A Pennsylvania based ministry that "Connects Kids With Gods Love Through Motocross"
By: Jim Bull
The original logo created in 2007
Have you ever spent a week with 100 other like minded individuals in the presence of "Gods Love" while leaving behind the news, your cell phone and the generally hectic pace that life throughs at us while doing something you truly love doing?
I imagine its a feeling that can be found in many other places but certainly a feeling you will experience while attending a "Motocross for Christ Camp".
Oh what a blessing that I have been fortunate enough to be a part of since almost the very beginning.
I recently received a call from new Camp Director Scott Passerini asking me if I could put together a history of this wonderful camp that he and a Christ loving group of volunteers has been so greatly blessed with the task of pressing forward with.
The mission or vision has always been the same.
It was the summer of 2008 and I received a call from a gentleman asking me to come to a local motocross race track to check out this new ministry that he had started. We didn't know each other at the time and Steve as I'll call him here didn't have any inkling as to my beliefs, but he knew that I owned a local motocross racing publication and he was looking for some promotion.
He was super excited about what he had going on and the track they were at was a client of mine so I was all in. What Steve didn't know was that I was a Jesus freak myself and was also super excited to learn about what he had going on.
This was the second year of camp as I would later learn and Steve was a racer that had a calling to "connect kids with Gods love through motocross". That the year prior, he and another racer friend held their first camp in a back yard in Schuylkill county with seven kids in attendance and it was a big hit.
Back to year two, Steve and his wife had spent months contacting track owners, sponsors, trainers and potential attendees. When I arrived at camp it was day three of three and things were in full swing. If I remember correctly there were around 30 kids in attendance plus volunteers and trainers. The riders were broken down by age and skill level and three groups were created to rotate through different stations of Faith based learning and riding instruction. The groups were labeled, Faith, Hope and Love.
This Photo is from year five at Wicomico Motocross Park in Southern MD.
Needless to say, I fell in love with what was going on that day and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Steve and I had many conversations in the coming months and I did my best to help the cause. We turned on the promotion machine and by the following year with the help of so many individual volunteers, dealers and sponsors we found ourselves at a track in Breezewood, Pa and we had over 100 kids attend a single three day camp.
Wow and thank you Lord was about all we could say. God was at work but everyone realized that 100 was too many to manage for one camp.
Meanwhile, Steve was doing trackside ministry at the races and he started recruiting other individuals that were doing smaller ministries at different tracks and it wasn't long before there were quite a few tracks tied into the Motocross for Christ banner and doing Saturday and Sunday ministries at local tracks. No rider training was provided but God surely was at work.
Year four saw the need to do two camps to handle the amount of interest the camp was receiving. It's ironic because in the beginning many track owners and trainers were reluctant to get involved, maybe because of their belief systems or possible schedule conflicts. Whatever the reason I don't think they were quite aware of how many individuals and families were looking for ways to not only feed their need to participate in a sport that they loved, but to feed their souls with Gods love.
1000's of riders participate in Motocross racing each year in the PA region alone.
At this point in time the ministry was still very small but growing faster than the resources available. The two times a year camp concept was working but I remember a few camps at this point where Steve was calling and saying, we don't have enough money to cover costs. What are you going to do I'd ask and he'd say, I don't know but God does. All the time more and more people were getting involved and guess what. God took care of the bills - Amen.
Then I remember one early Saturday morning while still laying in bed, my cell phone rang. My wife and I were awake so I looked at the phone and saw it was Steve's wife calling (his name wasn't really Steve and we are getting to that part). I thought it odd she would be calling so early on a Saturday morning.
She said, Jim I don't know how to tell you this but Steve is missing, he's slid back into his addiction again and he took some money from the ministry account and was last seen at a local bar. It was another "wow" moment for me as I guess you can imagine. My first response was that I didn't know he had a past history and what do you mean by "again"? Well it turns out that this was the second time this had happened since camps had started but she was really worried this time.
Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
So please remember Paul's words to the Romans from above as we continue. I myself had a long history of addiction and jail time in my past and had given my testimony many times at camp. It was beginning to become clear why Steve would never give his. I had asked him many times to but he always said he was just too busy running camp and wanted to give others a chance to speak.
Eventually he surfaced and tried to convince us all that it was just a weekend binge, something that he had to get out of his system and that he would be fine moving forward. A group of us spent the next year trying to work through that and finally came to the conclusion that he had to get some professional help before continuing to be a part of the ministry. Again, Please remember the below:
Click Here For Video From Camp
MX4C Fundraiser - Click Here
