Our story in church planting

Hey, my name is Rudy Rubio and I’ve recently helped plant RCLA (Reformed Church of Los Angeles) in the city of Lynwood, which happens to be right smack dab between Compton and Watts. This has been truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. This has been a road that started less than one year ago… it’s had many ups and downs with many super high points where we’ve felt like we had to be floating on a cloud…as well as many lows in the valley of desperation, loneliness, and brokenheartedness. Many friends and family members, especially colleagues in ministry, have all at some point or another said, “Hey, you need to document all that you’re doing! Somebody needs to hear your story”. So this is the beginning of just that… making an attempt to document our story.

Our story begins much longer than a year ago…approximately 5 years ago when my Senior Pastor and spiritual father, Eddy Aleman, invited my wife Edna and I out one evening for dinner. When he called he was very excited about taking us out, “You pick the place!” he said, “Anywhere you wanna go!”. Now this surprised us, not because he was inviting us out, but there was just something different in the tone of his voice. He is originally from Nicaragua, so in Spanish I could sense the excitement in his voice mixed in with just a bit of mischief, knowing this would be an evening my wife and I had NEVER expected. As we sat down for dinner at a local Denny’s (I know, I should’ve picked a better place since they were buying) we got to talking about ministry, and the lack of Latino pastors out there in urban settings and how there was such a need for 2nd and 3rd generation Latinos to be ministered to. I agreed and continued to listen in but something inside kept telling me that there was much more to the conversation than what he was letting on. Eventually he just blurted out that I should consider planting… after my wife helped me scrape my jaw up off the floor I immediately gave him approximately 126 reasons as to why I should NOT plant a church and that I was not in ministry to become a pastor. He just smiled and asked me to pray about it… it was late in the evening and I’ve gotta tell you that by the time we parted ways that night, we’d already even discussed where we’d plant and what building we could potentially use. As quickly as we’d dreamed about planting a church in the heart of South Central almost 5 years ago… God shut that down and I accepted an invitation to come on staff at an evangelical church in Paramount, CA. It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life! God used that church to teach me so much…amazing stuff, I never thought I’d leave it… but God had different plans, and that’s what this blog will be about.

We will document our journey thus far and as we move forward hoping that you would get to know us, hear of our experiences both good and bad, that you would pray for us and cheer us on (because it ALWAYS helps) and spur us on towards love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24). It is my prayer that others who have taken an interest in church planting in “the hood” type areas can potentially learn from our victories and our mistakes too. We’ve already learned so much in these 12 months since our journey started. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, and encourage me (us) as we seek to be obedient to God’s calling in planting a church that would be committed to building a community of believers that are passionate about knowing Christ and walking in obedience to Him.