Seven Buses Into Gangland

The Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles is known as the gang capital of the world.  It is estimated that over 1,100 gangs with 86,000 gang members live in Los Angeles County alone.  Twenty years ago, Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, decided to make this his home.  Why?  Because the love of Christ compelled him.[1] 

He tells the story of Rigo, a brash 15 year-old whom Boyle met in a detention center.  Rigo recalled the day that he was sent home from school and was surprised to find his father there.  His dad, a heroin addict, was never there.  “Why did they send you home?” his father asked.  Scared of being beaten, Rigo replied, “If I tell you, do you promise you won’t hit me?”  “I’m your father, of course I’m not gonna hit you,” his dad said.  So Rigo told him.

Immediately Rigo started to cry, unable to continue.  The cry turned into a wail and Boyle put his arm around the boy as he rocked back and forth, inconsolable.  “He beat me with a pipe. . . with . . . a pipe.”  Boyle could only hold him, saying nothing, entering with him into unthinkable sorrow, pain and betrayal.

“And your mom?” Boyle asked as Rigo regained his composure.  Rigo’s face lit up and he stopped crying.  “My mom, there’s no one like her,” Rigo said.  Capturing a thought and then continuing, “I’ve been locked up for more than a year and a half and my mom comes to see me every Sunday.  You know how many buses she takes every Sunday to see my sorry a#@?”

Once again, Rigo began to cry uncontrollably.  Gasping through his tears he said, “Seven buses.  She takes . . . seven . . . buses.  Imagine.” 

It took seven buses to reach this broken teenager.  It took seven buses to bridge the terrible gap that existed between this young man’s heart and the love of God.  It took seven buses to show this wounded child that he was worthy of care and compassion. 

How many buses will it take to reach the disinterested youth in your neighborhood?  You may not live in Boyle Heights but the pain and abandonment of teenagers is just as real in the suburbs.  How many buses will it take to reach the millions of Catholic teenagers who continue to be uninspired and indifferent to the formation they’ve received?  Whether kids were raised Catholic, Protestant or with no religion at all, Young Life has found no easier way to reach disinterested kids than to follow in the footsteps of the Savior himself, to “take on flesh and move into the neighborhood.”[2] 

Like Jesuit father Greg Boyle, we know that we cannot continue to ask kids to come to us.  We must go to them.  We must move into the neighborhood.  We need to earn the right to be heard.  There are millions of kids out there just like Rigo, never knowing the love of the Father, who are waiting, just waiting to see just how many buses we’d take to show up in their neighborhood and show them that we truly care.

Our young people today, six or eight-million in the high school age alone, are waiting, waiting for somebody to care about them like Christ did.  I mean there are six or eight-million in our nation that nobody has ever talked to about Jesus Christ, that nobody has ever said a prayer for, that nobody has ever cared about.  There are millions of them in our own nation, and they are waiting for somebody to care about them enough to take the time and trouble to pour out compassion on them, to prove their friendship, to bridge this tragic and terrible gap that exists in our culture between teenagers and adults.[3]

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            [1]  “For Christ’s love compels us,” writes the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor 5:14.

            [2]  A famous paraphrase of John 1:14 coined by Young Lifer Bill Paige who spent over 20 years as a beat cop and detective in New York City. 

            [3]  A quote from Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, taken from Kit Sublett (ed.), The Diaries of Jim Rayburn, Colorado Springs, CO: Morning Star Press, 2008, xviii.