“By this all men will know that you are good youth workers…if you keep the youth room clean”

Like many of you, we get the opportunity to do a lot of youth work in the local secondary school.  On a weekly basis we provide lunch-time clubs, we walk around the school grounds building relationships and we have even started teaching a few Religious Education lessons.  For the lunch-time clubs, the school gave us a disused classroom in which to meet…and I mean disused in every sense of the word!

But recently the school allowed us to repaint and decorate this space.  We are nearly finished with the project.   And this week while we meticulously peeled off tape, cleaned light covers and scraped up accidental drips, I remembered why it was so important to do a thorough job in situations like this.  (And no, it’s not just because it fits my perfectionistic tendencies!)

For many of the staff, this will be the only time they see any of our work.  And it will be the only thing they will use to decide if we are any good at what we do!  Most teachers will never come into the classroom when we are leading a lunch-time talk or group game.  And members of the senior staff will never see us  offering a listening ear to a broken-hearted teenager whose world has just collapsed.  The only thing they will see is the classroom we just painted…and by it they will judge how seriously and how professionally we take our role of caring for youth.

It is no different in a church setting.  How clean do you leave the space behind you when you leave?  For many in the church this will be the only tangible piece of data they have to assess your abilities.  The lead minister will not be there when you teach the Sunday school lesson.  The elder team will not be at the Friday youth club.  But they will be there to see if you have left a mess behind.

You may not like it.  You may think it’s not fair.  But it is reality.  And, if you want to grow in your leadership and influence…if you want to be the kind of youth minister who’s voice can help lead the church into the future…you will learn that one of the most important things you can do is keep the youth room clean.

The following is an exciting reflection written by Olivia Hollowell, who is working towards a bachelor’s in Theology while ministering in a local church:

It’s was 8 o’clock on a Monday morning, hardly a time that anyone would want to be awake and facing the world of ministry, especially me, a person who LOATHES mornings…and Mondays. However, on my Monday mornings, I get up (probably five minutes before I’m supposed to be there) and head to my local coffee shop and meet with three of the most uniquely different teenagers that you could imagine for half an hour before they venture off to school. They ask me if I’m awake yet, (to which I respond with “does it look like it?”) and greet me with expectant faces to the morning’s plans. Every Monday morning of every week of the year, I sit in a Costa and wait for teenagers from my placement ministry to show up and pray, fellowship, and read scripture. We discuss what I taught them on Sunday morning at church, and they ask questions and tell me what they didn’t understand and wanted to know more about.

“Wake up with Liv” was an idea pressed upon my heart last year when I noticed how difficult a situation it was for my teenagers to attend their school and be a Christian. They were some of about 20 Christian teens in their school of hundreds and they felt the weight of the lies Satan told them through their surroundings on a regular basis. I hoped that by getting up for 8am every Monday, they would recognise how much I loved them and wanted them to be strong, no matter what they had to face less than 10 minutes after leaving their time with God and me.  In the beginning, I had one teenager. Soon we had two. And now, I have three regular teenage girls coming every Monday morning, rain or shine (and even snow!).

These three girls have become a pillar of faith for their school, and even started up a mid-week lunch group for their friends who need prayer or just want to talk, whereas before they never would’ve even spoken to each other if they saw one another in the hallway. I’ve watched them fall, cry, walk away, come back, sit, and finally stand as they faced the pressures of being 16 in a post-modern society and spiritually empty school.  I give every bit of the glory to the Saviour who grants me the very life I wake up to each Monday morning at 7am (okay, 7:55). I’ve been so stretched since it started with only one person and have learned just as much if not more than these girls, and have realised that Monday mornings are as much for my time with my Father as it it for them.

When I moved to this small town a year and three months ago (almost) and brought with me a lot of baggage, heartache, and anger. I never thought ministry- let alone waking up for early morning Bible study with teenagers was for me.   I never wanted to live in another small town again.  Little did I know, God had bigger plans for me when I felt Him lay ICY on my heart when I was 16. Now, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else than what I’m doing, and I don’t regret walking away from what was comfortable to chase after what he has for me.   I follow His lead, and through the amazing support of the ICY and Reign family, He’s loved me past my pain and allowed me to offer this kind of acceptance to teenagers everyday of my life, even the hard days when I just want to quit and go back to all that I knew (and NOT wake up at crazy o’clock am on a Monday). And even though my heart was set on something else for my life, God’s heart was something bigger than mine could have ever fathomed.

In June, Reign in the UK will be hosting our first ever online fundraising event!  Plans are underway for three days of celebrating, giving and praying, all to mark our 5 year anniversary.  But we aren’t going to party along!  We are inviting our supporters and prayer partners to join us!  For three days we’ll share our celebrations in daily videos as well as live-stream our prayer times and gatherings.

As part of the celebration, we are asking God to help us finish the Motoshop refurbishment.  Phase 1 and 2 have been completed!  Phase 3 will transform the downstairs interior.  This will include office and meeting spaces, as well as kitchen and bathroom facilities.  In June we will endeavor to raise some of the remaining funds to finish the project.  Thanks to a generous matching gift, the first £3,000.00 (or dollars or Euros) given during those three days will be doubled.  That’s right, doubled!

The children are gearing up!  They are determined to reach that £3,000.00 goal.

If your family wants to get involved in helping us raise some pennies, pence or cents to refurbish the Motoshop, we would love your help.

If you are local to Bicester you can join our table top sale or bake sale on May 4.

If you live a bit farther away do your own project, and e-mail a one minute video to us.  We’ll include your video in an update during our 5th Birthday Celebration in June.  Click here for all the information you need!

I should probably just use the things that I learned when I was sixteen and stop trying to invent new ways to disciple people.  When I was sixteen years old I went on a mission trip with Reign Ministries.  Throughout the trip I was challenged that the powerful lessons I was learning about developing the character and priorities of Christ in my life, I needed pass onto others.  In fact, the challenge wasn’t to go home and preach sermons about following Christ, rather it was to find three people to pass it on to through a weekly discipleship relationship.  Because God used that summer in such a powerful way that I went home and took up the challenge.

Now 20 years later I am trying to work out the best way to disciple teenagers here in Bicester and I am brought back to that challenge. What I teach each young man I disciple, they need to turn around teach a person they are discipling.

Three weeks ago I began discipling a young man.  Driven by this return to the roots of discipleship I gave him this challenge the first time we met; that each week we would be learning things and he needed to find someone that he could pass on what he was learning too.  As I discipled him, he needed to disciple another.

I was a little nervous throwing him out there with this challenge.  It is risky asking a young man to find someone that he can disciple.  He might face rejection and no one wants to bruise an young man’s faith.  But, I prayed like crazy that week and the following week he was happy to tell me, “Well I have asked this guy who is three years older than me to meet up and he said yes!”

Now I am not saying he or I are the perfect disciplers yet.  There are risks at every turn as we pour our lives into others.  But challenging our young apprentices to apply and pass on the truth about God that we are learning in life is a risk worth taking.  It is the very foundation of a disciplemaking movement.

Sarah, pictured on the left is in her second year of studying with ICY.

Spiritual formation was one of the major areas where I grew this year. It started a few days after the semester had started as I went for sightseeing into St Paul’s Cathedral in London; “When I entered the church I was even more astonished by its size and beauty.  Before I left I recognized a sign post saying that since 400 AD there has never been a Sunday without a service in that church. Suddenly the history we had learned in class became very real and practical; I have been walking on the same ground as these people in history did. And I am part of that same history which God is writing through his people! A nice start of the term – I felt it was a deep encounter with God in this traditional church.”

Further, a lot of spiritual formation happened as a result of my intellectual formation.   My faith became more solid, less dependent on circumstances and feelings and God challenged me with a vision showing me that following Jesus meant following him in the joy and also in the suffering, as I wrote in my journal: “The night before I prayed to God and thanked him for my life and all the good he is doing to me right now. I felt him showing me Jesus entering Jerusalem on a monkey and telling me: “This is where you are right now, everything looks fabulous. But are you willing to continue the journey to the end – to the cross?”

My faith would have not grown these deep roots and layers of trust in my heart, if I had not had the intellectual formation first. Especially the courses Th222 (Theodicy) and TH303 (Apologetics) challenged me in these areas.

I have further learned a lot about my (in)tolerance towards other cultures, through my placement task in HIST123; while studying the HIST123 module I was fascinated by the mission of the Celts. Besides their whole lifestyle and approach to mission, I found most interesting how they used arts and music to express their faith. Therefore I decided to apply missional methods from the Celts to our youth group. The study guide says that “the Celts had a positive view of culture in the sense that they embraced the arts- music, poetry
and visual art – as key expressions of their relationship with God. They affirmed the cultures that they sought to bring to Christ.”

Likewise I wanted to embrace Hip Hop and break dance culture in our city and therefore our youth group launched a street dance festival and invited break dancers into our church. Some of our church members are DJ’s, rappers or professional break dancers and they put the message of the gospel into hip hop music or expressed it through their dancing. They sang, rapped, danced or spoke in between the battles during the festival. Although tenyative at first,  I began to see their positive sides of this community of people that I knew very little about.  Now I see beyond their culture and see their need for Jesus.

At times it seemed the chances for them to become interested in gospel and church music or even sitting in on a sermon seemed to be very low. However, by welcoming them well, being hospitable and taking their music, moves and rhythms into a church and filling the texts with the message of gospel, many of them were touched and said things like: “We are treated like kings here. Wherever we went, nobody has ever treated us so good.”, “I have never seen so friendly people before” and “What I find significant is the energy here. There is a really positive energy here, maybe because we are in a church?”

The method of incarnating Jesus’ message into the hip hop culture worked very well and people became attracted by or at least less sceptical about the church. Some of them have started to come to our youth services since then.

ICY has currently has 2 German students who study with us while placed in their local churches in Germany.  Please pray for Sarah as she seeks to incarnate Jesus’ message to teenagers in her community.

In the week leading up to Easter, The Crowded House (a local church expression partnered with Reign Ministries in Bicester, Oxfordshire) is providing an opportunity for our community to discover the last earthly days of Jesus using scriptures’ historical account, art, imagination and interaction. It’s our “version” of the traditionally Catholic Stations of the Cross (which is what we’re calling it).

The route Jesus took to the cross was through the streets of Jerusalem. In English it’s called “The Way of Pain”. From the time Jesus died people have retraced His steps to remember His journey of pain. Eventually, symbols or “stations” were placed to mark specific moments Jesus had along the actual streets in Jerusalem. Today, “Stations of the Cross” are displayed around the world to help people think through Jesus’ journey to the cross. The time before Easter (Lent) is an ancient season for thinking about Jesus’ sacrifice.

We design “Stations of the Cross” to help us all understand Jesus a little bit more than we already do. The journey through several powerful moments ranging from the Upper Room and Garden to the Cross and the tomb is informative, imaginative, emotional and interactive, asking people to think and participate.

We have prayed it creates new thoughts for those who come, and help us all to understand this man, Jesus who is still changing the world today because of what He did.

Here’s an example of one of last year’s stations, The Garden. The station area is filled with two dozen large trees and shrubs on loan from the local garden center. As the person enters the area the instruction card quotes several Bible verses from the account of His agonizing prayer to the Father in the garden. It then explains that as Jesus sweat these ‘drops of blood’ they were done in agony over us. People are asked to locate one of several red ink pads placed around the area, to press their finger or thumb into it and put their fingerprint on one of many rocks among the plants as a symbol that Jesus thought of them when he endured this pressured, agonising moment. The other stations are just as powerful, thoughtful and interactive focusing on Jesus’ betrayal, carrying His cross, being nailed to the cross and the quite tomb.

At the end of this self guided tour of important moments of Jesus’ final hours we place a small comment book for those who would like to write their thoughts. We were shocked that almost everyone has chosen to write in it, expressing their feelings and emotions about what they have just experienced. Believers, non-believers, seekers have all written things like the following:

“Thank you for these moments to realize just how much Jesus has done for ME”

“It really helped me understand what Jesus did for us and what I take for granted”

“It made me think about past wrongs and the possibility of redemption”

“It made me feel what Jesus must have felt, how it affected Him. Wow”.

May you also find moments to attempt grasping what Jesus has done and that He has indeed done it for you.

Here’s a report from our team leader, Kyle McKinnon:

Prayer really does work!!  Having people pray in numerous, cities, countries and even continents for our time away really paved the way for God to do some amazing things!

We shared tea and biscuits with a group of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics and heard about how God had changed their lives.  We were able to play kids games with three 8- year olds who had no idea who Jesus was.  We were able to share all of our existing and lacking musical talents with churches, homes, and bus drivers all around the city.  We felt God’s presence while serving, praying, playing and even when we were able to lead two people to Christ.  The Moldovan people need the love of  Jesus and for 10 days this year we were able to join Him in the mission He wanted to do there.  I can’t wait to see is how that flame of God’s presence is going to make a difference in the five churches that we partnered with.  In the future we plan to return to these churches and continue the story of what has begun there.

We are all ready to head out to Moldova Saturday morning, 9 February.  We are going to be working in the village of Balti, with a local church.  While we are there we are going to get some amazing opportunities to visit schools and dormitories, share the Gospel with them, and do a childrens program.  Please be praying for our safety, that God would really work in our hearts and that He would use us to bless the city of Balti.  Many times when we step out of our every day routines to do mission God does some special things.   We will give you a quick update on some of those special things when we return, so stay tuned.

It would be a great encouragement to the team if you would pray for them for the next 9 days as the minister in Moldova.  If you are willing to pray for them would you click on the link above and drop a comment on the blog?  Tell us where you are, and where you are praying from.

The following reflection is written by Leslie, one of our 2012-2013 Gap-Year students, as she processes her first 5 months in the Greenhouse Programme:

“Where you invest your love, you invest your life” – Awake My Soul by Mumford & Sons

Investing can mean many different things.  You can invest money into an up and coming business because you believe they have something new to add to the market or you foresee a gain for yourself in the future.  You can invest time into a new project because you have hopes and dreams of taking something that may begin as rubbish and turn it into something beautiful.

What GreenHouse has taught me is that youth ministry requires a heavy amount of investing.  I’ve learned that in order to really love people the way Jesus loved people and to disciple the way that He discipled, I have to be willing to invest more than just my time, effort, or energy, even though those are all important elements.  Truly investing requires investing all of my life.

First and foremost, I’ve learned that investing takes all of my heart and soul and a great deal of love.  As I am investing my heart, soul, mind, and strength into Jesus first, I am able to take the love, grace, and mercy that He instills in me and invest that into the teens we work with.  I think the more attributes of Christ, like His love or grace, that we are willing to invest and proclaim into our relationships with others through practical actions, the more we can have a radical impact for furthering the God’s Kingdom on earth.  Investing means we have to be intentional to reflect and mirror Christ in all of our actions and words.

So what does investing look like for us GreenHousers? It’s going to football matches in the cold to cheer on our teens.   It’s spending a couple Saturdays to help clean, organize, and paint a teenagers room.  It’s meeting up for coffee, playing video and board games, sharing meals, and always being available to talk through good times and hard times.  We’re investing ten months of our words, our actions, and our lives into seeing the teens of Bicester transformed by Jesus.