CA State Shut down a Christian Ministry

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California Is Shutting Down a Christian Ministry

Is California the tyranny state? Are they coming after your ministry? That's the question we'll be answering on this episode of The Wrap Report.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We thank all of you who are listening and we are gonna do a little something this episode, which is I'm gonna be having a friend of mine on. We're going to talk about, well, the tyranny of California.

You know, that's that communist state out there on the West Coast and what they're doing to ministries. And so if you're living in California, I'm just gonna say this, leave, leave now. And this episode may convince you why.

And if you're in one of the bluer states, well, you're not far behind. It is one of the reasons I left New Jersey, but they weren't too far behind. But I'm joined by my friend, Haps Addison, who, you know, now I'm not sure, is Happy your name or just the description everyone has for you?

I'm not sure. Your wife calls you Happy. So is it?

It's my nickname. My real name is Todd Addison, but everybody calls me Pastor Happy.

So you're with a ministry known as Olive Branch Ministries. This is at least currently in California. We're gonna talk about why I'm saying currently in a few minutes, but because we're gonna talk about what California did to you guys.

But this is something that a lot of folks may not know of your ministry. And so what I'm gonna do is ask you to introduce your ministry, yourself, your ministry, your pastoring there in California, at least right now.

I should let my audience know, the way that you and I met was we were both preaching at the Open Air Theology Conference, and you're one of the hosts of the Open Air Theology Podcast, which hosted that conference.

And so you and I got to share an Airbnb. I hope you've gotten over the nightmares of that. But I got to meet you, your wife, and we shared Brandon. So, but it was a good time. And so if you could introduce yourself and help folks understand your ministry and what you're doing with the guys that come through your ministry.

All right, well, thanks for having me on, bro. And yeah, my name is Pastor Haps Addison, Happy. My real name is Todd Addison. And my wife and I, we have a home in Wildermere, California. And what we did was we found a need in the community and we filled it with Jesus Christ.

And there's a lot of homelessness and mental illness in people out there that are in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a love. And there's a lot of working ministries out here where they get the homeless off the streets, places like Set Free and Free Indeed and whatnot, but they're working ministries.

So you had to be able to work. Well, my wife and I, you know, I used to evangelize, I mean, like all the time. And we just found this need for the mentally ill and people that are dying of cancer. And so we opened up our home and usually have 15 to 20 people live with us at a time.

And a lot of times when they come in here, they're dying of cancer and they have to get on hospice. And so we're able to give them the gospel of Jesus Christ and see them go from glory to glory and be with them in their final days.

And with the mentally ill, we help them get on their medications, not only get reconciled to God, but reconciled with their families. And it's one thing to take care of them, but God has so much more for them.

And so we do that, but every morning for the last seven years, we get up and we do Bible study and we teach them about Jesus Christ. After, you know, our foundation is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then another command is that we are to grow in the knowledge of him.

And so, you know, I teach theology and a lot of these people come out of cults. They've been in some serious cults. And so we help them untangle all that stuff. But yeah, we've been doing that for seven years.

Now, this is the thing. I mean, I love this because of the fact, I mean, our ministry at Striving Fraternity, we focus on the small churches where the greatest need is, but no one wants to focus there.

And that's what you're doing here. There's no money to be made in working with homeless, mentally ill and dying cancer patients. I mean, there's just, that you're not gonna make money doing that. So these big ministries, they ignore that.

But you go to where the need is. These people that need Christ, they're at desperate times in their life, they're calling out and the gospel is, and you're there presenting it to them. And so I love that, but something happened last week.

California came in and now let's be clear, the state of California and where you live, they even send people to you guys, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah, we have, let's say the Sheriff's department or police departments, clinical therapist, parole probation, the Sheriff's department again, the courts, all different ministries that can't take care of people like we can.

Again, there's working ministries out there, but yeah.

So I'm just trying to set the stage. The state of California, the county has sent people to you. And what did they do last week? Which is, it blows my mind that they're like, okay, we have these people, they're mentally ill, they're dying of cancer.

We don't know what to do with them.

So they're gonna send them to you. And then this happened. Well, last Wednesday, I just got done preaching. I preach every morning. Like if it's cold out, we start at nine,.

But if it's summer time Okay, okay, okay, stop, stop, stop, stop. You're in Southern California. What do you call cold?

Well, we're in the lower desert. So it gets really cold at night or early in the morning.

Because we preach outside So what's really cold, like 70?

No, no, I'm like, it's like anywhere from 50 to 60.

Okay, just so we could set a stage here, you're saying 50 and 60 is really cold. Okay, okay, I didn't just

When you're outside, so I preach under trees. So we're outside, my church floor is dirt. Anyways, so I get done preaching, and all of a sudden, to make a long story short, the sheriff's department come walking down in code enforcement.

Now, you did not expect any of this, right? You had no warning ahead of time.

No, not at all. I had no clue what was going on. And they said, well, we need to inspect your property. And I was like, okay, well, they've been here before. And so they didn't leave one stone unturned.

They went through every inch of my property and even came on my second lot where the majority of the people stay. And then they checked out my home and they checked out where the cancer patients were staying or the stroke victims too.

And then they asked me to open up my garage. And I said, sure, you know, it's part of my house. I opened it up and they're taking pictures wherever they went. And then we go back into the backyard and they sit me down and they go, well, because of a new California state law that just got passed, now it's four weeks ago, but they said three weeks at the time.

They said, everybody has to leave within 24 hours. I go, what? Like, what are you talking about? And they go, this isn't zoned here. You don't have permits here and all this and that. And I go, but you guys have been sending me people for years, you know?

And they said, I'm sorry, you know? And I was like, you know, they're like, you know, we're willing to work with you. And I was like, okay, that's nice and everything. But I have 24 hours before, I mean, I have to find all these people homes within 24 hours and everybody was crying, everybody was so upset.

You know, people were yelling out, this is our home, this is our home, you know? Still upsetting. You know? You know, but, you know, so I had my overseer, he's scrambling, calling people, I'm calling people.

And thank God this lady named Anne from this place called Project Touch, she has a couple homes out here. And she really helped out, you know, getting some of our guys into a place, they're transitions homes where they're only allowed to be for like 20 days.

And I was So they still need to find a home. They're not, they just, all they do, so, because the state basically came in and shut you down that day. It wasn't like, oh, we're gonna give you 30 days notice.

They just came in and shut you down. Yeah, they shut us down and then they said that you have 18 days to comply with all the stuff that needs to get fixed around here. And I was just like, this is like in the hundreds, hundreds, $100 ,000 and stuff, you know?

I mean, I'm not a paid pastor. I mean, we just make enough money to keep the lights on and food, you know, and gas so we can get them to from church, church proper, you know, where they can, you know, receive the Lord's supper and fellowship and worship God is with God's covenant people, you know?

But yeah, they shut us down. They said we only had 18 days. And then all the next day, all the bills came in and we were just financially wrecked because, you know, our, just our electric bill every month is like $1 ,000, you know, and the way California works with the electric companies, they can take your contract with them and then give it to another electric company and then charge you startup fees without you even knowing.

And this went back and forth and it just, I think our electric bill was like $6 ,300 the very next day. And yeah, the very next day and we were just like, oh no, and I was just, my wife and I and everybody here were just absolutely devastated, completely devastated, you know?

So, I mean, it's dumbfounding to me. Well, actually it isn't because, well, this is California we're talking about and thing. I mean, this isn't America anymore, right? I mean, we've now officially in America become a third world country where we arrest political opponents for made up, you know, trumped up charges, literally, pun intended.

The reality is that this is, I mean, this is, we're going to start seeing more of this. There's just no way around this. So, and it's concerning that the California could just can walk in and be like, okay, you're shut down.

And if you would have just said, well, I got no home for these guys, they go on the street as homeless and they'll get more rights as someone who's homeless on the street than being, you know, in your backyard, in your house getting care as part of a ministry.

And maybe we should start with, let's start with a little history with how this ministry came about. How did you start Olive Branch Ministries?

The Origins of Olive Branch Ministries

Well, what happened was, you know, I came to know the Lord back in, I think was 14 or 15. And it impacted my life so much that, cause I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the very first time. You know, I was a stroke victim.

I used to do heroin and speed and I stroked out and I ended up hearing the gospel for the very first time. And after a year of rehabilitation and everything, I was up and walking again. And, but I just couldn't, I couldn't shut up about the gospel, you know?

And so my wife and I would, at the end of every day, we'd make all these, people called them Jesus burritos, but we'd take like, you know, like chicken and black beans and rice, excuse me. And we'd make these burritos, hand make each one of these burritos.

And we'd go to the worst part of town and I would hand it to somebody and say, hey, I made this for you. And I wanna share with you the gospel of Jesus Christ. And they were really receptive because if you just go out there with like a pizza or something, they'll just take the food and run.

But when they see that you put some love and that you're actually thinking of them. And then it started, we did that for a while. Then it started raining one day. And I was like, honey, can we just bring them home?

We're called in scripture to invite the stranger in. And so we did that. We invited the stranger in. And next thing I know, I had all these tents in my backyard and all these cords going everywhere. And I kept going out on Friday and Saturday nights at the worst part of town and preaching.

And I'd stand on a milk carton and I preached the gospel and went up to five people, 50, 100, 150, 160 people. And so a friend of mine lent me a thousand dollars, just $1 ,000, that was it, dude. And I took on the other piece of property.

I went in and means a couple of friends and we had this old mechanics garage and I instillated it, put sheet rock in it, put two big giant fan. I mean, fans in there and a fireplace right in the very center and had just little by little started, I got like one bunk bed and then I got the mattresses for it and then another bunk bed.

And so it was every penny that we had, or if somebody came by and said, hey, I got a couple bunk beds, I'll give you. And so that's how we got started. And then somebody donated us a couple of couches and the guys back here, they built me a pulpit.

This was years and years ago, but they built me a pulpit out of a broken TV dinner tray and an old music stand. And so faithfully been preaching from there ever since. But yeah, that's how we got started.

Ministry, Homelessness, and California’s Anti-Christian Pressure

And so, I mean, little by little you built up, but it's, California is known unfortunately for it's homeless, right? It's not something that is unusual for California. And to see, I guess the thing for me to see the state just come in and shut you down, especially after sending people to you.

It's just, it's something where you look at this and say, well, why would they do it? Well, I think we know why, right? Because they have a very clear anti-Christian agenda. And it's, I mean, that's just what it is.

There's no other way around it, explaining it.

Well, you know what, to be honest, Andrew, we saw something, a shift kind of like happened about seven years ago. I was starting to get known out here for what I was doing and everything. And so we got, I got asked to come to a pastor's and city council meeting over in Temecula, California.

And I was there with like all these tons of pastors, like maybe like 70, 80, 100, something like that. And up on stage was the sheriff's department and they needed our help. And our help was that when we're out there evangelizing or we're feeding the homeless or whatever, to mark where they're all at and tell them where they are because they're coming out with a new ordinance that it would be illegal to feed the homeless, all right?

To feed the homeless, to give money to the homeless or, you know, tents or anything like that. And believe it or not, the majority of the people were on board and mean. A few people were like, oh no, that's never gonna happen.

And what came as a result Yeah, that's just setting up.

For something else down the road, right? Exactly. Kind of like they wanna do with guns. It's like, oh, we're just, we're not looking to get a list of who, you know, which homes have guns so we can go collect them.

We just wanna know who has them for safety reasons. Cool.

And let me tell you, you're exactly right. Cause I was calling pastors up and I was like, you can't let them do this. If they're gonna do it to them, they're gonna do it to you next. Yep. And yeah. And so what they would do is they'd find all these homeless the sheriffs and they'd smash, just smash their homeless encampment or wherever they're at.

And then they'd get, it's called displacement. So they just go to the next town and then the cops pick them up and take them to jail. Or it was just really, really bad. So that's when we were like, you know, the Lord, you know, just protect us, you know, protect us God.

And he did for seven years, you know, but it's been getting like worse and worse and worse out here in California. I mean, has anybody seen Los Angeles or San Diego or, you know, Orange County? They're filled with homeless.

I mean, you're right. They have the homeless encounters. And for folks who may not have been to some of the places you're just mentioning, it's important to realize when you go there, I was just in California for Shepherds Conference and it is just everywhere.

You end up seeing these encampments, you know, that's really what they are of just tents everywhere and people just living on the streets. And this is, you know, this had been in California. It's been protected.

It's been, you know, they've promoted taking care of the homeless, but now they have such a problem with homeless. They're trying to shut it down. And, but in the process, shutting down a ministry like yours, which is actually trying to help these people get back on the streets.

And so how do they do it? And this is the means folks that you have to realize when you have a ministry like Olive Branch Ministries, not making a lot of money, not doing it for the money, you're doing it to help these people out.

And they will come in and say, oh, well, zoning, you got to do this, you got to do that. And when you add all this up, hundreds of thousands of dollars, small ministries don't have that. You know, one of the things, let me give you, let me pull the drapes back or whatever to reveal how some ministries work.

You know, the bigger ministries usually have people that have been donating to them that can drop a hundred thousand dollar gift. Here, you need 10, 20, $30 ,000 here, done. And it's nothing for them to do that, to help out those ministries.

And so when those ministries get into a problem, they get kind of stuck. They can reach out to some of their big donors and their big donors will just, here you go. Here's the money you need. Small ministries don't have that, folks.

Small ministries work off of donors that are giving five, 10, maybe 20, $25. And that's it. Someone giving $100 is a big donation to a small ministry. And so when, and the government knows this. And so when they look, they come in and say, oh, okay, this ministry can't afford to do this.

But they just say, well, we changed the law and you're going to have to do all this stuff to, you have to, maybe this would be good. Let's talk through what they asked for you to do, because there's a whole series of things that they want you guys to do with site plans and things like that.

And when you say it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, what all are they saying you must do to be able to take care of people and run this ministry the way you have for the last seven years?

Zoning Demands, Permits, and Financial Burden

Well, nobody can live in, you know, like, again, I said, I got bungalows out back that used to be like music rooms and stuff like that. And they said that each place has to have a shower and kitchen for each little place, and including the back, the old mechanics garage, that it had to have windows in it, it had to have, get re-roofing, only six people were allowed to be on the back property, and I'm like, six people?

You know, that's, you know, that's strange, you know? And it was, yeah, it was just, you know, just all the permits, all the, just everything. There was just so much, you know, we just, we got to the point right now as to where we can't even afford to do this anymore, you know, just because, you know, the everything they want us to do, and we've just been going down in debt and debt and debt to the point as to where my wife's dad, he's the one that owns the property.

The property was built by my wife's grandfather, and he died, and so when he was, he built everything here, and this guy was like a genius. But the house that we're living in right here, he didn't get a permit for the garage, and so, and that's a part of our house, and our house has a, it's, so we got a flat roof, and that flat roof, it's a vinyl roof, so if you tear off one section, you just ruin the rest of the roofing of the house, you know, and it was just, you know, all these kids, I mean, having, they wanted us to, they said, you're gonna have to hire an architect to come in here, and I'm like, what?

Hire an architect? I wouldn't even know where to find an architect, you know, you know, I don't even know if I know how to spell architect, you know, but here, it was just so much that my wife and I, we prayed on it, and we were given an opportunity to move our ministry up to a place that actually wants to help the homeless and the mentally ill and, or drug addicts or whatnot, to actually help them, and so that's Southern Idaho, yeah.

Moving the Ministry to Idaho and Helping Support It

And yeah, so that gets us into where, what we're trying to get to, which is, you know, you have, you're trying to move to a friendlier state where you can continue this ministry, I mean, unfortunately, homeless, those with mental illness, those dying of cancer, that's not just in California, this is a need everywhere, and so you're looking to move to a state that's gonna be a little bit friendlier toward that, and so you are, and we're gonna have this in the show notes, is a GoFundMe that you set up, and you're not asking for a crazy amount of money, you're asking to raise $40 ,000, which would be what you need to basically pick up and move, and so that you can start this ministry up again in Idaho, and so this is, and this, folks, this is why I asked HAPS to come on, so you guys could be aware of this.

Now, those who listen regularly, you know that I do not often, you know, come with, you know, pleas for you to donate to ministries, even our ministry, there's a lot of that out there, and there's a lot of good ministries that need help.

Your church comes first, but after your church, this is something where I'm gonna request, if you have money afterwards, that you might consider helping out, and I'm not gonna ask you to do anything I haven't done, so, I mean, you could go on GoFundMe, and just search for, we are the ones that need help now, that's the title of it, and it's, I guess, really titled that way because this is a ministry that has been helping those in need for many years, and now they're the ones in need, now they're the ones that are needing the help from you because they're completely shut down, and the guys that they were helping, except for what, I think there's four or five guys dying of cancer that they allowed to stay on premise,.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah, I got one guy on hospice and three others that are stroke victims.

Yeah, so, are those guys gonna have to move with you when you move, or you don't know yet?

No, they're gonna have to, oh, I'm sorry, so the one that's on hospice, he wants to be closer to his daughter over in Redlands, which isn't too far from here, so hospice is helping us find him a home where he can live out his final days, which is like a couple weeks, and the other stroke victims, we found a placement for them that's good, where they'll be loved, they'll be taken care of, and so we're gonna, Lord willing, shoot up to Southern Idaho and restart all over again because churches wanna help.

There's a lot of churches out there, big churches, excuse me, they have the zeal, they wanna do it, they wanna help out in the community, they just don't know how, and what we wanna do is to go up there and show them how that we did it and how the Lord blessed us, but it's more of the body of Christ coming together and helping in their communities, stepping aside denominational lines or whatever and really being that united body of Christ and really to be that sweet fragrance out there to people that need help and to show them, hey, discipleship's messy.

When you start thinking about the burial cloths that were coming off of Lazarus, that must've been a stinky job, but if we work together, we can help these people, especially mentally ill, get on their medications, to actually literally bear their burdens because it's really easy to do it for the pretty but not the ugly, you know, and that we think are beautiful, by the way, but, and it works.

I know it works because Christ is in it and God's people are coming together for, this is all for his glory, not to build our own kingdom or anything like that, but this is for his glory, that he is going to be glorified in all of this and there's a way to do it and I know it because we've gotten over 1 ,000 people off the streets and I just had a guy that, he was in our home suffering from schizophrenia and a paranoid schizophrenia, walking around with his pants on top of his head and just lost it and we brought him in here, we bared his burdens, we loved him, he got the gospel of Jesus Christ and let me tell you, now he's getting ready to graduate from California Baptist University and he's about to get married, that's, you know.

A Call to Support a Ministry in Need

Yeah, and I know people can't see you, I can see you, folks, you know, HAPS is broken up over this and this is the thing, you know, when you pour yourself into a ministry, it's hard to just have a government come in and say, okay, that's it, we're shutting it down, but that's what's happened and so, you know, I wanted to, you know, not only introduce you guys to HAPS and this ministry, but I want you to consider if you can help out with this GoFundMe, the link will be in the show notes, the, if you wanna just look it up, just go to GoFundMe and it's titled, We Are The Ones That Need Help Now.

So this is to help them get started up again, this is not an easy thing to do to have, you know, to have the government come in and just shut you down, but this is what we're gonna be expecting right now between the economy and our government, ministries are struggling and I know that and I know that there's many, many good ministries out there that are struggling, I mean, Striving for Trees is affecting it as well, you know, we're feeling it and so I understand that, but here's a ministry that was completely stopped and shut down because of the government and it's a local government, so the issue is if they can keep helping people, they just gotta get to a state that is willing to work with them and California is not it and so that's why I say, if you're, you know, I think we've passed the point in some of these states where we try to get conservatives to stay in the state to try to work with it, no, I think we're past that, it's just time to move out and so you're looking to move to a very, very warm climate known as Idaho, where you're gonna suddenly realize what cold actually is when you get up there and, you know, those 60, 70 degrees that we were talking earlier, that's gonna be summer and so, you know, it's gonna be a radical change for you, but you have family up there in Idaho, you have land up there that you'd be able to use to start working toward setting up, you know, housing and all to, you know, for folks to be able to live and to start caring for them again, preaching on a daily basis with these men and helping them to start getting back on their feet and so for that reason, folks, I'm gonna ask that if you'd consider to support this, you know, this ministry, Olive Branch Ministries, I'd love to send you to a website, but guess what?

They're so low budget, they don't have a website, okay? Haps is on Facebook, so if you're on Facebook, you could reach him there, but this is not a ministry it's looking to really do anything other than what they're called to do to help these men and that's what they're looking to do.

So I wanna strongly encourage you to consider, you know, if you can, to go to their GoFundMe and support them, I did, I did with, you know, as much as I think I can at this time, but I, you know, I kind of, it hurt to, you know, but that's what giving is, right?

It should be a little bit of a sacrifice because I think there's a need here. And, you know, right now they're working at raising the funds, not close enough yet. You know, I'm looking at it right now and I think it's like one, what it'd be like one sixth of the way there.

So, you know, they need help, they need your help. And so if you can, if you have some extra resources, you know, that you might be able to help them out, that would be a big thing. I'm actually just, actually, I just looked at it, you're 16 the way there.

I just did, I just calculated it out. And so this is an opportunity to help out if you can. And what I wanna do, cause we, you know, there was talking about the ministry you're doing and all that, I wanna spend a little bit of time, let's talk some theology, cause I know you, right?

And we had a great time when we met. It was basically like what we do in our Christian podcast community, we have this theology throw down. We all get together and discuss something and we disagree or agree, we never know.

And we just start discussing it and having fun. And, you know, when we were together at the Open Air Theology Conference, it was like that every night. That, I mean, that was a great, every night. That was a, the way that conference was structured was really good.

And everyone got to, not, I can't say everyone, a lot of the guys got together. Buffalo Wild Wings, I would say was not, it was a great conversation. We just couldn't hear ourselves.

That place was loud. Well, remember when we were all there, all our phones started going off as a warning. There's, to seek shelter, there was a tornado going on.

Yeah, so we couldn't even leave once we got there. And actually, my device started going off telling me that the decibels in the area were so loud that it could cause deafness if we stayed there for more than 30 minutes.

And I'm like, yeah, well, we can't leave now. But, so let's, I wanna start talking theology, but I should mention a word from our sponsor, MyPillow. MyPillow is a great product. They got their, MyPillow 2 .0 just came out, which is their new one.

This is different than the old one. You just throw it in a dryer and it would expand and be all at a natural shape. This one isn't that way because this, the new one that they have is one that is designed so that it's to keep you cool.

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So it has been helpful. It's still the same comfortable sleep that I'm used to with a MyPillow. I even took my MyPillow to Israel when I was limited on space and had to choose, what am I going to take?

What am I not going to take? Well, MyPillow made it there. Granted, I took the travel size one instead. So I had a little bit more space, but it still went with me because I love their products. So if you want to help get yourself a good night's sleep, go to MyPillow .com and you can just use the promo code SFE.

It stands for striving for eternity. SFE is the promo code to get yourself not only a great discount, but lets them know that you heard about it here so they will keep supporting us because that's how we can keep doing these shows.

Of course, if you want to just donate to us, we don't turn that away either. But so let's, so Habs, let's, you know, I already know that no matter what topic we bring up, we're going to have a great discussion.

But for the next 20 minutes of the show, why don't we talk just some theology? We were at a conference where, let's admit it, I was the odd ball out, right? It's a covenant theology conference and I'm the dispensationalist, right?

So I'm the guy that's not a covenant theologian. So let's start with that in the sense where, you know, I could go to that conference as the guy who most people would not being in agreement so much with the theology, but I didn't feel out of place at all.

I was asked to preach even though we knew, I mean, the guy who ran it, someone we both know, Jeffrey Rice, he's best known for his Bible rebinding, you know, which he does excellent. Yeah, Post-Tense Lux Bible rebindings, excellent work.

He's been on the show before. So I encourage you guys to go back and listen to that. He's got a wild testimony. So you should go back to the episode. I'll try to link it in the show notes when I had him on because that was just, that was one that really was an episode to, when you hear his testimony, it was really rough upbringing and what the Lord has done in his life is amazing.