For years I struggled with how to approach ministry. I did not see myself or feel called to be a pastor of a church, and yet I felt called to preach and teach the Word, with a primary focus on evangelism. Nor did I see myself as a music director of a church, and yet I love playing and writing music that is evangelical and testimonial in nature. Well, finally, after much prayer and searching, I was encouraged to use my music as a tool to spread the Word.
In October 1991, I was invited to speak and to play my own music at a group home for troubled youth in Waterloo, Iowa, called Quakerdale. Quakerdale was founded by the Quakers in 1851. It began as an orphanage and education center, and was later used to help delinquent boys.
That contact led me to other Quakerdale facilities in Iowa.
The following month, I met the mid-west representative for Prison Fellowship. She helped me contact the chaplain at the Iowa Men’s Reformatory in Anamosa, where I began to minister. That contact led me to other adult prison facilities in Eastern Iowa.
The next month I was given permission to speak and play music at the North Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in Waterloo, and then the Black Hawk County Youth Shelter, also in Waterloo. The Detention Center led me to the State Training School in Eldora, Iowa, which led me to the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa, and also the Juvenile facility in Red Wing, Minnesota. Through the coming months the doors also opened up to several “Four Oaks” day treatment facilities, Teen Challenge of the Midlands in Colfax, Iowa, and numerous other facilities in Iowa.
My wife and I prayed for a local church that had a passion for this kind of ministry. Though we had verbal and prayer support, few people shared the same passion. But in the fall of 1995 we attended the Cedar Valley Community Church in Waterloo. Amazingly, they had been praying for a year about engaging in this very same outreach ministry. So we moved our church membership there where we helped them establish a Prison Ministry.
This ministry was widely embraced by the church . We had many adult and youth volunteers who went out regularly to many of these facilities doing music, drama, testimonies, preaching the Word, and encouraging the residents.
But then I was faced with a good problem, I was so busy in this volunteer ministry that I simply could not do it all. So I delegated out the adult facilities to other capable lay leaders in the church, and I focused on taking youth to the youth facilities.
In September 1998 until the spring of 2000, I took a break from this ministry. I needed time to refocus and to listen to God.
I started going out again in the Spring of 2000, but on a much smaller scale, more manageable with fewer assistants, ministering at fewer facilities.
Since the Spring of 2003, I have focused primarily on two facilities, where I do weekly bible studies with other men from our church. And where I also do an informal church service with the Word and with music on Sunday mornings.