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?