior college size junior college of a court you know being a former basketball player that was important to me that the kids have a real gymnasium i've been at churches where it's a little mini one or even a half court so we wanted to have a real a real gym and so it's it's gonna cost a lot but it's in in in time we're gonna see the it pay off and just i had a i had another church that i was with in san diego and they had a gym too and i would tell the parents you never know by staying open on a saturday night and giving young people a place to be how many drive flies we've avoided parties how many things how many choices they could have made that were bad but we had a place where they could choose to enjoy their saturday nights yeah i you know right coming up you know my father was a minister for 40 years uh in the seven day alley gainie ease for seven day advantage okay and every weekend saturday and sunday was planned okay you would have basketball game you would go skating sunday it was baseball so you you know i don't mind it's a devil's workshop yeah it is and then jesus said ask you shall receive you shall receive so how have you kept intentional evangelism in your life um i think it's to start with the pastor and to constantly cast the vision and keep us going as a church sometimes we can get on a pew and get stuck there you know uh and uh and so i am always you know i preached a sermon not it was a while while back but it was uh it was entitled what do is thou here elijah the story what do is thou here lies is in this case but i told them sometimes your church pew can become your cave and you get stuck there and i said as pastor i want to know what do is thou here what are you doing in this church are you serving are you working with the youth are you are you doing outreach you gotta be doing something no idol members here what do is thou here and after i preached that sermon i believe 15 people we're just coming to the church decided to become members and get active and uh and so uh yeah the challenge has to be pulled out and we've got to keep pushing and prodding and motivating people that we should be active uh and i told them the whole situation of hey Jesus did over 40 miracles only three we're in the church let's get out there and let's do some miracles let's read some people yeah because i think that people think that's all you have to do is come to church on Sabbath yes and i've done my part and that's it but oh no every day i tell people in my some of my seminars every time you step out the door you represent your brand you do you do so it's very important for the churches to get out there in the community what has been your biggest joy in ministry um you know the the biggest joy there are plenty of joys when you when you're when you're marrying a lovely wide-eyed couple uh to bless a little baby that that that will not let you hold them in church but we bless them anyway you know um but baptism baptism is the baptism is the goal that's that's you know we do of all of the services we perform in the church to just to know that that you are there in the pool with somebody who's given their heart to the Lord and let me say to any minister that's out there don't do anything to hinder someone from giving their heart to the Lord because that's the greatest thing that they can do that's the greatest thing you can teach them how to deal with their finances and you can get them a job and all of that stuff but the greatest decision that they'll ever make in your life is to give your heart over to the Lord that amen absolutely yes and i'm noticing that how we well let me rephrase this this to you okay how are we mentoring the younger generation the millennials yeah yeah to become ministers to become ministers it's tough it's tough uh first you have to make sure that it is God calling you to this you know to have that confidence i tell people all the time i would rather have a call to ministry and not have a church and to have a church and not have the call uh oh tell us about your calling well i i it came at seven i told you it came at seven and God has blessed us God has blessed us you know like most places even ministry has a good old boy network and i was never part of that my dad was not a pastor i i my dad was not a conference president or any of those type of things it's just you know God smiled on it he laid his hands on me and we have had success wherever we wherever we went and that there was more worth more to me and my wife than go her to know that my husband is called to do this and for me to know hey uh uh when i step up before the people it's not me it's God it's the calling he's giving me and and uh and i don't worry i don't worry i would also say to the to the young guys who are um who are coming up in ministry is uh the old stuff still works the old stuff still works you don't need a you don't need a gimmick you don't need to try the latest fad that's that's on social media reach the people peace to people reach to the people and love the people oh i love that well look on that camera and in 30 seconds or left yes leave us with some comforting healing motivating and inspiring words yes yes i i want to speak to the pastor out there who is looking for a way to charge your church uh and and you know take my advice that that three miracles happened in the church the rest was out get your congregation out and motivate it and trust me it's going to bless them it's going to encourage them uh give them the marching orders that we're going to take this city wherever you are new york or or or los angeles or chicago or here in hawaii uh and also to those who are at the end of the rope um maybe your cabinet and your refrigerator is is empty and you don't know where your next meals come from uh jesus knows he's counted the days it's been three days uh and you haven't eaten and he doesn't want to send you away hungry uh don't give up uh when you come to the end of your rope hang on tight and know that god is holding the other end god bless you thank you so much pastor callie thank you so much and and viewers thank you for spending part of your day with us oceans of aloha peace love and blessings