Our Mission As We Have Grown to New Locations

(Updated January, 2008)

In 2002 Dwayna had the idea for a ministry to Venice Beach—a booth offering people answers based on the Bible with astute resources for the lost in making a stand for God’s Word. LTW began in the psychic environment of the Venice boardwalk, offering sound sermons from Walter Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute, tracts, articles, Bibles and sermons on a plethora of apologetic topics with the sign at the table reading, “Come Find Out What God Has to Say About Your Future for Free.” In the domain of astral projection, demonic apparitions, and counterfeit gospels, Dwayna read the Bible (instead of tarot cards) to people about how to be saved through Jesus when they approached the booth and wanted to know “what God has to say about their future for free.”

Before it began, she asked the elder of evangelism at her church, Grace Community Church (www.gracechurch.org ) what he thought of the idea. He said he thought it was a great idea, and Dwayna started setting up the booth every Saturday with other members of Grace Community Church volunteering their time to work at Venice Beach with her. The idea was to tell seekers their “future” based on the Bible, instead of reading palms and tarot cards in the psychic environment. Word of mouth spread, and the ministry began as an official ministry of evangelism at Grace Community Church before going full time as “Lighting the Way.”

Lighting the Way began officially in 2003 with non-profit status with the state of California as an evangelistic ministry. At that time the only booth location was Venice Beach, and Dwayna’s job consisted of writing weekly email updates and prayer lists to Christians on the ministry email list, ordering supplies for the Venice Booth outreach table, keeping all resources and articles in the file bins organized, working with youth groups who visit on day mission trips, praying for the neighborhood and physically setting up the booth 3-5 days a week in missions at Venice Beach.

The current web site was designed with no charge by a Christian web designer as a donation to LTW. Dwayna helped design the pages and all pictures, overseeing all of the content and postings. Unless otherwise designated all of the pages and articles were written by her.

In the beginning months of 2005, LTW expanded to a new ministry location, which was West Hollywood, CA. Dwayna then began to work both booth locations as the ministry leader of each. In addition to what she had been doing in Venice Beach, which was a day outreach, she now led the night outreach alongside “gay” bars on Santa Monica Blvd. at the “Heart for Him (Psalm 37:4)” booth. Her job consisted of keeping the tracts, testimonials of former homosexuals on CD, sermons, and articles organized for free to the neighborhood of West Hollywood, as well as keeping the booth on Ocean Front Walk at Venice current and organized. She would meet Robin, a Christian volunteer, on Friday and Saturday nights and go to West Hollywood, often working until about 1:00 A.M. at the booth there. In 2005, in addition to the email updates sent out to ministry prayer partners [1] and her duties to update the web site, Dwayna started writing and maintaining a daily blog. This was originally for posting ministry updates and journaling about personal prayer times and Bible study. It has transitioned to provide more research links and essays by guest apologists to draw others to Christ. [Caveat: The blog has since grown to make a stand for the Bible in defense of apostate movements such as evangelical feminism, the emergent church, contemplative prayer, and seeker friendly agendas to merge the New Age Movement globally with postmodern Christianity. As these movements have grown drastically afoot, the blog had to change direction slightly to explain the true meaning of a “Christian” and “evangelism” according to the Bible. Apologetics is not only for the lost but also for the saved, as biblical apologetics emphasizes the importance of testing all things in light of the Scripture.]

In 2005, LTW began partnering with the “Church of the Open Air” in Santa Monica, CA, which is an evangelistic ministry to the homeless where about 300 homeless people line up for a hot meal to hear a sound sermon on salvation through Jesus weekly. They call Hector, the leader of the outreach, “Pastor Hector,” with Hector knowing the people by name, truly caring about them and being a long term friend to many of these people. He has seen many of the homeless in Santa Monica and Venice Beach get jobs and come back to work in the ministry to serve other homeless people food. LTW has been thankful for a friendship with Church of the Open Air, serving Santa Monica and Venice Beach with resources often donated from Firefighters for Christ. [2]

In that same year, the aggregate of outreach booths grew once again to Boulder, CO, and Dwayna moved to the Boulder area in December, 2005. After just one visit to the Pearl Street promenade, Dwayna felt an intense desire to start an outreach of apologetics there. At first she resisted the idea, feeling like the mere thought of moving to the area from LA was too extreme to even admit out loud! However, on the same weekend of her initial visit to the Denver and Boulder area, an elder at Littleton Bible Chapel was speaking to her about the mission field of Boulder, and something strange happened—she started crying just telling him how much the people of Boulder needed a ministry of apologetics. He said, “It takes God-given passion for something like this. Maybe you are meant to do it!” She declared, “I can’t do it! God has called me to Venice Beach.” However, that night down on her knees she surrendered the idea to God, telling Him that she would be willing if this is what He wanted.

Asking for confirmation, she met with her pastor in CA who told her, “If it is God’s will for you to move to Boulder, God will provide leaders for the ministries here in Venice Beach and West Hollywood, so that the work can continue.”

In these challenging mission fields, God did just that. In 2005, Robin began to lead the ministry in West Hollywood and Bob took over the ministry in Venice Beach as leader. The Lord provided all of the details, and Dwayna then moved to CO to get the new outreach in Boulder going. “Free Thinking in Boulder (Isaiah 1:18)” began on Pearl Street in the spring of 2006.

In July of 2006, Dwayna found herself in Colorado with an idea for a ministry to NYC called “God’s Heart to Central Park.” Right there she felt the Holy Spirit at work, as tears filled her eyes asking Him, “Lord, would You let me do this?” It seemed too good to be true! Not knowing how it or if such an idea would ever come to fruition (especially given the small budget for the ministry), it seemed too thrilling to believe. That same moment, along with the idea, God gave her a Bible verse for the possible NY location—Psalm 33:11, which is about how the counsel of the Lord stands forever and the plans of His heart from generation to generation. She made a few phone calls to pastors in NYC, and one pastor even told her that an apologetic ministry “would not go over” in NYC. As the contemplative prayer, emergent church, and the seeker-friendly gospels were spreading, the zeal for Bible based evangelism was obviously diminishing rapidly.

But, again, God provided a leader for the Boulder ministry and a church, Shepherd’s Community in Louisville, CO, to help facilitate the Boulder booth. Pastor Ron Prosise was new to the area, and he was working on his doctorate from Master’s Seminary, where John MacArthur is president, which is affiliated with Grace Community Church where LTW began. Because of Dwayna’s background at Pastor MacArthur’s church it made for a strong connection and friendship with Ron Prosise and the people at Shepherd’s Community. A Christian from Shepherd’s Community Church began helping with tech needs, as many more CD copies of sermons were needed at this point to stock ministry booths in all of the locations.

By 2007, Pastor Ron Prosise had joined the Board of Directors for LTW as well as Jill Martin Rische, the daughter of the late Walter Martin, the “original Bible Answer Man.” Jill and Dwayna began to do radio interviews against the teachings of evangelical feminism, specifically the notion that calling God “mother” was being disseminated by the evangelical feminists and promoted as “sound” as the growing apostasy.

In the summer of 2006 Dwayna went to Cornerstone 2006 to do research on evangelical feminism at the “Gender Revolution” tent. She and a team did research at the “Jesus People” event and handed out fact sheets against calling God “mother”. After witnessing “Days of the Dead” at this Christian youth festival, more emails came in than she could answer daily—She has been trying to keep up with research emailed to her on a regular basis since then and radio programs asking for interviews and invitations to speak at women’s conferences on the topics of evangelism and the perils of evangelical feminism.

Doing mission work in Venice Beach, West Hollywood, and Boulder, CO, Dwayna had witnessed to witches and feminists resisting a “Father” God. When the teachings to call God “mother” within Christianity came to her attention, there again, it was more than she could even discuss apart from tears. At first, when asked to do a radio interview against the teachings, she prayed, “God if you want me to talk about this, You have to enable me to talk about it soberly without crying.” It was heartbreaking to her. The Holy Spirit was obviously burdening her to write about evangelical feminism with tenacity, making a stand for the Bible against the Gnostic “mother god” worship and currents of androgyny within that scope.

To her surprise, articles began to be published on various Internet sites. Another LTW Board Member, Debi Fry, had emailed some friends a few of Dwayna’s blog entries on evangelical feminism, and one of those friends had an online news resource which was a popular Internet publishing site for columns. Hence, the articles began to get published there as well as other sites such as Walter Martin Ministries, Witnesses for Jesus, Crossroad, and Discernment Ministries.

In 2007 she began to speak at conferences for women on the subject of evangelical feminism warning the church of its perils. She also speaks to share her testimony and give details about LTW with a slide presentation of our work in home missions.

In January, 2008, Dan Hubbard and Dwayna and a team kicked off a new outreach to Long Beach, CA, with a focus on reaching homosexuals and prostitutes with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. The team plans to be out every other Friday night. Dwayna sends materials for the ministry to Dan on a regular basis, receiving updates from him and pictures to post on the blog to let others know how God is at work in the ministry.

Daily activities and duties involve answering emails, posting blog entries and news, writing articles on apologetics, doing radio interviews, mailing out books and sermons to Christians who email wanting answers and resources to ministry leaders in other locations, staying organized in the storage units, physically working the ministry in NYC where she now resides and physically working the ministries in other locations with leaders on visits. She also calls leaders daily in the street ministry locations to keep up with updates from them, share prayer requests on the blog about people to whom LTW is reaching with the Gospel in Venice, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Long Beach, Boulder, and NYC, and working on bookkeeping. She writes songs inspired from her walk with Jesus often to share with other Christians and the lost in ministry locations. She has written witnessing materials which have been used in the street ministries for New Agers and compiled LTW slide presentations for churches who want to find out more and get involved.

Dwayna’s church, First Baptist New York City, has Bible-based teaching with an emphasis on evangelism. More and more of her Christian friends in NYC are expressing interest in meeting her at the booth at Columbus Circle to give their lives away in service to the Lord on Saturdays when the ministry of apologetics is in action spring, summer, and fall.

Dwayna will be working with a pastor this summer (2008) affiliated with Evangelical Press in the UK. God has initiated a visit there with the pastor’s church offering to pay her airfare and have her stay with Christians in the area. God has impressed upon her to go and “be a servant” to the Christians and church plants in London and Harrogate, and see if God may orchestrate a LTW booth in the UK like the one we have in NYC.

Dwayna’s life is not defined by “LTW” but by a love relationship with Jesus, which leaves her indebted to tell others about such a Savior.