Jr. Youth is Praying for You!

Jr Youth is Praying for You

                Happy Spring to North Shore.  Hope you are all enjoying the warmer weather (it could still be another 10 to 15 degrees ) as much as I am.  I wanted to inform you all that the Jr Youth group is joining with the Wednesday night prayer group to pray for our weekly prayer requests.  Well to be fair we only join with them in Spirit but never the less they pray for you.  Each week North Shore prints out the weeks prayer request and on Wednesday night the 5:30 prayer group prays through it.  The past couple weeks, the Jr Youth has joined during our weekly meeting.  We also take the prayer sheet and praying through the names and the requests put on the sheet.  Each youth is encouraged to pray out load for the people mentioned on the sheet.  I am really excited to be a part of this awesome development. 

                I am thankful that I got a chance to preach on Palm Sunday.  As you know I preached on the importance of reading scripture regularly.  As such in Jr we are going through the book of 1 John for 5 to 6 weeks.  We will read it together and they are encouraged to read at home as well.

                As for the senior youth group it seems to be movie season.  A couple weeks ago we went to see the feature film “God’s Not Dead”.  I encourage any who like movies to give this one a try.  This coming Friday we are seeing “Heaven is For Real”.  This movie is based off of the best selling book by the same name.  It is also the season where our soon to be graduates will be completing their final semester of high school and making final preparations for this next huge stage in there life.  Please keep them all in your prayers.  The soon to be graduating students are Crystal Graziano, Shyann Hoffman, Marcy Pearson, Kaitlyn Schomer and Johnny Kopsi.  Please encourage them if you get the chance.

                Finally please pray for me and the youth ministry in general because as I related on Palm Sunday we have our work cut out for us so that our youth stay close to Jesus as they leave high school and move on to the next stage of life. I also want to say THANK YOU for allowing me to lead worship with the youth a few Sundays back.  The youth love to worship and were so excited to lead up front.  We pray you were blessed.

Until the Word all hears,

Michael Casale

Unspeakable Joy

Unspeakable Joy

            Did you know that in the Old Testament God instituted at least nine different feasts or holidays that the children of Israel where commanded to follow. Each of these feasts were established to commemorate a major moment in Israel’s history when it comes to her relationship with God.  The really interesting and fun part is that these feasts were in fact feasts.  They were actually parties to celebrate God’s covenant with His people.  The children of Israel were encouraged to enjoy themselves.  Well we may not be under the same covenant but God is still the same God and His ways to do not change.  God still encourages us to enjoy ourselves as we worship Him in all things.  In fact the celebration is a theme throughout the Bible.  We see this revealed in the New Testament with passages that describes this future party called the wedding supper of the lamb.  Even in the parable of the prodigal son, the father has a great big party to celebrate his son’s returns.  We are commanded throughout scripture to rejoice in the Lord always.  The Bible also testifies that the Joy of the Lord is our strength.  The point here is that we are called and even honored to have joy in our lives.  This is the message that I am excited, to teach our youth about.  Too often many in our western society view church goers as boring and bland.  This opinion is also held by many young people in our culture.   Please pray with me these next couple months as I attempt to take our youth threw a Biblical journey of the Joy of the Lord.  It is my goal that this young generation understands and experience the Joy of the Lord.  Those who have His Joy are rarely content with anything the world has to offer because it pales in comparison to the joy of the Lord.  This March 30^th you have the opportunity to see the joy of the Lord on the faces of some of our youth as they lead the church in worship.  As I close I would love to leave you with this final thought… “Seriousness is not a fruit of the spirit, but joy most defiantly is.”  I encourage you to ponder that thought these next couple weeks as you walk with the King and experience His Unspeakable Joy.

God Bless

Michael Casale

Youth Director North Shore Church

February ELEVATE

Greetings North Shore Church. I am praising God right now and want to tell you why.

This past Wednesday (Feb 26th) night we took part in a youth gospel assembly at Marinette High School. I was given the privilege to work with Pastor Mike from Calvary Temple, Marinette and Pastor Tim from Faith Baptist, Peshtigo to bring regional youth speaker Jason Moupin to our area. After 2 days of speaking at 3 different high schools during class time, we promoted a youth rally where the gospel was going to be preached. As you can see by the pictures above it was packed as over 300 people came. I, with some help, brought 75 pizzas that were all eaten, not one slice left. We had worship and Jason was able to preach the gospel. 

At the end of the night nearly 85 % of those in the attendance came forward to renewal there faith in Christ or bow the knee to Him for the first time. I know many of you have been praying for this night and your prayers were answered big time. In the days and weeks to come, I will be meeting with Tim and Mike to go over the follow up cards in order to contact all those youth and hook them up with one or more of our youth groups. Maybe even get the families coming to church. Please continue to pray for this part of the process as we do not want this just to be a great religious experience but a night of life transformation. This will only happen with discipleship. We need your prayers. Not only did many hear the gospel and seeds were planted but 3 churches came together for one of the biggest community reaches in the area. I am so humbled by what the Lord is doing.

 Youth Lock-in (few of the youth)

On Friday the 21st senior youth had a lock in. I encouraged the youth to bring a friend. We ended up having a bunch of new faces which we hope to continue to see back at Elevate. We had pizza, played games, did a short bible study and some worship. It was a long night that lasted into the morning but fun was had by all. Please join me in praying for the new youth to continue to come and learn what it means to follow Christ.

Jr. youth is growing!!! Many of them came to the assembly. I am excited to see their hearts. Every week they are excited about worship and what songs we are going to sing. As you know worship has a great spot in my heart too so it so awesome to see them love Jesus this way. Three of the girls( Abby Fendryk, Nia Lebrun and Morgan Owens) have all wrote lyrics to worship songs. We actually have been singing them the past couple weeks at Jr. Youth. Its a pleasure to see those who are so young get excited and passionate about Jesus. I have been teaching on prayer and with the help of my wife Christy we got each of the youth a prayer journal. I'm blessed by the hearts of these young people. They have been praying each week for the nations, our community and for personal things. We have been leaving time for testimonies and its been awesome to see these prayers answered. In blogs to come I will post lyrics to the songs and testimonies.

Thank you all for the prayers. God is doing a work in this next generation and my wife and I are happy to be a part of serving at North Shore where we are starting at young ages teaching the bible, helping plant vision, purpose, destiny, and truly how to follow Christ into the lives of our youth.

May the Lord Bless you,

Mike Casale

God is LOVE - Elevate Youth

Hello North Shore Church,

I pray the New Year is finding you drawing closer to God.  In this time of extreme cold we can rely on the constant love and warmth of the almighty.  Remember God is Love.  This is the primary message I am praying and hoping to convey to the youth group.  It is not a warm and fuzzy type of love or a love that is based on feelings and emotion, but an unconditional love that God has willed towards us.  Love is the most overused word in the English language.  We say we love our families and at the same time love hot dogs.  Unfortunately this leaves many especially our young ones with many misconceptions about the true nature of love.  To begin to illustrate and teach this point I taught both youth groups this week out of John 21.  This is the passage where Jesus asks Peter (three times) if he(Peter) loves Him.  As many of you know the Bible(New Testament) was not written in English.  It wasn’t even written in the King’s English.  It was written in ancient Greek.  The Ancient Greek has three words for the word we translate as love.  The type of love that God loves us with is called Agape’.  I encourage you to look up the meaning of Agape’ and look up the meaning of the words Jesus and Peter used.  Anyway please pray that our kids will begin to understand the height depth and width of His Love.

 

The Junior youth group this past week had an opportunity to put love into action.  They were taught about poor children throughout the world, and encouraged to pray for them.  After a quick lesson we all took turns praying out loud for specific children in harsh situations around the world.  I was extremely blessed to hear their hearts while they prayed.  I am reminded that as a leader/pastor my primary purpose is not to teach but to equip.  They are the ministers.  Pray that I can always keep that truth in focus.

Finally this last weekend marks the youth retreat Disciple Now.  This year we have eight Senior Youth group members who went.  It is a retreat put on by Faith Baptist with the help from a ministry team from Georgia.  I hope to get a few testimonies out to you in the next week or so.

Please continue to pray for our youth. God is really doing a work and thank you for being apart through your prayers.

Until the World Hears,

Mike Casale