Venturing To Uncharted Waters

It's Time Houston

Hi friends! Wrapping up another full week here in Orlando.  One of this week's highlights was taking a day out of our normal work with Student Venture for a semi-annual Worldwide Day of Prayer. The entire ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) takes two days each year to stop what we are doing and spend most of the day hearing reports of what God is doing around the world and then taking time to pray for those things. In our next prayerletter I might try to highlight one or two of the stories I heard. On the heels of that I am getting on a plane tomorrow bound for Houston, TX to gather with hundreds of teenagers and Student Venture staff from across the nation for a fast-paced, life-changing prayer experience. It is called...

..."It's Time!" 

Speakers, Greg Speck, Darryl Smith, Nancy Wilson, Barbara Francis, Sammy Tippit and Justin Christopher will teach from God's Word. Worship will be led by Altar, CAM, Aaron Ivey, Anthony Evans and Sarah Reeves. The speakers and musicians view this gathering as so unique and necessary for this time that they are appearing at their own expense.  

Teens will discover a variety of ways to deepen their communication with God so that they can have a greater impact for Christ on their campus through prayer and mission. 

The prayer conference will be streamed over the web. Anyone can join any or all sessions by going to  http://www.ustream.tv/user/svhouston. 

If you know high school or college students or others who work with and have a heart to reach students, please encourage them to connect. 

 The main sessions are (Central Daylight Savings Time):

• Sat. 2:15pm    It's Time! For Relationship.
• Sat. 6:30pm    It's Time! To Get Real.
• Sat. 8:40pm    It's Time! For Joy!
• Sun. 9:30am   It's Time! To Get Practical.
• Sun. 2:00pm   It's Time! For Unity.
• Sun. 6:30pm   It's Time! For Impact.
• Sun. 8:45pm   It's Time! To Advance The Kingdom.

Please join us in asking God to use "It's Time!" to inflame students around the country with the love and message of Jesus Christ. 

If you are in the Houston area please give me a call, I'd love for you to stop by the event or grab a cup of coffee with you early in the week. You can rech me at 407-375-2465.

Scott

Re-starting my blog - "See You at The Pole" update

Hi friends. Well, this blog has been dormant for awhile, but feeling the urge to start communicating a bit more and about life and ministry. I know that only a certain percentage of you will feel compelled to take the time to read most of this but my hope and prayer is there will be things of value that different ones of you will gain something from.

Well, today is a big day for many Christian students across the country and around the world. See You at the Pole (SYATP) is taking place at thousands of school campuses! Most of you are probably familiar with this event that began in 1990 and now involves millions of young people around the world. It's so encouraging to see students taking the lead to help see hearts changed on their campuses. But even more encouraging for me is to see some students take things a step farther by "adopting" their school and committing to see a movement begun that will change hearts, and even the whole spiritual climate of a school. There is a great site that helps facilitate this at www.everyschool.com. I encourage you to take a quick look, especially if you have a desire to see a campus near you reached for Christ or know a young person who who might. Part of my role in the Coaching Center is to follow-up with those students who do respond and help equip them to reach their campus. So in the coming days I hope to be busy connecting lots of students with our tools that will help them reach their school.

So, could I ask you to consider doing two quick things about all this? One, please share this post with one other person that you think would be interested in reaching a school near them or went to See You At The Pole today. Two, please stop and pray for a moment for a campus near you. Ask God to call Christian students to build a movement for Christ on their campus!

 

Family News

On a completely different subject, here is a fun family pic for you... so Logan & Mason decided to be hair stylists the other day and I was able to grab this quick pose... suffice it to say life is never dull in the Bartelt house!

 

From Instant Upload

Well, thanks for taking the time to read this far. If you are not getting our prayerletter by e-mail please take a second to sign-up on the left side bar!

We would love a comment with your thoughts on all this or a prayer request.

Have a blessed day!

Scott

A Second Reformation in Europe... could it happen again?

Thank you so much for your prayers recently as I travelled to Voorthuizen, Holland for a gathering of 70 youth workers from across Europe. It was a beautiful thing to see all of the people that God called to be part of this gathering, and to hear the vision and dreams they have for reaching not just their country but even all of Europe and the world. One of the best things was that God brought people from not only a variety of countries, but also a variety of ministries and stages of life.  There were couples there who had years and years of youth ministry experience and then we even had a couple teenagers who were fully engaged with reaching out to their peers.  Probably the largest block of people represented were college-age students who were volunteers or interns with Agape (Campus Crusade for Christ in Europe).  Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Estonia each brought college-age volunteers.  This was so encouraging to see!

My main purpose in going was to share about our work with the Coaching Center and what we are doing to launch campus-based ministries from a distance.  I have not done a lot of speaking reccently so it was a challenge to think about how best to communicate what God is doing here, and yet put it in a context that could be applicable in Europe. I'm sure God used it to give people some ideas, but the highlight for me was getting to sit down over meals or take walks with a number of the people I met. It was fascinating to learn what different ministries and staff are doing to reach youth in their countries and to brainstorm ways that we could encourage and help each other.  There are some tremendous challenges to reaching young people across Europe, but nothing that the Spirit of God cannot overcome. To that end I also sensed a great desire to come together and pray for each other personally and our ministries.

What's next? One of the strong impressions I came away with was how many young college-age people God was raising up to help influence the youth in the countries represented. One of the contributions I think I can make is to serve as a mentor/coach/resource for some of the young men who I met. Not long ago this would not have been possible with me living in Orlando, but with great tools like Skype it makes communication much easier and extremely inexpensive. It's not quite the same as living there but God can certainly use it, so we will see what happens in the coming weeks and months.

One guy you can be praying for right now is Christian Tiedeke from Frieburg, Germany.  He is an intern with Campus Crusade in Germany and working with the Frieburg team to reach college students and high school students for Christ. The staff team there does not have much experience with doing high school ministry nor does it have any male leadership to help mentor guys like Christian, so he and I are going to talk periodically on Skype. Pray that I can be a help and encouragement to him when we talk, and that the Lord would give Him wisdom and creative ideas for connecting with young German guys who need to know Christ. 

Below is a short slideshow from the retreat. You can click on it for a larger view.

Thanks for your prayers and giving that allowed me to take part in this event that is going to influence an entire continent of young people for Christ!

Scott

p.s. - feel free to share a comment or prayer request below!!

Hi all, brief update from the Getaway in Colorado. The conference kicks off tonight with 650 students, volunteers, and staff. We always give kids a chance to respond to Christ for the first time during the opening session. So please pray for God to speak to hearts tonight. It's also been fun to see a lot of the staff we worked with during our time in Houston. More updates coming later in the week!

Remembering 9/11

It is hard to believe it has been 8 years since the 9/11 attacks.  Things sure fade after that length of time.  As horrible a tragedy as that experience was I do miss the spirit that I saw in our nation, and how people came together.  Neighbors served each other, strangers had more conversations, and we all were reminded of how short life can be and what really matters.  I recall thinking how material things had much less meaning for me and I just cared about people more.  I also remember how much I wanted to go help and serve in any way I could.  Thankfully, many of us in Student Venture and Campus Crusade for Christ had that opportunity as we traveled to NYC in the coming weeks to serve in a variety of ways and share our faith.  It was startling how open people were to the gospel!

I was listening this week to a great message that Dr Bob Tuttle gave this past Sunday at our church (Summit), and it just dawned on me today how much it ties in to some of what I took away from 9/11.  His passage was from the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and his focus was on the importance of living our day to day lives with a sense of compassion and love for people, and managing the one degree difference between good and bad.  He had a great illustration about road rage and how it is really silly to get mad at other drivers.  Here was a great line related to that... "leave justice to God because justice is not up to you."  Reminds me of the spirit that I, and many others, sensed in the days and weeks following 9/11.  If you would like to take a few minutes to listen to this great message you can do so here...  hope it challenges you as it certainly did for me!

  Dr Bob Tuttle 9/6/09 

Also related to 9/11.  Please take a minute today to stop and pray for our troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other areas of the world that are fighting to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again.

Appreciate all of you!

Scott