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Getting outside the walls
“I’d love to see him down here permanently,” says Bosetski, 47, who grew up in this neighborhood. “These kids need him. Right now, they’d be in the park with no adult influence at all. Those kids are best behaved when he’s here. They’re happy kids right now, just having fun.”
Now in his seventh year of running PowerLink with his wife, Amy, Karl says he has some frustration with area churches that don’t understand the need to look outside their four walls. And by his own admission, he harbors a passion for children’s ministry that sometimes borders on fierce.
“I try to carry myself nicely, but I have a little bit of a chip on me when someone tells me that kids don’t need Jesus or they don’t need church,” he says. “And that comes out of a lot of people who say they’re children’s advocates. That frustrates me.
“Some people think I’m so serious and I’m so stern, but that is my passion and my heart,” says Karl, who served as a pastor at three different churches before starting PowerLink. “Even before we began ministering to kids, we would see kids on the sidewalk and we would say, ‘I wonder if they know Jesus?’”
The ministry-in-a-truck, the food, the neighborhood events and the free school supplies and are all staples of what Karl and Amy believe churches should do more of—get outside their own four walls. The model is built on programs like Bill Wilson’s Sidewalk Sunday School, a ministry focused on teaching urban kids and their families the basics of Christianity.
For Karl and Amy, that means not waiting for someone to invite those kids to church. It means taking it to them: going door-to-door with fliers, putting on puppet shows, giving away T-shirts and doing simple Bible lessons.
Tonight’s lesson focuses on voices.
Using a portable stereo as a prop, Karl and PowerLink volunteer Patti Sturzl-Price talk to the kids about listening to the right voices around them. With that comes not listening to the wrong voices, whether they’re from the radio or TV or movies or games. Most nights, the lesson includes the Four Things, a kids’ version of the Four Spiritual Laws Gospel presentation.
And then, of course, come the games. First up tonight is the ol’ sponge relay: Two teams line up. The kids in front race to a 5-gallon bucket, fill their sponges, run back and squeeze out the sponges into a small bucket sitting at the front of the line. The team with the fullest bucket when time is called wins.
Tonight, everyone gets into it—moms, dads, big kids, little kids. And simple as they may seem, the games are a key to PowerLink’s success.
“The games are stupid—stupid as you can get,” Karl says with a big laugh. “What makes it fun is, it’s all hype. Sometimes you can get kids, they’re ready to rock and roll, all over a relay game carrying a banana.”
The games aren’t an end to themselves. They break up the PowerLink team’s object lessons and Bible stories into digestible pieces. And they give the team a chance to get the Gospel to kids and their parents at the same time.
“They can only swallow so much—church kids can swallow way more than these kids can,” Karl says. “It’s little bits and pieces along the way to making them want more.
“Sometimes the thing we have to rest on and trust in is that God’s going to take what we plant and He’s going to use it.”
Linda says she’d like the team to be a permanent fixture in her neighborhood because of the rapport they’ve built with the kids there.
“Karl’s got a good relationship with them,” Linda says. “He knows them, and they trust him. These kids … need an outlet. They need somebody they can talk to.”
Even though ministry events like tonight’s presentation have driven PowerLink thus far, the Steinbrincks see their own need for permanence, too. They’re already hosting basketball outreaches and discipleship times at a local church gym and have plans for a ministry center where PowerLink can host soccer and basketball programs and mentor kids who are serious about their faith in Christ.
“We’re getting to the point now where we’re having to change,” Karl says. “We’ve been very evangelistic, very much outside the walls. But we need to do a better job now of bringing kids in and discipling those few that really have the desire to go forward.”
As those plans progress, Karl remains focused on getting Christians in Green Bay connected to ministry. That can be as easy as throwing a football around with a few neighborhood guys.
“I believe in the simplicity of what we’re doing, and I believe in the simplicity of connecting other people to the ease of getting out and making a difference,” Karl says. “Some of these kids come from families who are just the nastiest families, but who need the Lord.”
Dennis Toyne, a PowerLink supporter, agrees.
“Many of these kids’ parents have swing shift work, and they’re not up and at ’em on Sunday morning,” says Toyne, the pastor at Cornerstone Family Church in the Green Bay suburb of Suamico. “Or, they’re out partying and they don’t even have their act together until 3. The lifestyle of the parents does not produce easy access for churchgoing. Karl’s mission, I think, is a noble one because he is going outside the church walls.”
PowerLink volunteer Kevin Lehto says delivering the Gospel simply to people where they live works.
“Karl is reaching people in their own environment,” says Lehto, 46, an electrical engineer from the Green Bay area. “And I think that’s what is critical, because people are more comfortable in their own neighborhood than they are within the confines of the church.”
Karl says that while it may seem fatalistic, his goal is to get the Gospel to young kids so that it can do its work when they’re young prisoners.
“Success for me is to be able to plant that seed in their life, so God can use it later. That’s planting a seed of hope. Some people say, ‘Is that worth your time?’ To me, without planting that seed, what hope is there?”
Getting outside the walls
PowerLink takes Gospel to kids on the street
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTOS
GREEN BAY, Wis.—Watch closely: The gray-haired guy with the microphone might be having more fun than the kids with the wet sponges.
The guy is Pastor Karl Steinbrinck, 50-year-old founder of PowerLink Ministries. And though he’s in charge of this evening’s children’s ministry gig, he maintains more of a moving role within it: Chatting with a young mother about free school supplies. Helping to set up a table of free food. Recruiting two snickering boys to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
As this evening’s rally starts up in Navarino Park, Karl plays his best carnival barker impersonation to the hilt.
“Hey, if you want hot dogs still, there’s a lot of hot dogs here,” he announces over the blare of Audio Adrenaline’s “Get Down.” “You guys just came? Come get some chips and hot dogs! I want you guys to get filled up! I do not want to take these hot dogs home!
“Also—hey girls, check me out on this—if you did not sign up for school supplies, if you want school supplies, come and see me right now. You’re not listening to me, but that’s all right. I just like the sound of my own voice. Hey, you guys want some hot dogs? Come and chow …”
Linda Bosetski looks at the kids running relay races in the park behind her house and gives an approving nod.
She likes it when the kids, some as young as 7 or 8, aren’t fighting and cussing each other out and hanging out until 9:30 at night with no grown-ups watching them.
Watching Karl work the crowd from his box truck’s mobile sound stage makes her wish he and his team came to her working-class neighborhood more often.
PowerLink takes Gospel to kids on the street
 | |
|
Karl Steinbrinck (right) shakes hands with a 10-year-old boy named Ricky at a PowerLink event at Navarino Park in Green Bay, Wis.
|
GREEN BAY, Wis.—Watch closely: The gray-haired guy with the microphone might be having more fun than the kids with the wet sponges.
The guy is Pastor Karl Steinbrinck, 50-year-old founder of PowerLink Ministries. And though he’s in charge of this evening’s children’s ministry gig, he maintains more of a moving role within it: Chatting with a young mother about free school supplies. Helping to set up a table of free food. Recruiting two snickering boys to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
As this evening’s rally starts up in Navarino Park, Karl plays his best carnival barker impersonation to the hilt.
“Hey, if you want hot dogs still, there’s a lot of hot dogs here,” he announces over the blare of Audio Adrenaline’s “Get Down.” “You guys just came? Come get some chips and hot dogs! I want you guys to get filled up! I do not want to take these hot dogs home!
“Also—hey girls, check me out on this—if you did not sign up for school supplies, if you want school supplies, come and see me right now. You’re not listening to me, but that’s all right. I just like the sound of my own voice. Hey, you guys want some hot dogs? Come and chow …”
Linda Bosetski looks at the kids running relay races in the park behind her house and gives an approving nod.
She likes it when the kids, some as young as 7 or 8, aren’t fighting and cussing each other out and hanging out until 9:30 at night with no grown-ups watching them.
Watching Karl work the crowd from his box truck’s mobile sound stage makes her wish he and his team came to her working-class neighborhood more often.
“Success for me is to be able to plant that seed in their life, so God
can use it later. To me, without planting that seed, what hope is
there?” - Karl Steinbrinck
“I’d love to see him down here permanently,” says Bosetski, 47, who grew up in this neighborhood. “These kids need him. Right now, they’d be in the park with no adult influence at all. Those kids are best behaved when he’s here. They’re happy kids right now, just having fun.”
Now in his seventh year of running PowerLink with his wife, Amy, Karl says he has some frustration with area churches that don’t understand the need to look outside their four walls. And by his own admission, he harbors a passion for children’s ministry that sometimes borders on fierce.
“I try to carry myself nicely, but I have a little bit of a chip on me when someone tells me that kids don’t need Jesus or they don’t need church,” he says. “And that comes out of a lot of people who say they’re children’s advocates. That frustrates me.
“Some people think I’m so serious and I’m so stern, but that is my passion and my heart,” says Karl, who served as a pastor at three different churches before starting PowerLink. “Even before we began ministering to kids, we would see kids on the sidewalk and we would say, ‘I wonder if they know Jesus?’”
The ministry-in-a-truck, the food, the neighborhood events and the free school supplies and are all staples of what Karl and Amy believe churches should do more of—get outside their own four walls. The model is built on programs like Bill Wilson’s Sidewalk Sunday School, a ministry focused on teaching urban kids and their families the basics of Christianity.
For Karl and Amy, that means not waiting for someone to invite those kids to church. It means taking it to them: going door-to-door with fliers, putting on puppet shows, giving away T-shirts and doing simple Bible lessons.
Tonight’s lesson focuses on voices.
Using a portable stereo as a prop, Karl and PowerLink volunteer Patti Sturzl-Price talk to the kids about listening to the right voices around them. With that comes not listening to the wrong voices, whether they’re from the radio or TV or movies or games. Most nights, the lesson includes the Four Things, a kids’ version of the Four Spiritual Laws Gospel presentation.
And then, of course, come the games. First up tonight is the ol’ sponge relay: Two teams line up. The kids in front race to a 5-gallon bucket, fill their sponges, run back and squeeze out the sponges into a small bucket sitting at the front of the line. The team with the fullest bucket when time is called wins.
Tonight, everyone gets into it—moms, dads, big kids, little kids. And simple as they may seem, the games are a key to PowerLink’s success.
“The games are stupid—stupid as you can get,” Karl says with a big laugh. “What makes it fun is, it’s all hype. Sometimes you can get kids, they’re ready to rock and roll, all over a relay game carrying a banana.”
The games aren’t an end to themselves. They break up the PowerLink team’s object lessons and Bible stories into digestible pieces. And they give the team a chance to get the Gospel to kids and their parents at the same time.
“They can only swallow so much—church kids can swallow way more than these kids can,” Karl says. “It’s little bits and pieces along the way to making them want more.
“Sometimes the thing we have to rest on and trust in is that God’s going to take what we plant and He’s going to use it.”
Linda says she’d like the team to be a permanent fixture in her neighborhood because of the rapport they’ve built with the kids there.
“Karl’s got a good relationship with them,” Linda says. “He knows them, and they trust him. These kids … need an outlet. They need somebody they can talk to.”
Even though ministry events like tonight’s presentation have driven PowerLink thus far, the Steinbrincks see their own need for permanence, too. They’re already hosting basketball outreaches and discipleship times at a local church gym and have plans for a ministry center where PowerLink can host soccer and basketball programs and mentor kids who are serious about their faith in Christ.
“We’re getting to the point now where we’re having to change,” Karl says. “We’ve been very evangelistic, very much outside the walls. But we need to do a better job now of bringing kids in and discipling those few that really have the desire to go forward.”
As those plans progress, Karl remains focused on getting Christians in Green Bay connected to ministry. That can be as easy as throwing a football around with a few neighborhood guys.
“I believe in the simplicity of what we’re doing, and I believe in the simplicity of connecting other people to the ease of getting out and making a difference,” Karl says. “Some of these kids come from families who are just the nastiest families, but who need the Lord.”
Dennis Toyne, a PowerLink supporter, agrees.
“Many of these kids’ parents have swing shift work, and they’re not up and at ’em on Sunday morning,” says Toyne, the pastor at Cornerstone Family Church in the Green Bay suburb of Suamico. “Or, they’re out partying and they don’t even have their act together until 3. The lifestyle of the parents does not produce easy access for churchgoing. Karl’s mission, I think, is a noble one because he is going outside the church walls.”
PowerLink volunteer Kevin Lehto says delivering the Gospel simply to people where they live works.
“Karl is reaching people in their own environment,” says Lehto, 46, an electrical engineer from the Green Bay area. “And I think that’s what is critical, because people are more comfortable in their own neighborhood than they are within the confines of the church.”
Karl says that while it may seem fatalistic, his goal is to get the Gospel to young kids so that it can do its work when they’re young prisoners.
“Success for me is to be able to plant that seed in their life, so God can use it later. That’s planting a seed of hope. Some people say, ‘Is that worth your time?’ To me, without planting that seed, what hope is there?”
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.