youth center?

When I look at what we believe God is calling us to here in Ambridge...mentoring, lacrosse team, leadership initiative and a youth center. One really stands out, doesn't it...youth center. A youth center in Ambridge run by Ambridge Youth Ignite, wow just saying it makes me feel like I am crazy. For some reason recently God has begun to stir that in me. Honestly, it scares me and that's one reason why I think we need to start pursuing it.

I just finished this book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson, it really helped me see my fear as a good thing, something that was there for me to overcome, something for me to push into. With that I feel the desire to start praying over a building here in Ambridge that would be a great place for a youth center, that place is the old Foodland.

A couple of experiences have gotten me to this place of search for and praying over a possible youth center. First, in Batterson's book he talks about the building that they prayed over and received to start their own coffee house near Union Station in DC. Um buildings definitely come a lot easier in Ambridge then in DC near Union Station. Secondly, I met the people who operate The Open Door in Crafton Heights near downtown Pittsburgh. Their story is very similar to Batterson's and actually Ambridge Youth Ignite's, they opened a youth center and its still in operation 20 years later. Check out their video below



So, I caught myself saying well if they can do it why not us?

Faith and staying

Since my last post, we have had a difficult season. My wife and I who have been attempting to live on the support of our donors, looked at our financial numbers and knew things needed to change. From about April of 2008, I have been applying to jobs and not until recently have I felt peace about what I am about to write.

We are staying in Ambridge, not because I found a great job, not because we got enough donations, but because we can't run away from God's calling on our lives to this place. We love it here, we love our church, we love our friends, we love the youth and the challenges our ministry brings. With all of this God continues to place a burden on our hearts for the youth of Ambridge and we can't run away from that.

As I was thinking about what to say I remembered one of my favorite movies "Field of Dreams", there is a scene in the movie where Ray (Kevin Costner) is faced with making a decision about the field and his home.



I see a lot of similarities between Ray's decision and ours. We need people in our lives (like James Earl Jones in the clip) to say keep going, its worth it, even though things look bad now it won't always be this way.

Peace to you guys as you strive to stay or leave and go where God is calling.

try to update more often...

Here is some new news...we are still trying to find a field for the sport camp this summer. Due to the fact that they are tearing down the old high school where we have had camp for the past 4 years, we decided that it would be best for us to stay away from the demolition. Pray for us that we will find a field that all the youth who desire to come to the camp will be able to. We do have some great news about the arts camp, we will be holding the arts camp at Center for Hope in Ambridge this year, CFH's building is a former school with large classrooms that will be perfect for camp.

I am meeting with 3 middle schoolers now once a week, we are studying the book of Genesis. We just finished the book of Nehemiah . The youth invited one of their friends and it has been great spending time with all of them. We meet at the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe in Ambridge, they have some great food there and its cool to sit and pray and read the Bible with these 3 guys in there too.

I think we may have found a field for the lacrosse team to practice on this summer, its a fairly small field (too small for sports camp) but its open and right in the middle of town, pray that it works out...

Its been a crazy year already and its only May...

Spring time is coming

Who is excited that pitchers and catchers report this week?
If you don't know what that means, its ok here ya go;
Spring Training is starting for baseball

If you live in the north you understand that anything with the word spring in it is a good sign; especially when temperatures are in the single digits today in Ambridge, PA.

As spring time approaches we are preparing for our 5th summer of ministry to the youth in Ambridge. Five years is a long time and its crazy to me to remember that all of this started from an idea we had in the summer of 2003.

I wanted to let you guys know that we are changing our name to
Ambridge Youth Ignite (because we are becoming so much more than a camp). We'll have a new web-site in a few days called www.ambridgeyouthignite.org

This is a really exciting time for us and we are really happy to see things moving, Shea and I truly believe that this is why we are here in Ambridge to push this ministry into the school year and continue the relationships that were created during the summer.

With that I have been meeting with two youth each week, in effort to start a mentoring relationship with them. We are studying the book of Nehemiah, we eat together and we pray together; its a lot of fun.

We are starting to recruit summer staff, if you know anyone who would be interested in helping us out this summer please e-mail me at ambridgeyouthignite@yahoo.com.

It's 2008

Time has really flown by recently for us. A few weeks ago, the Ambridge Sports and Arts Camp had a storyboarding session where we decided on 4 initiatives that we are pursuing in 2008.

1) Facilitate Mentoring relationships

2) Launch a leadership initiative

3) Establish a Youth Center

4) Field a lacrosse team


Each of these initiatives are being headed up by a different person, which is really exciting. We have also started recruiting for leaders for Ambridge sports and arts camp 2008.

Moving on up...

The past few months have been challenging and good. Ambridge Sports and Arts Camp has moved to Rock the World, where it began 3 years ago. Soon we'll have some updates on their web-site .

We are very excited about the possibilities of moving to RTW as we will be in an incubation period for a season or two, in an attempt to prepare us to become our own non-profit in the future. We are looking forward to the mentoring we will receive from RTW. Over the past few weeks we have been speaking to several groups of people about supporting us and volunteering with us during the summer. Those meetings and conversations have been extremely helpful to us in continuing our ministry here. I am also continuing to pursue creating a lacrosse team here in Ambridge.

Continue to pray for us especially for vision for this community and how God can best use us here.

With the summer over where do we go from here?

Wow, what a summer. We had a great opportunity this summer to see God move in this community. First off our team was wonderful, we had team of six people who did both the sports and arts camp everyday for 5 weeks, that may not sound like a lot but let me tell you working all day with elementary and middle school students pushes people to their limits. But the team did a great job at coming together and was able to place the youth and God before themselves.

The arts camp (which was in its 1st summer of existence) was really neat, we were able to create a mural with the youth, which now resides in downtown Ambridge. The mural was created by the youth and except for a few touch ups was entirely painted by them too. We are hoping through things like the mural the youth in Ambridge will begin to see that they can make a difference in their community and that they will begin to feel more of a part of it.



We also each week had a chance to proclaim the gospel not just through our words but through our actions. But we also know that it is nothing that we do that brings salvation, it is God the father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that brings the opportunity and we just hope that we "planted a seed" or "watered a seed" with the youth and their families that we had the opportunity to interact with through the summer. We hope that our actions will help point them toward Christ.

As much as I am glad that the summer is over, I miss the daily interactions with the youth and how those interactions shape my faith in a way that I cannot recreate outside of the camps. It was also great to spend each minute with my family, Shea, Caleb and I were there at both camps and Caleb definitely has a fan club now.

As we move into the fall, we are praying and discern God's call for us in this community. We at this time feel that God is calling us to create a lacrosse ministry to the youth in this area. Now this may not sound like a great idea to you but for some reason God has placed it on my heart for several years now to do this. I think one of the reasons is because God wants all of his children to have opportunities beyond where their social classes reside. Many people in Ambridge live at or below the poverty level and the farthest thing from them is lacrosse. I think we have a beautiful opportunity to expose the youth to something they have never had the chance to be a part of and help them see that God loves them and desires a relationship with them as much as the financially rich. We want to begin to tear down the barriers between classes, through that I believe we can see justice and God's love for all of his people.

Please pray for our vision, for the team (Emily, Jake, Kayleigh and Sadie) as they discern their futures, for the youth that Christ may become real to them and that all of us may seek out God's desire and provision for our lives.