Your prayer is appreciated!

At the Loft this year we bring in the New Year with an all niter for the Loft and Beyond students. I haven't had an all niter lately and not with the neighborhood students. My idea of doing all niters with junior high through out the years has been to keep them busy doing something. Students these days can make it difficult to entertain. Anyway we appreciate your prayers. We are following what the Lord wants so He will make it happen. And the Good News with go forth. We are pulling out an archive from the past, 'The Cross and the Switchblade' to view that nite. Thanks for praying

Yesterday, was the day that we had the privilege to clear out the LYNC items at the old office. The LYNC office which is moving to our home at 1950 Willow Street Pike. Yesterday I went to the bank to open a CY (Community Youth) account. I needed a certain number so I have to wait to today to finish that job. Online we were able to see that my application for the name Community Youth had been registered with the State of PA. Also interesting was receiving a letter from Ed Weber and LYNC on the same day that my letter from CY came to the house (I always send myself a letter so I know when the letters are received by our friends). Here is Ed's 1st paragraph, "We have some exciting changes in store at LYNC in the new year. Dan Snyder is leaving his position as our Executive Director to pursue graduate studies and local city church ministry and our LYNC Board of Directors has selected Ed Weber, former LYNC Director of Media and Events and founder and Director of Youth Ministry Innovations, to assume Dan's position and continue the vision and work of LYNC." Ed is taking on the passion and position of moving the vision of networking forward with the name LYNC under the current non-profit organization of YMI (Youth Ministry Innovations). The Board of Directors also in that October 31, 2008 meeting established me as Director of the 501-C3 organization of Lancaster Youth Network of Churches, Inc. and establish a new fictitious name for 'my' ministries. Anyway your prayers are appreciated for this transition. I really am excited for this transition because the passions that God has laid on His people's hearts will best be served in this new setup. Make sure if you have any questions you ask.

Toby Mac -Lose My Soul

Another song that helps keep us focused on Jesus First!!

A CY Day of Skiing?

The question mark has to do with whether it was a CY event or not. I know it really doesn't matter but what a great day with many friends and family. How does a day like this happen. I don't know sometimes but I know our great God guides us as we are willing to do whatever He leads us in doing. I guess this event evolved from an idea Mark had since Kristy's step brother was going skiing with friends and they thought of going along. We thought we could join her family. By the time we thought of joining we had close to a group of 15. Well let us try and ask some others so we can get a group rate. As these events can develop we ended up with 22 and we were driving two vehicles. What a great day. Camelback was crowded but because we had a group we entered at a different place and missed all the lines. Wow was that nice. We stayed thru the evening and basically had the group lodge to ourselves. We had to ski to the last minute 10:00pm. We had to chase Keith and Ken off the slopes. They had some lessons and picked up on boarding really well. One concussion and a lost cell phone but a great day giving glory to God on the slopes. Someone called the last number on the phone which was a friend that was near by and we were able to get the phone back. Jeff on the way to get the phone found a $50 bill. The concussion was not too severe and most of us had bruises and sore muscles but thank you Lord for another opportunity to give glory to the Him in whatever we do. Thanks for your prayers and the adventure continues as we follow our Savior.

Continued... A Week in the Life

Wednesday nite we had our Loft and Beyond Christmas party. Many times we play a game called "now you have, it now you don't" but as we do many times at the 'Beyond' nite we do something to remind us that life is not about us. We had everyone bring a gift and $2. The week before we all came up with service tasks that we could be apart of doing in the coming year. We attached these service tasks to the gifts and each person bid on the service they wanted to share with someone in the next year. The money they bid from their $2 was then placed in the Gain banks that we got from our project at the Global Aid Network. The money will be given to build wells and feed people 10 cent meals. It was different but we were able to try and help ourselves to see that life and Christmas is not about us but giving as God gave, sacrificially and unselfishly. We spent time looking at the real story of Christmas in God's Word the Bible and saw how those who came to Jesus at first worshiped and gave and told others. Anyway a great nite sharing truth.
Friday and Sat. at the Loft this weekend was more cleanup and updating. Sunday afternoon is when the LS High School Bible study gets together. After the Truth Project they have been meeting in different homes of students. We requested they have their Christmas gathering at the Loft. We had invited about 60 of Jeff's friends. Over 30 showed for a suprize 18th birthday celebration for Jeff. Wow was he suprized!!!!
Monday nite was our regular Junior nite. 23 students for Christmas fun and the Truth shared, Jesus the Savior born at Christmas.
CY wants all to see the youth in their own community and ask God what He wants them to do about these youth.

A Week in the life of the Loft

Last Monday, 8 days ago the Loft was a wreck during the day. Mark is home from college and usually there is something electronic that needs to be fixed or upgraded. A good friend gave us a fairly new HD 32 inch TV and so Mark was putting that into the system. Also he had picked up two throw away computers from college that he recreated our family computer and the Loft computer for great speed and storage space. Mark's girlfriend, Kristy was here with us and she wanted some work so her job was to clean the Loft top to bottom. So the place was in a creative, cleanup shambles. By 7:00 the place was useable for our regular Monday nite Junior High meeting. I pick up Lincoln students at 6:30 and bring them to the Loft (5 this nite). Packed house with about 28 students and 5 adult staff. Human knots and a Truth discovery time and some rowdiness and another opportunity to live Christ before students.
Tuesday I am getting sick but I set up to bring all my science classes from Lincoln Middle School to the Loft for their Christmas gift from me their science teacher. Each class has about an hour. We enjoy the different activities and I bring out some more of our pets. We share free donuts that we get weekly from Willow Valley and get to live out Christ's life before the students. Mark gets to help monitor these students. What a joy to share with them students some of the things God has provided us. "Are you rich, Mr. Brubaker?" We really are not rich but God has given us many things and we like to share them with others. 80 plus more youth passing thru the Loft and the light of Christ shining forth.
5:50 am Tuesday and time to get ready for school. A week in the life...... to be continued!!!! :)

Launching Community Youth - CY

For over 30 years God has blessed Karen and I with the chance to share the good news of Jesus with youth in various locations and ministries. I remember being involved with Lancaster Youth for Christ as a child helping doing mailing with my mom and constructing Scream in the Dark with my dad. God has allowed us to serve Him by serving youth. For years I served on the staff of YFC, eventually Directing the ministry. YFC transitioned to serve youth by way of LYNC (Lancaster Network of Churches) these past 8 years. The LYNC ministry focused on networking youth pastors with each other in order to reach community youth. As that transition took place God lead us to begin a YFC type ministry at our home for neighborhood youth. I continued to work with LYNC raising our support. In 2003 God lead me to pursue youth work in the local school by using my teaching degree that I had since 1981. Wow, what a great way to serve youth in the public school. While still receiving donations thru LYNC because the beginning salary of a teacher was much less then what I had been making after over 20 years with YFC/LYNC. These past years the Loft ministry as well the networking of teachers with CEAI (Christian Educators Association International), the after school ministries and the connecting the school students with the Loft ministry have grown much. While not being able to directly network with youth pastors during the day like in the past the networking heart continues. We are the Body of Christ, we must work together to reach our world for Christ. I continue to see the need to network but what God continues to provide for us is the audience of youth. Even at 50 years old I love being with youth and giving them fun and showing them Christ.
So what is Community Youth and what is this launch? In a nutshell: the non-profit organization of LYNC is being handed to me to direct once again. The actual networking of youth pastors will continue through Ed Weber and YMI (Youth Ministry Innovations). He is called by God to continue the networking and will use the word LYNC. I believe in the networking and am on Ed's Board of Directors but God has our families focus right now to be in direct working with community youth, thus the non-profit organization with official name Lancster Network of Churches with begin ministering under the name Community Youth on January 1, 2009. How will this change what our family does? We will continue to follow the Lord in reaching youth. It is exciting to be able to place all the various activities we have been providing for youth as a family directly under a non-profit organization. We are not sure what this will do for our donation. Also the times we live in make giving a challenge for some people. We are not making our decisions to serve based on donations. God has given us the ability to work with youth and has given us many different resources to serve youth. We will continue to be good stewards of the 'talents' God has given us. We continue to serve and are now excited with serve under the name of Community Youth. We look forward to see how God will bless youth as we obey His leading.
Thus the launching of Community Youth - See Why at CY - See why Jesus Christ loves you. Thus the ministry email: cyjcly@gmail.com