Kingdom SEPTEMBER 2018 A PUBLICATION OF Worker THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST IN YOUTH Connection WWW.CIY.COM WORLD CHANGERS DECISIONS MADE AT CIY EVENTS ARE PROPELLING STUDENTS TO AFFECT CHANGE FOR GOD'S KINGDOM IN PLACES ALL OVER THE WORLD 2 STAFF LIST CIY PRESIDENT ANDY HANSEN [email protected] EDITOR CHRIS ROBERTS [email protected] ASSISTANT EDITOR AUDREY WUNDERLICH [email protected] STAFF WRITER BECCA HAINES [email protected] ART DIRECTOR AUSTIN EIDSON [email protected] CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/DESIGNERS/PHOTOGRAPHERS CHRISTINE COOK, JESS CLIFTON, CRAIG DAVENPORT, EMILY KROHN, JOSH HOWERTON, ZANE LEAVENS, ZEA MAROON, MYHA MCDANIEL, MAYA VAUGHAN, KALISA VEER COVER PHOTO BY CHRIS ROBERTS SUBSCRIPTIONS P.O. BOX B JOPLIN, MO 64802 (888) 765-4CIY To be added to the CIY mailing list, or to receive the Kingdom Worker Connection via email, please contact [email protected] KINGDOM WORKER CONNECTION 3 KINGDOM WORKER CONNECTION CONTENTS STAFF LIST 2 PRESIDENT’S LETTER ANDY HANSEN 4 A 50th ANNIVERSARY STORY 6 EXPLORING IDENTITY BELIEVE 8 CONQUERING GARGANTOR SUPERSTART 10 STEPPING INTO THE LIGHT MOVE 12 FROM DARK TO LIGHT MIX 16 WORLD CHANGERS 20 TRAINING FOR A LIFE OF KINGDOM WORK ENGAGE 28 WHY CONVERSATIONS MATTER AEFFECT 32 SOCIAL MEDIA SPOTLIGHT 34 STORIES FROM THE ROAD ENGAGE 36 FINAL THOUGHTS SCOTT WALKER 38 CIY PROGRAMS 39 CHRIST IN YOUTH 4 PRESIDENT’S LETTER ne of my fondest memories of early youth ministry years was when I was a “weekend warrior.” My wife, Marcia, and I would travel almost three hours from Great Lakes Christian College in Lansing, Michigan, Oto Bangor, Michigan, every weekend for a couple of years to lead youth ministry at a church. Several of the students from the church lived at and worked on farms, especially fruit farms. I frequently visited a student at his home where peach trees were brimming with huge peaches at the peak of their maturity. All I had to do was pick a peach, pinch the skin and pull. The skin would come right off, and the juice would begin to run down my arm! The flavor and sweetness of that freshly picked peach – WOW! Galatians 6:9 says: “Do not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Not many of our CIY friends understand the tremendous challenges and issues that take place to prepare for and provide 58 MOVE and MIX events and a dozen international Engage mission trips in the course of a summer. The crunch time leading up to the first events and then the incredible 10-week sprint from mid-June to early August is almost overwhelming. Yet, the harvest compels us to persevere! Andy Hansen PRESIDENT CHRIST IN YOUTH KINGDOM WORKER CONNECTION 5 Students attending MOVE events this summer were encouraged to make first-time decisions for Christ by walking out of the darkness of their past sins and into the forgiving light and salvation of Jesus. Luke 8 tells us that the seed that falls on good ground can planted in my heart for Haiti. I returned to Haiti in 2010 after the produce fruit a hundredfold! Jesus states in John 15 that our earthquake to build and help in an orphanage for special needs Father in Heaven is glorified if we bear much fruit. children.” The “end of the summer” is also one of my fondest times at Christ Keith Stone of Fairfield, Ohio, said: “Our son, Daniel, just In Youth, for I receive incredible messages that share testimonies returned from a week at MOVE in Cleveland, Tennessee. He can’t brimming with the fruit of what God has done through the stop talking about the messages! He even shared page after page ministry of CIY. of notes he took on his phone and all the visuals he was able to download. Thank you for all the time, love and prayer you put “Almost 20 years of attending/serving Christ In Youth events, into these kids! Daniel’s friend, Shelby – who was a professed talking to kids about Jesus, baptizing people in fountains and atheist a year ago – attended the MOVE week this summer and being poured out as God did big things at a CIY event,” wrote gave her life to Christ and was baptized at our church this past Chris Vandeline of Shiloh, Illinois, in one such message. “THIS Sunday! God is so good!” TIME, my own kid just got back from MIX and has decided to be baptized. She has truly had a God-touch on her perspective this Story after story continues to come across my desk. I am so past week! (My wife) and I are so thankful – thankful to God, but humbled and overjoyed by such an eternal harvest. I also realize also to CIY for the heritage of faith threaded through my life and the fields are vast and white unto harvest. CIY is ready and now my family’s life as we pursue Jesus.” willing to continue to expand. Pamela Hunter of Joplin, Missouri, wrote: “I took my first mission THANK YOU for continuing to PRAY for this ministry trip with CIY when I was 16 (I turned 17 while in Haiti) and it and continuing to sacrificially PROVIDE for this ministry. changed my life forever. John Mouton was the leader of our group The harvest of eternal fruit through God’s grace WILL BE and he and his wife were wise and loving Christ-like role models OVERFLOWING with bounty if together we persevere. for us. I am so very grateful for the work CIY continues to do in the lives of so many youth and adults alike. Please keep planting For such a time as this, let’s give of our best to expand the seeds of Jesus’ love and grace! I know personally the one you harvest! CHRIST IN YOUTH 6 RESCUING A REBEL CIY founder’s legacy goes beyond events and trips and into the hearts of individuals who were led to the salvation of Christ because of his influence STORY BY CHRIS ROBERTS hen Rob Lansdale was a Reeves, who was the youth minister at want to accept it,” he said. “So as one last kid, he was a punk. This the time, and Bob Stacy, who was serving act of rebellion I was going to stand in isn’t just something other on the ministry staff at the church while front of those people and let them have it.” people have said about also serving as the dean of preaching at Whim – he claims it for himself. In fact, Cincinnati Bible College. When his name was called, he grabbed his as the youth minister from Greenwood letter and marched up to the stage. He set Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, looks One of the first things he was told when his letter on the lectern and then looked back on his life, he can’t help but shake his he started going to Spring Hill was if up at the crowd. The eyes and smiling head in wonder at the way God rescued you went to church with Bob Stacy, it faces overwhelmed him. All thoughts him from a life destined for doom. The was mandatory to go to a CIY Summer went out of his head. He looked down beginning steps of that rescue started Conference. That’s because Stacy was at his letter, and “the words were gone,” with a local church, and were amplified the original founder of the ministry, and he said. “I don’t know what happened. It by his first experience at a Christ In Youth though he wasn’t involved directly with just wasn’t there. I looked up again and I conference. CIY anymore, he still believed whole- could feel the Holy Spirit taking over me, heartedly in its mission. and I just started weeping. I knew what Lansdale didn’t grow up in the church. God wanted me to do, but I was afraid to His family was broken – a father who had It took a lot of jumping through hoops do it. But then Bob Stacy stepped up and cheated on his mother, causing a divorce for Lansdale to get to CIY’s Summer put his hand on my shoulder, and asked and then both parents remarrying. His Conference, but he did get there, and if I wanted to give my life to Christ. He father was a bad example, and Lansdale the week ended up changing his life – baptized me that day.” would often act out or get into trouble as despite his best efforts. He spent the week a kid … so much so that his mother sent rebelling against everything that was Lansdale would go on to attend Kentucky him to counseling before the age of 12. being presented to him. Christian University to obtain a degree in It was around that age that he moved youth ministry. A lot of people in his life to Middletown, Ohio – a little-known But it’s nearly impossible for a young told him he’d never make it in ministry – town in the middle of the U.S. that would person to attend a CIY event and not be his past was too checkered to overcome. have been otherwise unremarkable for affected by the Holy Spirit. By the end of But every time he started to doubt himself, Lansdale’s story except for the fact that the week he knew that God was tugging he would remember the words of Bob it was home to Bob Stacy and Spring Hill on his heart.