Community Impact

Another way to measure the success of your church planting efforts is the response you receive from the community. We just received a letter from the American Czech Educational Center thanking us for how we served them.

This is a wonderful example of the mission Jesus has called us on. We are called to bless the nations!

If you cannot see the document below download it here.

Church Planting Success

How do you measure the success of your ministry? It's a VERY important question otherwise you don't know if you are doing the right things or how to change them. If you never stop and measure, by asking important questions, then you are living in a delusional, self-absorbed and narrow-minded bubble!

We took the largest survey we've ever conducted at ONEBLAZE this year. We wanted to know what God did during the week in the lives of our youth and we wanted to know if our vision of raising up a new generation of church pioneers is working. So, we had a special communication card created for EVERYONE to complete in the last meeting -- and the results are in! Of our 185 campers we collected the following indications:

• 4 salvations
• 24 came back to God
• 33 received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (never before experience God like this)
• 44 used a spiritual gift or received a word from the Holy Spirit
• 56 were set free from fear or a wrong way of thinking
  
• 14 shared their faith with someone
  
• 20 prayed for at least one person in the community (not in the church)
• 12 people indicated they received physical healing
• The most favorite elements of the week in descending order were worship, teaching, being with friends and service projects.
• We raised $3,864.55 (If you made an IOU please send your gift to Newfrontiers-USA)

Aren't these stats helpful! The biggest negative we had was that people wanted to go back to the dorms on the Saturday to clean up after the Family Fun Day -- that's a good bad point to have.

Here are some encouraging comments made on the communication cards we used:

1. "I received a powerful word. Camp changed my life around!"
2. "God took a ton of weight off my shoulders."
3. "Felt God calling me to San Fransisco."
   
4. "I know God is pursuing me!"
5. "God showed himself REAL and WORKING to me. These meetings also helped me hear his voice more."
6. "I was Baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. I experienced words/pictures and became 100% positive that I will be a leader and plant churches."
7. "God brought me back. I prayed for the first time, prayed for someone for the first time and had a picture for someone."
8. "I was going through a season of feeling like I can't hear God's voice. And with Euan's talk I found I could really hear God's voice."
9. "God helped me to get over my shyness and fear of what others think of me by filling me with his bold confidence."
10. "This week got me excited about sharing my faith."
11. "God told me I would be a leader of one of the 100 cities."
12. "When can I plant a church? "
    

I'll leave it up to to decide, but do you think we are creating a missional generation whose desire is to impact the top 100 cities of North America by planting churches? Or, do you think we have a passive, entertainment based youth ministry with no real juice?

ONEBLAZE in St. Louis 2008 will be a camp to remember. I am positive that we have future church planters in the group who will look back to this week and pinpoint it as a time that kick started their future ministry ventures. We have taken at least 2 or 3 additional cities because of this week. We'll see the outworking of it over the next 10-15 years.

Be praying for this generation, they WANT to plant churches, and I consider this event to be a HUGE church planting success!

So I made a mistake

I wanted to make a brief update and let people know that I prematurely uploaded a video interview I did with Rhianna from Atlanta. I reported that she had been completely healed of her Scoliosis (curvature of the spine) condition which was in fact unverified by a doctor at the time and has since been shown to be inaccurate. Broadcasting this on the internet created a lot of attention and disappointment for the family once they had it checked out.

Rhianna did experience freedom from pain during ONEBLAZE which was a real answer to prayer considering how physically demanding the week was. Those around her, not being familiar with her condition, were not able to tell if her spine had actually straightened up, and of course it is virtually impossible for Rhianna know. So, with the excitement over the pain going we all assumed a complete healing -- it was an honest mistake.

I wanted to publicly apologize about this and ask for forgiveness. I have expressed to Rhianna's Dad my deep regret about this. My desire for the youth of ONEBLAZE has been to see them grow in maturity, strengthen their relationships with their parents and release them to follow Jesus with a wholehearted boldness. In publishing the report on the internet I circumvented her parents authority which was a real lack of judgment on my part and I am truly sorry for it.

For those of us who believe in miracles it can be easy to make exaggerated claims without any accountability. I wanted to make it clear that I got this one wrong and hurt some people in the process. I hope I only have to learn this one once! As a young leader I have learned a valuable lesson.

The last thing I want to happen is for this to cast a shadow on the wonderful things that happened at ONEBLAZE in St. Louis 2008. During the event 7 of our youth indicated they had received physical healing, 4 became Christians and many had life changing things take place. We truly had the best conference ever and I know that a new generation of church pioneers is being raised up. I will be posting a full report on my blog soon.

ONEBLAZE in St. Louis 2008 Photo Slideshow

What a week! 185 campers from across the USA worshiped Jesus, learned from the Bible, served the community and were changed forever with a vision to plant churches in the top 100 cities of the USA! If you attended or are interested checkout this ONEBLAZE photo slideshow (roughly 300 photos). Please forward this to any youth or counselors who don't receive my blog updates.

ONEBLAZE Photo Slideshow

Another Salvation at ONEBLAZE 2008

After years of church attendance and coming to ONEBLAZE, Emily from Union, Missouri realized she needed to give her whole life to Jesus and become a Christian. She is full of joy now and feels Gods presence with her. See my short video interview ...

Prayer for Scoliosis at ONEBLAZE 2008

I have made an important update about this post. Please read it here.

Rhianna from Atlanta has had Scoliosis (curvature of the spine) for about a year. One of her shoulder blades sticks out because of this and she has constant pain -- day and night. She was prayed for in one of our meetings and experienced some healing. It's been a couple of days and she still has no pain.

Rhianna is scheduled for an operation which would require 3 months out of school. Keep praying that she will be completely healed and not require this operation any longer.

(NOTE: I removed my video interview until we hear more details about Rhianna's progress)

Salvation at ONEBLAZE 2008

In our second evening meeting Sam, a catholic girl from the North East, realized that she was not a Christian and decided to follow Jesus. The girls had a party in the dorms that night to celebrate!!! See the brief interview with her ...

Healing at ONEBLAZE 2008

In our second evening meeting we received a word of knowledge about someone with a problem in their elbow and suffering from headaches.

Wes from Arizona responded to the word. He hurt his elbow playing tennis and after an MRI scan the doctors told him that they couldn't do anything for it. He was stuck with the problem. So, we prayed in the name of Jesus and his elbow was completely healed and he's been free from his headaches so far. Watch the video below for more ...

ONEBLAZE in St. Louis 2008

This week is one of the most exciting weeks of the year for us. We have about 185 campers at our annual Newfrontiers-USA youth conference. Our vision for ONEBLAZE is to raise up a new generation of church pioneers. To do this we are training them to think and act differently.

Each afternoon teams of young people go into the community to serve. Some are running kids camps that focus on soccer, basketball and art, and others are doing food drives, building pirate ships for local kids or making signs for our family fun day on Saturday. This morning we trained everyone on how to engage with people and start conversations. This is a critical skill that the younger generation needs to learn in order to connect people to Jesus.

Last night I preached about the big picture. God is calling us to leave the small things and go for the big thing. He is calling us out of the Shire (Lord of the Rings), with its safe, picturesque, generational and traditional backdrop and into the great city of mordor -- the heart of the enemies activities. I gave them a vision to reach the cities of this nation. Cities have more people and more influence which makes them strategic for the advancement of the Kingdom. We'll never change things from the small rural areas.

So, big picture "CITY" and small picture "HOW TO HAVE A CONVERSATION" are two ways we have started to build the vision into this generation. Our goal is concerned with mobilizing these young people to engage in the mission of God -- which is to make disciples of all nations.

I can't wait for tonights meeting where my good friend Seth Hein will speak about sin and the wonderful nature of God's grace! My other good friend Sean Stewart will also be interviewing ONEBLAZERS about how their service projects went and relaying any exciting stories.

This camp is very different on a number of levels and it is amazing to have my wife and son around for much of the activities. Hearing Heather pray in our meetings and seeing people play with Jones is such a joy. We are one big family together on a mission.

Video Message to ONEBLAZE North East

I recorded a personal invitation to the youth from Newfrontiers churches in the North East. Note the city skylines in the background. Living with the vision. Check it out:

Long Term Church Expansion Strategy

Last weekend (Feb 15-17, 2008) I ran a youth conference in St. Joseph Missouri. We run 3 ONEBLAZE events each year. Our vision is to raise up
a new generation of church pioneers.

Normally we have around 200 teenagers between grades 7 & 12. When I say I ran it, I mean a very committed team of volunteers from Living Hope Church administered the weekend, and I simply set the vision, arranged the messages and gave input on a few things.

So why do we do it? Seriously, it's a lot of work for one weekend; travel, extreme weather (6 inches of snow Saturday night), late nights, community service projects, bands, preaching, making videos, flu epidemic, bad attitudes etc... Why? All youth work NEEDS a generational strategy otherwise it's just serving the immediate group of people -- which is a greedy vision. Sometimes it can be hard to see the long term benefits but here they are:

1. Leadership Training: Youth ministry is the BEST place to start raising up leaders. Teenagers are passionate and too young to realize the limitations that adults place on things. If I preach about the resurrection of Jesus they are trying to raise the dead the next day! During ONEBLAZE I have young people leading worship, preaching, judging spiritual gifts, leading service project teams and overseeing meetings. We try and give feedback on all these things to encourage leadership growth.
   
   
2. New Churches: Question: what is the best thing to do with leaders? Answer: send them out to help pioneer churches! This nation needs more churches (check stats on the right). Starting new churches is the best long term kingdom strategy out there, parachurch wont do it alone. Our ONEBLAZE youth events are hosted by local churches to train young people in church based serving, outreach and community impact. It's a lot more hard work than just using a Christian camp at the Lake of the Ozarks, but the long term impact is more valuable. Youth ministry is a perfect place to build vision for church planting.
   
   
3. Existing Churches: With all this talk about new churches, don't feel like existing churches aren't in the plan. ONEBLAZE ministry is all about serving and prospering existing churches. If you lead a church wouldn't you love 200 passionate for Jesus teenagers who will pay money to represent and serve your church for a weekend or an entire week? ONEBLAZE makes a huge impact in the life of a church, it injects an existing church family with raw youth passion -- what a great encouragement and opportunity for spiritual refreshment.
   
   
4. Community Impact: This is by far one of the most amazing and exciting parts of ONEBLAZE. This last weekend we went to dozens of venues to serve the community in St. Joe. I ended up at Special Olympics and cheered for the Eagles, a basketball team of adult men and women which included many athletes with greater abilities than myself! The Eagles are playing in State Basketball Championships in Wentzville, MO in March. I talked with the coaches, the players and other volunteers and explained that Living Hope Church was there to serve the community today. People were incredibly grateful and the name of Jesus is now more famous than before. The other benefit to church based youth ministry is that the local church can continue the work, so it's not the hit and run tactic of many Christian outreach strategies.
   
   
5. Personal Development: ONEBLAZE has been an amazing opportunity for me to grow in my leadership skills. Setting vision, preparing and delivering messages, working within a team, learn from church leaders, increasing my capacity, growing in faith, connecting with the community and the list goes on. But not just me, this is true for all those involved in leading ONEBLAZE. If we limited our roles by only discipling a couple of people, or ushering on Sunday mornings, or going to bible studies (not that these things are wrong) it would take years for us to develop to where we are at now. Church based youth camp is an accelerated development strategy. It creates opportunities that enables growth.
   

See ONEBLAZE.net & livinghope-stjoe.org

For info on our upcoming ONEBLAZE event this summer see this promo video: