By Joe Hyde
Publisher
June 30, 2007

For solving society’s ills, the quick answer is to ask our government to raise our taxes and “solve” them. But no government program comes close to the success in San Angelo of a former schoolteacher and a former juvenile probation officer who took it upon themselves to help at-risk children with a non-profit youth ministry. Their ministry is called The House of Faith, and the concept works so well, volunteers from other communities across west Texas are duplicating the program.

Popular thought and culture today is more and more materialistic and, some argue, evil. Drugs, sex and violence saturate our televisions and movie theaters as new content delivery technology makes it ever more real and harder to ignore. Those stuck in the middle of all of these influences are our children. But some children are harmed by these influences more than most. These are the children without any firm foundation of a family to counter these influences.

Codependent families, or families suffering from some sort of affliction or addiction, are an epidemic in this country in all ethnic and cultural groups. This problem is fueling the growth of an entire underclass of human beings who are born into a world without hope. No hope leads to despair and behavioral problems early in life. Left unchecked, this will eventually lead to a life of crime and violence, with each generation moving further away from any moral grounding. The cost to society is astronomical, adversely impacting and stressing social welfare programs, our healthcare systems, and our prison systems.

Kevin Reynolds had a bird’s eye view of the problem with San Angelo youth as a juvenile parole officer. “Every day, I saw broken kids and broken families. By the time they ended up in my office, there were embedded patterns of behavior and destruction wreaking havoc in their lives,” Reynolds explained in his self-published book, The Hands and Feet of Jesus (2006). “Tom Green County has the best juvenile probation office in the State of Texas,” Reynolds explained. Yet his desk was continually piled high with case folders, and Reynolds did not see any relief to the shear volume of problems he faced everyday. “There was no way I could help these kids,” Reynolds recalled of his experience.

Reynolds, now 43, was a youth pastor and minister in Albuquerque, New Jersey, and Missouri before accepting an opportunity to move to San Angelo. His experience and Christian faith honed during his childhood and early adult career told him that many of the problems faced by San Angelo’s youth were spiritual in nature, and no government program can fully address spiritual problems. That was in 1993.

At the same time, Rachel Beaver was taking a break from her career as a teacher to be a stay-at-home mom. She was previously a teacher and coach at a public junior high in a lower income area of San Angelo. She was an organizer of the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the school. She saw the same problems Reynolds witnessed. The Christoval, Texas native, had also been a youth minister in New York before moving back home. Her life’s experiences planted the seeds that, when brought together with the experiences Reynolds witnessed, brought forth what is now known as the House of Faith.

The House of Faith is a non-denominational, evangelical Christian organization whose purpose is to reach out to at-risk children in the community and rescue them from a life of misery and crime by providing them with hope. The Christian faith provides the framework for establishing in children’s’ hearts that there is true meaning and purpose to life. Then, with a program of activities and classes, House of Faith volunteers establish deep-rooted relationships with the children and eventually, one-by-one, provide them with guidance on how to live fulfilling and productive lives, instead of a life of despair. They try to break the chain of self-destruction happening with these San Angelo youth.

Reynolds drove me to a little frame house on Avenue Z in San Angelo. “I have to show you something,” he said. This was the location of the first program of the House of Faith started on a February day in 1994. “I stood out here, in the middle of the street with a guitar, a hula-hoop and a Nerf football,” Reynolds explained. His mission was to capture an audience of children returning home from school at Rio Vista Elementary. The location was perfect because of its proximity to a crosswalk over U.S. Highway 277. It funneled just about every kid walking home that day in front of Reynolds’s clown act.

“You have to get their attention first,” Reynolds explained on how to get children to join the programs at The House of Faith. Then, if you can form any kind of relationship, it can be contagious. One kid will bring their friends, and those friends will bring more, Reynolds said. “Kids will come to you if you get other kids interested in what you are doing,” he said.

The first day, Reynolds said they attracted 63 kids to the first program in the small yard of that house on Avenue Z. “We had to go out and get more snacks. We were only expecting maybe ten or fifteen,” Reynolds said. That afternoon, Reynolds and Beaver hosted fun activities, gave out snacks, and held their first Bible study for neighborhood at-risk children.

Like all entrepreneurial endeavors, plans change after you examine how your customers use your product. In the case of the House of Faith, the initial plan was to organize programs around San Angelo on a rotating basis. “We were only going to work at the Avenue Z location for three weeks and then move on to another location,” Reynolds explained. “But we fell in love with those kids. We couldn’t leave them,” he said. So, instead of hosting rotational meetings in different neighborhoods, they added additional programs, and people. Today the House of Faith holds meetings at 13 locations around San Angelo. “The key to this ministry is to go to their neighborhood. We take our thing to them,” Reynolds explained.

“When we first started House of Faith, we felt like we were in a canoe and paddling up stream. Everyone was on the banks sitting in lawn chairs cheering us on,” Reynolds explained. But as the program demands increased, so too did the momentum, and with the momentum came a flood of volunteers. “It is extraordinary how many people came on board,” Reynolds said. Gatherings like the first one on Avenue Z, became the backbone of the ministry. They are called “Backyard Bible Clubs.” They are aimed at ministering to children from three-years-old through the fifth grade.

Soon, the demand for the activities and shear volume of the number of kids involved in the program outstripped their meager resources. “We borrowed from everyone. We had everyone’s bus from every church in town,” Reynolds recalls. Today, the House of Faith’s bus fleet, some with paint schemes reminiscent of the bus on the Partridge Family TV series in the early 1970s, are loaned out to church groups across the region.

The House of Faith today is based out of a 10,000 square foot warehouse just behind Mayfield Paper off Koenigheim (Highway 277 N) at 321 Montecito. “This used to be a petroleum storage facility,” Reynolds said, as we toured the property. The gathering room is the largest in the facility. “Although we started with elementary school children, we quickly learned that we needed a program for the older kids too,” Reynolds explained. While teaching children in the Backyard Bible Clubs, older kids would sometimes cause problems and distractions.

Out of the need to segregate older children from the neighborhood clubs, The House of Faith founded a program called The Exodus. Junior high kids are bussed to the facility where they can enjoy the latest video games, activities, and music. There is a large stage for bands inside the Exodus room. In addition to activities and food, the program seeks to develop the kids into leaders; many of them become volunteers for the program through their young adult years.

For those in high school, The House of Faith has a similar program called “The Refuge.” This program is similar to Exodus, but there is more emphasis on developing discipleship in the Christian faith and leadership.

The House of Faith also hosts smaller groups for post-high school ages. There, young adults enjoy fellowship, accountability, and encouragement to live Godly lives.

Reynolds is a celebrity among the throngs of kids who are participating in the House of Faith’s summer programs in June 2007. The two-week long sports camps provide life-changing activities for area youth. Volunteers from across the community help coach soccer camp, football, and basketball, for boys and girls.

Lakeview High School defensive coordinator and football coach Ben Lyons is a volunteer to teach the football program. The Angelo State University graduate explained that teaching the program gives him not only the satisfaction of knowing he is making a small difference in the lives of hundreds of kids, but it is also helping him with his coaching skills. “It’s totally different working with the younger kids. They say they are listening, and they turn their heads away from you when you are talking,” he said as he mimicked what he was dealing with all afternoon. But the math teacher said that at the end of the day, his volunteering is all about his love of the Lord.

At a local junior high school gym, volunteers Jason Huddleson and Lindsay Kissko had just finished teaching basketball camp. Hundreds of kids were boarding five busses to ride back to their neighborhoods. Huddleson, who will be a freshman criminal justice major at ASU in the fall, says watching the kids’ attitudes improve over the course of the program is rewarding. Kissko, a junior basketball player at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, agreed. “Their attitudes really show improvement of the course of the week,” she said. “I think they appreciate having someone who cares about them,” she said. This was her third year as a volunteer.

Reynolds marvels at the number and quality of volunteers the House of Faith programs have attracted. “Esther Wyman was a nurse for over 17 years and she has volunteered to help us since almost the beginning,” Reynolds explained. Today, she is a fulltime volunteer. Jimmy Hill, who was coaching football during the summer camps, is now a fulltime director. And then there are many volunteers and leaders in the program that at one time were merely participants in the Backyard Bible Clubs. Reynolds knows them all, and points to them, as if asking the question, where would they be if the House of Faith did not intervene in their early childhood development?

Reynolds and Beaver understand that they cannot fix all of the problems with San Angelo’s at-risk children. But they have certainly provided the organization and framework to reach out and touch a great number of them. The mastery of the organization is the way it self-replicates new leaders within itself. “We don’t do much organization on a day-to-day basis of the programs themselves,” Beaver explained. They have volunteers and past participants of the program that do that for them.

The House of Faith has a charter program where volunteers from other west Texas communities can start their own House of Faith. They provide on-site training, quality curriculum and teaching supplies for charter organizations. Already, there are 14 House of Faith charters in nine cities from Roaring Springs near the Panhandle to Junction. This is similar in design to a franchise. Reynolds and Beaver have created a non-profit business model and now they are helping others in outlying communities to do the same.

Reynolds prays and hopes the ministry will have a lasting impact upon the hundreds of youth the House of Faith touches every day. The programs are very much about acknowledging the value of each individual human being. Once value is recognized, through love, that life may be impacted enough to become a productive member of society, not a burden. And if the House of Faith intervenes in only one life of a child, it can have lasting benefits for mankind. One of the kids they rescue today may get an education and become a brilliant scientist who finds a cure to some terrible disease. That may not have happened if no one cared to show up in the neighborhood to tell that future scientist, “We care about you.” And that is what the House of Faith does every single day.

Reynolds says in his book that he, Beaver, and the hundreds of volunteers around them are the hands and feet of Jesus. “One thing is important to remember, though, is that it’s all about the Lord,” Reynolds wrote.

The House of Faith, a 501(3)(c) no-profit organization, is open almost every hour of the day, but their office hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. For more information on their programs, please see www.hofministries.org. For solving society’s ills, the quick answer is to ask our government to raise our taxes and “solve” them. But no government program comes close to the success in San Angelo of a former schoolteacher and a former juvenile probation officer who took it upon themselves to help at-risk children with a non-profit youth ministry. Their ministry is called The House of Faith, and the concept works so well, volunteers from other communities across west Texas are duplicating the program.

Popular thought and culture today is more and more materialistic and, some argue, evil. Drugs, sex and violence saturate our televisions and movie theaters as new content delivery technology makes it ever more real and harder to ignore. Those stuck in the middle of all of these influences are our children. But some children are harmed by these influences more than most. These are the children without any firm foundation of a family to counter these influences.

Codependent families, or families suffering from some sort of affliction or addiction, are an epidemic in this country in all ethnic and cultural groups. This problem is fueling the growth of an entire underclass of human beings who are born into a world without hope. No hope leads to despair and behavioral problems early in life. Left unchecked, this will eventually lead to a life of crime and violence, with each generation moving further away from any moral grounding. The cost to society is astronomical, adversely impacting and stressing social welfare programs, our healthcare systems, and our prison systems.

Kevin Reynolds had a bird’s eye view of the problem with San Angelo youth as a juvenile parole officer. “Every day, I saw broken kids and broken families. By the time they ended up in my office, there were embedded patterns of behavior and destruction wreaking havoc in their lives,” Reynolds explained in his self-published book, The Hands and Feet of Jesus (2006). “Tom Green County has the best juvenile probation office in the State of Texas,” Reynolds explained. Yet his desk was continually piled high with case folders, and Reynolds did not see any relief to the shear volume of problems he faced everyday. “There was no way I could help these kids,” Reynolds recalled of his experience.

Reynolds, now 43, was a youth pastor and minister in Albuquerque, New Jersey, and Missouri before accepting an opportunity to move to San Angelo. His experience and Christian faith honed during his childhood and early adult career told him that many of the problems faced by San Angelo’s youth were spiritual in nature, and no government program can fully address spiritual problems. That was in 1993.

At the same time, Rachel Beaver was taking a break from her career as a teacher to be a stay-at-home mom. She was previously a teacher and coach at a public junior high in a lower income area of San Angelo. She was an organizer of the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the school. She saw the same problems Reynolds witnessed. The Christoval, Texas native, had also been a youth minister in New York before moving back home. Her life’s experiences planted the seeds that, when brought together with the experiences Reynolds witnessed, brought forth what is now known as the House of Faith.

The House of Faith is a non-denominational, evangelical Christian organization whose purpose is to reach out to at-risk children in the community and rescue them from a life of misery and crime by providing them with hope. The Christian faith provides the framework for establishing in children’s’ hearts that there is true meaning and purpose to life. Then, with a program of activities and classes, House of Faith volunteers establish deep-rooted relationships with the children and eventually, one-by-one, provide them with guidance on how to live fulfilling and productive lives, instead of a life of despair. They try to break the chain of self-destruction happening with these San Angelo youth.

Reynolds drove me to a little frame house on Avenue Z in San Angelo. “I have to show you something,” he said. This was the location of the first program of the House of Faith started on a February day in 1994. “I stood out here, in the middle of the street with a guitar, a hula-hoop and a Nerf football,” Reynolds explained. His mission was to capture an audience of children returning home from school at Rio Vista Elementary. The location was perfect because of its proximity to a crosswalk over U.S. Highway 277. It funneled just about every kid walking home that day in front of Reynolds’s clown act.

“You have to get their attention first,” Reynolds explained on how to get children to join the programs at The House of Faith. Then, if you can form any kind of relationship, it can be contagious. One kid will bring their friends, and those friends will bring more, Reynolds said. “Kids will come to you if you get other kids interested in what you are doing,” he said.

The first day, Reynolds said they attracted 63 kids to the first program in the small yard of that house on Avenue Z. “We had to go out and get more snacks. We were only expecting maybe ten or fifteen,” Reynolds said. That afternoon, Reynolds and Beaver hosted fun activities, gave out snacks, and held their first Bible study for neighborhood at-risk children.

Like all entrepreneurial endeavors, plans change after you examine how your customers use your product. In the case of the House of Faith, the initial plan was to organize programs around San Angelo on a rotating basis. “We were only going to work at the Avenue Z location for three weeks and then move on to another location,” Reynolds explained. “But we fell in love with those kids. We couldn’t leave them,” he said. So, instead of hosting rotational meetings in different neighborhoods, they added additional programs, and people. Today the House of Faith holds meetings at 13 locations around San Angelo. “The key to this ministry is to go to their neighborhood. We take our thing to them,” Reynolds explained.

“When we first started House of Faith, we felt like we were in a canoe and paddling up stream. Everyone was on the banks sitting in lawn chairs cheering us on,” Reynolds explained. But as the program demands increased, so too did the momentum, and with the momentum came a flood of volunteers. “It is extraordinary how many people came on board,” Reynolds said. Gatherings like the first one on Avenue Z, became the backbone of the ministry. They are called “Backyard Bible Clubs.” They are aimed at ministering to children from three-years-old through the fifth grade.

Soon, the demand for the activities and shear volume of the number of kids involved in the program outstripped their meager resources. “We borrowed from everyone. We had everyone’s bus from every church in town,” Reynolds recalls. Today, the House of Faith’s bus fleet, some with paint schemes reminiscent of the bus on the Partridge Family TV series in the early 1970s, are loaned out to church groups across the region.

The House of Faith today is based out of a 10,000 square foot warehouse just behind Mayfield Paper off Koenigheim (Highway 277 N) at 321 Montecito. “This used to be a petroleum storage facility,” Reynolds said, as we toured the property. The gathering room is the largest in the facility. “Although we started with elementary school children, we quickly learned that we needed a program for the older kids too,” Reynolds explained. While teaching children in the Backyard Bible Clubs, older kids would sometimes cause problems and distractions.

Out of the need to segregate older children from the neighborhood clubs, The House of Faith founded a program called The Exodus. Junior high kids are bussed to the facility where they can enjoy the latest video games, activities, and music. There is a large stage for bands inside the Exodus room. In addition to activities and food, the program seeks to develop the kids into leaders; many of them become volunteers for the program through their young adult years.

For those in high school, The House of Faith has a similar program called “The Refuge.” This program is similar to Exodus, but there is more emphasis on developing discipleship in the Christian faith and leadership.

The House of Faith also hosts smaller groups for post-high school ages. There, young adults enjoy fellowship, accountability, and encouragement to live Godly lives.

Reynolds is a celebrity among the throngs of kids who are participating in the House of Faith’s summer programs in June 2007. The two-week long sports camps provide life-changing activities for area youth. Volunteers from across the community help coach soccer camp, football, and basketball, for boys and girls.

Lakeview High School defensive coordinator and football coach Ben Lyons is a volunteer to teach the football program. The Angelo State University graduate explained that teaching the program gives him not only the satisfaction of knowing he is making a small difference in the lives of hundreds of kids, but it is also helping him with his coaching skills. “It’s totally different working with the younger kids. They say they are listening, and they turn their heads away from you when you are talking,” he said as he mimicked what he was dealing with all afternoon. But the math teacher said that at the end of the day, his volunteering is all about his love of the Lord.

At a local junior high school gym, volunteers Jason Huddleson and Kindsay Kissko had just finished teaching basketball camp. Hundreds of kids were boarding five busses to ride back to their neighborhoods. Huddleson, who will be a freshman criminal justice major at ASU in the fall, says watching the kids’ attitudes improve over the course of the program is rewarding. Kissko, a junior basketball player at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, agreed. “Their attitudes really show improvement of the course of the week,” she said. “I think they appreciate having someone who cares about them,” she said. This was her third year as a volunteer.

Reynolds marvels at the number and quality of volunteers the House of Faith programs have attracted. “Esther Wyman was a nurse for over 17 years and she has volunteered to help us since almost the beginning,” Reynolds explained. Today, she is a fulltime volunteer. Jimmy Hill, who was coaching football during the summer camps, is now a fulltime director. And then there are many volunteers and leaders in the program that at one time were merely participants in the Backyard Bible Clubs. Reynolds knows them all, and points to them, as if asking the question, where would they be if the House of Faith did not intervene in their early childhood development?

Reynolds and Beaver understand that they cannot fix all of the problems with San Angelo’s at-risk children. But they have certainly provided the organization and framework to reach out and touch a great number of them. The mastery of the organization is the way it self-replicates new leaders within itself. “We don’t do much organization on a day-to-day basis of the programs themselves,” Beaver explained. They have volunteers and past participants of the program that do that for them.

The House of Faith has a charter program where volunteers from other west Texas communities can start their own House of Faith. They provide on-site training, quality curriculum and teaching supplies for charter organizations. Already, there are 14 House of Faith charters in nine cities from Roaring Springs near the Panhandle to Junction. This is similar in design to a franchise. Reynolds and Beaver have created a non-profit business model and now they are helping others in outlying communities to do the same.

Reynolds prays and hopes the ministry will have a lasting impact upon the hundreds of youth the House of Faith touches every day. The programs are very much about acknowledging the value of each individual human being. Once value is recognized, through love, that life may be impacted enough to become a productive member of society, not a burden. And if the House of Faith intervenes in only one life of a child, it can have lasting benefits for mankind. One of the kids they rescue today may get an education and become a brilliant scientist who finds a cure to some terrible disease. That may not have happened if no one cared to show up in the neighborhood to tell that future scientist, “We care about you.” And that is what the House of Faith does every single day.

Reynolds says in his book that he, Beaver, and the hundreds of volunteers around them are the hands and feet of Jesus. “One thing is important to remember, though, is that it’s all about the Lord,” Reynolds wrote.

The House of Faith, a 501(3)(c) no-profit organization, is open almost every hour of the day, but their office hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. For more information on their programs, please see www.hofministries.org.