"But I learned on youtube..."

The last few weeks have been intensely busy, with winter retreats, march break camp and youth speaking engagements in between.  

The more time I spend with kids the more I see how important mentorship is, especially in the lives of inner city kids.  So many of the kids we work with grow up with only their moms, and their moms are often too exhausted or busy to spend the necessary time with them.

So often when we teach kids the Word, they respond with..."But I learned on youtube...But I saw in this movie...I read in this magazine...I saw on tv...my friend said...this song says..."  With no one to mentor them these kids deal with adult situations with kid like maturity.  They don't have anyone to help them filter the information the receive.  And with today's technology they receive information at an unprecedented rate.

The kids we have been able to mentor seem to be understanding God's Word more and begin ask questions about what they've been hearing, even some things they may have learned at church.  I start to hear them ask, "Why is it wrong to have sex before marriage?"  "How do you know God is really real?"  "Why are there so many translations of the Bible?"  and the list goes on.  The questions are often insightful, and some have been debated for centuries.

Many of these kids are signed up for Big Brothers and Big Sisters hungry for mentorship.  I believe that we the Church should be the one to providing them with mentorship, we need to step up and fill that role.  Will you join me?

 On a sidenote, I'll be sending out a prayer letter soon with updates retreats and March break camps that we've had.  Thanks for praying!

"The harvest is plentiful..."

Although CEF's Summer Training Institute is still 6 months away this is the time of year that I travel around the province (usually no more than 2 hours drive outside of the GTA) speaking to youth groups and high school fellowships challenging young people to spend their summer serving God.

This year, more than others, I feel a tremendous burden to find as many young people to serve with us as possible.  We have so many churches wanting to reach out to children in their communities needing help, they just don't have the experience our young people.  It's frustrating to know that the only thing holding the ministry back from reaching more children for Jesus is the young people that serve with us.

In the past 7 years as youth director of CEF the most CYIA we've ever had is 51.  This year I am believing God for 60 people.  With the thousands of Christian teenagers in Ontario surely we can find 60 who are willing to serve Him.

I've already completed a few youth speaking engagements and have a number of them coming up in the next few weeks.  Would you please pray that God would call young people to serve with us?  Can you provide me with an opportunity to share about CEF's summer missions opportunity with the youth you know?

"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the harvest field."  Luke 10:2

Hope in the Next Generation

Soon after I became a Christian at age 16 God gave a clear vision for my life, "To raise up a chosen generation" and "...to see the Church in victory."  Lyrics from the song "Let Your Glory Fall".

My other love in CEF is the privilege of being the youth director and seeing young people begin to fulfill the purposes of God in their lives.  Every year I am always excited to see where the CYIA serving with us will come from.  One year there were 16 different languages spoken among our CYIA.  

After serving a summer with us many young people can be heard saying things like, "God used me.", "Now I know how to share about Jesus with my friends."  "God is amazing."  

I thought I'd take a minute to share with you something one of CYIA recently shared.  She is coming back for her third year and will be joining me on our Camp Good News Base team this summer.  I am looking forward to serving with her.

"Everything that I have learned in my spiritual walk over the past year can probably be described in one sentence.  God is enough.  For so long I have been looking for other things to fill areas of my life that only God can fill and continually it left me feeling empty and discontent.  I was talking to my older brother and he told me to think about that statement, God is enough.  After praying about it for a while I realized that I wasn't allowing God to be enough for me.  I wanted God and to be living anywhere but ***, or I wanted God and a boyfriend.  I wasn't allowing God to be enough on His own...I was looking everywhere around me for the one thing that would make me feel complete, when the whole time I was missing out on the great joy I can have in God!  This is still a work in progress for sure, but I can definitely see the difference that God has been making in m life!"

Imagine what the future would look like if the next generation grew up with this kind of maturity in Christ.

Please pray that many young people would serve with us this summer.

Quality vs. Quantity

If you're a Tim Horton's fanatic you'll notice the new sizes they've implemented.  Imagine my wife's surprise when she ordered her usual "large earl grey tea".  It seems Tim's is moving in line with its American counterparts in size, but thankfully their new quantity isn't compromising it's quality.

Too often in ministry we measure success with quantity.  How big is the church?  How many young people showed up the event?  How many gets "got saved"?  We tend to fall for the "bigger is better" idea, in large because it is something we can measure.  When you're working with lives quality can be very hard to measure, especially when working with kids.

With large numbers of kids attending events it's easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we've been successful, so I've had to be very careful with how I go about doing ministry.

To maximize the potential for quality in urban ministry we try to maintain high counsellor-child ratios.

This past weekend we had a "Winter Weekend" with the kids who attended "Music & Drama Camp" this past summer.  Most of the kids are in Foster care, Children's Aid, or enrolled in Big Brothers & Sisters.  We have kids come who are high functioning autistic, have ADD, low self esteem, and other social and behaviour issues.

I had seven counsellors come out for the weekend and only ten kids show up.  However, it ended up being an amazing weekend of ministry to these kids.  They were all so starved for attention that our high number of counsellors enabled us to give them all the attention they wanted.

We played games, took them on a hike, had an outdoor campfire and did some tobogganing.  The kids AND counsellors had a great time of laughter, love and ministry.  The kids already asked about signing up for the summer.

In talking with some of the parents there is a real want and need for a Slingshot in Brantford for these kids.  As the kids left I felt so burdened for them and their parents.  Please pray that God would find a way to make the Slingshot in Brantford work.  We had one in December but have faced some challenges.  An incredible opportunity is before us to reach some very broken children and families.

Up Ahead in 2012

I hope everyone's New Year is off to a great start!

As we begin a New Year our urban ministries will be hitting the ground running.  Here's a short list of events coming up that could really use your prayers.

January 14: Slingshot Yorkdale
Pray for it to be well attended and that we could effectively reach the kids

January 20-21: Winter Weekend with Western Ontario kids
Many of the kids who attend are in Children's aid, foster care, or enrolled in the Big Brothers and Sisters program in their community.  Pray that many kids would attend and that we'd be able to love them as God would want us to.  Since we only ask the children to pay $10/each for the weekend (often they can't even afford that), we still need about $250 in finances to break even on the weekend.  Pray for God's provision or if you would like to give please let me know.

January 28: Slingshot Rexdale
Pray that many kids will attend and that we could effectively reach the kids

February 10-12: Boys Winter Weekend
The boys from Camp Good News are invited to a weekend called "Real Men Cry".  Pray for many to attend and a great weekend.

February 17-19: Girls Winter Weekend
The girls from Camp Good News are invited to a weekend just for girls.  Pray for many to attend and effective ministry.

March 12-16: Camp Good News Winter Rush
Unfortunately we can't accommodate as many kids as we'd like so it's on a first come first serve basis.  Please pray that God would bring the children He wants there.  It is a week long overnight camp.

Of course there are other events in between such as Good News clubs, "mentor outings" and visitations.  If you would like to be involved in some capacity I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks so much for praying!

"What's a dad supposed to do?"

A couple years ago I started to make a point of taking out the inner city boys one on one.  The idea was to get to know them better and to mentor them a little more.  What I found was that all the boys didn't know how to react when I invited them out, and when we did go out, they felt awkward.  I quickly realized that these boys didn't know how to behave around a man, or father figure.  They always asked where the other boys where and had very little to say.  It's taken some time for them to get comfortable with going out.

One time I took out an eleven year old boy, Nolan, for dinner.  It was was awkward at first but he eventually started talking.  He'd been going through a rough time at home and school and I wanted to find out why.  He started to share with me that he had just found out the year before he had a father.  I had a conversation with him that went something like this:

me: "So what do you think about having a dad?"
Nolan: "I don't know.  I never thought about it before."
me: "How do you feel?"
Nolan: "I don't know, what's a dad supposed to do in your life?  And how come he wants to be in my life now?  Now that I'm a man he wants be around, where was he before?"

There was a lot of hurt, anger and confusion in Nolan's heart.  It was compounded by the fact that his absent "dad" was starting to fight for visitation and custody rights through the court system.

It's been a tough journey for Nolan but he's a good kid with a great heart and trying to find his way through it all.

What really concerned my heart was the comment, "What's a dad supposed to do in your life?"  It's a question that many if not all of our inner city kids ask themselves.  How will they learn to be godly fathers without a father in their lives?  There's no one to teach them how to fish, learn a new video game, or treat a woman right.  They need to be mentored, they need to know what a man of God is.  Will you help?