Mere Missions

T he C hurch : E quip • 169

were being saved. Faithfully, the Lord’s Supper was administered. The word was preached and worship in praise songs filled the park each Sunday. It was a bona fide Church, a Kingdom Outpost. Together we evangelized, established the Urban Church Association, equipped saints for the work of ministry (2005-2013) when World Impact leadership asked me to relocate to Newark, New Jersey, and give oversite to our mission efforts on the East Coast. In 2015, Dr. Reverend Hank Voss sent me the following update on what the Lord was doing through Hector in equipping many of the “least of these” to advance the Gospel leading to other churches being planted. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. ~ 1 Samuel 16.7b There is often a divine irony in those leaders God selects. They are those who the world would least expect to be God’s special choice. Rev. Hector Cedillo, an inner-city church planter from the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles is one clear example. Hector was in his early thirties when he finally decided to turn his life over to Christ, and by that point, he had few options left. Hector sat in a room looking at his wife. After a five-day binge which almost ended in a drug overdose, his wife and brother had finally found him at a cheap hotel in downtown LA. They brought Hector home, he had wasted all the grocery and rent money during the binge, and now sat weeping, crying like a baby. His wife tenderly asked him, “Hector, you have tried so many things. You have tried alcohol, cocaine, heroin, illegal business, probably even women . . . but why don’t you try God? What have you got to lose?”