Pastors Ken Keith and Wade Peltier join Pastor Walton this week to talk about ministry opportunities for children and teens this summer at Harvest.
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Episode transcript:
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these 25 minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends in the ministry. We’d invite you to join us at Harvest Baptist Church this week. We’re transitioning to one service during the summer months, which will be at 10 AM.
At that time, we’ll still have Japanese and Korean translation. That’s during the 10 AM service this week. Please join us. You could also join us via livestream at hbcguam.org, hbcguam.org. This week, we’re back in our series, just keep walking, how to live a refreshing Christian life, this week from Colossians 2 6 through 15.
Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming pastor Gary Walton. Hi, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey. Hafa Chris. Yeah. This is the last week of this little short I think it’ll be a 5 week series when we finish this week. Just walking through one chapter each in, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.
We spent a couple weeks in the chapter in Ephesians. But talking about this idea of spiritual growth and how do I change and, specifically on this topic, how to live a refreshing Christian life. Not just a Christian life, but God desires that our life would truly be filled with his blessing and that we would grow and change in a process of becoming more like him. And so, the the subtitle of the series is just keep walking. And, Colossians 2, brings us back to that idea.
It’s been pretty cool. This week, I had a couple of people talk about, you know, after the service, some of the things that God was doing in their life and a reminder to them that, you know, sometimes along the spiritual path, the spiritual journey, we can stumble and maybe even, fall away. And the call of Jesus is that we can get back up. We don’t quit. We don’t stop, but we can get back up and we keep walking.
And as we do that, we can be faithful to the end, and that’s that’s our prayer. And, we would love to have you come and join us. It’ll be a great week together in the word and fellowshipping together. This is the transition week for us to one service through the summer months. A couple of months, we try to cram everybody into the auditorium at one time And, so that’s going to begin this Sunday.
It’ll be a great Sunday together. We’d like to invite you to come. It’s actually a transition for us to summer ministries in a number of different areas, including, it’s it’s exciting. We’ve kind of finished up this last week of the the rest of the school year, our college, our academy. And as that was wrapping up, we had a team of, students, college students coming in to begin preparation for a summer of ministry.
And so I’m really glad to have, pastor Ken Keith, pastor Wade Peltier here. They’re overseeing, summer ministries and a lot of different parts of it. And we just want to talk about that together. So first of all, welcome to you guys.
Ken Keith: Great to be here.
Thank you.
Gary Walton: You both have a background in camping. I was thinking about that. Back in the day, both of you, Ken, what’s your sort of camping history?
Ken Keith: So I spent my time at Northland Baptist College which had a camp also, Northland Camp and Conference Center. Actually, my minor was in camp administration, so been a key part in a wide variety of areas in camp which served me well to being in a wide variety of camp, here in the unique opportunities we have on island. Yeah. When you came, your role was specifically to begin and run summer camp ministries and and which has continued to be be the role. We just added a
Gary Walton: bunch of other pieces over the time.
Ken Keith: Yeah. Yeah. I we came out originally back in 2,005 and, we had just finished Harvest had just finished a church camp. 2004, 2005 was a first, really step into what we see more of today. Marty Herron, the pastor at the time, obviously he was a massive camp guy.
He was the director of the camp there at Northland and one of the vice presidents of the college for a long time. So he wanted he saw the tool of camp and how effective it was, nothing on the island. In fact, we were in the first junior overnight camp ever to happen on the island of Guam that we knew of. Mhmm. And, it was interesting.
It was, it shook the community a little bit. They’re like, you want our kids to spend the night? We’re like, it’s safe. It’s great. And we started with a few and some parents are literally sleeping in the parking lot just to make sure their kids were okay to now, we’ve got, as Wade has started taking over over a 100 kids some summers coming out for the for the junior camp.
So it’s awesome to see you guys use the camp to reach out to this island in a wide variety of ways.
Gary Walton: That’s interesting. Just last week, I met with somebody, a dad, and, is a has a 6th grade son. He said, I brought my my son to camp for the first time last year. I had no idea it was overnight.
Ken Keith: Yeah.
Gary Walton: And he said the first night was pretty hard, me and mom. But we found out actually, what he said was I really in that week, I kind of learned that I could trust the Harvest team. And so that was really good for my son and some things that initiated, but it’s actually good for us to see that. So Yep. Even now that’s unusual.
Wade, you 2 have, camp background. Right?
Wade Peltier: Yeah. And, Ken, I’ll actually one up your your minor in camping. I have a full degree in camp ministry.
Gary Walton: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Wade Peltier: Which I always have to explain that a little bit. It it’s basically a youth ministry degree. It’s very, very comparable to that. But, yeah, I had studied that in school, but then also got the hands on experience working at the Wilds Christian Camp in North Carolina and several other camps here and there, around the country and around the world. How many years were you at the Wilds?
6 full summers and a couple years, full time there as well.
Gary Walton: Okay. Yeah. And then, Ken, you and Sam came out here in a couple different stints. Wade, you spent some time not here, but overseas before God brought you back here to Guam. Right?
Wade Peltier: Yeah. That’s right. My wife and I spent 3 years in Hong Kong. And, yeah, each summer we’d run a a youth camp out there as well. It was a tremendous opportunity for the the kids there.
And, we were able to bring several kids from across the border and mainland China over as well. It’s an awesome time. Wow.
Gary Walton: That’s cool. Well, Well, there is a lot of things that are happening this summer. Ken, maybe you could start us kinda just walking through some of the opportunities beginning next week and then the camp, opportunities later on.
Ken Keith: Yeah. So we have, a wide variety of opportunities this summer. We have our cool school program, which is an educational based day camp. So in the morning, we’re kinda helping the students refine what they learned the previous year, retain a little bit of what they learned the previous year, keep their mind sharp and active. And then in the afternoon, we do a lot of traditional day camp camp activities from arts and crafts, to activity time and we have some games and fun times there to some singing time and then we have some field trips on and off campus.
It’s just a it’s a great time. Limited space available for that right now. But if you’re at all interested, you know, stop by. We’ve got that going on. We’ve got an international camper kids from all over the Asia Pacific come in, and they’re able to learn English in the morning and then they integrate with our our English speaking camps in the afternoon.
So they get some immersion in there. So that’s an awesome opportunity. We’ve got sports clinics, that that’ll happen a couple of the weeks, coming up. Some art activities that Brandon Pegarido is doing to some, church activities. We’ve got a big heart for Christ teen activity, coming up and some hikes coming up.
So it’s just a wide variety of opportunities this summer, very active. So if you’re looking for something for your kid, pretty much from k 4 up through really college age, because we’ve got some stuff for them too, please, let us know. We really do have a lot of opportunities happening this summer and it’ll all come to a close at the end of the summer, at the 1st week of July. And, the week of July 1, we have our teen camp where we have all of our teens come and they actually spend the night. We’ve got a speaker, Jeff Fain coming out.
Who’s not, not unknown to the island of Guam and harvest in particular. He’s coming out and, we got a lot of fun activities, a lot of exciting things happening, and then followed by our junior camp, which which Wade will do.
Gary Walton: Let me back up just for a minute. You mentioned Cool School, is a day camp. And, we, we do have a few opportunities there. But it I mean, every summer, it’s packed out. People wanna be part of it.
There’s a waiting list. But we’ve got a few spots still. Right?
Ken Keith: We do. Especially in the 5th and 6th grade. So if you got that 5th and 6th grader and they’re floating out there, you’ve got pretty much just the two ends of the spectrum. The the k 4 k 5, we’ve got some space and then the 6th, 5th and 6th grade, few, few spaces left, but, yeah, we do have some waiting lists, unfortunately, for the middle, But, really, it’s a testament. We’ve got great staff come out.
We’ve got college students that come from the states. We’ve got, quite a few of our handfuls handful of our full time staff that are here on on island that keep and maintain the quality that that everyone knows and loves about harvest. The the off island kids, man, they bring the excitement and the energy and it turns into just an awesome, awesome summer of activities and fun.
Gary Walton: Let’s talk about staff for a minute because I agree with you. I I mean, I the program’s fantastic. I’ll maybe ask some more questions about that at the end. Just really a fantastic program. But, I think the strength and the significant benefit is the staff that we have.
Wade, you lead a group of HBBC kids, you know, kind of our HBBC team that’s all summer involved in all kinds of different things.
Wade Peltier: Yeah. These are our own, Harvest Baptist Bible College students. We have a team of 4 this summer. 2 guys and 2 girls who are staying on through the summer and being all in with ministry. They’re helping out in some little ways with Cool School, but they’ll be helping with our Vacation Bible School program, helping with the summer camps and really just doing other ministry in the community whether Bible clubs with kids in some neighborhoods or reaching out to, some church members in need of some help around the home, different ways that they’ll be plugged in.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It’s a cool opportunity for them. I always love that, training, equipping for them. But, yeah, very significant impact too. And then Ken, we’ve got, I think, 17 college students for stateside.
Ken Keith: We do. We have 17, that are here. We’ve got a couple different unique internships through some of our facilities department and then harvest house. We’ve got an intern who’s helping out with all of the activities this summer. Then we have 4 that are part of our, international camp and the remainder are part of our Cool School.
And all of them come together at Harvest Baptist Church and and do many outreaches, kids, children’s, teens, harvest house events, young pros, helping and engaging in the, in those different ministries. So the team, we just, I mean, I just got done, with training with them. We’ve got a couple more days of it, but, just a phenomenal team. God has again blessed us with. They’re excited.
Their hearts are excited to to interact with the kids. They love the Lord and they wanna make a difference eternally in the lives of those they interact with, this summer.
Gary Walton: Them coming is a reminder to us that a year ago, we, they were ready to come, actually getting on flights, starting to get on flights when little typhoon kind of seemed to come over our island.
Ken Keith: Yeah. We have 4 who are returners this year and we were just talking about that at lunch and, yeah. The, some of them took multiple flights. There was an airline, we won’t name the airline, that they were getting on a flight and I told them don’t get on the flight. I said there our our airport’s closed and the people where they were at said no, the airport’s open, you’ll fly right in.
And this was one day for those who are listening, one day after the typhoon And I said, don’t get on the plane. And then the, people at the desk said, you don’t have a choice. You either cancel your ticket or get on this plane. So they got on the plane. They flew to Houston.
Houston said, what are you doing here? Guam’s not going to be open for another week. And they flew him right back. So that was some of the stories. But, man, God, we are very thankful.
We did a little Thanksgiving circle, last night. Just what are things we’re thankful for in a couple of our returners mentioned air con and power. So
Gary Walton: Yeah. Because just like everybody else here, we had them staying in dorms with no no electricity, no air cons. And they’re not tough islanders like, you know, the rest of us. They
Ken Keith: no. Actually, they were fantastic. They really did. They honestly, they did phenomenal. It was awesome.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Wade, you mentioned, VBS, Vacation Bible School. Can you give us the dates for that and, you know, a little bit of summary?
Wade Peltier: Sure. Yeah. We have a vacation bible school, coming up, starting on June 17th. It runs Monday through Thursday that week in the evenings. So 6:30 to 8 o’clock each evening.
And it’s designed for those that are going into 1st all the way up through 6th grade, coming up this next school year. So elementary ages, it’s going to be a fantastic time. This year we have a theme Mission Deep Sea. So this fun underwater theme, underwater exploration, that goes into a bunch of games and activities. But we’re also talking about our faith going deeper as well.
So we’ll have a lesson from God’s word each night. And one of those nights we’ll specifically look at how we need to trust in Jesus to have that starting faith, and what that is. So opportunity to spread the gospel. We’ll also be having a competition going on so our own kids will not want to miss it where they can earn points each night by saying verses and big points for bringing visitors, kids that have never come here before. So they’ll want to be inviting their friends and have a blast in that vacation bible school.
Gary Walton: Yeah. I mean, our burden ministry burden is that, young people when their hearts are still are so tender, they would hear about Jesus, would know about his love for them, would give their hearts to him at a early age. And so, yeah, any opportunities that we can have to express the the truth of the fact that Jesus loves them, that he died for them, that he wants to give them a life of, meaning and purpose. Yeah. We wanna communicate that to kids.
They’re old enough to understand and give their hearts to Jesus. So thankful for the team that does that. We’d like to invite, you know, if you’re listening or if you know of people that that, family members and friends and neighbors, we’d love to have you come and join. It’ll be a great week, together. Ken, there’s some teen opportunities too, through the summer.
I know pastor Noah, our our youth pastor, student priest pastor is not here, but couple things going on teen wise. Can you just at least update us?
Ken Keith: Yeah. No. We, starting, next Tuesday 4th, we’ll have an open court that’s open for any of our teens that happens from 7 to 9. And it’s an open court in our gymnasium. We have a great time together.
Everything from volleyball, basketball, little futsal. We’ve got 9 Square. If you don’t know what that is, your your teens will tell you. Long line for that all the time. But just a time, to get to know some of, our our staff here.
Obviously, pastor Noah and Nikki are gonna be there and the team will be there. So plenty of safety, plenty of fun, that’ll be happening. And then like I said, we have some different activities all throughout, the summer, some hikes and, some different activities that pastor Noah is working on. And then at the end of the summer, as I mentioned earlier, they’re kind of the crown jewel. It’s a little bit in the middle of summer.
Summer does go on. We do have open court all the way through the month of July, but, kind of our the crown of the of the summer and what we look forward to and what teens have already been telling me they’re looking forward to is our our teen camp, which again is that 1st week in, in July. It’ll happen from Monday to, Saturday. They’ll get dropped off at 3 in the afternoon on Monday 1st and they’ll go all the way through till the morning of 6th, which is that Saturday. And during that time, obviously a safe and fun environment, but we’ll be challenging them with the word both, as cabins and as a whole under the preaching.
We’ll be praising the Lord through song. We’ll be playing a lot of awesome fun games that you’ll only find on this island at our camp. Mhmm. We got a new laser tag system we used last year, which is does does great. We got climbing wall.
We’ve just got, we got some jet skis that we’ll take out and we’ll enjoy that together. It’s just an all around clean, fun, safe environment where they’re gonna be challenged spiritually, and our desire is they walk away taking another step spiritually in their journey.
Gary Walton: And you mentioned pastor Jeff. Jeff Fain
Wade Peltier: Mhmm.
Gary Walton: Will be here as the camp speaker for both weeks. Pastor Jeff was here before on staff. A lot of people Yes. Now graduates know him, love him.
Ken Keith: Mhmm. He’s
Gary Walton: been pastoring in Kentucky. Right?
Ken Keith: Yeah. Outside outside of Kentucky. Yep.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. So
Ken Keith: Cincinnati. Actually, yes. In in Kentucky, outside Cincinnati. It’s, like, right on the border. It’s right on the border there.
Gary Walton: Okay. Yeah. So they’re he’s gonna be here. Mhmm. He communicates, connects well with kids and teens.
Yes. And, it’ll just be an opportunity for, you know, teens to hear the word again in a way that I think it will be expressed compellingly and passionately. So, yeah, we’re looking forward to all that together. Wade, any more details on the 2nd week, the junior week of camp? Tell us about that.
Wade Peltier: Yeah. I think that’s, June or July 8th. We’re starting our junior camp. It is an overnight camp that, goes all week long. Fantastic time.
I think it’s for rising 3rd graders up through 6th grade, so kind of the older elementary group. There is a day camp option for parents that might not want their kids to be here overnight. They could pick them up before bedtime, drop them off at breakfast, but we really encourage the overnight option. It’s just a really unique experience for these kids in a safe, environment where they can have a blast, do so many fun activities, but also be challenged from God’s word daily.
Gary Walton: Pastor Jeff will be speaking there as well. Right? That’s correct. And, there’s a good group. We’ll have a hundred.
I don’t know what you’re gonna cap it at, but a 100 plus teens. And I don’t, you know, maybe not quite that many, but a lot. There’s a bunch of juniors.
Wade Peltier: I’ve had around a 100 junior campers here before as well.
Gary Walton: It’s a fun group. Yeah. It is. It’s a it’s a full campus.
Ken Keith: They’ll have
Gary Walton: a great time together. Mhmm. So why why why do we do all this? What’s kind of the goal of, of the the camps, but really the just summer ministries? What’s the goal with the camp teams?
Ken Keith: Yeah. That’s a great question. And we’ve, really since we’ve been out here, this was first, the vision was first shared to me by, Marty Herron, pastor Herron. It’s a time in the summer where there’s freedom, there’s there’s no school, there’s no structure and it’s an opportunity. We see it as an opportunity when our campus, you know, doesn’t have a 1,000 students roaming around.
We’ve got this massive facility, people who are wanting to get involved. And we saw why let it sit dormant for 2 months when God has given us such a great gift and opportunity to to utilize this campus and to to to maximize our summers, not kind of step back, spiritually. And so that began a process, which was always kind of pastor’s burden. And we were brought out to kind of help with that process because it was clear that help’s needed and, and pastor being pastor Harren being from a, from a Bible college and working with teens and college students coming to Northland Camp saw how we could not only bless the island, but we can actually bless those who are looking for ministry opportunities on the other side of the world. And so that was the seed bed of what we really have today.
And that was how can we take what God’s given us here and leverage that and use that for proactive ministry in a time when quite honestly, parents are looking for things for their kids to do. They’re, they’re looking for opportunities like this, where it’s it’s safe and fun and their kids could get some energy out, especially some of those 5th and 6th graders. Right. Get some energy out and and get that. And why not have a Christian environment where we can maximize those opportunities for the gospel and build relationships.
So we started bringing college students out and we have 2, we have a 2 fold goal, in our summers. We want to help any, we call them campers in the summer, you know, students in the school year, because it’s summer, we call them campers, but our desire is to help each campers take their next step spiritually. So whether they’re coming to a court night, whether they’re coming to a teen activity, whether they’re coming to cool school, international camp, any of the camps, we want them wherever they’re at to take another step spiritually this summer, if not more than 1, but we want them to take some steps spiritually in the summer. So we started bringing in the summer camp to help or the summer team to help us. So one was to accomplish that goal.
And then the other goal was how can we invest in the next generation of servant leaders coming out this way? And so we started investing in the different team members who would come out these college students. And what’s awesome is over the years I’ve been doing this. I think the last count, I know, I don’t remember the last count, but it was over 35 full time staff have come out because of the team. I was just talking to
Wade Peltier: Right.
Ken Keith: To to Hope, our our, one of our principals. And she said it was actually the summer. She wasn’t planning to come out, but she came out in the summer and that’s what God used to lead her here. Couple of the people helping us, with our summer, this, our full time staff helping us set the same thing. So God has allowed us to, to invest and some have gone on to other places and they just talk about how God used this cross cultural environment and the gospel opportunities and their abilities to interact with other cultures, which they hadn’t had before to make them better at what they’re doing.
So it’s pretty awesome how those are the 2 goals. We’ve got these 2 goals in summer help Each camper take another step spiritually and invest in the next generation of leaders. And and God has allowed us to be able to do that.
Gary Walton: Wade, the HBBC team and the summer team has integrated a lot of things, also other things doing separately. What kinds of things really are, you know, top of your mind for seeing invested in both of those groups?
Wade Peltier: For the HBBC team Yeah. Yeah. They’re, this is a great opportunity for them to see a lot of what we’re doing with these camps and VBS programs and be involved in it really from the the structure, the bones of it, putting they’re involved in helping put together the schedule. And really the purpose is that they would be able to go out and, replicate it all around. In fact, a couple of our team members are headed back to Yap as soon as our camps are over and immediately putting on some summer camps down there and, taking exactly what they’ve learned and going and doing it out in some other islands.
And so that’s really neat to see them gain this experience, gain, this knowledge and ability. It really stretches them in some ways. They will be pushed into the spotlight in some ways that they may not want to have. And it’s great to see the growth come out of that and then be able to use that in the future.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It is amazing to watch that particularly with those HBBC kids having to push push them and seeing them blossom and flourish, you know, in some cool ways. Well, we’ve been talking, today about a lot of kids ministry, teen kids ministry connected with others. But, we want you to know that ministry at harvest is a growing time. So, no matter where you are at in this stage of life, there’s opportunities for you to grow.
We talked earlier about the moving to one service, so a combined service on Sunday morning and, 10:10 am We’d like to invite you to that. But summer, I think for all of us, is a little bit of a change of pace, but it is full of opportunities for growing in your faith. So don’t go on vacation from your faith, because your spiritual enemy is not going on vacation.
So so don’t go on vacation from your faith. Actually, use this when the the pace changes for a lot of people. Use it as a time to invest in, in your spiritual life, your spiritual growth. And, man, we’d love to be part of it if we can help you. You can find out more information on our website.
You can call in to the office. If you got questions about any of the things that the guys have been talking about, today, how your kids can get involved or your Call us. We’ll make sure we get you the information, the specifics that you need. So thanks a lot to you guys, praying for God to bless these ministries. Yeah.
Thank you.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always wanna invite you again to our Sunday morning service at Harvest Baptist Church. We’re back to that one service during the summer hours. During the summer months, it’s at the 10 AM hour, 10 AM on Sunday morning. We’d love to see you there.
If you can’t join us, we do broadcast live here on 88.1 FM and on khmg.org, but we do hope to see you this Sunday at harvest. Thanks for listening to Harvest Time.