Youth Mentoring - a Pebble of Faith

My Father is a pastor. In 1975, He had accepted an invitation to be the dean of students for a private Christian prep school. He was thrilled with the prospect of a new and very different challenge. But before the moving van was packed, but after the church said its warm good-bye, the school had some form of difficulty and removed the job offer. Therefore, my father was not only deeply disappointed, he was unemployed. It was a very low point in my Dads life.

The job search ended in Lancaster California where he because the senior pastor of a great church. I was a freshman in college. That summer I went to my new home in Lancaster forvacation. It was there that I was quite taken by the beautiful church pianist who was a senior in high school. A couple years of friendship with Kay turned into courtship and later marriage. I had never connected the dots until I recently was talking to my dad about that difficult time of unemployment. My kids were in the room. You would not believe the look on their faces as we suddenly realized that if that school had not removed the job offer, they would not be here.

In 1978, after recieving his MBA, my brother David was working for a small and rapidly growing software company in the Seattle area -- yes, it was Microsoft. The owner called him (guess who) to let him go. He quickly landed a job with Exxon in Houston Texas. As he was preparing for the move, David's wife Vivian was given the news that she had cervical cancer that needed to be removed as soon as possible. They chose to postpone the treatments until they settled in Texas. A few days later, they were at a specialists office in Texas who said; "I do not know anything about cancer, but I do know that you are pregnant." The cancer that was to be removed by the Seattle doctor is named Gregory. He recently graduated from UCLA with a double major, married and moved to Japan to spend his first year of marriage teaching english. God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His name.

As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of this ministry we have looked at our history. There were countless events that happened, that from our earthly eyes, were absolutely necessary precursors to the start of this ministry. I will share just one of those event as told my Warren Christie, who is writing our history:

The movement of Christian youth rallies that started in the thirties expanded further with the millions of soldiers and sailors encamped in cities around the country. In 1944 many of the Church and Christian youth leaders who were leading independent youth rallies and clubs met at Lake Winona , Indiana for an annual Bible conference. There these men prayerfully deliberated how to best coordinate this evangelical effort to young people. They agreed to cooperate in this great movement of the Spirit. Later that year, at in meeting in Detroit , Torrey Johnson, a Chicago area Pastor was elected Chairman of a temporary organization to oversee the work. Torrey had been the organizer of the Chicago Youth Jubilees ably aided by many including a dynamic, recent Wheaton graduate and Chicago radio evangelist, Billy Graham. (A complete copy of Warren Christies work can be found at http://LIYouthmentoring.com.)

Little did anyone who was at that meeting, dream that this would be the birth of Youth for Christ which has contributed to or birthed countless other ministries like Dr. Grahams ministry and even Long Island Youth Mentoring. It was just one meeting. Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the apples in a seed.

One day Ed came home from church and told his wife he had signed up to be a mentor to a fatherless boy. Fifteen years later, that boy is a policeman keeping order in the aftermath of 9-11. He is also a sixth grade Sunday school teacher and now a mentor to a boy with a story very much like his own.

It was just a decision made at church. He volunteered to get together with a boy for two hours a week.

What God will do with that pebble of faith that was thrown obediently into the pool of the will of God will reverberate for generations and onto eternity.

Please know that we rest only in the very capable hands of Almighty God. The God who can use a lost job to enable me to meet my Kay and to be blessed with our three children, and who blessed my brother with his first born son, is quite capable to lead and provide for Long Island Youth Mentoring (http://ChristianMentor.com) that He loves so much. Our question is only to know His call of what we should do, weather seemingly large or small and to know that the Lord of the universe has chosen to bless us by enabling us to be apart of His blessing work.

John Cragg has been the director of Long Island Youth Guidance (http://christianmentor.com) for the last 15 years. This ministry is a Christian big brother/big sister program. The success of this ministry has sponed dozens of other groups around the world to use John Cragg's methods successfully reach at risk children.Suki Blog16423
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