I feel like we have been talking about this nonstop and yet Bronwyn and I keep running into people who still don’t know that we are moving to Africa. And nothing makes it more real than having our flight booked. So we need your help, we are asking you to do a few things. Consider joining our monthly financial support team at any level and please share this post so that hopefully more people will see it and get excited about what God is calling us to. Lastly we ask that you would genuinely add us and the ministry to your prayer list.

So in case you haven’t heard, Bronwyn and I are going on the mission field in Nairobi, Kenya with the opportunity to share the love of Christ with youth and teens from around the world. We will be running a camp just outside the city June and July and working with teens in the city the rest of the year.

This is truly a hands and feet of Christ kind of ministry and we need people committed to praying for us daily. We are also responsible for raising 100% of our living expenses while there. If you haven’t heard the entire testimony of how God called us read the first few entries of our blog. If you have questions please feel free to ask.

My email is – brett.stamps@blueskykenya.org

Check out our website – blueskyglobal.org

Or use the link below to become a supporter

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Ever since I caught his act on Comedy Central years ago Mitch Hedberg has been my favorite comedian. He died of a drug overdose in the prime of his career but left us with some amazing lines. I think of this one almost every time I get up to speak. When referring to his own comedy routine he said “you can’t be like pancakes, all exciting at first but by the end you’re sick on ’em”. I may have left an expletive out. Although I think this is excellent advice for any speaker, preacher or performer it’s also excellent advice when your thinking about long haul ministry. I’m looking at an article  now on the National Network of Youth Ministers that states that the average youth minister stays in their position for 18 months. You know, just long enough to get to know the students you are working with, and then boom you are gone. Now I realize that sometimes God does call people to other work, and sometimes in churches rush to fill a position they put in the wrong person, I also know that “youth minister” is often a stepping stone to other church positions. However I also know there are plenty of Youth Ministers that stay for a long long time. That means there are those who don’t even make the year and half. I think the reason can be explained with pancakes and the book of Joshua.

Youth ministry usually is all exciting at first. It’s all new music and bowling. Maybe you redecorate the youth room, get some old couches and a pool table. It’s awesome, everyone is excited, your excited, parents are excited, teens are excited but about a year in something happens. You grow to a point that you can’t handle it anymore. It becomes bigger than what any one person can handle. You take late night phone calls from parents and frantic texts from boys who just got crushed by a girl. There are plays and basketball games times to attend. You can only be so many places at once and now this thing that was all exciting at first is steering you straight toward the dreaded burnout. So what does that have to do with Joshua? Have you read Joshua lately? What do you think about when you think about it? Oh, it’s all exciting at first, spies, crossing the Jordon with another miracle, the Commander of the Army of the Lord making an appearance, walls come a tumbling down the sun literally standing still; super exciting stuff. But then what? It’s allotment time! It’s chapter after chapter of how they divided the newly conquered land among the children of Israel and by the end you’re sick of it.

So what does that have to do with youth ministry? It comes down to organizing, Joshua couldn’t lead all of those people in their day to day grind any more than a youth minster can be effective with a bazillion teens. You have to organize, you have to find other leaders or raise them up within your ranks. Jesus literally taught us this lesson by only taking on 12 to truly disciples. A growing, meaningful, impactful youth ministry can’t be managed by one person. There has to be a time of allotments, otherwise you get burnout or a youth ministry that isn’t changing many lives. Call them small groups, discipleship teams, covenant groups, whatever you want but if you want to impact lives for Jesus and not have to choke down anymore pancakes get help and then organize that help. You only have so much time, maximize it.

 

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What it’s like to Trust God for Everything

This week Bronwyn and I made two videos, one for our church because we are new members and one to explain our case for support. The first was easy and took about ten minutes. We decided to join Fellowship Memphis because the very first service we went to seemed like the church we had been looking for forever. The church looked like Memphis, the teaching was on point and we knew that day we would be a part of Fellowship Memphis. This was back in February before we had ever heard of BlueSky and had considered moving to Africa. That video was easy, short, and fun to shoot. The second video was draining and I’m not sure why. As sure as I was about Fellowship I am just as sure about Africa. I know that God has called us to work there, I have no doubt. Shooting that video should have been exciting, sharing the story of how we got to where we are and why we need people to come along side us and be part of our support team. But it wore me out.

After a few days to think about it I think I know why. I had to talk a lot about how we were completely relying on God. That sounds easy enough until you are actually doing it. BlueSky is a missions organization and although we run camps and other programs successfully they do little more than break even. I’ve looked through a lot of the financial stuff and had people smarter than me look at them too. Everything looks great but there isn’t money to support full time staff. So here we are, called to a ministry that can’t support us and being fully reliant on God to provide for us. We have no idea where we will be living when we get there, we don’t know for sure everything we will even be doing but I know one thing for sure, we are going where God has called us. And here is the thing, we don’t have anywhere near the support we need at this point. But I know we are going. It’s exhausting to have to trust God completely with everything but after we shot our support video last week I told Bronwyn that our faith would be incredible when it was done. Later that night she prayed that she couldn’t wait to see how God did it.

So if you are reading this we want you to be a part of our support team. BlueSky is a Christian organization but not affiliated with any denomination. We are a registered 501c3 so your donations will be tax deductible and the money you give to us goes to us. You are literally helping us live in Nairobi, Kenya, minister in Nairobi, Kenya and share our lives with the people of Nairobi, Kenya. It’s humbling to have to ask for support, it challenges you and stretches you. But I can’t wait to see how God does it.

We prayed from the start that God would do something that only He could do, that believers and nonbelievers alike would see it and rejoice. That our lives would point to God. And you can be a part of that by becoming a part of our support team. The link after all of our posts takes you straight to our donation site. What we really need is monthly supporters who are giving and praying as we move to Kenya. Please prayerfully consider it. Also please share this post so others may be encouraged by what God is doing in our lives.

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Posted by: Bronwyn

In July, we went to Kenya for a visit so that we could see just what it was that God has called us to and to get a feel for things.   We went with the plan to just observe and take notes on what’s going well and what needs improvement or enhancing.  Those that know us, know that stepping back and just observing is totally not us at all!  They likely don’t even believe that we were able to do so but we did…for the most part anyway.   During our observing, we would also talk with campers and staff asking them questions like “what makes camp camp?”, “what is your favorite thing about camp?”, “what is your least favorite thing?”, “If you could add anything to camp, what would it be?”, etc…  The answers were varied and very positive but no, we will not be adding video games to camp.  In the process of this, we had the opportunity to talk with a girl that was there for her 9th summer.  It wasn’t her answers to the above questions that were insightful but what she shared with me later about how and why she became a Christian.  One evening as all the campers are laying outside in the field looking up at the stars and their counselor is going around praying for each one, I got to hear this girl’s amazing testimony.  She comes from a Muslim faith background but her parents sent her to a Christian camp anyway because honestly there isn’t anything else like it that exists right now.  A couple years into camp, she accepted Christ.  Her reasoning is what really touched me and made me think.   She didn’t decide to become a Christian because she was learning about the Bible and Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was what she observed in the counselors during worship time.  Every evening during worship, the counselors and campers sing praise and worship songs.  The same ones many of you probably know.  She said she could see the genuine love for Christ the counselors had and the love that they received back and she wanted to experience that in her life.  It made sense why these college students would raise money to spend their entire summer with Camp BlueSky, to share God’s love. What she experienced from counselors wasn’t pushy or judgmental, it was the true love of Christ.  A love that can only come from knowing Him.  Her becoming a christian had a huge effect on her relationship with her family for awhile.  However, her parents continued to let her come to camp each year where she would grow in her faith and experience God’s love from staff and new counselors each year.  She will likely be a counselor herself in a couple years and her parents are more open to Christianity all because she observed the love for Christ through the staff at Camp BlueSky.   So, what do others observe in us?  Not just in church, that’s easy but at work, at school, on social media, or with our family? Would knowing that you had to opportunity to lead someone to Christ just by your actions change the way you act or talk or do things?

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If you have read Acts or any of Paul’s letters you can see pretty fast that he liked to go where the people where. All the people! Corinth for example was a Greek city that sat on an isthmus between Athens and Sparta. Ephesus was a hugely important port city in Asia where trade came from all of the known world. Thessalonica was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and of course there was Paul’s time in Rome itself. Paul always went to the major hubs and then went to the most populated parts of those hubs and started teaching about Jesus. It was just what he did and what his ministry was about. So I think we can imagine what his missionary journey might look like now, London, New York, Beijing, other major cities I am sure you can think of. The more I learn about Nairobi the more I realize what a major hub it is. Besides being a home of the United Nations it is also where over 100 companies’ headquarters are located and many more major regional offices preside there.  Currently Nairobi has a population of about 3 million but if you add in the metropolitan area it doubles it. Estimates show that the population could grow by as much as another 2 million in just 8 years. Besides the African population, there are large groups of Indian and Pakistani expats and from countries all over the world. So yes, I think this would definitely be a city Paul would have established a church.

But what if he had been a camp counselor for a summer? I think he would have been amazing at cabin devo and probably really good at teaching a tent making interest group, and ensuring campers were writing letters home. I’m not sure I would have let him teach canoeing and you definitely wouldn’t want to send him to the prison in the game capture the flag unless you wanted it destroyed by an earthquake. But I honesty think he would have worked at a place like BlueSky. Last summer there were 600 campers and they came from 30 different countries and nationalities. Many of them are in Nairobi for only a few years and have never had the opportunity to hear a clear gospel message. They will later return to their home country or perhaps even a new one with the knowledge and experience of Christ’s love they may never have had an opportunity to receive anywhere else. Ultimately BlueSky exists to make disciples through relational  ministry with students using experiential programs that reflect the adventure of following Christ. Paul would have been amazing at that, mostly because its pretty much what he did. Sharing Christ is all about building relationships and for anyone who has ever had any summer camp experience, there aren’t many relationships much deeper than ones formed at camp.

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There was a time when most of what I knew about the second biggest continent in the world came from “The Lion King”, and the Val Kilmer Michael Douglas movie “The Ghost and the Darkness”. I did often use Africa as an illustration about God’s calling, I would say things like  “God isn’t going to call you to Africa unless that is the place that will bring you the most joy. I would talk about being in the center of God’s will and throw in Psalms 119:105 or Proverbs 3:4-6. It was just one of the hundreds of devotions I would do at camp or use to teach teens as a youth pastor. However now I am living that out. When Bronwyn first texted me on March 29th “wanna move to Kenya” my initial text back was “I’ll move to Kenya”. I completely meant it too, I mean I knew we would pray and seek God’s will but I’m honestly not sure I could have pointed to it on a map. I mean I think I could have found it but not right away. Because I am now so full of knowledge about Kenya, mostly stuff I’ve read or talked to others about and the little I gleaned during my 10 days there, I wish I could quiz March 28th Brett about everything he knew. In other words I have no idea what I didn’t know.

So I’ve been having lots of conversations lately about Africa, I mean I work it into most every conversation I have for several reasons. For starters I genuinely like talking to people and it is an interesting topic of conversation, “My wife and I are moving to Nairobi in January” definitely  peeks peoples’ interests. Another reason is we are building our support base and you never know who might be interested in joining our team as monthly donors. The last reason is a little more about me I think than anything else. Whenever I am interviewing new staff I like to ask them if they would rather spend three months traveling Europe or six seconds on the moon. It’s just a fun question to get a person thinking. I like that question because I have a clear cut reason for what I would choose and it has everything to do with why I like talking about moving to Africa.

The questions I get when telling people this are mostly what you might expect:

“How hot it is it going to be?  It won’t be hot at all, Nairobi is on Mt. Kenya and is at 6,000 feet so even though it’s on the equator it will be mostly a highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s.  During camp season, it’s mid 50s-mid 70s which is awesome!

 Will you have running water? Nairobi is a major city with a population of over 3 million and if you include the metro area 6 million. The United Nations is there, so yes we will have running water and Wi-Fi.

What are you going to eat? They have amazing food and although Kenya isn’t known for any specific cuisine they do have many options because it is such a melting pot of people groups. They also have Burger King.

What language do they speak? Kenya was part of the British Empire so most everyone speaks English, we are learning Swahili phrases however because most people speak that as well.

Are you worried you will get eaten by a lion? No

Are you worried about being eaten by a tiger? Definitely no

Is it dangerous? As I mentioned earlier it’s a large city so yes there are places you don’t go at night by yourself, you know same as every city. However, I think Bronwyn put it best when she said, “the safest place you can be is in the center of God’s will.

We plan on sharing more about Kenya as we learn more, but for now we are super excited and can’t wait to see how God works all of this into His special plan for our lives.

 

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Teen Lock-In Theory

Early in my career as a teen professional I was told of the perils of lock-Ins. How there was all downside and no upside to letting teens stay all night at an event. I am thankful that I flatly ignored this advice because if I hadn’t I would have missed out on two things. First the amazing times Bronwyn and I have had hosting them either at the YMCA or churches or at host houses for some Disciple Now events. I can tell you from years of experience that something amazing happens at 4 o’clock in the morning when everyone is just fighting to see the sun come up so they can say they stayed up all night. Defenses are down and everyone gets goofy but also honest.  Some of the realest conversations I have ever had with teen groups have happened in these unstructured morning times. The second thing I would have missed is the relationship building that happens at lock-ins among all of the participants as well as with us and them. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the teens I am closest too are the ones that have been at lock-ins with us. Bronwyn and I have a 1 to 7 theory that the time spent overnight like this is 7 times as impactful as time spent anywhere else. So one hour becomes seven and an entire night is like a week. Therefor I am a huge proponent of lock-ins.

Now I will be the first to admit that I am built for this, I can go all night without sleep and still function just fine the next day. I do eventually have to crash and I have found the older I have gotten the longer I need to recover but staying up all night is still no problem. I am also fortunate that I am married to someone who can more or less do the same so it does give us an advantage. I’ll also add that I don’t let just anyone come to a lock-in, these are not outreach events but are designed and programmed, yes they should be programmed, for those teens you already have a relationship with. I have kicked people out of lock-ins or not allowed them to come even at the last minute because there has to be a certain expectation met. These events like many others are a privilege that has to be earned not a right. And lastly I have had some unfortunate incidents happen, not many but some. However ultimately the upside has always far outweighed the potential for downside. For example that picture is from our annual New Years Eve Lock-in and every year just before midnight we have a bon fire and let them write down something about the previous year that they want to change or forget and one by one quietly they walk out into the cold and throw their scrap of paper into the fire. It’s always reverent and touching and I would love to post examples of what is written but it’s between them and God.

One of the things that drew me to BlueSky was the fact that they do lock-ins outside of just camp. You have no idea how happy this made me because it meant I didn’t have to go convincing everyone why I thought they were a good idea. Lock-Ins are messy, exhausting, at times bewildering even but I don’t think I would ever trade one moment I spent doing them because ultimately they are amazing and probably a little closer to what I think heaven will be like than our normal boring day to day lives on this side of eternity.

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As some of you may know Bronwyn and I hiked the Appalachian Trail a 2,173 1/2 mile journey from Georgia to Maine that took us six months to complete. So on May 18, 2006 about  month and half into our hike we were in Damascus, Virginia celebrating the annual event known as Trail Days. While we were there we helped out with some very cool ministries and enjoyed being in a town instead of hiking. We also decided to take advantage of the Damascus Laundromat. I’ll let 2006 me tell you the next part of the story.

 “I went to Damascus Baptist Church to help set up for an eating contest and Bronwyn went to get the clothes. After setting up I got worried about Bronwyn taking so long and started walking over toward the Laundromat. Then I saw her walking up the street toward me looking frazzled. When I got to her she told me that when she got back to the dryer where our clothes were, it was still running, and it had been running for a while. Our clothes were pretty much melted or burned to a crisp. Her pillow was more of a bag of golf balls, and my pants had become one with my shirt”

So literally everything but the clothes on our back were ruined. However, God had not brought us to Southern Virginia to leave us half naked and in financial peril. I know that He wanted to show us that He was our provider, that He was going to always take care of us. When Baltimore Jack, a pretty well known hiker due to his many many hikes on the AT, heard about what happened he got the laundromat owners home phone number and they compensated us some, an outfitter in town sold us replacement gear at cost and random people who heard about it literally gave us cash. By the end of the day, a day that actually ended with us sleeping in a van but that’s another story, everything was replaced. I believe it happened so I could look back and be reminded that God is our provider. We are reading Exodus together at Fellowship Memphis and it’s hard not to be reminded of chapter 16 when God supernaturally rained down bread from heaven. Hiking clothes may not have fallen from the sky but God took care of our needs. When Paul was under house arrest he wrote, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:19)

So here we are all these years later preparing for an even greater adventure in trusting Him and resting in the knowledge that He will provide all our needs. When we started praying fervently together we asked that God would do a work that could only come from Him. That clearly was above our ability to show that He would provide and be a testimony to shape not only our faith but the faith of those who heard and saw. After all are we not worth more than many sparrows?

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Bronwyn and I met for the first time in the spring of 1997 at the Baptist Student Union on campus at the University of Memphis. She was actually the social chair at the time and was in charge of the back to school event me and a few friends were attending. Lets start with the fact that she was, and still is, absolutely beautiful. However the attraction went much deeper than that right from the start, here was this girl totally in charge of this massive event running around barefoot organizing everything and putting out fires. I literally told my friend Russ that I was going to marry her that night. She is truly  bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh created especially to be my partner in life.

This past Sunday we were privileged enough to have lunch with two couples who remind both of us of how we were. Neither couple are engaged yet however they seem to be doing everything right. We gave them some sage advice but mostly just enjoyed being with them, being reminded of how amazing it is to be young and in love instead of much older and in love like Bronwyn and I are. I can’t help but relate that to when God first called me out of my old life and into this one. That feeling of being young and in love with God, reading the bible and learning new things all the time. That passion that comes with being on fire for God is similar to those feelings of falling in love with your soul mate.

Bronwyn and I have now been married 18 amazing years; our marriage in old enough to vote and buy cigarettes and join the Navy. Through it all we have had times where we have put God first and times where we have put each other first. The thing that we have learned and the best advice we gave yesterday was to always put God first. The happiest most fulfilling times of our lives have been when we put God above everything including each other. So now we are off on another adventure to the other side of the world. We will be the first to admit that we haven’t been perfect but God has been so gracious to us, and has called us into a wonderful ministry together. I think that’s the most exciting thing for us, we get to work side by side after years of learning each others strengths and weaknesses. God created us for each other and has now called us together to Nairobi, Kenya to put those things to His best purpose for us. What is God preparing you for? What is he waiting for you to learn so he can call you into the next phase of your life? Is there anything you are putting ahead of Him, a spouse, kids, money, even church? Nothing is more important that putting God number one in your life.

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Posted by: Bronwyn

I was on the phone yesterday with a camp counselor I met during our visit to Kenya and Camp BlueSky this past July.  As she was sharing about her very possible return next  summer as a calling not just a want, she said “well, God doesn’t need me to be there.  He doesn’t NEED any of us”.  How very true!  God can do and make happen whatever He wants.  He just chooses to allow us to be a part of His work.   I think as Christians we can easily get caught up in seeking ministry opportunities verses seeking God’s will (not that God won’t choose to bless your efforts).  However, be ready because if you truly open yourselves up to what God desires and how He wants to best use you then you could be preparing to go to Africa.  And as crazy or scary as that may sound to you, the peace and joy that comes from totally surrendering to His plan is something that can only be understood if you have experienced it.

I had the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Bolivia when I was 16 with a group from my church at that time, Calvary Baptist in Horn Lake, MS.  It was an amazing experience and I knew then that God was calling me to ministry of some sort. It would be years later that my first big ministry would be as an inner city youth pastor’s wife at Highland Heights Baptist Church in Memphis. Now, Brett and I have been a part of some amazing ministries over the years and thank God for the impact those ministries have left behind and the blessings God gave us with each one but move to Kenya?   Really?  It’s definitely the biggest step of faith God has asked of us so far.  So, when I think of Kenya and the ministry of BlueSky, I am not only thankful that God is choosing to use us as part of the BlueSky team but in awe that of all people he called us and is allowing us to be a part of His amazing work there.

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