I generally don’t post about the numbers of people who make professions of faith at my programs. That’s because I don’t measure the success of a program based on the number of people coming forward. I’m not called to produce numbers, I’m called to be faithful. Getting people to respond is the Holy Spirit’s job, not mine.

I recently returned from doing a series of programs for Fellowship Community Church in Norwalk, Iowa. We decided to conclude each of the VBS programs with an alter call. The first day, I didn’t do much of a Gospel presentation. I just spoke in a very general sense about putting God in charge of your life. I would build on that idea during the rest of the week, dealing more specifically with our sin and Jesus sacrifice and resurrection. I expected to have very few, if any, responses the first day. However, God had other plans. At the end of that first program, a large percentage of the kids came forward.

I was afraid that they didn’t understand. Perhaps they were just coming to join the crowd, or thought they were volunteering to participate in the program. The church had volunteers ready to speak with the kids who came forward in small groups immediately following the alter call. It turns out that the majority of the kids who came forward really did understand and wanted to begin a relationship with Jesus.

I certainly can’t take credit for the results. I didn’t do a particularly powerful or persuasive presentation. It just serves as a reminder that it’s not me who produces results. It’s God.

The Vault is an area on my website that contains magical object lessons you can do, as well as other free ministry resources. I just added a new object lesson for you to use.

It is an uncanny effect where a strip of paper is cut apart and put back together. You can keep cutting pieces out of the middle of the paper and restore what’s left. This can be used to illustrate how sin cuts us off from God, or how some things need to be cut out of our lives to bring us closer to God.

I hope you’ll find this and the other resources useful to your ministry.

I’m in the middle of summer camp season. Some of the camps directors wrote letters to go over schedules and expectations. Two of them explicitly said that I was expected to mingle with the kids outside of my performances. I was somewhat surprised by this, as I would have expected that to go without saying. Apparently that is not the case. I’m guessing that these camps have had problems with previous speakers who just wanted to do their performance and not have any interaction beyond that.

Honestly, it would never have even occurred to me that was an option. I believe the heart of ministry is relationship, and the deeper the relationship, the deeper the ministry. This is the model that the New Testament shows Jesus using. He didn’t just preach to the “sinners.” He ate with them, drank with them, spent time with them. Jesus didn’t just shout up the tree to Zacceaus that he needed to repent. He spent time with him–began a relationship with him–and Zacceaus life was changed.

Yes, ministry can happen based on the rather superficial relationship that exists between a performer and an audience, but there can be so much more if the kids know the performer really cares about them. To a kid, love means spending time with them on their level. It’s eating together, having fooz-ball battles and water-gun wars. Even when I’m just doing a single performance, I feel that some of the most important ministry time is when I mingle with people before or after the performance.

I’m certainly not advocating going to the other extreme of just showing love but never actually telling them about the source of that love. I’m also not talking about building a relationship to use as leverage to get people to respond to God. That would be manipulation, and would be wrong.

People need to be given the facts about God so they can decide for themselves how to live their lives. They’re more likely to listen and seriously consider it when it comes from someone who has demonstrated love for them as they are.

I spent the last week at Covenant Cedars Bible Camp in Nebraska. This was a six day camp, so I did a total of ten programs. The first half of the week, there were kids from third through sixth grade there. On Wednesday, the younger kids went home, leaving just the fifth and sixth graders.

Nebraska is certainly a lot flatter than North Carolina. (Which is good, since I’m not sure how many more treks up the mountain I could handle right now.)

This camp has really nice facilities. I also got to learn a new game, Gaga. (It’s a dogeball variation I’ve never seen before, but really like.) Once again, God did a lot of work in the lives of many of the kids there.

Now I get a much needed week off before I head off to my next summer adventure in Iowa.