Effort geared to help young adults in area

By Forrest Adams

The city was waking up Saturday morning as Corey Magstadt and his wife, Lori, were sitting together with a small cadre of volunteers at a round table in a church fellowship hall with coffee and donuts, orange juice and an easel.

“They have to be making their own decisions,” Corey explained.

Lori listened to his instructions and jumped in with her own two cents as the spirit moved.

“At this point in their lives, they need to feel the natural consequences to their actions,” she said.

As Corey begins a new project, called Launch Ministry, designed to “launch this generation” of young people “into their God-given potential,” Lori wears multiple ministry roles. She is a supportive wife and an enthusiast in the mission, working extra hours at her regular job for a curriculum company, serving as the organization’s systems manager, and also training to be a Launch Ministry mentor.

“Our whole dream and hope is to see these kids that we work with go into independence. That’s really my dream and hope – to see one of the girls that I mentor, or whoever it may be, a couple years down the road have a career and have great decision-making, especially in relationships,” she explained during a coffee break.

Mentors will be at the heart of Launch Ministry, said Corey. The organization is meant to effectively reach 18- to 25-year-olds in Chaska and surrounding communities who are left behind when their classmates leave town for college and other new opportunities. Corey, formerly at The River Alliance Church in Chaska, described the Launch approach as a “comprehensive” way of helping members of a group that tend to fall through the cracks. He brings to the mission a passion for “those that have been left out.”

The vision for something like Launch Ministry came from a number of youth pastors who were meeting together and were facing similar difficulties of kicking kids out of youth group because they were too old, said Magstadt. The kids had graduated from high school but were not plugged into the regular church.

“There was a gap in ministries. There wasn’t really anything for them. They were sort of kicked out into nothing,” he said.

The group decided to have small Bible studies for the young people, but Magstadt said “it quickly grew because there is a huge need.”

“There are a lot of people who are just wandering around aimlessly or living in their parents’ basement or not having any idea how to move from the place that they’re at into successful adulthood. We’re particularly looking at ‘at-risk’ kids,” he said.

The stated mission of Launch is “to promote holistic life transformation as youth transition into adulthood by providing them with tools to develop life skills, opportunities to lead and serve, and by promoting spiritual and character formation.” Regular life skills classes, community building events, bible studies and volunteer opportunities are part of the Launch experience. Each member is assigned a mentor, who will work with that person “to see broken people become whole.”

Corey is the executive director and Lori is the systems manager for Launch Ministry. Andrew Peterson, youth director for junior and senior high ministry at Valley Evangelical Free Church, is the board chair. Mike Friesen, a resident of Carver, is the board treasurer. Currently enrolled at Crown College in the ministry program and scheduled to graduate in the fall of 2010, he’s jovial about the new ministry.

“Getting out of bed this morning was a struggle. I don’t drink coffee. Thank goodness they have orange juice,” he joked. “I think there are a lot of people my age that have all these dreams and potential in our head, but we don’t know how to get there. Either something wasn’t demonstrated for us or something happened, and we don’t feel that we can get there. Having someone to walk side-by-side and when we fall be there to help us get back up is huge.”

The Launch Ministry vision for the future includes training 15 adults from the community within the next year. At the meeting on Saturday morning, Corey, Lori, Mike, and several other volunteers were hopeful about the future. Among those was Doug Peterson from Love, INC of Eastern Carver County, who sees “providing guidance and support” for the Launch target group as complementary to the ministry of Love, INC; Dawn Holmen from Chanhassen, who was there out of “a desire to develop youth into who it is they are supposed to be”; and Dan Rider from Chaska who was there “to learn more how to mentor” and “the opportunity to help youth.”

For more information, contact Magstadt at (952) 261-606 or corey@launchministry.org. The Web site is www.launchministry.org.

Readers can contact Forrest Adams at fadams@swpub.com.