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March 25, 2020

Just Hang Out

Quarantine and restriction takes one key thing away from teens’ lives: hanging out. Whether it is going out for a meal, to the mall or just hanging out at someone’s house, time with friends is an important part of young people’s lives. Now that has been taken away for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, make sure you are making space for your young people to simply hang out.

Create a standing time in a virtual space for students to get online with their friends and simply chat. If a daily meet-up is not feasible for your schedule, make sure you at least make it a part of your regular youth group time at the beginning or end of your meeting. It is important for your students to be heard and seen, and you can give them this space to share about what that is going on in their world. As you make space for structured meetings, make sure to also make space to just hang out.

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Discipleship, Stories

Fruit in Hard Soil

Dear Friends, How does the gospel bear fruit in hard soil? Montenegro is one of the most beautiful countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Sandwiched between Croatia and Albania on the Adriatic Sea, it combines stunning beaches with soaring 8000 ft mountains, rushing rivers, and the deepest canyon in Europe. But this hidden gem has very few evangelical believers. Out of a population of 600,000, less than 300 believers attend a few tiny evangelical churches. How do you make progress in such a difficult place? When Josiah Venture staff Noah and Jill Ellenwood moved to Montenegro in 2020, they immersed themselves in the local language and culture and took every opportunity to build natural relationships. Following the instructions of Jesus in Luke 10:6, they prayed that one of these new friends would be a “person of peace,” a trusted insider who would open the door to others. Noah met Slavo while playing soccer with a group of guys and invited him over to their apartment for board games. Slavo asked if he could bring his friends, and what began as a small gathering quickly grew into a weekly tradition with more than ten people attending. Slavo was always the catalyst, inviting new people while consistently building relationships. During this time, Slavo was on a personal spiritual journey. He openly shared his exploration of various paths for inner peace, including Hinduism, Buddhism, individualism, and Christianity. Noah and Jill had many candid conversations with him, sharing their own stories of God’s transformation in their lives. Still searching, Slavo embarked on a six-month backpacking trip through Europe. Along the way, he encountered people from all walks of life—Muslims who invited him to join their mosque, those who dismissed Christianity as fake, and others who loved him unconditionally. Throughout the trip, Slavo sensed that God was calling him, though he wasn’t sure what it meant at the time. When he returned, Noah spent 10 months studying the Bible with him, focusing on themes such as identity in Christ, being adopted into God’s family, and understanding sin and how it separates us from God. During this period, Slavo began experiencing dreams that seemed to be God speaking directly to him. One day, Noah received a call asking to meet on a hill where they often walked and talked. There he was greeted by a joyful Slavo, who exclaimed, “I want to do it—I want to follow Jesus!” Sitting down together, he prayed to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Slavo quickly became passionate about studying the Bible. He would often cancel plans just to keep reading, feeling unable to put the Word down. His transformation impacted his family so much that they started joining him for church services. This fall Noah had the privilege of baptizing Slavo as he publicly proclaimed his faith in Christ. Perseverance, prayer, relationships, God’s Word, time, sacrifice, and commitment—each of these is needed to bear gospel fruit in difficult soil. But then the transformation is real and spreads to others. Thank you for your part in this movement of God.
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Spotlight, Stories

The Light of Imagination

On Saturday, December 22, 2012, in my final year of Czech high school as a Josiah Venture Kid, a light came to our doorstep in Czech. I was preparing to graduate in the spring and move to the States for college. While I expected this Christmas to be the same as all the previous ones, it felt different because of one encounter on a chilly Saturday morning. Our neighbor Pavlina, who lived down the street, rang our doorbell to bring us a special and meaningful Christmas greeting: a flame from Bethlehem. This flame was lit in Bethlehem by a Palestinian boy, flown to Vienna, and taken by the scouts through Brno to Ostrava. Pavlina had woken up early that morning to take the one-hour train trip to Ostrava to light her flame so that she could spread the Light to our little town. The candlelight danced inside the lantern as she opened its glass door and passed the flame to a candlestick, which she used to light my candle. It was so cold that we could see our breath, and we lingered only for a moment at the door before she said goodbye and went on her way. Pavlina walked away with her lantern, but the light she still held was now also in my hands. We kept that flame alive throughout the following days until Christmas. Even after we turned off the lights for the day, it still glowed safely in our lantern on the windowsill. I was mesmerized. Growing up as a JV missionary kid, I often heard about Christ being the Light of the World. That Christmas, however, that flame that came from Bethlehem ignited my imagination. It brought the story of Jesus’s birth to life in a new way. We don’t only get to hear about the Light of the World; we get to experience him, just as I experienced the light and felt the warmth of the Bethlehem Light. This past September, I had the joy of hosting a workshop at JV’s Fall Conference and learning together with youth leaders and brothers and sisters in Christ from all over Central and Eastern Europe. The workshop, “Getting People Excited About the Bible,” centered around applying our imaginations to studying God’s Word. Back in high-school, the visual of the Bethlehem Light sparked my imagination as I considered the Christmas story. In the same way, when we apply our imaginations to engaging with God’s Word, we see it with fresh joy and wonder. In our workshop, we imagined ourselves as different characters and looked at Scripture through that lens. For example, we talked about being like a guest. As guests, our goal is to come in and try to understand the culture and the people in the home we are visiting, not assuming we already know what life looks like there. With that in mind, we explored the cultural traditions of Psalm 23 together. We also imagined ourselves as astronauts who can see the whole world from their space station. They can see how the continents fit together and how big the ocean really is. We again looked at Psalm 23, but this time to discover how it fits into the bigger picture of Scripture. Perhaps someone nearby has delivered the Bethlehem Light to your town, and you could find it, bring it home, and share it with your neighbors. Or perhaps you could discover and carry the light differently—by using your imagination to explore the story of Jesus and inviting others into this joy. Advent is a season of anticipation, a time to pause and let the beauty of the gospel stir our hearts and imaginations. Just as the flame from Bethlehem sparked awe and inspiration in me that unexpected December morning, we, too, can let the light of Christ illuminate our lives and draw others toward his truth. What could it look like for the story of Christ’s birth to come alive to you this Advent season? How might your imagination draw you into its beauty? Could this wonder then spread to those around us as we also bring the light to them? May this season be one of discovery, joy, and sharing the gift of Immanuel, God with us.
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Evangelism, Spotlight

Exit Tour Romania

Dear friends, How does a local church restart their youth ministry? Agora Christi is an innovative church plant in the university city of Iasi, in northern Romania. They don’t own a building, but a rented room in the mall serves as a meeting space on Sunday and a vibrant network of small groups helps to make disciples during the week. In spite of this purposeful outreach, their youth group has declined to just a few teenagers in the last several years, as former youth became adults. This is a perfect challenge for our Josiah Venture (JV) Romania Exit team, which specializes in opening doors for churches into schools. They arranged with four local high schools to do a series of lectures in classes, offering practical help in areas like managing stress, digital addiction, and preventing bullying among students. Additional seminars were offered for teachers on relevant topics like preventing burnout or understanding the teenage brain. Our team has been able to acquire official accreditation for this program, and their experience and credibility take them places the church could never go alone. During just three days in November, they were able to be face-to-face with 1600 young people, as well as a number of teachers. This provided a context for building a bridge of relationships since 12 volunteers from the church joined them in each of the settings. During the lectures, the teens were invited to a pizza party sponsored by the church, occurring immediately after school that same day.. Almost 10% of the students, over 150 young people, attended these creative events. A series of games and competitions helped create a fun environment and build relationships, and the gospel was presented through several testimonies. At the end, students filled out contact cards with a list of their interests, which gave the church an open door to connect with them in the future. At the end of the party, the teenagers were invited to learn more about God through a youth club and individual meetings with members of the youth team. That same week, 42 new young people showed up for the first youth meeting. Our Exit team provided a packet of 6 weeks of follow-up meetings for the church, and many young people are already meeting for individual discovery Bible study using an innovative phone app JV has developed called “Seek.” Throughout the week our team had many long conversations with hurting young people, often dealing with great pain in their homes. One girl grew up fatherless after her biological father abused her mother and then abandoned her. Another shared how her father, a terrible alcoholic, created such conflict in the family that she was placed in a foster home. Adina, one of the members of our team, was able to share the good news of a heavenly Father who loves them, and who is also able to redeem what is irrevocably broken through the power of his resurrected Son. In just one week so many lives have been transformed, and a vibrant local youth ministry reborn. Every month our Romania Exit team takes local churches and the Gospel to the front lines of students in schools. As we enter the Christmas season, I am especially thankful for your gifts and prayers that make this possible.