I met Jonathan Ofili last summer at a College and Young Adult Fellowship event, and I was immediately struck by his easygoing and inviting presence – his smile was generous and his laugh contagious. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he volunteered with the Junior High ministry here at Lake, but I was surprised when he shared how reluctant he initially was to follow God’s call there.
Having heard him share this story to a large group of us several months ago, I was eager to hear more from him, so we sat down for coffee and got to talking earlier this month. We started with the basics, which turned out to be far more interesting than I thought basics were supposed to be. His Nigerian father and Caribbean mother met at a bible study in France, and so he was born in Versailles before his family relocated to Pasadena so his father could attend Fuller Seminary. For the next 25 years, Jonathan attended Lake Avenue Church. He told me that he always saw faith as a personal relationship, between himself and God, and that led to a lack of interest in engaging with the faith community. He preferred attending “big church” over programming for students, and even into adulthood he refrained from getting plugged in to the various ministries our large community offers.
When his family entered a period of financial difficulty, Jonathan found himself relying on God for the first time in his adult life. He described to me the familial reality that his childhood at Lake had given him an invisible foundation he wasn’t even aware was there until he needed it – but when trouble came, he knew what to do, and he found himself on his knees before God.
As things started looking better, Jonathan said he felt like he owed God, and he actively sought to grow in his faith in response. This led him to a year of heavy Bible reading, followed by a year of intense Bible study; but then he plateaued. What was next? His dad gave him this piece of advice: there are two kinds of Christians – those who believe, and those who act on what they believe. But what exactly he was supposed to do, Jonathan wasn’t sure.
Then one Sunday, when Pastor Waybright mentioned that volunteers were needed in our Children’s and Student Ministries, Jonathan’s mother, who was visiting, nudged her son, whispering, “He’s talking to you!” Jonathan shook this off, knowing that the call for volunteers went out weekly, and believing that it wasn’t an announcement that pertained to him; it was just something you sat through while you waited for the sermon.
Next Sunday rolled around and he heard the request for volunteers again, and glanced to his left and to his right, and agreed: God was stirring him to pay attention. Reluctantly, he scribbled his name and contact information on a card and dropped it off, and hoped to never hear about it again. Unfortunately for him, a few weeks later he was invited to coffee. After much honesty and prayer, and no small bit of convincing, Jonathan found himself roped into volunteering in the Junior High – and mentoring with the Lake Avenue Community Foundation.
He told me that it was awkward at first, and that he wasn’t motivated to go – he would show up to fulfill his commitment to being there, and then leave. The idea of leading young people was intimidating – Jonathan had read in the Bible that teachers will be judged double, and he wasn’t certain if that job was for him.
He told Perry, our Junior High director, that he thought he’d make a mistake volunteering, and they prayed together. Then Jonathan decided on an ultimatum – one last attempt to see if God really wanted him to do this. “Okay Perry,” he said. “I’ll do this for one month – I’ll give it everything I have for the month of January. If I’m still standing by February 1st, you have me for however long you want me.” And he forced himself to really be there, to get to know the students, and to do life with them. Suddenly, he remembers, it was February 1st, and he couldn’t imagine leaving.
Jonathan described the freedom he found – his job isn’t to have all the answers, his job is just to be there and to be a friend. The students ask him tough questions sometimes, and instead of being intimidated with the responsibility to answering them, he gets to celebrate that growth is happening. “Okay, God – this is all you!” he says during those times.
But he has also encountered trial and frustration. When I asked him what the hardest part of working with the Junior High students was, he told me it was the work of making every student feel at home. Lake Avenue, like many churches, has its own culture, and it can be hard to understand and participate in it if you are shy, or visiting, or new, and others students have been here for years. And then there’s the fact that Lake Avenue is a huge church! The shear number of students on any given Sunday may be a bit frightening, but it also means we are a diverse community, with students coming in from different cultures within our city. Jonathan says it can be hard to attend to the different groups of kids, to make every student feel known and safe and welcome, especially when there just aren’t enough volunteers.
We tell them that the church is their home, but sometimes our actions say we’re only open Wednesdays and Sundays. What would it look like if we had all hands on deck, everyone totally devoted to these kids – investing in their lives, showing them that church happens beyond our campus, beyond the organized programming we offer?
Jonathan found that mentoring was a unique way to develop the kind of one-on-one relationship he sensed would be so beneficial to the students he saw in his community. It was, at first, awkward and challenging to form a relationship with the then 9-year old, just like it had been uncomfortable when he first started in the Junior High ministry. But over time (and over food), they got to know each other, and build a real relationship - one that has already outlasted the 18-month minimum commitment asked by LACF.
The mentoring relationship is often described as mutually life-changing, and this was true for Jonathan and his mentee; the investment is gritty and challenging, but wonderful. The commitment Jonathan made out of obedience turned into a gratifying and spiritual experience. Jonathan said that it’s “a blessing to see God at work outside of my own life, to see him work in the life of a middle schooler is encouraging and exciting.”
I was moved by Jonathan’s devotion to the ministry and the students, and convicted of my own failure to honor, maintain, and invest in my church family. It made me think about how much more I could be doing, what God might be trying to tell me if only I would take more time to listen and trust and follow.
I asked Jonathan what he wanted to say to our church the most. He went back to the advice his father gave him, that there are “believers” and those who “believe and…” Jonathan ended by saying, “There’s a lot of opportunity for people to act out their faith at Lake, we just have to get a little uncomfortable.”
Want to serve in Middle School Ministry? Contact Perry Hawkins at or 626.817.4873. For LACF Summer Opportunities, click here. For Mentoring opportunities, click here.