This is Discipling (www.getoutthebox.org) - YouTube

Awesome video about discipleship.

Staggering Statistics

Yesterday at church we had several meetings that had to do with reaching our community and knowing our community. We have a great guy on staff (Joey Mayfield) who helps us know our community better by looking at the statistics. He showed me some crazy statistics about our community yesterday that i want to share mainly as a reminder to myself what my mission field looks like. Pray with me that Christ would be proclaimed to these students.

Bethel Demographics

Lake County 2010 Statistics

   Total Population- 496,005

             Under 18- 127,273

 Age 10 to 14- 5,704 in Lake Co
   15 minutes from Bethel- 10,805

 Age 15 to 19- 6,118 in Lake Co
   15 minutes from Bethel- 11,467

Local School District Enrollment -

          School-                Middle School                 High School

          Crown Point              1778                               2633

          Merrillville                 1663                               2396

          Lake Central             2456                               3225

          Valparaiso                1467                               2114

          Lowell                       869                                1276

          Wheeler                    416                                545

          Totals                      8649                             12189

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

(Matthew 9:35-36; Matthew 9:37-38 ESV)

Week of Prayer

Prayer Stations-

Last night our student ministry participated in our church-wide "Week of Prayer" by setting up prayer stations for our students to go through for the evening. We divided our church up into a sort of prayer labyrinth that the student walked through and stopped at each station for 5 minutes to be lead by a youth leader in that specific station. The high school had 10 stations and the middle school had 10 stations.

 My wife and I had the privilege of leading the "Offering" station. This station's goal was to help the students see that God desires us to give Him everything, not just our money. So my wife started by reading Romans 12:1 to them and then had examples of areas of their life they could give to God. After they went around the table looking at the examples, they wrote out a prayer asking God to help them give this area of their life to Him. The prayers were then  put into an offering box.

Overall, I think the night was a great opportunity to help our students engage in prayer as well offer a good variation on the typical Thursday night worship. It's always good to involve the students instead of just preaching at them. I hope we are able to use experiences like this in the future.

We got all the ideas for this night from this website. http://www.creativeprayer.com/index.php?blog=2

A Faithful Presence- Christ at the Colonel

A Faithful Presence-
One of the goals for our middle school ministry is to have a faithful presence at each middle school where our students attend. It's a pretty bold, audacious goal, but one that I think is attainable and Christ-honoring. We want to refer to them as a "faithful presence" because our goal is to go where the students are instead of just asking them to come to us. So, please pray with us as we ask God to bless our ministry in this way.


Praise God-  God has allowed one of these to start. A couple of weeks ago one of our students came up to me in regards to this challenge. He told me about his passion for his school to have a Bible Study/ "Faithful Presence". As God continued to work through this, a leader at our church who is also a teacher at that school has volunteered to help with this meeting. So I am proud to announce "Christ at the Colonel". A faithful presence at Colonel John Wheeler Middle School. I am so excited to see what God is going to do through the heart of a 7th grade boy with a passion for the lost at his middle school.

Ministry Idea!? "Laser-Tag with the Homeless"

Last Sunday my 6th Grade boys small group meet again. Our topic was, "this life is short, make it count." One of the things we discussed was how our small group could make a difference in our community. Our youth ministry gives every small group a budget to use in order to minister to the community, so we discussed possible opportunities.
The Question- what could we do to impact our community?
After a little discussion and coming to a consensus that our desire was to help the homeless and hungry.
The Answer- Laser-Tag with the homeless

My 7, 6th grade boys were pretty dead set that this was a great idea to encourage the homeless community. Now, my job is to take their idea and turn it into something that would support their dreams as well as help them meet a need. Any ideas?

Small Groups Begin

This month our small group ministry got started and i am so excited to have an opportunity to build relationships with a new group of students. This year I am a 6th grade boys small group leader, and am fortunate enough to have an assistant leader. My assistant is my intern Brett, and I am so grateful for his help. What is so cool is that Brett works in the children's ministry too, so he already knows some of our 6th grade guys because of that ministry.


This week we went through chapter one of "Crazy Love" which is titled Stop Praying. We discussed who God is, Who we are talking to when we pray. So, I had our group do a little white boarding to get them thinking about who God is. Then we discussed what we say to God. So, i had them think about what they would say to God if He was standing right in front of them. Overall, we had some great discussions. Here are some more pics.


I love teaching to a large group, but the more i get to do it the more i see the real ministry and life change that happens in small group ministry. Please pray for my guys and our small group ministry if you think about us.

Great Resources that are new to me

Over the last few weeks i have had the privilege of getting my hands on some awesome resources that i would love to recommend. Please comment on this and let me know what you have been reading/ listening/ or use.

1. Books- Grace Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel
                Sun Stand Still by Steven Furtick
                ESV Student Study Bible

2. Podcasts- White Horse Inn- On Theology
                    The Village Church - Sermons - Matt Chandler


3. Blogs- The Youth Cartel- Good ideas that will make you think
               YouTube Trends- Great for research on culture

4. Ipad Apps- Flipboard
                      GLO Bible
                      Keynote Remote

I'm always looking for great resources let me know what you think.

A little fun

Every week in our youth group we have an element of fun called "Riot Time". This weeks was especially fun and crazy. Here is a quick video. What i love about "Riot Time" is that it is completely planned and ran by a few awesome volunteer youth leaders. This allows Pastor Jim and I to keep our main focus on the teaching aspect of the night. I am so grateful for gifted and called youth leaders. 

2011 Fall Season

I can't believe the 2011 Fall Season got started last week. I'm very excited about being able to be a part of this entire school year from start to finish as opposed to last year, where I started right in the middle of it.  As our new school year gets going I just want to give a quick overview of what we are doing in our youth ministry.

Thursday Night Worship - This is our weekly big group gathering. This year we are going through a study on the book of Jonah. We will be taking the majority of the school year to dive into a deep study on this book, with periodic breaks to do special events or topics. While I was studying and preparing for this series, someone recommended a book on Jonah that has been so amazing and informative that I would like to recommend it to you. The book is called Surprised by Grace written by Tullian Tchividjian and has been a great resource for me as I study the book of Jonah.




Sunday Night Small Groups- Our students meet twice a month for age and gender specific small groups. This year our small groups will be going through a very popular book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Our students will be reading it, watching his DVD curriculum, hearing our staff teach on it and going through the small group study guide each time they meet. We are so exited to see our our students step up to the challenge of loving God with a crazy bold love.

A Youth Ministry Summer (Week Eight)

Week eight of the summer, Bethel Teens put on our fourth and final missions trip for the year- Samaria Missions Trip. Our Samaria Trip is a local missions trip . Our goal for this is to show our students the mission field that is their home town and surrounding areas. We took 16 students (middle and high school students) as well as 7 leaders. Our youth ministry does a missions trip blog to keep parents up to date about the trip, so instead of giving highlights of the trip here is the link to that blog. http://alphaomegasamaria.tumblr.com/

A Youth Ministry Summer (Week Seven)

This week our Church sent Kaci and I to Berlin, Germany to join a team of a few others to put on a teen camp. Crossway International Church puts on a Summer Camp style "Teen Camp" every summer, but this year a team that had intended to go had to back out at the last minute. The Church in Berlin, where my sister is a missionary, frantically called everyone they know in youth ministry in order to try to put together a team at the last minute. I gave the proposal to the staff here at Bethel and they allowed me to go and help.



The Lord miraculously put together a team from all over the United States to put on this camp for Students in Berlin. Dan, a phys ed. teacher from North Carolina, Chaplain Marty, the chaplain of Purdue University, Nate, and engineer, Kaci and I and my sister Kristi. Most of us did not know each other before this trip, but God allowed us to work very well together in order to spread his love with over 40 students.


We arrived during that churches VBS style childrens camp, where we got to see and hear of over 40 children who made professions of faith. Then on monday we started our program for the week. We averaged right around 40 teens each day, and the majority of them unsaved. We even had the opportunity to share the gospel with a few that this was their first time ever hearing it. Instead of rambling on about each day i will just give a few highlights of the week.

Highlights from Teen Camp
1. Meet a Senior in High School who for the first time in his life heard the gospel. His girlfriend brought him to church and for these two weeks he was confronted with the truth of the gospel. Through many conversations with Kristi and rubbing shoulders with true followers of Jesus, i believe he is on his way towards a relationship with Christ. He told us at the end of the week he would like to be more involved in the youth ministry next year to continue to grow.
2. Meet a student who just graduated high school and is on her way to an ivy league school in the states. The amazing thing about meeting her is she is still searching for truth. She Dad is a scientist and teaches her evolution, so she is still wrestling with what is truth. She has been actively involved in this youth ministry for years and desires to come to a knowledge of who Jesus is, but is actively wrestling with this. To read more about her... http://kristiwalkeringermany.blogspot.com/2011/08/dedicated-to-helena-hengelbrok.html
3. There is a student who comes from an unsaved family who was saved through this churches ministry, but his parents have been opposed to the gospel for years. One of the nights i had the opportunity to speak, due to circumstances and God's sovereignty his parents had to sit in and listen to the gospel presentation. I found out later that God used that week and his word to urge them closer to himself and they told the church leadership that they want to start coming to church on Sunday's.
4. Every night we had someone share their story with the students. One night we asked a German lady from the church to share her story of how God changed her. Her testimony was an awesome story of God's grace/ mercy and rescue. What was awesome was that it had to be translated into English for the English speaking students at the teen camp. The lady giving her testimony got choked up as well as the translator and many of the audience as we heard of how God rescued her from her sin and how God offers that same salvation to all. Powerful stuff
5. A funny story- one night we were playing water games and their was a poisonous moth that drops hairs that cause a rash, and many of our students came back the next night covered in that rash. The cool part of the story is that night we taught about the 10 plagues and how God allows big things in your life sometime to get your attention and show you your need for a rescuer. Great object lesson.

A Youth Ministry Summer (Week Four - Six)

These three weeks went by in a blur. As I reflect on the events of these three weeks its hard for me to remember specifics, luckily Microsoft Outlook has a better memory than I. After returning from Woodlands camp i had one week of some what normalcy. We went and picked up our children after camp and spent the next weeks having a lot of family time and i was in the office a lot making final preparations for the rest of the summer. But, here are two highlights from these three weeks. 1. VBS- My daughter had the privileged of being involved in Bethel's VBS this summer. It was amazing, very high energy, loud fun and professional. I was awesome being in the office trying to get work done while 600+ children are all over the building, a great week. 2. My wife and i will be in Berlin, Germany for week seven, so in order to make this trip happen we need to again drop the kids of with family. This week my parents, who live in PA, would be taking them. So, Monday we were able to drop the kidos off with mimi and papa. This gave Kaci and I almost a whole week to ourselves. We horribly missed the kids, but it was really nice to have a week long date. (Much needed)
Overall these were some nice and relaxing couple of week during a crazy busy summer.

A Youth Ministry Summer (Week Three)

Week Three consists of taking 17 middles school students to Woodlands Camp in Georgia. We left Sunday morning and returned the following Saturday. Woodlands camp is great. Nice facilities, tons of activities for the campers and is excellent at making the whole week about spiritual growth. Many memories were made on this trip. Overall i think this camp was great for the students spiritual lives as well as a great opportunity for the leaders to build relationships with the students.