HISTORY:

The Crossing youth ministry center and skate park opened around 2003, when Matthew and Angela Lutz and their children came from America to start a youth ministry in Pattaya. During their time in Pattaya, they led many youth to Christ and discipled them at The Crossing. Among those youth were Wan, Bey, and Lek. When the Lutz family felt called to return to America to start a youth center there, they left The Crossing in Wan's hands to lead. Since then, many youth in Pattaya have found The Crossing to be a safe place, a community of youth trying to live in purity and freedom.

Wan decided in early 2012 to leave Pattaya with his wife and two children, to move to northern Thailand. When he prayed about leaving, Wan and Matthew began to pray about new leaders to step up to lead The Crossing. At the same time, Jessica, Bey, and Lek were seeking God for an open door to start a youth fellowship and ministry center in Pattaya. It seemed a perfect fit, and Bey, Lek, and Jessica have begun taking over leadership of The Crossing this year, with hopes of growing it into a much bigger ministry center. In 2012, The Crossing has succesfully transitioned into coming under Hand to Hand Foundation, and Vineyard Thailand as a ministry.

Currently, Bey, Lek, and Jessica are helping to lead The Crossing youth ministry, with the vision of facilitating many more discipleship opportunties. There is worship every Friday night, a laid back church-type meeting on Sunday afternoons, and community and activities every day of the week except Monday. Pattaya is full of youth whose mothers work in the bars and streets, but their foreign or Thai fathers are not very present in their lives. There is a whole generation of youth in Pattaya that essentially have no earthly fathers, and are hungry to know Father God’s love and truth, and to discover God’s plan for their lives. Together with Bey and Lek Leesin, Jessica has felt a strong call to disciple youth at The Crossing to know Jesus, and raise them to live in freedom and to go out and minister and make disciples.

Please be praying for The Crossing, as the current building is scheduled to be demolished by the end of 2012. The Crossing leaders are currently searching for a new and bigger location that will facilitate not only a skate park, but a youth fellowship, a school of worship, a coffee shop and restaurant, and living quarters for The Crossing team and volunteers. The Crossing leaders need a lot of wisdom and finances for this new facility, so please donate and sow into the vision.

scroll down here

THE CROSSING'S MISSION STATEMENT AND VISION:

Our mission as The Crossing is to improve the lives and health of Thailand’s youth and to intervene and prevent the cycle of prostitution in their families and communities. We carry out this mission through providing a skateboarding/ active community, and through introducing youth to a relationship with their Father God in community, and in worship and the Word, discipling them to walk in freedom and truth.

Our vision is to facilitate The Crossing as a community of youth coming together through skateboarding, sports and activities, sharing meals, worshiping God and fellowshipping together. We envision The Crossing as a community where we share our walk with God and allow others into that community to disciple and grow one another. We desire to build The Crossing as a community that embraces God’s purpose for family in caring for one another, sharing life together, using our gifts to educate and equip one another, and through and drawing others into an experience of God’s love and power together.