HOUSE OF FAITH |   MORE HISTORY Excerpt from The Hands and Feet of Jesus (www.handsandfeetbook.com) House of Faith began as a move of God. It was not something anyone set out to do. Rather, it was the Lord moving through the simple obedience of people who sought to be his hands and feet. He started sowing the seeds for this ministry years before it began through different people, in different ways and in different areas. It is all something the Lord Himself put into place. We strongly identify with the Apostle Paul when he said in 1 Corinthians 3:7: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” During the fall months of 1993 the Lord was working in the heart of Rachel Beaver, a wife and stay at home mother of two. During this time, she was regularly talking with Kevin Reynolds about what he was seeing in his work at Juvenile Probation. The brokenness of kids and families, the ongoing tragedies being played out in the lives of so many who did not know the Lord, and the lack of any structure to communicate the spiritual truth so clearly lacking in their lives. As she was hearing about the experiences with so many broken kids and broken families at Juvenile Probation, she was also hearing songs on the Christian radio that would talk about being the hands and feet of Jesus. Each time she would hear those songs she would be moved to tears. With every passing week, Rachel’s heart was being moved more deeply. She felt the Lord was trying to show her something but had no idea what it was. She was sure it had to do with kids, but that was it. She and her husband Bob were involved in a small group at their church, and that group began to pray with them about this burden. There was a ladies’ Bible study group she attended who prayed with her as well. Those seeds were some of the most significant ones, as it was clear the Lord was setting things into motion. There was one song, Arms Around the World [1], by the Gaither Vocal Band that moved her especially. Over the next month and a half, everything became more and more intense for Rachel, and there were more and more tears as well. One day, while she was alone in the kitchen stirring ground meat, that song came on the radio again. Rachel began sobbing uncontrollably to the point she could hardly function, and she knew she could not keep going like that. She turned off the stove, went into her living room, fell down on her face before God and cried out, “Lord, whatever it is I have to know—I’m ready.” In that moment she gave it to God and felt a huge sense of release. While she was driving some days later, the Lord gave her a vision. She saw a building, and in this building were several rooms. As she stood in a big hallway, kids were going past her to one room while others were passing her going another direction. To the right there was another room with parents involved in parenting classes. The vision was overwhelming; it meant a facility and all that comes along with one, such as finances to acquire and maintain it, the people to staff it, as well as a budget and the various programs. Again, it was so big and almost too much for her to grasp, and she felt ill. A couple of days later, while reading to her son Benjamin, the Lord gently spoke to her and said, “You don’t start there, you start in one backyard.” In that moment Rachel had a tremendous sense of peace. As she shared this revelation with her husband Bob and my wife Robin and me, we realized that one backyard was something we could do. Kevin was still working full-time at the Probation Department, while Rachel was a stay-at-home mom and as such, her schedule allowed for many opportunities to talk with different people in the community about the needs and what all was out there for kids. They thought that maybe they were supposed to get involved in something already going on. They would talk together about all these things daily, and the four of them (Rachel, Bob, Robin and Kevin) would often get together in the evenings to pray. Rachel spoke to a lot of people and concluded that many activities were available for kids in the community, but, outside of church, there was nothing that incorporated the gospel. And even most of the church programs were not being attended by the kids that Kevin was seeing at Juvenile and others the Lord was placing on their hearts. They knew there were many individual churches doing things within their own walls, but as far as they could tell, no one was reaching out to unchurched and at-risk kids with the gospel in their own neighborhoods. Rachel ended up in the barrio talking with a pastor, trying to find out if he thought there was a need to work with the kids in that area. He said that he thought so and sent her to an early childhood center near Rio Vista Elementary School. She was excited about talking with someone who worked with neighborhood kids, but when she got there she was told they were only working with the elderly at the time. As she was leaving, she asked if there was anyone in the neighborhood who worked with kids. The woman pointed to a house across the street and suggested she talk to them because they sometimes took kids to church. Thinking it couldn’t hurt; she went over and knocked on the door. It was the home of Lupe and Gloria Mata, a godly young couple with a baby son living in what had once been a nunnery (a convent for nuns where many seeds of prayer had surely been sown years before). Rachel had barely begun explaining that we were interested in working with the kids in the area when Gloria, who had answered the door, said, “You can use my yard.” The next few moments were an awkward silence while they both just sort of stared at each other. Rachel was stunned, as she had not even thought about asking that question. Sometime later we found out that six or so months earlier someone else had come to the Matas’ house asking to use their yard for a Backyard Bible Club (still more seeds). After talking and praying about it, Gloria and Lupe had decided they would let them. However, that person never came back. Naturally, when Gloria met Rachel at her door, she assumed that was who we were, and since they had already talked about it and decided to allow it, she said we could use her yard. During their evening meetings they prayed together, asking for God to open the doors if this was of him, and if not, that he would close them tightly. The next few weeks were a flurry of activity as they met almost nightly to pray and plan. It was as if all the doors we approached just started flying open, and everything came together. As they began to get clear instruction from the Lord, they started to write it all down. The Lord gave them a verse during this time in Habakkuk 2:2: Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. They did just that; then things really began to happen. The plans and notes that were written during those few weeks have been a guiding force behind the ministry until this day and still serve as a reminder of the original mandate from the Lord. They began the process of setting up a non-profit corporation and felt very strongly that the Lord was leading them to organize the ministry independently from any one church. This would help people understand it as a kingdom endeavor rather than something a certain church was doing. Earlier the Lord had simply laid on Rachel’s heart to call it “House of Faith.” A short time later he laid on Kevin’s that the mission would be to, “Take JESUS to neighborhood children, youth, and families.” In no time they had a logo, purpose statement, goals, ideas and lesson plans. They strongly believed that if this was of God, then he would bring others alongside, so they got a P.O. Box and a checking account under the name “House of Faith.” At first there was no one to send them anything, so they would actually mail things to themselves just to have the excitement of receiving mail in the House of Faith box. Everywhere they went and everyone they talked to were potential targets for their message. Kevin wrote hundreds of letters to anyone and everyone they could think of who might be interested in what they were doing. Most never responded but slowly the Lord drew together a support base that remains faithful to this day and still continues to steadily grow. It is made up of people who share the passion of reaching at-risk kids with the gospel of Jesus Christ—being his hands and feet to neighborhood children, youth and families. All of those who were there the first day will never be the same, although in many ways it was just another ordinary day in the barrio. For the kids in the neighborhood, it was just another Tuesday after school a couple of weeks past Christmas break. Two weeks earlier they had placed a big yellow sign in the Matas’ yard, built and painted to look like the House of Faith logo. The Mata home and therefore, the sign, were directly across the street from a footbridge over a highway used by every student from that neighborhood who attended the nearby elementary school. Lupe told them later that he agreed to the sign and even to them using his yard because he thought their ministry would only last a short while. He was sure they would get tired and lose interest, and at first, he didn’t really think they would get much of a response from the kids in his neighborhood. Twelve years is a long time when you think someone is only going to stay a few weeks. He has since become a firm believer in HOF, even to the extent of having done regular visitation in his neighborhood and serving on the Board of Directors. Early Monday evening, the day before the first meeting, they gathered together a few volunteers at the Mata home to pray and canvas the neighborhood with flyers. They we went to every house within a six block area of the Mata home, they always pointed out the colored logo on the flyer and asked the kids if they had seen that sign on their way to school. All the kids they talked to had seen it, and they invited them to stop by on their way home from school the next day. Many said that they would come. A few of the kids came running, wanting to get there first, while others just watched as they started to walk by. They were trying to figure out what was happening. After a few games, everyone was invited everyone to stay for a Bible lesson and snacks. Not knowing where they were in their understanding of spiritual truth, combined with not knowing if any who had come would ever come back, the HOF crew wanted to teach everything they thought they needed to hear in the very first lesson. They started with Genesis and went all the way to Revelation in about seven minutes flat. It was decided that Rachel would teach the lesson while Bob and Kevin worked the crowd dealing with whatever discipline problems arose. Their job was to help them focus if necessary. Robin and others prepared the craft and snack supplies in another part of the yard. The question heard most was, “Are you going to come back?” Every week they would ask, for months. But no one asks anymore, they just know. Once all the kids had left, they gathered together to take a breath and thank the Lord. The original plan of spending three weeks in one location and then moving on to another was not going to wash. All of the plans had changed - the Lord was moving. He would soon do something across our whole city and beyond. The original plans included nine weeks of “field tests.” There were to be three Backyard Bible Club meetings on the same day of the week in the same yard each week for three weeks in a row. After the three weeks at one site, plans were to move on to a new location and repeat the process. But after that first day, they realized that this just would not work. No one had the heart to tell the kids they were not coming back after only two more weeks. They had been praying for the Lord to bring workers for the site in the Mata’s yard, thinking at first he would bring them to take over so thet could move on to the next. Those three weeks turned into three months, and then five. Somewhere along the way, the realization came that they had absolutely fallen in love with these kids, with this yard, and with the idea of taking Jesus to this neighborhood. That original group of sixty-three kids fluctuated between forty and eighty each week, and they had become a huge and important part of everyone’s lives. They were praying about the other two sites and felt strongly impressed in regard to two other areas. Since they were now meeting after school on Thursdays (switching from Tuesdays because it was easier for some of the volunteers), they laid Tuesdays and Wednesdays before the Lord each time they prayed. With doors still opening everywhere they turned, they were approached by two women who had heard about what they were doing in the barrio. One lived near another school and wanted to do something in her yard on Tuesdays. The other had a real heart for the kids in yet another area, and Wednesday was the best day for her. One particularly amazing story about the starting of a new Backyard Bible Club concerns an area we had been praying over for some time. Late one evening Rachel just knew it was time to move. In classic Rachel style, she just drove by herself to the house, went through the gate, up to the door, and rang the bell. The house was dark except for a light at the back end of the hallway and she could see this silhouette of a man through the glass loom larger and larger as he approached the door. When he opened the door, she was slightly taken back. He was a big, gruff-looking guy with a bit of an imposing look and air about him. She briefly thought about turning and walking away but decided to just trust God and chance it, going through with her little prepared speech. She told this guy her name and explained that she was with a street ministry called House of Faith, targeting neighborhood children considered at-risk, and that she was scouting out possible sites for Backyard Bible Clubs. The man just kept staring at her as she talked, kind of squinting slightly, almost like he was not really listening. When she finished, he just stood there for awhile without saying a word. Finally, after a few awkward moments, he called to his wife to join him at the door. When she got there he said, “She’s the one; she was there. I recognize her eyes.” This man had been having a recurring dream and had been telling his wife about it. In this dream, he was standing at their upstairs window looking down into their yard. There were kids playing, and Rachel was there, too. She has very unique and striking green eyes, and he recognized her by them. After relating this to Rachel, they said that, yes, she could use their yard. She started to suggest they consider and pray about it, but they kept insisting this was the right thing to do. The Lord had prepared the way again. There is a story with every site that has been started. This really is something the Lord has put together. The one site became three, and then the three became six and so on. Eventually there were weekly neighborhood outreach sites in the form of Backyard Bible Clubs at eleven elementary schools that. For the first two years of the HOF ministry, they tried to keep the same schedule during the summer months as during the school year. This made for some really hot days in the yards, for one thing. And for another, attendance always went down. When we saw kids who had missed and asked them about it, they would comment that they hadn’t realized it was, as they called it, “House of Faith day.” Even if they did remember the day, they simply had no grasp of what time it was, and so they missed. It’s not that the kids were any less interested, but rather, they were just being kids and doing what kids do in the summer, where one day runs into the next, and you just play all day long until it’s time to come in. Without the structure and schedule of the school day, it was difficult to keep a Backyard Bible Club going at the same level. And that doesn’t even factor in family vacations and trips. In these neighborhoods there are many families with extended family members in other parts of the state and even Mexico. Kids are always telling about trips to see their aunts and uncles or grandmas and grandpas. Low attendance was just one of the reasons they started praying and looking for other options to put into place during those summer months. Two options that have proven very successful are summer overnight and sports camps. Back