Conversation with Linda Evers

Linda is an attorney with Stevens & Lee. She operates in the area of energy law. She works on behalf of electric companies dealing with the companies’ financial funds. Linda grew up on the south side of Chicago in a town called Robins Illinois. She grew up with a catholic background she got her communications undergrad from Northwestern University. During her time at northwestern she went through a time where she was having a lot of fun and her grades dropped. This story she told was really encouraging because she got through this and pulled her grades up and got into Law school. Her first job she took was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, this time period in her life is when she really became a Christian and dedicated her life to God. She got saved at a church altar call because at that particular church she felt the urge from God to truly dedicate herself to him. She met her husband in school and through some strange circumstances they ended up back together about 3 years after they originally met. He husband is a music consultant with churches in the Reading area. While her husband helps churches with outreaches through his music ministry she is able to help out in the area of pro bono law through “Glad Services”. This organization helps out the community through different programs including working with berks county social services, counseling, and a health clinic.

Conversation with Jason Lamer

Got saved at a very young age in his family, Parents went through a very radical transformation in a weekend his parents went from living a life of sin to being born again and reading the bible. His father became a pastor and his mother became active in foster care. Jason can count up to sixty kids that were in his home during the foster care years. He believes that growing up in a foster home is one of the major reasons that he can minister to people in the way that he can today. His father went through some issues with the church while Jason was in high school, his father stuck to his morals and ended up losing his position. This became a dry spell for Jason, he went through a period where it was hard for him to stomach the way things in the church worked. Jason believes this moment was crucial for him though, he was able to work through his issues with God and the church and this allowed him to come to understand what his actual theology was. The first position that he took was in Uniontown PA, just a few months after he graduated from college. This church was very outreach oriented allowed him to grow in his ability to minister to people. In his time there he saw the church grow from 16 to just over 100 students. Now Jason is now a Youth Alive missionary to the PenDel district and is actively involved with the seven project, a program that takes the message of the Gospel in to Public school settings.

Conversation with Tim Siminski

Tim is the leader of Investigation of Child Maltreatment Team of Berks County Children and Youth Services. He deals particularly with cases of sexual abuse, but helps closely with departments dealing with adoption, foster care, in-home services, out of home placement, and truancy. Tim has been employed with Berks County social services for twenty-two years. Now Tim is a supervisor of the cases for the county, but for twenty years he was an investigator in the streets handling cases on his own. One logistical challenge that Tim has dealt with during his entire time in social services was the fact that there is no real schedule, the work is unpredictable just as the crimes are. Along with this comes the issue of how cases are treated, sometimes you will expect a case to be horrendous and you get to the house and the story doesn’t check out, other times you will be in a situation where you would expect no problems, and the situation is much worse than expected. The definition that the social services department uses ties them closely with county detectives because of the nature of the cases usually things that break social services codes also break crime codes. While working with the kids it is a strong point that the department makes to fix the issue in the home when possible, so that the child can stay with a relative that is not a guilty party. Removing a kid from a home and putting them an entirely new situation is not always the correct answer for every situation. He is also involved in the foster care program of Berks County. This involves placing children in the correct homes as well as making sure foster care parents check out and are properly educated.

convo with KR Mele

KR Mele

Grew up in Springdale PA in a non-Christian home. His father was involved in organized crime and his mother never showed him the love that he needed as a child. His father was in the hospital from a result all of his habits, at this time the church approached his parents and told them that only the church and God could help their lives and marriage. Today they have been married 50 years and are both serving the lord now. He graduated with a degree in business management from Penn State University. After graduation he worked at a Kay jewelers and fitness center. During this time he was living for the lord and a pastor from a local church ended up asking him to come on staff as a Pastor. This Church in Sarver PA he was a Children’s pastor and a administrator for the Christian school that the church owned. His mentor at the church taught him many important lessons; among the most important was the idea of doing family devotions and maintaining a healthy personal and family lifestyle. After a very successful time ministering at his home church in Sarver, he left to take an opportunity in state college at family life. The first nine months of ministry in state college were very tough for the family because of the great situation that they had come from. The most challenging thing he faced at state college was dealing with all of the details that come a long with a new building. It was stressful for him being in charge of something so important and totally new than anything he had done. After four years at this church he was approached about planting a church. Being on staff is a difficult thing; he was able to be successful at this by being a team player and submitting to authority. So after about four years he was able to plant the church in Penns Valley about 20 miles away from state college. He started the church with about 50 people. Church Planting boot camp really helped prepare him for ministry at the church; it allowed him to nail down his vision and real purpose of the church. He believes that meeting in a church as opposed to a building allows you to STAY focused on being outward minded as a church. Light the Night has became a main ministry tool for the church to reach out to the community. This is an opportunity to take Halloween and turn it into the ultimate outreach night all across your community.

Convo with Pastor Jack Belin-

Called to ministry at age of 5, remembers serving the lord from before than and on through his life, graduated from northeast bible institute in 1970, became a sr. pastor soon after that, was at the church for five years, and he left the church during a time of success. From there he moved to a church in the pochonos to a smaller congregation that was pretty conservative. During his time there the church moved from being conservative to charismatic. From this church he moved to Lebanon PA where he served for 9 years. This was his last sr. pastorate. During his time has a senior pastor he believed he matured a lot while he wasn’t quite sure he was maturing. His main goal was loving people for the purpose of loving them, not for making the church feel good about its self. He’s been told that during his time in Lebanon 87 percent of his congregation came to the church because of his invites of love that people in that area were not doing at that time. Another big form of ministry that he used at the church was in the hospitals. People regularly were in the emergency room and the nursery. In the emergency rooms people would help comfort families in need and in the nursery people would ask families for a picture of their new babies so that they could be prayed over. Another form of ministry that he had to get people in the church was celebrating all holidays. National teachers days, nurses day, armed services, police, fireman, EMT, celebration days were celebrated by the church so that those people got the honor they deserved. During this time of great success at the church out of nowhere he felt the call to Bolivia. This was a hard decision, he was in love with his church, he loved the community and where he was in life. But he heard the audible word of God and knew what he had to do. The call was confirmed by several people and his family went through some different routes and wound up in Bolivia! While there he encounters different complications with people groups and demographics, these are what he believes are his biggest challenges there. The problems they face there are not with people who hate Christians, like many areas of the world, but with the social unrest that is so prevalent in the area. Good quote to finish things up from him was this “the only way to change people who hate Jesus and hate you, is to truly love them”

Convo with Otto Wegner

Pastor Otto Wegner,

Pastor of highway tabernacle in Philadelphia PA, Second oldest AG church (in the world) Was a pastor of a Large successful suburban church in New Jersey. Before he arrived there the church had dropped from 750 to 100 people. Planted a church in another part of the region to establish relations with the people who had left the church and regained full membership. US missions came to him and asked him if he would be interested in helping with a church in Urban America, so after prayer and thought he left this thriving church to move into the city, which was something that had a negative connotation. A good quote from him is that “poor people are easier to reach than the rich”. Isolation is brought from money. He believes this is a huge reason why he has had success in the neighborhood of his church. While reaching the poor in his community are still reached even though his church is very effective while still reaching the affluent community. He is also the pastor of a church in north philly that is much lower along on the poverty food chain. This church is also thriving because of the churches commitment to reaching the poor. Taking this church was a massive undertaking because of the dilapidation of the church. Through much help from other churches and organizations the church was able to be restructured into a fitting church. Another quote I found great was while pastor Wegner was speaking on politics and said that “Jesus didn’t call us to lead he called us to follow”

Convo with Pastor John Bowman

Pastor John Bowman,

He is from Dover, Delaware; his family was there because his Dad was based in Delaware at the air force base. Started at Calvary Assembly in Dover Delaware in 1990, he started attending as a person who had just became saved and was looking for a church that met his needs. From that day in 1990 he has never left the church. Got involved in working with the church by taking kids to a camp. 1994 he had an urging from God (which he didn’t know was God at the time) to right down and ambition to be a Children’s Pastor, about a year later he was asked to come on staff as the Children’s Leader and he has been the Pastor there since then. The church has the mindset to continue growing by reaching unchurched people. The motto he goes by for his Children’s ministry is “my business is kids so Kids are my business”. His Children’s group has about 3000 people on the roster, but children who are being brought to the church every Sunday ages 3-12 is about 500. They are reaching another 500 consistently on a weekly basis through their “G-team” which goes into the neighbor hood of the community. Recently they just gave one of their trucks from the “G-team” to a church from a different denomination so that the ministry could be spread. The “G-team” is not what he considers a Calvary ministry or a John Bowman ministry but a ministry for the community that goes beyond denomination.

He meets in different parts of the community on a different day of every week. One neighborhood asked him to leave over spreading the Gospel after 3 years, He spoke with the leader and offered that he would still go into the community to be with the Kids regardless. But after hearing his hear the supervisor told him to stay in the community because he was needed. Right now he is ministering predominately in lower class neighborhoods, but he would like spread into the upper class neighborhoods because those kids need Christ just as much as lower class Children. He’s working with Boys and Girls clubs and Family Crisis Therapists to effectively reach communities. The biggest one time donation given to the ministry was 10 grand

Holistic Ministry and Pastor Gerry

“holistic ministry is ministry through acts of love towards people”

based biblically out of the two greatest commandments- LOVE GOD-LOVE PEOPLE

finding new ways to be effective, sometimes you will have budget constraints but there are ways to get around budget.

holistic ministry is about using other means of ministry such as feeding people and helping people through counseling to minister to their spirits and introduce the idea of Jesus Christ

What are the concepts behind holistic ministry

Geography, demographics, politics, denomination, socioeconomics

Uniting trait is that the church must preach the Gospel and that community outreach is a main priority.

One-on-one relationships leads to

Lasting change leads to

Moral framework

Leads to faith in Christ………………..All of these things take patience and time

Focus on social services ministries as ad door to evangelism

Felt Needs, Conversation of faith, meaning, and Christ

Focus on ministries of reconciliation that witness to unity in Christ

Racial, Economic, Physical and mental, social and family, multicultural and worship

Focus on community development to express God’s love for whole persons and communities

Pervious conditions, self sustainability, provides identity, schools health clinics, rec-centers

Focus on justice ministries that embody the empowering message of the Gospel

Unjust systems, Racism, sexism, political corruption, unfair economic structures, prevents development and progress, social advocacy

Focus on reaching skeptics by demonstrating that the church makes a difference

Image, self serving, hypocritical and irrelevant-secular society, developing reputation for social activism.

All of these things provide opportunity for witnessing.

Pastor Gerry stoltzfoos - Speaker from freedom valley

Mike flemming (missionary to the DR- working together on a church plant)

Haiti sending people to the DR

Pastor Gerry- Respects the dedication of America to rush into help other countries.

Great up Amish, struggled with the idea of pacifism and had to work through those issues with his family, this was a defining moment for him.

Had struggles with the idea of his church not being acceptance. Ended up checking out a Pentecostal church

Went to the church and hated it, ended up being introduced to someone there, was impressed by the relationships with people. The care from individuals replaced the problems he had with the church its self.

Ends up becoming a church planter ends up in Gettysburg,…..crazy god occurances worked out well in the long run even tho it wasn’t wanted by him….good quote while he was going through some pressure someone told him “ who do you serve (he answered Jesus)…the guy then replied, well what did Jesus go through?)

His churches strategy was to reach people who had given up on church (this remains his churches mission)

Knew a girl who got saved and started a ministry in a tattoo parlor, ended up buying the lease on the tattoo parlor so they could stay open as an effective ministry until they could purchase the lease

Bought a Harley to raffle off, ended up having to buy a PA gambling license…….BUT the guy who won the bike ended up getting saved.

gerry@freedomvalley.org

Notes from Matthew Barnett's breakout session

LA Dream Center with Matthew Barnett

A few points about pastor Matthew

In the First six months his church went form 18 people down to 2 people. In the second six months it went from 2 people to 700.

He gained his passion from his father, because he was a friend, he never had religion shoved at him, he just gained the passion through their relationship.”

Focusing on success was his fault, he needed to focus on being used by God.

A few good quotes

“Build relationships to Build the church”

“If you go and reach the people that nobody wants God will send you the people that everybody wants”

“your always a success when you seek after the welfare of the people”

How the dream center thrives

Being a permission giving church: They give the permission to try in ministry

Being there for people by using adopt a block, inviting people to all aspects of ministry through being in the community on a constant basis.

Consistency is key, two people who take 30 doors and go there every day

Letting people do what they are good at.