Transcript:
Rev. Darren Herbold:
Happy New Year, Alliance Family. A few quick updates for you to kick off this year. As you know, the very first of our four pillars in our strategic framework is prayer.
At the end of last year, we gathered on a Zoom call to continue to pray and invite Jesus to speak to us as we desire to faithfully serve Him in achieving our goal of doubling our reach. Each time we pray, we will share themes from those sessions with all of you so that we can continue praying together, be encouraged, and consider joining our next prayer gathering on the morning of January 30th.
You can find the summary from our time of prayer below, as well as a calendar reminder for our next gathering on Zoom. Also, we begin this new year with 21 days of intentional prayer starting February 1st. I encourage you to sign up to receive the daily emails so we can pray together for the least-reached people groups our International Workers are ministering to, as well as those in our neighborhoods and communities here in Canada.
Each day we will feature a least-reached people group with specific prayer requests. This is an opportunity for us to join together in corporate prayer. However, it feels like more than just an opportunity—it feels like a responsibility and part of our shared commitment to pray together.
This simple structure through daily emails allows us to join together with intentionality in prayer. Holy Spirit, Jesus, would you come?
This is so important. We truly believe that God answers us when we call on Him, and that prayer is a vital and incredibly powerful part of our shared work and responsibility. God moves when His people pray together.
So, as we join with those serving overseas and those serving in our churches here in Canada—lay leaders, pastors—let’s pray for the people groups the Lord has brought to our spheres of influence and those we may not yet have contact with but feel a burden to pray for.
I can’t wait to report back with stories of how God is moving and has answered our prayers. You can sign up to join us in this important ministry work via the link below in this video.
A personal ask: if you’re a licensed worker, a board member, or a faithful constituent in our churches, would you consider sharing this with your church family and inviting them to pray with us?
As members of the broader Canadian church, would you consider bringing this to your Bible study group, on-site class, or other spheres of influence that the Lord has given you?
These 21 days of prayer also lead up to the Global Gathering, where Alliance church members, pastors, and International Workers will gather together in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
It’s not too late to sign up for this missions conference, but this is your last chance to register before it closes at the end of the month.
I also want to make sure I’m clear: this is not an event just for licensed workers or pastors. It’s for anyone from our Alliance churches who would like to participate, and I’m so looking forward to this. You can find more information on the Global Gathering website below.
We’re also planning a financial update in February regarding our giving in 2024 and the Jaffray Offering. We want to ensure we’ve received all mail postmarked by 2024, as there’s been a delay due to the postal strike. Now, my favorite part of these updates—a video story about Territorial Youth Services (TYS), a ministry in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Let’s watch this together.
Video
I absolutely love the Battlefords. I absolutely love it. North Battleford is positioned with seven First Nations communities within one hour of us. Over the years, we’ve been involved on reserve on five different reserves to different levels. Our mission field is right here.
I’ve served on staff here since December 1st, 1988. My initial job was to be a halftime youth pastor, halftime director of Territorial Youth Services, which began in April of 1988 at the request of the government to help with the problem of youth crime. The court system would refer young offenders to us who had dispositions of restitution, community service hours, and fines to work off. We were commissioned with the task to come up with a small business model to generate income so that youth could pay off the business that they recently vandalized.
We usually make garden sheds, hunting blinds, or chicken coops, fences, and decks. Ice axes are really fun to build. Austin Drever has worked with TYS off and on for almost five years now. He started in the program working off community hours and had no experience whatsoever. Doing all this construction and yard work, he really enjoyed it. Once he finished his community hours, we asked him if he wanted to keep working or if he just wanted to be finished. He said, “Yeah, I’ll keep working.”
Austin is a youth who has grown in development, both in his practical skills, and has also become a large part of our family. A high percentage—95 to 98%, I’m just picking numbers here—of the young people that come to us who’ve been in trouble with the law or are at risk do not have a healthy father figure in their lives. So, we have four staff who essentially take that role. They connect with the youth, get to know them, build trust with them, and teach them life skills. They teach them how to use a lawn mower, how to use a power drill. A lot of what we do for TYS is seed planting. We get a short window to share the love of Christ and be present in their lives face to face.
If you were a young offender at lunchtime and really needed to have a smoke but didn’t have a lighter, what would you do? You’d take a DeWalt drill battery, short it with a piece of wire, hold your cigarette to it, light your cigarette, put the battery on the stand with a bunch of other batteries, and walk out to have your smoke. All those batteries would heat up, ignite, and light the shop on fire. The fire chief was standing there with all of us as the smoke billowed out. In that moment, the young offender who caused the fire went and confessed to his staff. The staff told the fire chief what happened. The fire chief said, “Okay.” That youth continued serving with TYS because of the forgiveness, love, and grace he received. He carried on working with us.
Sometimes success looks like just taking the time to hear a kid’s heart and praying for them. Sometimes success looks like sharing the gospel with a kid who’s never heard it before. Sometimes success looks like just going to pick up a kid and making sure he’s okay. Lots of individuals come back to us later in their 20s, or even into their 30s and 40s, and tell us how much of an impact TYS had on their lives. They say, “Someone cared about me when nobody else did.”
We talk about restorative justice. So, a young offender goes out, breaks somebody’s window, breaks into the yard, and steals a bike—it’s happened to me. They’re at odds with our community. How do you restore that justice? Well, here’s how we do it. We train our youth to mow grass and shovel yards. The majority of our customers are senior citizens. Grandma brings out milk and cookies or Pepsi and cookies to the guys. Relationships develop, and young offenders become upstanding members of the community, yard after yard, day after day. Those seniors primarily love those kids. To me, that’s restorative justice.
Darren Herbold:
The ministry there is so beautiful. One of the things that I keep thinking about is what Jacob shared: “People come back decades later,” he said. They’ve been doing ministry long enough that people have come back and shared, “You cared about me when no one else did.” But that’s the call of Jesus for all of us, isn’t it? To love faithfully, to be the presence of Jesus where we are, where we find ourselves, and our job is to be faithful to the invitations of Jesus each day. He does the work, he shows up, and it might be years before we see what happens, but he already knows that his purposes are at work.
We need to continue to be faithful to Jesus and the invitations he sets before us. Alliance Canada, keep saying yes to Jesus. He reminds us in John chapter 15:5 that if we are faithful, we will bear much fruit. Our vision is to double our reach by 2034, and this is all about responding to Jesus with unwavering obedience and a willingness to go the extra mile.
I’m so grateful for you and for your love for Jesus. Together with him as we serve, and as we say yes to Jesus, I’m confident that he is going to do amazing things because that is who he is and what he does. I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds with you and for you. Lots of love and Happy New Year!