My Labor of Love

My Labor of Love It's been two years now since what would become New Disciples Ministry was formed. It all began with some conversations that I'd had with a couple of friends of mine. At the time, we were all looking for a little more from our walk with God than just going to church on Wednesdays and Sundays. I came up with the idea of a discussion group on Myspace. It was called 'New Diciples'. Yes, I accidentally left the 'S' out of the name. I created it on June 11th 2008. My friend Allen, who also designed our first profile layout, wrote a blog about the missing 'S' standing for the 'something' that was missing from our church lives. It all started to fall into place from there. Several of us began posting topics on the discussion group and leaving comments with our own views and so on. We also made a Myspace page under the same name and invited friends and family to join it. It all went pretty well for a while. In time though, people got busy with other projects, or with raising their families, or with their careers and activity pretty much died down to nothing. After about 5 months, it was down to pretty much just me being active. Then, God put something else on my heart to do with it. By this time, I had started teaching teen Sunday school at church. It was a very small church, so I didn't have a lesson plan to go by. I had to come up with the lessons myself. I was enjoying teaching and enjoying the traveling I was doing with our pastor at the time. The idea came to me to start an internet ministry. There was so much bad stuff floating around on the net, I figured why not turn it around and use it for some good. I saw that I already had the beginnings of my ministry right in front of me. So, on November 11th of 2008, I deleted the 'New Diciples' pages and made them again under the new name of 'New Disciples Ministry' and explained my idea to everybody. Some of my friends were like "That's great man!", while others were like "How's that gonna work?". I began posting my lessons I would teach my Sunday School class on the Myspace page's blog. It was getting a little bit of attention, but not too much. It was slow going and I was getting a little dejected. Then, I got up on Christmas morning 2008 and had a comment on one of the blogs I had written. A woman from San Francisco, CA had written that she was feeling down, but then she found the New Disciples profile and the images and writings on it had lifted her up and made her feel better. I felt such a warm feeling in my heart at that moment. I had stayed true to what the Lord had put on my heart and now I had proof that I had touched someone in a positive way. I knew I was hooked and was in it for the long haul after that. Since then, I purchased webhosting from Yahoo and put together www.newdisciplesministry.com, started the Facebook page, linked up the Myspace page with Twitter, and created several more Myspace pages. For a long time, it was just me working on all of it alone. Then, I got involved with a ministry called The Follow Me Tour. While on the tour I got to know a lot of good Christian people as we traveled NC, SC, VA, WV, and TN ministering to people and bringing Christian music artists with us. It was a great oppurtunity to spread the gospel and talk a little bit about New Disciples. It was also unusual for me, because all through life, I had always been so quiet and reserved. Public speaking was definitely something I had never liked until I started ministering. I met my friend Jason Stover on the tour and asked him if he was interested in working on the internet ministry with me and he accepted. Next, I got to know Jennifir Huston while on the tour as well. She also became a part of New Disciples. Along with them, my friend Allen contributed writings from time to time and my former fiance' and her son and daughter were helping me with it as well. Also, some of the guys from the tour and myself started a ministry in Statesville, NC called The Gathering that met on Sunday evenings. Everything was going great again! Then, everything started to go wrong. Support for The Gathering faded, so we ran out of funds and had to shut it down. Differences of opinion on some matters led me to leave the tour. This all happened right after Thanksgiving 2009. A few weeks later, the day after Christmas, my fiance' and I split up. I had lost a relationship of almost three years, a brotherhood of friends, and a ministry in a little over a month. At this point, it felt like God was the only thing in my life that was right. I kept on working on the ministry though. Even though I felt like I was dieing inside, I did my best to stay positive to everyone who was involved with New Disciples. I started rebuilding my life based more in my hometown of Lexington, NC. I rebuilt relationships with old friends and with my hometown itself that I had been drawn away from. Also, through the online ministry, I continued to make more and more friends all over the world. Unfortunately though, most of the people who had been helping me with the online ministry were gone at this point due to broken relationships or others projects they had taken on. I also suddenly transferred to another division of the company I work for and had to learn a new job on top of everything else. Again, New Disciples was the one constant in my life other than God Himself. So, again I find myself doing the bulk of the work for the ministry that I founded. I don't know who, if any of the members from that past will be a part of it's future, but there is a group of young people who have just started working on a new chapter of the ministry that seem eager and willing to get it growing again. I do know that I won't let anything get me discouraged about it though. Even if I have to keep it going by myself in the future, I definitely will do that. I love sharing what God has done for me and giving other people the oppurtunity to see what He can do in their lives. I even have the ministry name tattooed on my arm, so it's definitely not going anywhere! In closing, I just want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for taking time to read the writings on these pages and for supporting this ministry. We continue to move forward so that we may spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to more and more people. I hope to continue to write for you for many, many more years. Only God knows what's in the future for this ministry. Thank you so much, Pete. Pete 6-7-10