... THAT PEOPLE OUT OF THE ENCOUNTER AND RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD,
LIVE VICTORIOUSLY AS SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE LORD GOD IN THE PROMISED LAND.
The biblical person Joshua did just that. He spent many hours in his life in the tabernacle (the tent of CONGREGATION). We read this in Ex 33:11: "...while Joshua his servant, the son of Nun, a young man, never left the inside of the tent." Joshua knew his God and had no doubt that God would fulfill all his promises. In Josh 23:14, Joshua says this to the people of Israel, "Deep in your hearts you know that every promise of the LORD your God has come true. Not one has remained unfulfilled!" Out of this certainty and out of his heart's RELATIONSHIP with God, he conquered and took the Promised Land bit by bit.
Joshua did not act with his own thoughts and plans, but always with the specific strategies of heaven. He knew that he would only LIVE VICTORIOUSLY if he trusted fully in God. Speaking forcefully to the people, Joshua summed it up, "Your lives depend on loving God." (Jos 23:11) The relationship with God, and the love for Him that resulted, allowed Joshua and the people of Israel to live victoriously in the Promised Land.
And us?
We create space for these life-changing ENCOUNTERS with God. Which are first and foremost about RELATIONSHIP and communion with Him. From this encounter and hearing from Him, we encounter ourselves, our circumstances and our counterpart. At the same time we get to know Him better and better from heart to heart, understand what He is saying to us and can thereby LIVE courageously and VICTORIOUSLY in our "promised land".
Exactly in this way, our togetherness should also be characterized by this CONNECTION with God. To this end, we consciously create space for mutual exchange of hearts, to meet each other at eye level, to be there for each other, to stand together and to move forward together.
THIS VISION...
we carry as a team, consisting of eight full or part-time employees, all of whom live directly in Strittmatt.
God has put us together as a team in our diversity and we feel that He delights in it.
Our desire and at the same time our challenge is to live and work not only in ministry relationship but in heart relationship with each other.
Since it is not so easy to describe us in short sentences, you are welcome to make your own picture of us :-)
Christoph and Utta Häselbarth are the founders of the Joshua ministry in Strittmatt. After working as a whole family in development aid in Afghanistan for several years, God led them in southern Black Forest. How did they go on from there? In the booklet "Schools of Life - How God Shaped Us Through Ups and Downs," Christoph and Utta tell about it. Here are their personal accounts:
"In 1987 the time had come: we had the feeling that [...] we should found our own work. Thus, in our adopted home of Strittmatt, the "Joshua Ministry" was born. Our orientation was [...] the following: On the one hand, we specialized in leaders; on the other hand, we worked mainly with groups instead of individuals. Our first seminars began in 1989 with eight to twelve participants each. Already in those days it became apparent what God's special calling for this ministry was. [...] It became a characteristic of the Joshua ministry that people can willingly open their hearts in a group - often a stranger. God reveals to them deep-seated problems of which they are hitherto unaware, and gives them a supernatural frankness to speak about them. [...] Apparently, the Holy Spirit loves to take people out of their everyday lives and into the heights of the Black Forest, where they are gifted with a renewal of heart." Furthermore, the two also tell about how they filled the seminars with content at that time. "We took up the simple truths of the Gospel and - this is crucial now - we made them practical."
After about 20 years of leading the Joshua ministry with Christoph and Utta, they passed the ministry on to Michael and Gabriela Kienapfel. Looking back, they tell us the following: "In 1999, we heard a call in our hearts to the ministry of Christoph and Utta Häselbarth. At that time we were doing mission work in Kazakhstan. When this call was confirmed by the Joshua ministry team after our return to Germany, we moved to Strittmatt. It was a privilege for us to continue to grow spiritually under the leadership of Christoph and Utta and the co-leaders at that time, Helmut and Emma Schweiker, and to become more and more empowered to help design seminars for leaders and multipliers. In the course of time, the cooperation developed to the point that we were asked to take over the leadership of the Joshua ministry. So it happened that in 2006 we were appointed as leaders - in the first years together with Uwe and Beate Meyer. With a lot of passion in our hearts we gladly took over this task and experienced really wonderful years. We were able to further develop the work in the Joshua ministry and grew as a staff team. Already in the first years of our work in the Joshua ministry we developed seminars for children, teenagers and families. This area really developed into a solid branch within the ministry. In 2012, God spoke to us to make the work with families our main ministry. Therefore, we looked more closely at the issue of leader discipleship. Through various processes and God's speaking, it became more and more clear that our deputy leaders at that time, Volker and Christine Dehn, received a calling from God for this. So after 10 years of leadership and 17 years of Joshua ministry involvement, we passed the baton to the Dehn couple. We founded our own ministry, "Family Live," with a focus on family ministry, and now we are primarily in travel ministry."
And this is how Volker and Christine experienced their arrival at Strittmatt: "After God called us to Strittmatt for Joshua ministry through a dream in 2008, we moved here in the dead of winter in early 2009. We grew into seminary work, taking over the leadership of various seminaries and also helping to develop seminary branches. Our heartbeat has always been for people to have deep encounters with God and to live a life of freedom through a living relationship with HIM. In 2014, the request came from God if we were ready for "more" in the Joshua ministry. We couldn't fill that "more" at first, but over time we realized it was about "more" responsibility. So, after a period of acting leadership, we took the baton of Joshua ministry leadership from Michael and Gabriela Kienapfel in 2016. We are excited to live and work in a place where God's grace is so visible and tangible. To see how God restores, sets free, encourages, loves, ... . And at the same time, we look forward to and are excited about God's continued journey with Joshua Ministry."
