Service Trip

Summer is here again!! And generally we would be gearing up to go off to the BYSA Summer Camp. This year however, we have decided to give of ourselves and go on a Service Trip. 16 teenagers from Troyeville Baptist Church, Lisa and myself will go and partner with Lighthouse Project, one of WEC international's ministries. We will be helping construct a playground for one of the local schools and present a Holiday Bible Club. We aim to present the Gospel through the stories of Creation, David and Goliath, Solomon's wisdom, Daniel and the Lion's den and the Conversion and Ministry of Saul/Paul. A lot of work has gone into organizing this and we are praying that the teens grow and learn from it as well as having a relaxing time away from the city. Lisa and I thought it was a great idea several months ago, and now we find ourselves asking why we decided to do this. We certainly have learnt a lot about youth ministry, organizing a trip and even working and planning stuff together. But we wouldn't be as far as we are without the Lord's help.

Sunday baptisms

Yesterday, 14 August 2011, I had the privilege of leading two teenage guys through the waters of baptism. The way these two boys are growing in their walk with the Lord is amazing.

Lisa and I continue to pray that the other teenagers would commit their lives to Christ. Please pray for them as well as Brave and Blessed as they have declared publicly their faith in Christ.

Tim

Back to the Basics

We are about to go back and start our youth group meetings again. Lisa and I have thought and prayed about it, and have decided to go back to the basics of the Bible. There are a lot of misconceptions due to poor interpretation, and we are facing a generation where the Bible is not taught in the home anymore and that attending Sunday School is not a big priority. So we are going to be working through teaching the Bible in a Chronological fashion, but we will include small group discussions, which is something the teenagers enjoy.

Please pray for us as we work through the Bible from the beginning and work to teaching the basics to the youth. And pray for those who are mature Christians and have a better understanding of the Bible, pray that they will be leaders amongst the teens.

Post Holiday Bible Club

A week ago the youth at TBC, Lisa and my self took on the challenge of hosting Holiday Bible Club for ages 5-13 yr olds. This year was actually a lot more stressful from the last two that we have held. This biggest reason is that we didn't prepare far enough in advance and it was literally last minute prep. The day before and day of each programme of activities was a briefing and send out with a quick prayer everything would work out and all the material needed would be availbable. The Lord really worked wonders. All those helping us were committed to being there every day, even if it was just in time to start the programme. We had only enough kids for us to cater for and handle in small groups. In the end it all worked out well and everyone had a great time.

Lisa and I continue to learn that we need to motivate the youth in Troyeville to commit to things, we are the ones to help keep the ball rolling in an environment where things change constantly, people's lives are hard and they continually seek an easy means of living. We are needing to continue to set a Christian example and push forward. As long as we stay faithful to the Lord, he does work things out. We have learnt that we need to do a little less talk and a lot more action. We continually need prayer in this area. We have such huge dreams for the next generation, yet we struggle to follow through with things that would uplift them in such a depressive lifestyle, show them the wonders of what the Lord can accomplish through them and for them, despite their backgrounds.

The Christianity Explored studies went well and we feel that we need a similar type of programme. The youth like to engage in small group discussion based around a specific topic. They enjoy finding out what the Bible says about topics and they compare it to what they grow up believing from what family and friends teach them. If you know of any series that has a section that has a time for large group teaching that leads into small group discussion and would stimulate good discussions, please let me know. We are dealing with a group of youth that have not grown up with the Bible, the only influence they have received is from church and youth group. Even in church services there are things that they don't understand. We need to go back to the basics of the Bible. There are so many misconceptions that we need to start at the beginning to clear things up.

That's all from my side. We we are planning on starting up with BASIC (Brothers and Sisters in Christ-youth group) again in the first week of August.

In Christ

Tim

Holiday Bible Club 2011

The winter holiday is the time of year when most churches here in South Africa put together a Holiday Bible Club for the children in their surrounding areas. Generally the youth are very involved with running it, whether they are group leaders or helping with snacks and decor. For the third year at Troyeville, Lisa and I are faced with putting together a programme with a team of leaders from the youth group at Troyeville. The biggest challenge is getting things moving. We have three weeks until we plan on running HBC. For all of us, Lisa, myself, Cele, Nonhlanhla, Brave, Tsakani and Bongani it has been a very busy year, more than last year. We haven't been as committed as we should have been to getting ideas and start working on stuff. Please pray as we shift into sonic speed to be ready in time. We do want the Lord's leading and guiding on this. We have a theme: Survivor Island. What we need now will be games, crafts and stories (Biblical stories of people who have "survived" hopeless situations. We need ideas about Biblical Characters who found salvation whether from their sin or where God saved them from a physical harm): we have kids from 4yrs to 13yrs, so we need things appropriate for all.

Will keep you posted as things progress.

Thanks

Tim

Reflection

For the past 5 weeks we have been going through a series "Christianity Explored". The focus is to educate people about what Christianity is really about. It is aimed at people who may never have set foot in the church or who haven't had much of an exposure to Christianity. We have decided to take our teenagers through it. Because the majority already have an understanding of Christianity it has allowed us to take things to a deeper level of understanding. The encouraging thing is that that there is continued interest and our number of 30+ teenagers has remained constant and that these kids are bringing their friends along! Praise the Lord for that!

We will be celebrating Troyeville Baptist Church's 114yr anniversary. It is such a witness to the work of the Lord that a tin shack in a mining town became one of the largest and wealthiest Baptist Churches around, and now is one of the poorest, but still a beacon of light to such a depraved part of the city.

More coming up in the following weeks.....

Please pray for Troyeville Baptist Church