One recent morning found me at the 2006 Economic Development Summit, put on by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (think Academy Awards) in its new, state-of-the-art theater. This annual event, currently in its fifteenth year, gathers small, medium, and large players in the development of Hollywood.

Few people outside Southern California realize what Hollywood is really like. Fifteen years ago, it was difficult to convince a business person to think of Hollywood Boulevard as a promising location to place her business, occupied as it was by those in the less-savory businesses of drugs and prostitution. In the past fifteen to twenty years, Hollywood has changed in remarkable ways, but it still has a way to go. (Hollywood has the second largest homeless population in Los Angeles County, with nearly twenty-five hundred humans living on the street every night—second in rank only to "skid row" in downtown LA). You can see alarm in the faces of tourists as they pile out of tour busses—"THIS is Hollywood? You’ve got to be kidding!"

What was I doing at an Economic Development Summit in Hollywood? Well, my church is located on Hollywood Boulevard, at one end of a two-mile stretch that will have literally billions of dollars invested in it over the next five to ten years. Governmental agencies will invest some of this money, but a large proportion will be private money. I was there as a concerned resident and clergy person.

A few of my church members and I have been very involved in advocating for a development project near us that will not only house the homeless in permanent apartments but also offer a long-term solution to homelessness in Hollywood and greater Los Angeles. We are proposing to transform the use of our property into something better for our church and the community. So I attended this summit to learn about the vision of government and business leaders for Hollywood.

As I stood to one side of the room during the opening brunch reception, I looked out at all the dark suits and well-groomed hair and thought to myself, "What am I doing here?" I introduced myself as a pastor to one young ambitious businessman and the shock on his face told me he wondered the same thing. We had a good conversation.

Running in the background of my mind were these texts about "principalities and powers" (like Eph. 6:11-13, and Col. 2:15, which amazingly aren’t part of the Bible Study Guide’s discussion of principalities and powers). "These are the powers," I thought to myself. But it wasn’t just the men and women in expensive clothes, glad-handing and passing out business cards, or the unnaturally attractive women promoting luxury condos to start selling "in the low eight hundred thousand dollar range."

Behind all this are forces—powers—beyond the control of any one person or organization. We even have spiritual-sounding labels for them, like market forces and the invisible hand. These powers are not simply evil forces. If that were true, the solution would be easy. In fact, this complexity gives rise to the very intractability of the spiritual challenge. Without economic development, communities collapse in crime and degradation (witness Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s). But with development comes gentrification, escalating housing prices, marginalization, and "ghettoization" of the poor.

Imagine the situation in Ephesus as Paul pens these words, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (6:12 KJV). The Roman "power" exerted all the force of a wild "beast" (see Saint John’s Revelation).

Paul knew that the small Christian communities of Asia Minor could not withstand these forces on their own. Neither could they beat them at their own game. They needed spiritual resources to combat the spiritual challenges that lie at the root of the "powers that be." In Colossians, Paul gives us those resources in a concise theology of creation and the cross. Creation: God created the powers, he is before them and sovereign over them (Col. 1:16–17). Cross: Christ disarmed and triumphed over the powers through his death on the cross (2:15).

One of the most beautiful moments that morning at the summit came as I listened to the most powerful and wealthy agency in attendance gave its "crystal ball" prediction for the next twenty years. It included things like ending homelessness and providing affordable housing, economically blended communities, civic spaces like parks, and greenbelts.

This agency was the only organization to talk about such things—things that resonate very deeply with me as signs of the Kingdom of God. It was evidence that God is Lord over the powers and that the powers sometimes serve the Kingdom, though not unequivocally and not consistently. There are also reminders that, in the words of Paul to the Ephesians, the proper role for God’s people is simply to "stand" (6:13).

Visit Spectrum’s Message Board for an ongoing discussion of this quarter’s subject, "The Gospel, 1844, and Judgment"

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