Five Years Ago on Father's Day Weekend

I wanted to share with you the sermon that launched our church on the Life Coaches (now Father's Light Mentors) ministry path five years ago.  It ranks as one of the top 10 sermons I've ever heard.  I was a kindergarten Sunday School teacher and small group leader at the time.  Sitting in the pews, I knew I had no time to get involved, but I could barely keep myself from bee-lining it to the ministry table after David Michael's rousing call to serve.

Some 15 months later, God made a way for me to join Mike (the Life Coaches leader at that time) and two other faithful men in the church to relaunch the ministry.  Almost four years later, we've seen God raise up over 20 men and women to dedicate one year of their life (and beyond) to mentoring father-absent children.  And by God's grace 16 are actively mentoring in our church's ministry today!

The sermon is about 50 minutes long and worth hearing in entirety.  The call to serve as a Life Coach/Father's Light mentor comes just before the 41:00 mark if you like to cut to the chase :)

http://www.hopeingod.org/sermon/more-abundantly-all-we-ask-or-think

Hoping with you that we can "blow the dust off this sermon" in 16 years and "marvel,"

Tony

From Life Coaches to Father's Light

We just finished the process of choosing a new ministry name!  It was a little bit bigger of an undertaking than expected.  A name communicates a lot of information... some good, some not so helpful.  It takes a while to sift through a variety of good options.  After quite a bit of discussion we chose the name Father's Light Mentors for a variety of reasons.  

 

 1.  Our ministry addresses father absence head-on, and our ultimate desire is that God would use each mentor to lead children to Himself as their true Heavenly Father.  

2.  If you do a concordance search on "light," you'll see it is a familiar image associated with God's presence, favor, protection, revelation of truth, wisdom, goodness, life and His glory.  And it's not only God who gets associated with these things, but we become His "children of the light" and "light of the world" in Christ. It's hard to find a better constellation of traits that we want to embody as mentors to the kids we serve!

3.  Our name upholds the fact that it is the Father who is the source of anything good in our lives and our mentoring.  The light doesn't come from us. 

4.  Last, we wanted to be sure people knew we're a mentoring ministry.  So what better way to do that than put Mentors in the name :)  And of course, we liked the way Father's Light Mentors sounds -- even if it's a bit of a tongue-twister!

In some ways it feels like starting a new chapter as we announce the new name, and move on to work on a new logo and hopefully our own web page.  But, of course, these are just the window dressings of the ministry.  The flesh and blood, real life-changing work of mentoring the father-absent goes on just the same as it has for almost five years now.  We'd love to have you pray for the small changes we're working on, but we especially would love prayer for the 16 of us who are mentoring and our kids.  Also, please remember the 40+ kids we are hoping to serve at Bethlehem and Hope Academy.  God bless!

Note:  If you're wondering why we had to find a new ministry name, check out the post below.  

Life Coaches for Kids®: Major Expansion

These are exciting days for the national Life Coaches for Kids^® ministry, which has served as an umbrella and resource to us at Bethlehem for years. 

Over the last year, Life Coaches began a partnership with Young Life, the world’s largest youth ministry (reaching approximately 2 million kids in about 70 countries).  The goal of Life Coaches has always been to reach the millions of father-absent kids throughout the world.  Until the Young Life partnership, however, Life Coaches ministries had only been started in a handful of states and in India on a small scale.  At this time Young Life has already started training hundreds of mentors in 15 major cities in the U.S.  This kind of expansion has been the hope of Life Coaches all along.

The next step of this partnership was just announced. As of May 1, Young Life will be taking over ownership of the Life Coaches ministry.  Practically, this means the ministry has the chance to grow 30-fold (by conservative estimates) over the coming years, without having to build a national-sized ministry from scratch -- Young Life already has the scale necessary to expand Life Coaches immediately!

Please join us in praying for this amazing opportunity.  At Bethlehem, we will keep doing what we've been doing with just a few small adjustments, like finding a new name for our ministry.  Our hope is that thousands more kids in Young Life programming will get to experience what 15 kids are currently experiencing in ours.

Life Coaches has put together a good-bye page on their website.  It has a moving photo tribute to their last 12 years of church-based ministry.  I encourage you to check it out.  You'll see a number of pics of the mentors in our program and they sneak me in there too.  Enjoy!  

Link to Slideshow

New Opportunity to Provide Life Coaches for Children of Prisoners

We're excited to announce the start of a new partnering effort that gives us the opportunity to provide coaches for another important teaching and mentoring ministry here at Bethlehem, Fathers for Christ.  

Fathers for Christ was founded by former inmate and Bethlehem member Dustin Shipley. Dustin equips male prisoners at the Lino Lakes Correctional Facility and Hennepin County Jail to reconnect with their children as godly leaders for Christ.  He leads men through a 12 week class, connects them with one-on-one mentors from our church, and helps provide them transitional housing and support/accountability once they leave prison.  Having life coaches from our ministry in the lives of these fathers' kids is one more important piece for God to use to establish these families in Christ. 

Dustin leads seven fathers through his 12 week class at a time.

Rare Event: 2 in 1

We’re celebrating a rare event in our ministry:  just a few weeks ago we had two mentors start within one week of each other!  You might recognize one of them in the picture below!

It’s been a long time coming.  I was thrilled to become an urban missionary last year since this let me increase my ministry hours and opened up time in my schedule so I could become a life coach, myself.  Now, the demands of support-raising (we've nearly reached our goal!) have slowed down enough to get started.  Praise God!

I’m matched up with a wonderful boy named Andre. He’s a smart and outgoing kindergartner at Hope Academy who loves basketball, sledding, and just spending time together. He’s gotten to know Jeremiah, Levi, and Hannah, and they've hit it off well. When I started mentoring I knew it would be fun, but I'm surprised to find I enjoy it even more than I expected! God is good!

Ben and his wife, Bethany.

Our other new mentor is Ben.  In the end of December, he contacted me to let me know that both he and his own mentor (a pastor at Bethlehem) felt like God wanted him to start working with a young man. He let me know that he was hoping to mentor someone near his home in the West Metro.  We found a 14 year-old youth who lived near Ben and appeared to have a lot in common.  He was part of the national ministry’s waiting list, so I called up his mother to see if I could drop by to get to know them better and get him registered with Bethlehem.  It turned out I called exactly one year from the day she first signed her son Bobby up for a life coach. 

Two weeks later Bobby’s mom told Ben and me through tears how happy she was to have the opportunity for a godly man to get involved in her son’s life.  So far things are off to a good start.  Last week Ben was taking Bobby out to the racquetball court to teach him the game Ben shared with an important mentor from his own college days. 

We’re thrilled to have Ben come on board!  He’s part of the Air Force National Guard, and is set to deploy in late June for five months overseas.  He obviously has a lot of good reasons to wait a year to start mentoring, but it’s impressive that he didn’t want to push it off.  One of those reasons has to do with becoming a father.  He and his wife are expecting their first child to arrive in mid-July after he’s deployed.  Please pray for God to provide a way for him to be there for the birth!

Seeing God's Goodness Through Mentoring

This is an inspiring story about one of our veteran life coaches/leaders, and what God has done in the midst of some significant challenges. It was just published this week in our church newsletter.  Enjoy!

“What do I do with a rebellious kid?”

“What if there’s no connection?”

“What if they think I’m lame?”

These are the normal questions that run through most of our minds when we first dive into children’s ministry. When the children we minister to come from broken homes, we can add to these:

“How do I break through their defenses?”

“How do I deal with so many troubling influences in this child’s life when I’m only seeing him once a week?”

For one of our most experienced Life Coach mentors at Bethlehem, Howard Engnell, there was one more question:

“How do I build a relationship with a young man I can barely hear?”

Three years ago when he started meeting with a second grader named Jude, this was Howard’s assessment: “I could see he was troubled. His parents had divorced, and his dad had moved on with a new family. It was just Jude and his mom. He was angry and struggled with authority figures.” Jude’s dad had left a hole in his life.

“I would spend time with him, but we struggled to communicate. He was quiet, and talked quiet, and with my hearing impairment it was hard to hear him.” It’s what many of us would consider a hopeless situation. But Howard realized, “I just had to be his friend.” And Howard has been quite the friend.
For three years Howard has been committed to Jude. He faithfully brought Jude to Cub Scouts during their first year. Jude often wouldn’t cooperate with the leaders, and he wasn’t willing to put on his uniform for meetings. Howard never received a “thank you” from Jude during that time.

Still, by God’s grace, Howard didn’t give up. He met Jude in his world just like Christ meets us. Like a father or grandfather, he helped him learn how to hit a baseball. He taught him to ice skate backward. He took him on the free outings to sports games and performing arts that our ministry provides. And he taught Jude to say thank you. At the same time, Howard’s wife, Grace, befriended Jude’s mother, and they stayed connected.

Looking back three years later, Howard and Grace remember what it felt like to see Jude smile for the first time. It took over a year of waiting but now smiles are a regular sight. Howard brags about how Jude, now in 5th grade, survived a 19-mile bike ride to Fort Snelling with him. Grace talks with mother-like pride of how Jude graciously served them drinks and snacks at a recent visit. Their biggest joys are over the small but noticeable changes in Jude’s heart.

Jude is learning to thank the adults that serve him, from his sports coaches to his mentor. And he shows a growing sensitivity to the Gospel. His mother reports that for the first time she has heard Jude pray for his dad to encounter the saving grace of Christ.

Howard and Jude are living proof that “love covers a multitude of sins,” (1 Peter 4:8). Even though communication has been challenging at times, providing a steady love in Jude’s unsteady world has been used by God just as much as words.

In our ministry, we see over and over how hurting kids like Jude need the persistent grace of Christ in human form more than anything else. They need a mentor who believes God is sovereign in their lives even when they try to shut everyone out. They need someone who is faithful.

Besides mentoring Jude, Howard has served on our Life Coaches for Kids® leadership team for three years. He was inspired to get involved when he heard the tragic statistics: 70 percent of incarcerated youth, 63 percent of youth suicides, and 71 percent of the high school drop-outs in our nation involve father-absent children and youth.  God moved him to carry out the call of James 1:27 to minister to the “fatherless and widows” as one of our first life coaches three years ago. God has led another 17 adults to join him since then. Their stories could easily fill a book.

Today we have 30 father-absent kids waiting for faithful men and women from Bethlehem. Some of
these kids attend church here with us, and many are students at Hope Academy, where a number of Bethlehem members teach and volunteer. They have stories like Jude.

Many have never met their fathers, and some are close to having to leave a school like Hope Academy because of the anger and soul pain of their broken family lives. We know the need is huge, but would you consider joining us to represent God’s pursuing grace in one of these lives? Would you believe God for great things with us? Pray for us? All this ministry requires is faithfulness. Our God takes care of the rest.

May the “Father of the fatherless and Protector of widows” be with you!

In Christ,

Tony Beach,
Director of Bethlehem Life Coaches for Kids ®

Howard and Jude at our Fall Outing.

The Children

An excellent poem for Sanctity of Life Sunday, read by our pastor John Piper.  It's message is close to the heart of our ministry to the fatherless. 

The Children

Highlights of the Year!

We hope you had a blessed Christmas and New Year's!  We enjoyed having the chance to visit our families in Eastern Wisconsin this year to celebrate.  Last year we stayed at home trying to keep up with baby Hannah's arrival and several boxes still left to unpack from our Thanksgiving move.  Freedom to travel is very nice!

Here are some more reflections on what we are most thankful for over the past year of life and ministry:

*A healthy and strong family.  In spite of all the stressors of 2009 and maybe in part because of them, God has brought us closer to Him and each other than we ever have been.  Thanks for your faithful prayers for us!  Please keep them coming!

*Four new mentors in 2010.  We're thrilled with what this means!  Eight lives and families that God has brought together for a potential lifetime of ministry!
 
*14 life coaches going strong with their mentees.  God has given us amazing coaches!  I'm impressed with how they continue to persevere through the joys and trials of mentoring with an obvious love for their kids that flows both ways. 

*A summer job with UGMTC's Minneapolis Director.  What an opportunity to learn about what goes into reaching the inner-city poor from a wonderful leader and organization like UGMTC!

*A monthly financial support increase from 45% to about 90% of our goal.  Back in June our support level was only at 60% and it looked like I might need to leave the ministry to find other part-time work but God provided significantly in July and August through giving and contributions to our big yard sale!  Thanks to everyone who was and continues to be involved!

*Seminary life continues to be rewarding.  I'm being challenged and grown in a variety of ways, and it's great to see it overflow into our family.  Especially good, was the 36 hours of pastoral care I had the chance to be part of at Maranatha Home in Brooklyn Center this past year.  Please pray for wisdom and God's provision for internship opportunities for me in the coming year.

Now, this wouldn't be a blog without some pictures. So here's a quick photo journal of some of the year's family fun:

Newborn Hannah and her high energy siblings in January.

Hannah and Julie's Grandpa, during her first traveling experience in February.

This is how we do dishes in our house!
You can imagine what the floor looks like when we're done :)

Hannah-bear in one of our frequent trips to Como Zoo.

Gotta love the tranquility of video time.
With cousins Eva, Grace, and Stephen in Chicago in April. 

One of our trips to the airport.
Who knew this pic would turn to be out so handy for a blog?

One of the many play times with our Albanian neighbor Emi.

Hannah showing some enthusiasm.

Another Como trip.  This time with my parents.

Hannah in a cute moment.

A visit to Julie's mom in July with a tired little girl.

We stayed home this Thanksgiving and rode the Mayflower Hide-a-Bed to Plymouth Rock. 

12/14, first birthday and first cake.  She's a cleaner eater than her brothers at that age but shares their "frosting first" mentality :)

Snow fort fun with cousins.  And the boys say good-bye to their new cousin Aklilu -- who was just adopted from Ethiopia by my sister and brother-in-law.  Both he and Levi had their first experience riding bikes on Christmas week!

Hope you enjoyed this little taste of life and ministry from the past year.  

God is good!  Have a blessed New Year!

A Glimpse of "Hope"

Check out this moving short video about our ministry's school partner, Hope Academy, right here.

Right now we're excited to have a handful of Life Coaches mentoring with father-absent kids at Hope, and 25 father-absent kids from Hope still on our waiting list.  Lord willing, we'd love to see those numbers reverse in the next few years!

Kickball, "Rabid" Possums, and The Gospel

We just enjoyed our Annual Bethlehem Life Coaches for Kids outing at Ham Lake Baptist Camp!  God get's a little bit more glory this year since we had double the amount of kids and adults running around playing soccer and kickball (10 mentors/mentees total) and all of our muscles and joints held together!

Enjoying some carpet bowling before our trail hike.

The highlight of the evening was a chance to talk about the Gospel with the kids at the campfire.  I was asking the kids (all boys) how significant God was compared to a person, and they were having a fun time showing how much more important God was with hand gestures and suggesting "to the moon," "to the stars," etc.  Then we talked about how big just one sin against God was compared to one sin against a person -- the same superlatives came up.  "How angry is God over just one sin?"  The boys probably knew where this was going, but they continued to enjoy suggesting "to the sky!"  I asked them what the consequences should be, and they excitedly talked about how huge of a punishment we deserve.  It was a pretty interesting sight to witness.  I'd never seen a group so happily talk about eternal damnation!  I remember thinking there's no way I can get these kids to mellow out.  Then the possums came.

The peaceful pre-possum campfire.

We were right next to the woods and heard three animals getting closer and louder.  All the adults sitting closest to the woods were trying to figure out what was going on with all the clawing around.  We shined our lights around and found one of the possums.  He just stared back and seemed intent to continue looking for a way to get under the fence to get closer.  This was strange, and one of the hunters in our group mentioned animals will do this when they're rabid.  We must have felt confident enough in our small mammal fighting skills, because we decided to not give up camp.  We put a couple people on flashlight patrol in case the possums launched an assault.

At the time I thought, "Great, now the boys will be even more giddy thinking about getting attacked from some of the silliest looking creatures in Minnesota."  But, surprisingly, their mood was much more focused than before.  We talked about Christ as the perfect substitute sacrifice for all who believe, His role as our ultimate reconsiler, and how He is proof of God's immeasurable love for us.  Then we had a nice little Q&A afterward about what it means to trust in Christ. 

To my surprise, the possums had actually helped settle the kids down -- and they even wandered off for the rest of the night after their surprise visit.  Perhaps they were on "a mission from God." :)  Whatever the case, we're praising God for an excellent evening of bonding, discussion, injury-free games, and unique campfire experience!

Our group.  They represent one third of our Life Coaches & Kids.

A Mother's Plea

I recently received this message from one of the mothers of a child on our waiting list.  Her earnest desire for a Christ-centered mentor for her son is echoed among so many mothers we work with:

Dear Tony, my son is an active, loving, outgoing seven-year-old. He is really into sports, and is eager to learn.  He is very intelligent. He says his dream someday, is to be in the NBA. 

He may be our ministry's most faithful prayer.

My son has one sister. He is very close to his sister.  They have stuck together during hard times. Their dad was verbally and emotionally abusive. Fortunately, my son was only two so he doesn’t remember much. He was dedicated to the Lord a few years ago, and he loves Jesus. I strive everyday to show him what is best in life, but he is still missing a Christian male role model.

My son has been on the waiting list for 20 months now. We pray together every single day for God to bring the right mentor. He has been very patient. I know God has His own timing, and that is one thing My son is learning through all this.  

This young man lives in Bloomington and has the difficult distinction of being on our waiting list longer than any other.  We are doing our Fall promotion this weekend at all Bethlehem campuses.  Please join me in praying that mentors come forward for him and many of the 30 other father absent children on our list.  Please consider forwarding the blog link on to anyone you know who might be interested in mentoring, especially with the young man above.

New Match!

We’re celebrating another new match, which started just a few weeks ago in the heat of August!  Our new mentor’s name is Brandon, and he’s made a big jump this summer.  

He’s an Iowa native who sensed God’s call to move from the Twin Cities suburbs into the Phillips neighborhood and start out as a Life Coach, all within the past three months.  He now lives just blocks away from Hope Academy where his middle-school age mentee attends school.

From the Hope Academy website

Once again, it's impressive to see God bring together a mentor and a young man with so much in common!  Both Brandon and his mentee have surprisingly similar interests in sports and academic subjects.  Both also identify strongly with Christ.  Brandon recently wrote to me, "We are connecting really well... last Tuesday we played basketball together at Stewart park gym.... I'm really encouraged by how we connect already on a spiritual level."  Praise God for a good start!  Please join us in praying for God's work to deepen in Brandon and his new mentee.  His mentee has never met his own father.  

Yard Sale Results!

The dust is settling from an intense weekend of “yard sale-ing.”  God provided much more than we expected, considering we just started the planning 6 weeks ago!  Thanks for everyone’s prayers and help!   Our three day total ended up being $2350, basically doubling our goal!  This is enough to cover over 20% of my annual need for funds as the Bethlehem Life Coaches for Kids® director or over 10% of my total two year need! 

We had surprises every day of the sale. On Thursday, Day One, we experienced a near constant flow of people.  This included a pair of counterfeiters who snuck a fake $100 bill by us (a “bleached” $5 bill with a $100 printed over it). But even with the loss, $650 still came in!

Jeremiah and the yard full of goods, and this was the final day!

Day Two we canceled due to the forecast, which ended up being a gift since we were so spent from Thursday and all the prep-work on Wednesday.  Saturday, God provided some last minute set-up help and another large turn-out – strangers were even buying up a good number of our bake sale goods!  We had some added excitement on Saturday night when we left most of the sale items under tables on the lawn covered in tarps.  We noticed a group in a car checking out our place around midnight.  They took off when they saw me peek through the blinds, so I ended up calling the police to ask for more patrols.  Thankfully, God helped us to get some sleep and nothing was touched during the night!

Day Three demonstrated the ecumenical power of rummage.  We discovered the pastor/priest of the 4000+ Roman Catholic church across the street inserted an announcement to encourage everyone to visit our sale.  He’d already dropped by multiple times during the week without us knowing it.  His church helped clean out a good portion of our bake sale and did some shopping too! 

All in all, God’s promises to care for His people were on display.  We’re thankful for the approximately 25 families/individuals that donated over 1000 items -- wow!   Special thanks to our small group and all who joined in to help us by praying, pricing loads of things, lengthy set ups, baking, hauling tables, and child care!  Your support in the middle of summer busyness was huge and definitely what Paul would call “a fragrant offering to the Lord!”  Thanks so much!!!

A view from the "Sporting Goods" and "Furniture" Sections.

It reached the 90's on the final day, but people kept coming!

Enjoying Tighter Spaces

We’re actually thrilled to feel the walls start to close in on us over the last two weeks!  God is providing.  Thanks to everyone who’s donated so far, and to everyone who’s still planning on donating to the yard sale.  We have plenty of room for more donations!

Hanging out in the redecorated garage.

We also received two good pieces of news last week.  One, BUI confirmed that we can provide tax-deductible receipts – if you’ve already donated items, one should be on the way shortly.  And two, my friend Francois, an accomplished French Pastry Chef, is partnering with us. He’s preparing cheesecake and French pastries to complement our Saturday morning bake sale!  You can learn more about his business, which is helping him get through seminary at his website, La Ciel Cheesecakes and Pastries.

Keeping safe in the basement storage area.

Besides bake sale and yard sale donations, we’re busy looking to assemble a team of pricing/labeling helpers for Tuesday night (Aug 17) or join members of our small group on Wednesday night (Aug 18th) – thanks group!  We also could use help with set up and take down for the sale on Thursday through Saturday (mornings before 8a or evenings after 5p) – help as briefly or long as you like.  Let us know if you’d like to get involved!

lifecoaches.org