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HOME » ABOUT PASTOR VON » MY HISTORY IN WORKING WITH YOUTH COMMENTS: on the information below: Here is a simple and somewhat general history of my youth work. Past to the present is a span of more than fifty years. As a youth worker of today you might find it interesting to look back at what youth work used to be and how youth work developed. THEM THAR DAYS! (1943 - 1953) It was different back in "them thar days." Radically different! Youth groups were simply a collection of people ranging in age from a ten or eleven year old boy to an thirty-five or forty year "old maid". Whoever felt young and wanted to sit in the youth meetings became the youth group. There were no "teenagers" as such; the term wasn't coined yet. Youth pastors or youth directors were yet to be created. We simply had sponsors, a couple in the church who organized and sponsored the group. Youth budget? Of course not. What did we do? We basically gathered, sat, listened and sang choruses in youth meetings. Occasionally, we would pile in cars and go to rallies combining with other youth groups. Youth for Christ rallies, were getting big then and we would hit them every Saturday night. EMMANUEL BAPTIST CHURCH: (1944 to 1951) I attended Emmanuel Baptist Church as an early teen; I belonged to the small youth group there. As a new church we met in the Women's Club house located in the Mission Beach area of San Diego, California. This small church group was started and pastored by Claude Cuddebach, a volunteer pastor and a full time postal worker. Back then, everyone and everything was volunteer. I grew up in this kind of a Christian volunteer environment. We would come in our cars every Sunday. Each car would be packed with adults and kids from our neighborhood. Poor kids had no choice they would have to stay through Sunday school and church. But we had a good Sunday school program! Our church Sunday school started growing. Because we lacked teachers, several of us teenagers were asked to teach classes. I began teaching a Sunday school class as an early teen. I didn't know how to teach kids, but I soon learned. I remember our little church was one big room with four curtains on the side wall that we would pull out for Sunday school, dividing the church building into six class areas separated by these thin curtains. A great place for a young teen to start a teaching career right on the lower floor of the tower of babble! Later, we graduated into positions of leadership. Sunday school superintendent and assistant Sunday School superintendent for more than a hundred kids were positions I held in my older teen years. I didn't know how, but I soon learned. Our only preparation at this point in time was the school of hard knocks. Budget? Our own pockets. By then I took positions of leadership in our youth group. Interestingly enough, more than half of our early youth group eventually went into full time ministry. CLAIREMONT BAPTIST CHURCH: (1953-1957) When I returned from my military service in Korea, I visited another young church in the Clairemont area of San Diego. This church was pastored by Rev. Walt Barnes and was meeting in a house. Soon I became Sunday school director and leader of the fledgling youth program. The church became Clairemont Baptist Church and we started and finished a Church building. By then, our Sunday School was more than a hundred members and our youth program numbered about thirty-five kids. I was working full time as an aircraft mechanic. My church work was volunteer. TRINITY BAPTIST CHURCH: (1957-1961) I resigned the Clairemont work after several years and joined another young group meeting in a house in the Allied Gardens area of San Diego. Jack Kendall was the pastor. He worked at the telephone company. I became Sunday school director and youth director of the church that ultimately became Trinity Baptist Church. The Sunday school membership was about two hundred and the youth program numbered about forty. This church gave me my first budget, it was about $100. for the year. Jack and I continued our services as volunteers. I stayed at Trinity Baptist Church for several years. CLAIREMONT EMMANUEL BAPTIST CHURCH: (1962-1981) I was invited by the pastor, who had teenagers of his own, to participate in a special week of vacation bible school meetings held at my old church now located in the Pacific Beach area. They wanted special youth meetings for their teens. I beat the bushes and created a successful week of meetings for the teens in that area. In a few short days we had more than fifty kids. The church was totally surprised that many teens would come to church. Several weeks later, the pastor asked me if I would consider coming on as a full time youth worker for an experimental one-year commitment. He had located several men in his church who would underwrite the cost. I would have to quit my work at Convair Aircraft where I had worked fifteen years. This was a major decision, but I accepted the church's offer and soon (1962) became full time director of the Sunday school and youth program. For the first time in my life, I was paid to do what I loved doing. Pastor Ray Hahn was a tough old bird. He told me right up front that he would give me the money I needed to live, not what I deserved. I thought that was fair (I still do). We had a very small Sunday school and no real youth program on which to build. I worked hard in every area, starting with the juniors in grade school through the high school crew. I majored on the junior high kids. I majored on guys, knowing if I did so I would have the girls. In a matter of time, I began to see growth. In 1968 and '69 the youth program exploded from some forty kids to more than a hundred. Even though the actual church had consistently remained at three to four hundred. The Sunday school and youth program continued to grow to the extent we had to relocate to a larger area. We merged with Clairemont Baptist Church around 1970 and the new combined church took on the name of Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church; I'm a charter member of both churches. This move gave us plenty of room to grow. Between our Sunday school, our boys' and girls' clubs and our youth program we were running close to nine hundred children and youth each week. Our youth program peaked out about 1971, when we were hosting nearly seven hundred teens in our meetings each week. Our dynamic program was characterized by good music, heavy teaching from the Word, regular ministry and active discipleship with a minimum of monthly fun activities. In 1981, I resigned my position and it was taken by two of my former youth who were prepared to continue the ministry. MINISTRY & YOUTH / SPECTRUM MINISTRIES: (1981-PRESENT) After leaving the active or traditional church youth work at Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church . . . I'm still on CEBC staff as minister at large . . . we created, Spectrum Ministries, a non-profit organization, We continued working in Tijuana, Mexico, among the poorest of the poor. In many ways, this was simply an extension of our CEBC youth program's ongoing ministry in Mexico. Spectrum would also focus on bringing youth groups from all over the U.S. into San Diego and then across the border to become involved in a hands-on ministry while we challenged them to make a difference in their world. This combination makes an unbeatable impact. Spectrum's U.S. teen focus continues to this day. Many of the thousands of kids we have taken into Mexico have had their lives radically impacted by what they have seen and done! Through the years, a good number of people have indicated in conversations and letters that it was on a trip with us into Mexico that they decided to commit their lives full-time to God's use. Many have become missionaries. Spectrum also has its own youth program among the nationals, at this time we have about thirty teens. I continue active in that phase of our ministry. After fifty years in youth ministry (More than thirty five of those years full time) I still enjoy working with teens. For further information on our current ministry in Mexico you might visit our Spectrum site at WWW.SPECTRUMMINISTRIES.COM. CAMPS & RETREATS: Camping is essential to a successful youth program. It plays an important and unique part in the spiritual health of your kids in particular and your group in general. It's a shame that camping has gotten so expensive. Only the kids from a wealthy Christian family can afford camping now. More than forty years ago I started into camping. In those days, "the good old days," it was inexpensive and pretty primitive, even the big West Coast camps like Hume Lake and Forest Home were affordable. In the early days, we did our own camps from start to finish. I have averaged two camps and a retreat or two every year for more than forty years. Little local camps of a hundred or two and large camps of four or five hundred kids. By this time, I have experienced every camp position from counselor to director and speaker many times over. To me camping is where it's at! TRAVEL: Each of my three churches were good about letting me take time off for speaking and travel. I generally had a good volunteer staff and program in place that would allow me to be away from time to time. My trips around the world gave my interns a chance to learn. MISSIONARY KIDS: (MK's) For more than thirty years, I have been working with MK's all over the world. Primarily with Wycliffe and New Tribes Mission as well as independent schools like Faith Academy in the Philippines and Japan Academy. I found this challenging and truly rewarding. EDUCATION: I'm not formally educated. I'm not proud of this nor am I ashamed of it. I often wonder what I would have been like had I a formal education. FRUIT: It's incredibly rewarding to be at this stage of life where I get to see spiritual children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren. I have grandchildren on the U.S mainland, Hawaii, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines, even in the remote areas of Papua New Guinea. Some of these I have met and many I have never met. I'm convinced it pays to hang in there for the long haul. GOALS: I never had much in the way of goals. I am more oriented to a general direction than a specific or what I would call a hard goal. I did drive myself. I remember telling one of my guys that was considering youth work as a profession that unless he had a hundred kids or more he wasn't worth full time. Looking back I guess that was a pretty tough statement to drop into the lap of a young, would-be youth man, but he made it and he is still at it. Early in my ministry I set down two soft goals for myself. First, I wanted to be able to be used of God to influence at least fifty individuals into full time Christian work by the end of my life. It looks like that goal has been more than realized. Second, I wanted to be able to connect and communicate with junior high kids when I was seventy. That too has been realized. BOOKS: I have written and co-written many articles and several books, some of the books currently available: Outrageous Object Lessons / Gospel Light Publications, Incredible Questionnaires / Zondervan Publications & Youth Specialties, Youth Ministry Crash Course / Zondervan Publications & Youth Specialties.

HOME » ABOUT PASTOR VON » MY HISTORY IN WORKING WITH YOUTH

COMMENTS: on the information below: Here is a simple and somewhat general history of my youth work. Past to the present is a span of more than fifty years. As a youth worker of today you might find it interesting to look back at what youth work used to be and how youth work developed.

THEM THAR DAYS! (1943 - 1953) It was different back in "them thar days." Radically different! Youth groups were simply a collection of people ranging in age from a ten or eleven year old boy to an thirty-five or forty year "old maid". Whoever felt young and wanted to sit in the youth meetings became the youth group. There were no "teenagers" as such; the term wasn't coined yet. Youth pastors or youth directors were yet to be created. We simply had sponsors, a couple in the church who organized and sponsored the group. Youth budget? Of course not. What did we do? We basically gathered, sat, listened and sang choruses in youth meetings. Occasionally, we would pile in cars and go to rallies combining with other youth groups. Youth for Christ rallies, were getting big then and we would hit them every Saturday night.

EMMANUEL BAPTIST CHURCH: (1944 to 1951) I attended Emmanuel Baptist Church as an early teen; I belonged to the small youth group there. As a new church we met in the Women's Club house located in the Mission Beach area of San Diego, California. This small church group was started and pastored by Claude Cuddebach, a volunteer pastor and a full time postal worker. Back then, everyone and everything was volunteer. I grew up in this kind of a Christian volunteer environment. We would come in our cars every Sunday. Each car would be packed with adults and kids from our neighborhood. Poor kids had no choice they would have to stay through Sunday school and church. But we had a good Sunday school program!

Our church Sunday school started growing. Because we lacked teachers, several of us teenagers were asked to teach classes. I began teaching a Sunday school class as an early teen. I didn't know how to teach kids, but I soon learned. I remember our little church was one big room with four curtains on the side wall that we would pull out for Sunday school, dividing the church building into six class areas separated by these thin curtains. A great place for a young teen to start a teaching career right on the lower floor of the tower of babble! Later, we graduated into positions of leadership. Sunday school superintendent and assistant Sunday School superintendent for more than a hundred kids were positions I held in my older teen years. I didn't know how, but I soon learned. Our only preparation at this point in time was the school of hard knocks. Budget? Our own pockets. By then I took positions of leadership in our youth group. Interestingly enough, more than half of our early youth group eventually went into full time ministry.

CLAIREMONT BAPTIST CHURCH: (1953-1957) When I returned from my military service in Korea, I visited another young church in the Clairemont area of San Diego. This church was pastored by Rev. Walt Barnes and was meeting in a house. Soon I became Sunday school director and leader of the fledgling youth program. The church became Clairemont Baptist Church and we started and finished a Church building. By then, our Sunday School was more than a hundred members and our youth program numbered about thirty-five kids. I was working full time as an aircraft mechanic. My church work was volunteer.

TRINITY BAPTIST CHURCH: (1957-1961) I resigned the Clairemont work after several years and joined another young group meeting in a house in the Allied Gardens area of San Diego. Jack Kendall was the pastor. He worked at the telephone company. I became Sunday school director and youth director of the church that ultimately became Trinity Baptist Church. The Sunday school membership was about two hundred and the youth program numbered about forty. This church gave me my first budget, it was about $100. for the year. Jack and I continued our services as volunteers. I stayed at Trinity Baptist Church for several years.

CLAIREMONT EMMANUEL BAPTIST CHURCH: (1962-1981) I was invited by the pastor, who had teenagers of his own, to participate in a special week of vacation bible school meetings held at my old church now located in the Pacific Beach area. They wanted special youth meetings for their teens. I beat the bushes and created a successful week of meetings for the teens in that area. In a few short days we had more than fifty kids. The church was totally surprised that many teens would come to church. Several weeks later, the pastor asked me if I would consider coming on as a full time youth worker for an experimental one-year commitment. He had located several men in his church who would underwrite the cost. I would have to quit my work at Convair Aircraft where I had worked fifteen years. This was a major decision, but I accepted the church's offer and soon (1962) became full time director of the Sunday school and youth program. For the first time in my life, I was paid to do what I loved doing. Pastor Ray Hahn was a tough old bird. He told me right up front that he would give me the money I needed to live, not what I deserved. I thought that was fair (I still do).

We had a very small Sunday school and no real youth program on which to build. I worked hard in every area, starting with the juniors in grade school through the high school crew. I majored on the junior high kids. I majored on guys, knowing if I did so I would have the girls. In a matter of time, I began to see growth. In 1968 and '69 the youth program exploded from some forty kids to more than a hundred. Even though the actual church had consistently remained at three to four hundred. The Sunday school and youth program continued to grow to the extent we had to relocate to a larger area. We merged with Clairemont Baptist Church around 1970 and the new combined church took on the name of Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church; I'm a charter member of both churches. This move gave us plenty of room to grow. Between our Sunday school, our boys' and girls' clubs and our youth program we were running close to nine hundred children and youth each week. Our youth program peaked out about 1971, when we were hosting nearly seven hundred teens in our meetings each week. Our dynamic program was characterized by good music, heavy teaching from the Word, regular ministry and active discipleship with a minimum of monthly fun activities. In 1981, I resigned my position and it was taken by two of my former youth who were prepared to continue the ministry.

MINISTRY & YOUTH / SPECTRUM MINISTRIES: (1981-PRESENT) After leaving the active or traditional church youth work at Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church . . . I'm still on CEBC staff as minister at large . . . we created, Spectrum Ministries, a non-profit organization, We continued working in Tijuana, Mexico, among the poorest of the poor. In many ways, this was simply an extension of our CEBC youth program's ongoing ministry in Mexico. Spectrum would also focus on bringing youth groups from all over the U.S. into San Diego and then across the border to become involved in a hands-on ministry while we challenged them to make a difference in their world. This combination makes an unbeatable impact. Spectrum's U.S. teen focus continues to this day. Many of the thousands of kids we have taken into Mexico have had their lives radically impacted by what they have seen and done! Through the years, a good number of people have indicated in conversations and letters that it was on a trip with us into Mexico that they decided to commit their lives full-time to God's use. Many have become missionaries. Spectrum also has its own youth program among the nationals, at this time we have about thirty teens. I continue active in that phase of our ministry. After fifty years in youth ministry (More than thirty five of those years full time) I still enjoy working with teens. For further information on our current ministry in Mexico you might visit our Spectrum site at WWW.SPECTRUMMINISTRIES.COM.

CAMPS & RETREATS: Camping is essential to a successful youth program. It plays an important and unique part in the spiritual health of your kids in particular and your group in general. It's a shame that camping has gotten so expensive. Only the kids from a wealthy Christian family can afford camping now. More than forty years ago I started into camping. In those days, "the good old days," it was inexpensive and pretty primitive, even the big West Coast camps like Hume Lake and Forest Home were affordable. In the early days, we did our own camps from start to finish. I have averaged two camps and a retreat or two every year for more than forty years. Little local camps of a hundred or two and large camps of four or five hundred kids. By this time, I have experienced every camp position from counselor to director and speaker many times over. To me camping is where it's at!

TRAVEL: Each of my three churches were good about letting me take time off for speaking and travel. I generally had a good volunteer staff and program in place that would allow me to be away from time to time. My trips around the world gave my interns a chance to learn.

MISSIONARY KIDS: (MK's) For more than thirty years, I have been working with MK's all over the world. Primarily with Wycliffe and New Tribes Mission as well as independent schools like Faith Academy in the Philippines and Japan Academy. I found this challenging and truly rewarding.

EDUCATION: I'm not formally educated. I'm not proud of this nor am I ashamed of it. I often wonder what I would have been like had I a formal education.

FRUIT: It's incredibly rewarding to be at this stage of life where I get to see spiritual children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren. I have grandchildren on the U.S mainland, Hawaii, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines, even in the remote areas of Papua New Guinea. Some of these I have met and many I have never met. I'm convinced it pays to hang in there for the long haul.

GOALS: I never had much in the way of goals. I am more oriented to a general direction than a specific or what I would call a hard goal. I did drive myself. I remember telling one of my guys that was considering youth work as a profession that unless he had a hundred kids or more he wasn't worth full time. Looking back I guess that was a pretty tough statement to drop into the lap of a young, would-be youth man, but he made it and he is still at it.

Early in my ministry I set down two soft goals for myself. First, I wanted to be able to be used of God to influence at least fifty individuals into full time Christian work by the end of my life. It looks like that goal has been more than realized. Second, I wanted to be able to connect and communicate with junior high kids when I was seventy. That too has been realized.

BOOKS: I have written and co-written many articles and several books, some of the books currently available: Outrageous Object Lessons / Gospel Light Publications, Incredible Questionnaires / Zondervan Publications & Youth Specialties, Youth Ministry Crash Course / Zondervan Publications & Youth Specialties.