Randy Lovejoy
has been the pastor at Silverlake Church for almost 9 years. Randy grew up in Texas, Australia and England. After graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio with a degree in religion and sociology, Randy worked with churches in Latin America for two years. During this time he met his wife, Los Angeles native Cheryl Ray. Following seminary at Fuller in Pasadena, Randy and Cheryl lived in Mozambique in Southern Africa where Randy worked as a pastor in the Igreja Presbiteriana de Mocambique and Cheryl led human resources with World Vision Mozambique.Cheryl and Randy’s first son, Lucas, was born while Randy was an associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Florence, SC. Their second son, Samuel, was born right here in Los Angeles. Cheryl is presently working with Women of Global Action.

Randy's Vision: a Statement of Faith:

I believe in the kingdom of God; breaking in through the work of Christ according to the will of the Father, working through the church by the power of the Holy Spirit,coming through the return of Christ to the glory of the Godhead.

Christ came preaching the good news that the kingdom of God was near. He lived as a citizen of this realm by doing the will of God, even unto death. His death and resurrection broke the power of individual and structural sin which characterizes fallen creation and enabled the coming of the Holy Spirit which empowers us to live as he lived. His victory was complete. The kingdom is now present as a ferment in the world.

Christ also proclaimed the need for repentance and trust in the good news. God created the world according to sovereign love and created us in His image. His world calls us to enjoy each other and the earth. Thus what God created was good. But humanity chose to follow its own way. We recreated our own world according to our futile striving and recreated ourselves without God. Our world calls us to trust in ourselves and our technology and to live our days believing that life consists in progress and the accumulation of wealth. Thus we have committed idolatry and set ourselves in direct opposition to God

We must turn from these ways and trust in the hope of the kingdom, doing the will of God in all aspects of our lives including the social and cultural, the economic and the political, the scientific and the technological, the individual and the corporate. We must confront those who worship freedom to the loss of responsibility, tolerance to the loss of truth, and individual human rights to the loss of community. We must challenge those who worship the remembered past to the loss of a new and more just future, social stability to the loss of creative and courageous change, and material security to the loss of millions of lives due to a lack of the most basic needs. In the midst of these divisive and short-sighted agendas, God calls us to a new agenda in which freedom leads to responsibility, unity is found in diversity, and where individual human rights are secured within community.God’s agenda calls for a past which informs but does not rule our future, a social stability which comes from social righteousness, and prosperity which comes as the result of lives spent in the service of others.

I believe in the church’s active participation in the movement of the kingdom. Through self-sacrificial service to others, the teaching of the Word of God graciously used by the Spirit, , the shared sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the truth spoken in love, God the Holy Spirit molds, shapes and empowers the body of Christ to be a witness in word and deed according to the needs of the time. It is by the Holy Spirit’s power that our lives are renewed and we are strengthened to challenge the world, to unmask its idolatries and to live in the hope of the kingdom coming.

Finally, I actively await the coming of the kingdom in the return and judgment of Jesus Christ. Our partial achievements do not themselves lead directly to the kingdom. The direction of history is not under our control. Rather, our actions are acted prayers for the coming of the kingdom and as such, signs of its reality which allows others to act in hope. When Christ returns we will witness the full realization of the kingdom’s victory over darkness to the glory of the Triune God.