All great stories begin with the same elements: Happiness, contentment, trial, suffering, struggle, perseverance, and ultimately - victory. You will find this story is no different.

 

As many of our family of churches are aware, the Indianapolis Church is no stranger to any of these elements. In fact, most of the disciples in our church have had direct contact with many, if not all, of these elements in the recent years. Specifically, though, the one struggle most congregations face may be the toughest question of all: How do we pass our faith on to the next generation?

 

Many movements have faded simply because the second and third generations do not keep the spark of the faith growing in their lives and communities. It is almost as though God has worked through waves of people then the tides recede and crash back to the shores.

 

So many of our own teens had been lost to the corruption of the world and at times things appeared bleak for our congregation. It seemed like no matter how hard we tried to fight, sin seemed to swallow a number of our stronger, older, and more mature disciple teens. But through prayers and acts of faith, God noticed the cries of his people, and like so many great examples in the scriptures, He answered them in a powerful way.

 

A little over two years ago, the Indianapolis Church employed a full time teen minister and his wife to help lead the teens. Their names are Kevin and Clarissa Hoecke. Starting from scratch, the Hoeckes knew they were going to need help if they wanted to turn the teen ministry around.

 

With the church meeting in three regions, the Hoeckes couldn’t be everywhere, every week. So they gathered four other young married couples in the church to lead each sector’s group of teens. That way, the Hoeckes could travel to our various regions and oversee what was going on in those places.

 

As the bond between the teen workers grew, their unity brought about faith that God would use to help inspire our ministry. It seemed as though each teen worker had a unique strength to bring to our ministry and every teen had someone they could look up to and learn from. Despite our differences, we let the teens see our unity and Godly focus in our lives, marriages, and the expectations that they should imitate.

 

Having teens with so many backgrounds and interests, it was and at times, is still difficult to break the high-school cliques that formed, but we constantly and consistently met to break these walls of exclusion down and make us more united in our faith.

 

Through many long nights of prayer, study, tears, and determination, in the two years the Hoeckes were with us, God blessed our ministry as we baptized more than 22 teenagers. Most of the teens that made it had a great foundation in the home and so some kudos need to be given to the parents as well. The only other ministry to come close was the campus ministry. It seemed nothing would stop us from growing.

 

After the two years, the Hoeckes had a baby daughter and God called them back to Toronto, from where they came. At first it came as a shock to us all that they would be leaving, but we knew they needed their family as much as their family needed them. In the spring of 2007, the Hoeckes had their last service in the Indy church and we wished them well.

 

Many of our teens struggled with our dilemma, but through their unity and faith in God, they stayed strong spiritually. Meeting through the summer, they had teen-led events that helped them to take charge of their faith and ministry.

 

At this time, we still have no paid teen leader couple, and while we have at times felt the pressure of time to meet needs and discouragements, we have persevered and have continued to grow. We had three baptisms this summer and have grown in the areas of prayer, discipling, learning how to study the bible with our friends, and learning to change the way we think. All these things have helped us to stay excited and motivated to be God-focused in our lives. We have hope for the future that God will receive the next generation of our church as a generation worthy of His calling- a generation that learns how to spread our faith to the one that follows us.

 

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we await God’s decision on our staffing needs, and pray that we continue to grow in our zeal, knowledge and faith in our Lord and His will for our city.

 

If anyone is interested in applying for the teen ministry position here in Indianapolis, please contact Steve Cannon at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or call him at (317) 297-3973.

 

God Bless.