Beginning of the End LINCLetter

The Beginning of the End;

The End and a Beginning

When I was very young, my Dad took our family on what was my first fishing excursion. That is a very Dad-like thing to do, but this was not an ordinary trip to the trout pond or nearby stream. My Dad’s best friend was the head of the Washington Fish and Game Department, so we went fishing at a “secret” lake and stream where huge, hungry trout abounded. One of my first memories, period, is of reeling in fish after fish after fish - all of them leviathans of biblical proportions. And one of our earlier family home movies features me sitting in the middle of a small creek, crying my eyes out, after falling down while attempting to cross what to me must have been the equivalent of the Red Sea. The memories and film are priceless; they are also rather metaphorical. I’ll explain later.

At this point, I have no idea how to make a smooth transition to what comes next, so I will just just blurt it out on paper, so to speak. You may have gathered from the poem in the last LINCLetter that something was up. You were right. LINC Ministries will cease to exist on December 31, 2010, and Sondance, an Idaho-based nonprofit corporation, will begin on January 1, 2011. There. I said it. The beginning of the end. The end and a beginning.

The following is a “Reader’s Digest” version of a long and wonderful story that will take me more than one LINCLetter to tell. Our family has enjoyed summer vacations in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho for over 25 years. Within an hour’s drive of Ketchum is spectacular fly fishing, hiking, rafting and mountain biking, along with amazing summer weather, and we have taken full advantage of all the area has to offer. About five years ago, Terri heard God ask us to look for property in the area. We had no idea why, and had no clue how we would pay for anything we found, but we found a realtor to help us start looking. We soon discovered the Wood River Valley (Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey) to be crazy-expensive, but that wasn’t the case with the Little Wood River valley to the east. We found a lot. We went home and prayed. Within a week God supernaturally provided the money to buy the lot, in a way that was dramatic enough to get our attention. Soon, God began to adjust the desires of our hearts to align with His (Ps.37:4) and He began to show us a vision of a new place to live, and a new ministry. He has led us every step of the way. He has clearly shown us how He wants us to serve Him in the years to come. He has changed my heart in some amazing and necessary ways. He has provided, and will continue to provide, ALL that is needed to make His dreams our incredible reality. He has always been faithful in that regard. It is His nature.

So, when God gives us the green light, we will be moving to Idaho. We have no clear idea when the green light will come. When my Dad died over seven years ago, I made a commitment before the Lord to stay in the area and take care of my Mom. She is 89, her health is not all that good, and the rest of her life could be measured in months, or years. God makes the call on that one. I do not know the “when” of the future, but I do know the “what” of the present - to take care of her. She has no idea that we will be moving to Idaho right after she passes away, and she certainly does not need to know, so please help us keep that information confidential.

We will make the physical move to Idaho in God’s timing, but we will be “crossing over” into a new ministry right away. The transition has had God’s fingerprints all over it, but it has not always been an easy one - for me in particular. Like my experience crossing the stream as a child, I have fallen down and cried several times along the way. I like LINC Ministries. I like my Board, all of whom have stuck with me for the duration. I love Portland. I was born in Portland, I have spent most of my life in Portland, and I was committed to serving Portland, seeking the peace of my city and advancing the Kingdom there, for the rest of my life. I love the Portland Youth Foundation and the 350 or so youth workers who are part of that movement. All of that, and more, will not be easy to leave. But my testimony to God’s faithfulness is that He has literally, clearly, changed the desires of my heart in many respects. We will have a new ministry, a new Board, a new state, a new home, a new community, some new friends, and a really cool new adventure!

The area in which we will be living is called the Upper Camas Prairie. Somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 live in and around the communities of Fairfield, Bellevue, Haley, Ketchum, Picabo and Carey, which are a little more than two hours northeast of Boise. In recent years we discovered that my Dad was born in Fairfield! I knew he was born in Idaho before moving to southwestern Oregon at a young age, but I had no idea where. We found the house where he was born, and the graves of several of his uncles and relatives. Two uncles were prominent doctors in the area. We also discovered that my maternal grandmother was born in Hailey, the daughter of a silver miner. Fascinating!

Sondance will be a new, Idaho-based nonprofit. Terri and I are assembling a new Board of Directors and drawing up the legal documents. We will continue to need to raise our financial support. Many of the mission distinctives of LINC Ministries will continue to happen through Sondance. I will always deploy my “three sharp arrows:” character matters to God, prayer matters to God, unity matters to God - at every opportunity God provides within youth ministry and beyond. I will continue to serve as an advocate for youth ministry in the prayer movement, and an advocate for prayer in the youth ministry movement. Rather than closing doors in those realms, God is actually opening more doors and provided more opportunities. But there will also be some  shifts in ministry. One shift  will be a new focus on the issue of fatherlessness. You are likely not surprised by that, since I have written about it recently. Actually, I can’t seem to avoid the issue - it keeps surfacing again and again and again in the books I read, the people I meet, and the music I listen to. This makes sense in light of these current statistics: fathers are physically absent in close to 50% of homes today (and are emotionally and/or spiritually absent in far greater numbers); the Prison Fellowship says up to 90% of inmates grew up without a father; the Census Bureau reports that 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; according to the National Principals Association, 71% of high school dropouts grew up without dad around.

So, a major Sondance thrust will be: To help bring hope to the fatherless through new Kingdom strategies and collaborations that focus on: Supernatural Healing; Biblical Mentoring; and Spiritual Parenting.

At this point, I am well aware that I am likely raising more questions than I am answering. I will simply do my best in the next few LINCLetters (which will be the last of that genre; January will bring something new and perhaps even improved!) to explain what God is leading us to do, what we believe that will entail, and how you can continue to partner with us in our new adventure. I am also starting a blog (address forthcoming in the next LINCLetter) where I will do my best to provide the details that won’t fit in a newsletter. During this season, my devotional times have been so rich that the blog will be an outlet for that as well. As has been the case for the past 18 years, we are trusting God to keep both our prayer team and financial support team at full capacity. Please prayerfully consider if God would have you continue, or start for the first time, to partner with us in one or both of those capacities. We will certainly need you as we make this very significant and very exciting transition! 

From His Resting Place,

Mike & Terri Higgs