From Donuts to Disciples: Brian Barcelona's Unique Ministry

0:00 And I remember one of my first meetings I did in Copland High School, very small, maybe maybe seven or eight kids when we started. I was preaching and during my message, this girl raises her hand. She interrupts my message and she says, excuse me, I have a question for you. And I said, sure. I didn't know who she was. She said, are you coming back next week? That was your question. I said, yeah, I'll be here. She goes, great. She goes, maybe if you start coming every week, we'll start listening to you. Brian Barcelona, it's great to have you here on Charisma to be able to talk about how God has called you to reach Gen Z and be that bridge that's gapping the generations. And so welcome to Charisma.

0:41 Thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege and an honor to be able to connect with you. And some of the things that we talked about before we hit record, I want to make sure that we talk about those, because you have been used instrumentally in in schools, which is a place that unfortunately, it seems that God has been kicked out of the schools in so many ways. But God has used you in a way to transform. One particular school is where we're going to talk about this stories. But but tell us a little bit about the journey that God has brought you on from now you're reaching Gen Z and everything with that.

1:21 Yeah, it's interesting because I started preaching in 2009. And I mean, I guess that was kind of a tail end of millennials into what we know as Gen Z. I didn't know anything about Gen Z. I knew briefly about millennials, so there wasn't a realization of communicating to Gen Z until honestly, 2020. So, you know, over over a decade, I was preaching and then I'm realizing, oh, man, I'm preaching to an entirely different generation. Which probably made sense to why some of my jokes were phasing out in next gen. They didn't get the Gameboy one or the PlayStation one or none of those jokes that maybe were relevant to my generation.

2:03 But yeah, I started preaching in 2009, just felt a call of God to go into campuses. And never would I thought over a decade later it would lead to 46 countries, schools all over the world. We've trained people from so many different places now. But it really started with just a desire to see public schools have the opportunity to hear the gospel. And I think our method was that, you know, Bible clubs or what we know as Jesus clubs would be evangelistic in nature. They would be in gymnasiums, auditoriums. They would be larger gatherings that would be not for Christians, but they would be for the atheists, for the Buddhists, the Muslims, for the agnostics, for the kids that were suicidal, the ones that were gangs, the ones that were on drugs.

2:53 That was our main focus of the Jesus clubs. How does those how do those kids have the opportunity to hear about him? So how did you get into those schools to be an evangelist? I mean, because it's it's one thing to have a club where everybody's, you know, coming that's already a Christian and they, you know, it's it's like, OK, have your little club over there, but don't touch the rest of us. How did how were you able to make that shift? Well, getting into schools was just a matter of me showing up, knocking on doors, meeting people. But getting the lost together or getting people that weren't part of the Christian faith, it wasn't difficult for for us.

3:36 We had a few methods. One of them was we would my goal the first week weeks on a campus was to meet as many people as possible. And so I did it in a way where I would bring hundreds of donuts to a campus. I'd get with the campus leaders, you know, the teacher advisors. And we would walk the quads or the schools with just hundreds of boxes of donuts, these pink boxes. And I would just get donuts and I'd say, hey, take a donut from the Jesus clubs. It doesn't cost you anything. I say, hey, what's your name? So I come up to you and I say, hey, you know, hey, how are you? What's your name? My name's John. Awesome. Hey, it's so good to meet you, man. My name is Brian. I'm, you know, working with the Jesus clubs.

4:17 Would you like a donut? Sure. You know, you can say yes or no. If you'd say no, I'd say, OK, awesome. Well, maybe next week, you know, grab one for free. The next week, I come back. Maybe you'd be a little bit skeptical. But the third week, the fourth week, the fifth week, all of a sudden, your your walls are dropping and you're like, I'll take a donut. Awesome. After a month. Now, I know a little bit about your life. Hey, how's the you know, how's that? How's that test? Finally, you took. How's your brother before you know it? Hey, man, I'm doing a gathering in the gym if you'd like to come. Yeah, you know, I'll come check it out. And people would come and we would just preach repentance. We preach the Bible. I would preach on topics relevant to their culture.

4:59 And we would just see transformation happen. But our biggest, our biggest I don't want to say secret or weapon. That sounds funny, but our biggest strategy, which all young people strategy strategy and tactic was our consistency is we would show up every single week. I say this and I would do what their deadbeat dads never did. I would show up every single week. And so I remember there was a school one year. They had two people write articles about the Jesus clubs. And so the first article was written in the yearbook by a Christian. And the Christian wrote every week we could count on the Jesus clubs happening.

5:42 And they were ecstatic about their faith. And the second article was written by an atheist. And the atheist said every week, you know, we can count on a few things in our school. This, this, this. And they said one of them would be at every week, the auditorium doors would be open. We would hear music playing and every week Jesus comes would gather. And although we never forced our faith on anybody, you know, the door would be cracked or sometimes open. My message would reverberate throughout the quad of that school. And that was, that was actually a campus that had about 600 kids a week that were gathering voluntarily in that campus during lunch. Wow. So one of the things that I'm, that I'm hearing here, and of course I have questions, but one of those questions being how many donuts have you gone through in this, in this evangelism method, because my goodness, that's a lot of students to reach out with donuts week after week, but the real thing is consistency.

6:39 That's what I want to focus in on here is I think it's really easy to, I mean, yes, there's a lot of work that goes into putting on a big event or drawing people to, to something like a one-time thing. But you said about consistency and showing up whenever their deadbeat dads don't, is that the cultural key that we need to really focus in on to reach this generation? I think that there is more power and consistency than we could ever imagine. I think a lot of times we put our efforts into one-time events. We put all of our money into making our event the best, the flashiest, the games, the whatever.

7:22 I remember I was preaching in Compton, the city of Compton, and there are two campuses that I preached there in my years of one voice. I preached in Centennial High School, which is off of Piru Street where the bloods originated, the bloods on the Crips, the bloods originated off that street. I preached there for many years. And then I preached in Compton High School. And I remember one of my first meetings I did in Compton High School, very small, maybe, maybe seven or eight kids, one of the first meetings I did in Compton High School, seven or eight kids when we started, I was preaching. And during my message, this girl raises her hand. She interrupts my message and she says, excuse me, I have a question for you.

8:03 And I said, sure. I didn't know who she was. She said, are you coming back next week? That was your question. I said, yeah, I'll be here. She goes, great. She goes, maybe if you start coming every week, we'll start listening to you. And that statement has never left my mind to this day. You know, one of the most powerful stories I remember was there was this one kid, I think I invited him to the Jesus Club for almost two to three years, probably. And I think it was actually three years because he came in 2016. And the reason why he came, his name was, was Justin. He was a homosexual and he was a Jehovah witness.

8:43 Don't ask me how that works. But I remember every week inviting him. He'd blow me off. He wouldn't come. And this one Christmas I'd gotten, I'd gotten a bunch of $5 gift cards at Starbucks and I would just, I would just give away gift cards to kids. You know, Hey, Merry Christmas, bless you, whatever from Jesus. And I remember I had this one, I had, I had a gift card left and I went up to Justin and I said, Hey man, I said, you know, Merry Christmas. I just wanted to give you this gift card. And he just started weeping. And I said, why are you, why are you crying? And he said, well, said I'm Jehovah witness. And so we don't celebrate any holidays. This is the first gift I've ever received in my entire life.

9:23 Wow. And we did an event after school. He came, got saved and he came to the Jesus Club after that. And, you know, I don't know, everybody has their opinions and methods on evangelism, but I think, I think I have seen the power of a longterm evangelism. And it's different. It's, it doesn't longterm evangelism doesn't thrive on the big gatherings. Although that does happen. We've seen the big gatherings, but I mean, when you look at Roosevelt at school, I was in for four years. I mean, I graduated a class, kids that got saved their freshman year were Bible club leaders, their senior year.

10:04 Wow. And, you know, the impact that we had on their lives. I mean, I'll probably never know until I get to eternity, you know,