Category Home and Ministry

God’s Word @ Work!

Brian Aaby Leave a comment

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind, launching the ID/MT missions (YMV #2), landing the first YMV, traveling around to each of the 7 YMV #2 towns, home for a couple days, over to Spokane for the YMV #2 Landing, off the next morning to Washington Family Ranch (YL camp) and then home just in time to see my girls at their VBS program only to leave the next morning for the YMV #3 Launch in Dallas!  Now, I’m home!  Whew!

One thing I am seeing weaved through all of these adventures:  God’s Word (and Spirit) are at work in MIGHTY ways!

For whatever reason the following pictures tell the story to me.  Psalm 46:10 says “be still and know that I am God.”  As we take the time to acknowledge this, rest in it and then live in response to this great truth we see Him at work.  These students and staff took that time on Saturday morning in Dallas, I pray they (and we) continue to do so…

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” ~James 1:22

May we be doers!

Grace,
Brian

My Personal Mission Trip

Brian Aaby 1 Comment

All this week I have been doing something I have longed to do for a very long time, about 19 years to be exact.

I am down in Central Oregon at Washington Family Ranch (formerly Wildhorse Canyon), a YoungLife Property.  I am down here with several hundred teens from all over the west and many leaders who want to love and support these students well as many hear the Gospel for the first time.  Specifically, I am leading with 6 other Kentridge Leaders who are here with 50 KR students.

As I posted just over a week ago, one June 28, 1990 I trusted Christ as Lord and Savior in a very similar setting, at Malibu Club in Canada (another YL property).  It is my hope (and prayer) that I will be able to help others in their discovery of Christ this week.

All summer long I will help students who are being sent on Mission trips in an effort to be trained for their mission at home.  It was with great hope I left on this trip as I have looked at this as the week I was really be “sent” on my own mission trip.  My prayer is the same for myself–I pray this will increase my mission back home!

Appreciate the prayers you can lift for me and for the students here at WFR!  I return today so that I can quickly turn around and launch the Gulf Coast teams (would love your prayers for this as well).

Grace,
Brian

Seeing Numbers or Souls?

Brian Aaby 1 Comment

While on my Montana and Idaho tour last week I had the opportunity to share some of my observations with a couple different teams at Family Time.  As you go back and read the blogs over on the youthmark.com site (click on blogs), you can read the great success stories we have in students sharing their faith, however, sometimes this came after a painful learning process (or trap) we often fall in.

Numbers vs. Souls.

Here’s what I mean… when you look at a picture like the one below, what do you see?

IMG_0731

Besides the beautiful scenery and some of the obvious other things we can point out, we see a good number of teens, correct?  On these trips, or even, any given Sunday at church, this is what we see… numbers.  We see a gathering of folk.  We talk about “how many people” we had in church, at youth group, or in Bible Study.

There is and was nothing wrong with our teams being excited about the 4, 15, 35, 67 or 9 people they had at the park or the school.  God honored our prayers by bringing people to these local fields.  However, the trap happens when we simply see numbers and not souls.

You see, in this crowd we needed to see the following:

Can you see them?  These are the individuals that make up those “numbers.”  We need to see each of these faces as souls we want to introduce to Jesus or encourage in Christ ( if already saved).

We can get caught in counting heads rather than seeing the faces.  These faces sometimes tell and sometimes try desperately to hide their stories.  What happens in these mission towns is often similar to what is happening in our own towns.

When you go to work tomorrow, the park on Wednesday or Church on Sunday, will you see the soul of another, or will you just see a number?

Grace,
Brian

Did The Landing!

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I was not supposed to be there… but for whatever reason the Aaby family decided on a great adventure yesterday and drove to Spokane to greet the teams coming back from Idaho and Montana for the Landing!  Youthmark has assigned “Leads” for each of the regions.  So, where I do the launch at each place I also have one of my Leads doing it with me.  This Youth Pastor is one of the guys going on one of the trips in this region; then, on the back end this Lead does the Landing (because I am normally off to the next launch). So, we were covered in terms of leadership, but this was going to be my only chance at a “Group” debrief besides the very last one this summer (last week I landed the Chehalis group, but that was just one team, whereas this week there were seven).

Late Friday night I was feeling very excited about the teams and I just lob-tossed it out to Elisabeth, “feel like a road trip to Spokane tomorrow?”  We discussed it at length and decided to sleep on it.  There were many positives about doing it and a few potential negatives.

In the morning we still uncertain about doing it or not (that’s a long trip for the kids).  And ultimately at 9:15 AM decided to do it.  We were out by 10:00 AM and in Spokane Valley by 3:00 PM (including a couple short stops)–teams arrived at about 3:30.

Our kids were fantastic and were rewarded by watching some great fireworks on the way back through Ritzville, Moses Lake and Vantage!

Below are some pics of the Landing, I’m sure I’ll post more about it later and probably at my Youthmark.com blog.

Grace,
Brian

Blog-o-rific

Brian Aaby 1 Comment

Curiosity caught me the other day when I sat down to post to this blog.  I was trying to remember when I started my blog, so I went back to the archives and discovered that it was exactly one year ago today!

I decided to start the blog so I would have a way to update friends, family and those who asked how they could support as we began Youthmark.  Of course this is still one of the primary purposes of this blog.  I have enjoyed being creative with it from time to time and have very much appreciated those of you who have prayed for us and even commented from time to time.

If you click here you can read the original blog post.

Since that post I have posted another 286 times (including this one), I have received 381 comments and had nearly 20,000 (19,977) hits on this site (the busiest day had 195 views).

In this next year I think I will keep posting prayer requests for the Aaby family and Youthmark but will slowly transition more of the Youthmark related things to my Youthmark blog here.

Maybe some time this next week I’ll look through some of the archives and give you a “top 5” of my favorite blog posts thus far… any stand out to you?

Grace,
Brian

To My Prayer List

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First, if you would like to be on our prayer list (via email) shoot me an email and I’ll add you to the list (I send stuff out about every 6 weeks or so).

Just because I am so jazzed about this prayer opportunity I am copying and pasting the entire letter I just sent here:

Youthmark Prayer Partners!

It is with great anticipation I write this email.  In about five hours we’ll begin our “Launch” of our first Youthmark Mission Venture team.

As I type from Starbucks in Ritzville, WA (about an hour from Spokane) I have been praying for the people of Simms, MT and surrounding towns  (the recipient area of this trip).  I have prayed for the students and leaders from First Baptist Church of Chehalis (the first group heading out).  Now, I would like to challenge all of you to become “prayer partners extraordinaire!”

How exciting would it be for every group this summer to have scores of people they don’t even know praying for them, commenting them (on the blog) and waiting with them to see the Lord answer their specific requests?  I challenge each of us to do just that.

It is simple too!

Go to this site: http://youthmark.com/blogs.php

This first week you’ll want to scroll down to First Baptist Church of Chehalis and click on their blog.  At the bottom of each post you can see there is a place to add/view comments.  Feel free to do just that!

Having been on many of these I have NEVER seen the Lord answer specific prayers in quite the same way.  I’m going to try to get the dates listed for each of the churches on the website as well so you know which ones are out on that given week as well.  But for this week, it’s First Baptist Chehalis.

I encourage you to read through all the blogs, but specifically check out the blogs of each of the following as they’ll head out next week:

Avondale Bible

Calvary Chapel South

RiverRidge Cov’t

Lake Sawyer Christian

Snohomish Free Methodist

NW Bible

Last, you’ll see on the blog that we have released the HomeBase Guided Study to others outside of the Mission, don’t hesitate to pick one up for yourself!  You can study the same things the Mission teams are studying and like the parents of these missionaries, you can live out your mission at home! (And you can pick up MERGE at the same time, a 112 page Guided Study of James I just completed).

Now, head to the blogs and start praying specifically for FBC (and all the other teams)!

Grace,

Brian


Final Club and the Seekers

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Last night marked the end of our year at Kentridge Young Life.  I am thankful for the opportunity I have had to serve this year with a group of teens who are hungry for life.  So many of them remind me of me when I was their age.  They are seekers, only many don’t know what they are seeking.

They come seeking any (or all) of the following:  fame, fortune, popularity, belonging, escape, religion, love, laughter, outlet, understanding, stability, something different, friendship, comfort, him, her, help, and  God.

Though the list is not complete, because they do come seeking more than what I had listed, many come with a heart that is being worked on by the Holy Spirit.  This is what is so exciting to me.  Every-single student who walks through the doors of Young Life is going to be presented the opportunity to hear about Jesus.  We need to be faithful in building the relationship and share the Good News, but He is the one who is faithful in preparing the heart for His message!

Please pray for me as I prepare to go with 50 (most of whom do NOT know Jesus) high school students to camp this summer. And while you’re at it, praise God for this opportunity He has given me as well.  Being involved with YL this year is going to have direct influence on the writing and training materials I write for Christian students as we prepare them for future lifestyle evangelism opportunities!

Grace,
Brian

By faith, we are trusting God to provide the way for me to go to camp with these students (about $500), if God has placed it on your heart to give to YL for this cause, please comment  or email me and I’ll let you know how you can help (brian@youthmark.com).  Thanks for your prayers!

Are you on Facebook?

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If you’re a facebooker (one who does facebook), I have just added a Youthmark page to Facebook and think you should become a “Fan.”  I mentioned on my latest “tweet” (what you call a post on Twitter) that now that I have accounts on twitter and Facebook and have a Youthmark page, I can now have “friends” (fb) “followers” (twitter) and “fans” (fb).  I think we should get one of these sites to create a new category, “enemies,” that would make things VERY interesting!

So, come be a fan of Youthmark on facebook, just sign in and then search “youthmark” and you’ll find us!

Grace,

Brian

Special Guest Star

Brian Aaby 2 Comments

About three weeks ago today (Sunday), I was thinking (finally, Brian was thinking), and for whatever reason, I was thinking about the Love of God and his relentless pursuit of us!  I am sure some of these thoughts were coming to mind because of Crazy Love, the book I wrote about a few weeks ago.  So anyway, back to God’s love and my thoughts…

For the first 8-10 weeks of the 2009 calendar year I had been speaking for Kentridge Young Life.  But for the previous 5-6 it had been Rob, the main guy over the entire area.  I normally wouldn’t do this, but I texted Rob on Monday and asked him if he needed a week off and let him know that I had a talk ready to go if he was open!  He was game…

So, strike up the band, we had a guest star appear at KR Young Life!  Welcome William Aaby!

The gist of the talk was how God loves us enough to give us freedom of choice (aka “free will”), while at the same time He relentlessly pursues us.  Will became a living illustration.  A few minutes into my talk I sat him down, he desired to crawl and choose his own direction (he’s getting into this whole independence thing).  The floor of the gymnasium was very slick, and he kept slipping and got very confused as to why he wasn’t making progress.  Amidst the “oohs and aahs” of the high school students, he began to well-up and though many a teen age girl would have loved to have helped, he wanted only his Daddy’s help.

Hmmm, sounds a lot like us?… May we be quick to walk the path the Father has set out for us.  May we be mindful of His pursuit of us and make choices (free will) that are consistent with what He’d desire.  And last, may we rest in His arms of grace knowing He loves us not because of what we do, but simply because we are His!

Grace,
Brian

You Want To Participate?

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One of the strengths of the Youthmark Mission Venture is that it is so much more than a mission trip.  Besides the training materials (mission prep workbook, leaders guide, retreat, etc.) the participants and their families get blessed with additional publications.  

 

Now you can too! (more on this in a second)

 

As I have posted before and now you can see for your own eyes, the books are done and about to be used.

 

RoadGrip-Cover

 

RoadGrip is the Guided Study for the YMV participants while on their Mission Trip! The students and staff and any “adopted” student in the community will be guided in His Word during their mission week.

 

HomeBase-CoverHomeBase is the Guided Study for the Families of the YMV participants.  While the students/staff are out on the field, we’re asking the families to study the same Scriptures but are specifically challenged to live it out at home!  This book is now also available to you!


 

Merge-CoverMerge, which was originally entitled, 14 Ways for 14 Days has emerged as a brand-new way to come home.  For years, I believe, Youth Pastors have missed the mark at bringing the teams home well.  Merge contains 18 study sessions through the book of James!  Rather than relying on the “Mission Trip High,” we’d like to see everyone continue their striving hard after the Lord after the trip is done–this includes the participants, families and now you!  This book, especially geared for the adolescent believer, will challenge the reader to live out His instructions to us very practical ways!

 

Each YMV participant will receive his or her own free copy (all three publications), however, Youthmark is making the latter two books available to you, our prayer support team.  In addition, Youth Pastors are encouraged to purchase Merge for the remainder of their Youth Group so the two groups (mission team and the students back home) can “merge” together to live out the Great Commandment and Great Commission together at home!


If you (the “at home reader”) would like to purchase your own copy of Merge and/or HomeBase our Publisher (Spire) has given us permission to sell these to you at a very low $5 cost per book (plus shipping if you can’t arrange for a pick up from me). The book has a list price of $9.99, you’d you’re getting it at 1/2 price! 

 

Email us at missions@youthmark.com and let us know what you’d like and your address, then we’ll send it to you with a simple invoice at $5 (plus minor shipping cost) for each book you order. UPDATE: This half price offer is only available to Youth Pastors and the Blog Readers through the beginning the of actual mission trips (June 19, 2009), after the YMV’s begin we will only be able to offer a different discounted rate to the Youth Pastors for their team orders only.

 

If you are the praying type, and we know you are, I’d especially encourage you to order a copy of HomeBase and do this study along with the team you are praying for and reading about on their blog (http://youthmark.com/blogs.php). 

 

My prayer is that the Youth Group and Church would be united in their attempt to live out the Great Commandment and Great Commission together (whether they were on the mission trip or not).  

 

I can’t wait to see the way the Lord uses these publications in the lives of all who read; I am already looking forward to writing the 2010 editions of RoadGrip, HomeBase and Merge!

 

Grace,
Brian