When you think back on your own life, what was the one thing that had the most positive impact on you and your faith? Was it a trip or an event? Maybe a particular sermon or talk you heard? Was it that mission trip you took to build houses for poor families? Or was it, perhaps the patient loving acceptance and input of a friend or mentor?

In my experience, and it seems to be born out in studies, the most important impact on my life and faith came from a guy named George. George was just an average guy who worked as an engineer at Chrysler. He didn't have any special training in youth ministry. He wasn't a great preacher or bible study leader. He wasn't a cool youth guy who's wild personality made kids want to hang around him. George was just an average guy who cared about kids.

George came along at a time in my life when, as a high school junior, I was utterly lost. Things were happening in my life that I wasn't equipped to understand or handle and I was teetering in what little faith I had. With no fanfare or strategic plan, George became my mentor and I didn't even know it.

George did several things that made a huge impact on me over the next three years:

1. George showed up (consistantly). He led summer bicycle trips of 1000 miles or more and he made me his assistant. I wasn't qualified but he saw something in me.
2. George accepted me in love. He knew the state of my life, maybe not all of the specifics, but the general lostness I felt. He never preached at me or chided me. He simply accepted me for who I was and where I was.
3. George modeled the kind of faith that made me want to be like him. His example helped me to believe that God cared about me.

Today, I'm a Christian, in large part because of George. I consider him my spiritual father.

What is the one thing that matters most? It is being "George" to lost, hurting and troubled kids. If we can do that, God can transform lives for eternity.

Was there a "George" in your life?

Is there a kid you can be a "George" to?

1. Churches Seem Overprotective
2. Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
4. Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
5. They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

In addition, in other research, Barna estimates the number of teens in America who do not attend church at all to be 27 million!

Here is the good news. If our experience in Youth for Christ, working with incarcerated teens as well as "average" high school teenagers, is typical, TEENS ARE INTERESTED IN GOD AND / OR SPIRITUAL THINGS.

My purpose here is not to debate Barna's statistics or reasons given. I believe they are probably very accurate. Neither is it to try to figure out what the church corporately is doing wrong. I'll leave that to people who are smarter than me. Rather, I'd like to urge you as a Christian adult to take a serious, personal look at what you can do to reach those kids who are desperately lost and are not finding the answers they are looking for.

Our strategy in YFC, and what we find most effective is that of developing personal relationships between Christian adults and kids. Over and over we find that when a loving Christian adult spends time with a kid, that relationship fosters genuine spiritual transformation. It doesn't happen quickly, and it isn't always easy, but it is effective.

You may be thinking that you don't have what it takes to really be "in" a kids life, but you would be wrong about that. Every week we see hundreds of Christian adult volunteers spending time with kids in juvenile detention centers, neighborhoods and high school campuses. They are regular folk with families and jobs and busy schedules. They are college students and retired people; moms and dads and busy executives. What makes them effective? They have made a decision and a commitment to invest in the lives of kids.

If Barna's research is correct, and I'm sure it is, there are millions of kids in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands in the Denver area who desperately need someone like you in ther lives. They need someone like you, who God will use, just because you are willing.

What will your part be? Are you willing to allow God to use you to see a young life transformed?

If you would like more information and getting involved with kids click here to see the various opportunities we provide.

• Add two new Campus Life staff and have Campus Life ministry going in three schools. A year ago there was only one. In addition we are planning on adding two more staff this summer and expanding to six schools in the fall
• Pioneer a brand new ministry strategy at Gilliam Youth Services Center called T3 (Training, Transition & Transformation).
• Begin a new Mentoring initiative with the Department of Youth Corrections that allows us to create significant, long term, one-on-one relationships between adult mentors and kids who desperately need their help and guidance.
• Expand our Juvenile Justice Ministry into another facility for girls and hired a chaplain to oversee it.
• Develop a new ministry partnership in the Denver “Five Points” neighborhood which is, historically, one of the toughest neighborhoods in Denver.
• See kids start to follow Jesus in our Campus Life ministries, in the correctional facilities and in the neighborhoods!
• Retire our debt!

Your partnership is making an impact and it is growing!

As we look toward the ministry year ahead, there is great potential. We are trusting God to provide all of the financial resources needed to accomplish the vision of reaching kids in Denver for Christ. In order for that to happen, we need to significantly increase our funding, our volunteer staff and our ministry partnerships.

• Please pray that God would continue to go before us.
• Ask God how you might increase the part you play.
• Prayerfully consider giving an extra gift this month.

Together, we can see more and more kids all across the Denver area become followers of Jesus Christ!

Last weekend Denver Area YFC, in partnership with Colorado Christian University, held a soccer tournament. A number of boys from the city neighborhood ministry played against the girl’s soccer team. It was a great time. The kids interacted well. They played hard and had fun. We’ve been doing these soccer tournaments for some time now.

After the tournament, there was a short program and the opportunity was given to respond to Christ. Two young men went forward and publicly committed their lives to Jesus! When our staff guy, Lucas, told me this story, he was so excited because he had been working with those two guys for over four years!

God had been working on them for their entire lives!

What does it take to change a young life for eternity?

It takes committed adults who play soccer. It takes a staff person to hang in there for the long haul. It takes the unseen work of the Holy Spirit. It takes Bible Studies and conversations and trips to the pizza place. It takes special events and people who share the gospel. It takes mentors and volunteers who build relationships with kids. It takes interruptions and late night phone calls. It takes many hours of prayer and intercession. It takes people who give of their finances.

It takes whatever it takes.

It takes you!

We have a huge calling and a huge vision. We are asking God to allow us to reach more and more youth in Denver. Your prayers, and financial giving and partnership make it possible. You are helping to change young lives for eternity!

 

Responding to opportunity...

One of the most consistently amazing things I've seen God do since I started this role at Denver Area Youth for Christ, is to bring opportunity. My friend, Danny de Armas, always says, "Pray for opportunity. Then when God brings it, RESPOND!"

That is a faith testing thing. God is bringing opportunity every time I turn around. We have opportunity to start new Campus Life ministries at more schools than we can currently staff. We have opportunity to place adult mentors with incarcerated kids, and we're training mentors as fast as we can. We have opportunity to hire new staff and place new volunteers, and we're doing our best to respond!

Mentoring opportunities...

This month we have begun a new program, in cooperation with the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections, which greatly expands our ability to place mentors with incarcerated kids. We have hired a new staff person, Ken Allen, to oversee this ministry expansion. He is an incredibly gifted individual, and I can't wait to see how God will impact the eternal destiny of hundreds of lost youth!

It comes down to financing...

So where is the faith testing part of it? Simply, it is financing. It comes down to raising the needed funds to enable us to respond. It is expensive to reach today's youth, but God has been incredibly faithful. In the eight months I have been here, we have been able to pay down half of our debt, and our goal is to be debt free by the end of June! As Executive Director, one of my primary tasks is to grow the ministry to reach more and more kids but to do it in such a way that we remain financially sound. We can't spend money we don't have, so we trust God to bring in the needed financial supply.

Ask God how you can help...

As you read this, I pray you will ask God how you might be able to help. 

You can find out more about getting involved here.

We still need to raise significant additional funds to expand the ministry and meet the opportunities. Please pray that God will raise up additional monthly supporters. Pray that we will be wise in responding to the many opportunities. Pray that we will have faith to follow God as He leads in all of this.

• Volunteering one hour per week
• Letting friends know about YFC ministry and how they can help
• Inviting us to make a presentation at your church
• Supporting us financially
• Joining us in prayer for more volunteers

The harvest is indeed plentiful. There are so many young people yet to be reached. At this moment we have over 30 kids waiting to be matched with a mentor. We want to be there for every young person who needs to here about new life in Jesus Christ!

Would you consider helping us enlist more workers for the harvest? Please ask God how you can become a “Mr. Don” in a young person’s life.

Until every one has heard,

I forget how much I need God moments to survive. They are those too rare glimpses of incarnation that help to sharpen the Kingdom into focus before my eyes blur again and I start to believe that the orders and inequities and cruelties of this world are more Real than anything else.

I sat with my friend Claire over coffee yesterday. Like the Chilean miners who have risen from the depths of the earth, Claire has lived a similar story of abandonment to the abyss and resurrection. Her eyes light up as she speaks of entering back into the depths with a story of rescue for those who still dwell there.

Claire is a Chaplain for a girls’ detention center. Many of the girls there have been sexually, physically and emotionally abused. She adds that they come from a population that doesn’t know about story. They live in the moments of high drama to high drama, without plot and purpose and hope for movement and resolution. They don’t understand the world any other way. Some Christian groups have tried to go in and “minister” without understanding the generational mindset that has shaped these girls’ worldview and sense of self (and lack thereof). Without a grasp of story that can teach cause and effect, the building up of resources (such as education and savings) and rewards, the girls can’t follow a plan. The “ministers” truly mean well, but as is so often done in the church world, they seem to expect these girls to think as they do, and to be able to appropriate the same language of expression and meaning. The girls are often told of how their behaviors will send them straight to hell. Sin management has not worked well as a means of transformation or of bringing hope to the captives. They are already in hell, with no way out.

Claire has found the heart language. She recalled one young woman sitting across from her who said, “Well, aren’t you supposed to do something religious now?” Claire replied, “Talking to you is the most religious thing I do all week.” The girl didn’t quite know what to do with that. All she had known from religious folks were rules and measures and the reminder of being caught up in a system of life that she had little hope of moving beyond. But now, here was someone who believed that to sit with her was holy. Another woman told Claire, I believe you see me without these [prison] clothes on. You see me.

She speaks to them of forgiveness and the deeper, holy longings in their hearts that fuel so much of their surface behaviors. She blesses them. She is bringing them the Story, from which they can learn to have real life. I have a pastor friend who says that if you want to meet Jesus, go to hell. That is because He is there, preaching good news to the prisoners, calling them holy. In this particular hell, His name is Claire.