Keyzer Family Ministries

Keyzer Family Ministries.

The Bolivar House, our home:

The Keyzer family is a founding member of the Bolivar House Community.  We bought a property with a group of believers who wanted to live their life and serve the poor in a different way.  Many of the founding members worked together at the local homeless shelter and shared a heart for helping the poor but found that the professional confines of being paid to work with the poor was limiting.  It was hard to keep the "appropriate distance" from someone when you know that Jesus has called to you love and lay down your life for them.  After years of breaking the rules and inviting mission guests into our lives and our churches, we thought it was time to be able to invite them into our homes.

For the past 6 years we have lived in an apartment complex with both stable believers and also people that need our support to help get back on their feet.  The most we have had in our six-plex property at one time was 24 people (this number includes children).  There are currently 6 adopted children in our community, several of whom have special needs, 3 of whom qualify for make a wish.  We do our ministry with our families in tow, which means that our children are learning to love the marginalized of society along with us.  Over the years we have had helped several people coming out of prison, people trying to overcome meth addiction, families that have found themselves homeless and friends who just need a safe place to talk.

We have a heart to live simply so we can work part time, allowing us to have time to do ministry in our neighborhood, at our churches and with our children.  For several years we had a weekly dinner with our neighbors and have enjoyed breaking bread and being a part of their lives.  It has been amazing to share all things, not only within our house, but within our neighborhood.  We are often asked if there are any open apartments in our building and openings are rare. For this reason we have begun to ask God to help us purchase other buildings on our block, in hopes that we will be able to help more people in the future, training up other stable believer to do what we do, while providing those in need with a “landlord” that cares for them and low rent that can help get them back on their feet.  We also have dreams of becoming a non-profit, so that perhaps, God willing, we would someday be able to show more grace, to help those that can’t even pay rent at all.  As it stands currently, we must pay our mortgage, so having employed people, paying rent, is a must.  (Although we normally have at least one person living with a family that contributes by “working” in that family’s home, helping with laundry and childcare).

Northern Lighthouse, our church:

In the past 2 years our involvement at church has increased, while we each have been involved there for over 10 years. It is a strange transition for us to be doing ministry as a “job” and not volunteer work and also to be the “people running a church”.  Jon preaches about 40% of the sermons, leads a men’s group, organizes the services, serves as an elder and on the leadership team.  Anna leads worship weekly, leads small group, produces the church newsletter and serves on the leadership team.  But as our lives are ministry…the church ministry also ends up coming into our home and due to the type of church we attend, we are still working with the marginalized of society, people struggling with drug addiction, unemployment and homelessness.

The Northern Lighthouse church is a very communal ministry.  Each Sunday we get together for worship, followed by a break and then small groups.  Afterwards we share a meal together.  We have found that allowing this much social time has helped us to get to know each other, and feel more like a family.  This is important because we have a very high turnover at our church, because we do inmate ministry (when people get out of prison, they often leave Lincoln to go back home and be reunited with family).  We bus 30-45 inmates from the work release center to our church each Sunday.  This means that on any given Sunday morning we have the potential to have several non-believing, un-churched and at times, people who don’t even really want to be at church, at our church.  This, as you can imagine, creates a very different kind of Sunday service.

Due to the high number of our church body being either in prison, newly out or struggling with unemployment and homelessness, we must raise funds for Jon’s salary.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our ministries.  I hope that you will pray for us.  If you feel lead to give, thank you so much, your gifts are encouraging and help us to keep doing what we are called to do.  If you would like our church newsletter emailed or mailed to you please leave me a comment with your information.  God bless you, friends!!