Mentoring Youth
Katzir (Harvest) National Youth Ministry
“Equipping teens to be laborers in the Harvest”
(Matthew 9:36-38)
What is Katzir?
Founded by Eitan Shishkoff 20 years ago, Katzir has impacted over a thousand teenagers who have been through our events.
Katzir (Harvest) camps take place three times a year, each serving 80-90 teens, ages 14-18, from congregations all over Israel. Our goal is to serve the wider body of Messiah in Israel by equipping and discipling the next generation of believers and leaders in the land. Each camp is served by teams of young adult volunteer counselors who come from around the country to work together. A vital part of our ministry is to train and equip them for small group leadership with the teens.
Why is Katzir needed?
Youth in Israel are faced with two difficult realities. (1) They are a small minority in their schools (and society in general); and (2) they must serve in the IDF when they finish high school. We encourage youth to live radically for the Lord in face of intense social peer pressure, and prepare them to live out their faith in the military and beyond. We are dedicated to giving them a place to grow in their faith, to be encouraged, and to commune with youth from all over Israel. A primary need is to form their identity in God. To achieve this, Katzir provides a safe place for repentance, healing, and change to take place.
The three annual conferences are much-awaited by the youth—as an opportunity for spiritual breakthrough and for solid progress in their life with God.
Invest Into The Next Generation
Our budget for the 3 camps per year is $125,000. This helps us subsidize the cost for the teens and pay the cost of our young adult volunteer leaders. Your gift can help make these camps possible! Or you can look at it this way, your gift of $260 sponsors one teenager in one of our camps!
Discipling Harvest Workers
Harvesters Discipleship Experience
“Equipping Jewish and Arab disciples for the harvest - unto Yeshua's return.”
Who Are We?
We are a locally based, multi-generational ministry team, dedicated to serving the body of Messiah in Israel by training and equipping young adults from both Jewish and Arab backgrounds. We are committed to discipleship in the context of community – sharing life, learning to work with the land, and above all, pursuing the presence of God together as one.
Why another Discipleship Training Center?
Making Disciples
Serious challenges confront young adult believers in this land. Among them there are two groups. One group is those who’ve completed their compulsory military service as Jewish citizens. The other group is young believing Arabs living in Israel, who face multiple existential questions. These young people—the future of our nation and of the Lord’s harvest—need a dedicated period of time in order to get trained, equipped, healed, restored, and empowered to walk in their God-given identity and calling. We also believe in the value of young Jewish and Arab people experiencing God together, growing in unity, and discovering God’s heart for each other.
Equipping Harvesters
Yeshua said “the harvest is the end of the age” (Matthew 13:39). In Matthew 9 He instructs us to pray that laborers will be sent into the harvest. These laborers need to be prepared. Katzir, as our name (harvest in Hebrew) indicates, is devoted to training those who are entering the spiritual harvest. The first stage, making disciples, brings about the second stage—equipping harvesters. Those who become true disciples bear the eternal fruit of making more disciples (Matthew 28:20).
What is Our Program?
Harvesters Discipleship Experience program is founded on the following values:
- Presence of God – Encouraging the students to walk in intimacy with the Lord personally and corporately. Encountering the power of God through His Spirit. Personally, daily reading and meditation of the word, prayer, and corporately with daily extended time of worship and prayer as a group.
- Unity – Students living together, sharing meals, and developing relationships and friendships based on love, trust, common goals, cooperation, and mutual dependence. Learning about God’s heart and plan for the Jewish and Arab people in Israel and the Middle East (Isaiah 19).
- Teaching – Going deeper in God’s word through teaching and personal study, by teachers both from within and from outside the program.
- Repentance and inner healing – Biblical principles of Inner healing and forgiveness, regular one-on-one meetings with a leader.
- Agriculture and service – team bonding through serving and doing agriculture together. The work outside serves as a time for personal reflection, internalizing what is learned, and building relationship.
- Outreach and volunteering – Outreach and volunteering to serve Jewish and Arab communities as a team, both in Israel and abroad.
- Cultural Relevance & Honoring Heritage – Both Jewish and Arab history and culture will be explored. The Scriptures will provide a constant reference point to understand God’s covenant relationship with Israel.
- Fun and Family – Family meals, treks and fun outdoor activities as a group.
Please consider sowing a special gift to help subsidize the practical costs of young Israeli believer’s – both Jewish and Arab – being discipled. Your gift will help send them forth to the waiting harvest fields!
PROPERTY
Our Place
A Place where Fields of Wheat can be Planted
Yeshua and His disciples were headquartered in a village called “Village of Comfort/Kfar Nahum.” After ministry journeys across the Galilee, they returned here, to their base (Mark 2:1). I like to imagine them sitting around in a circle, sharing a meal, listening to the Master, reflecting on the incredible events of the day.
This is the atmosphere we envision for Fields of Wheat—an intimate setting in which men and women can gather, experience the Master’s presence, and learn to walk in His ways.
Our dream is to locate in the region where Jesus spent the vast portion of His ministry—above the Sea of Galilee, in the northern part of Israel. This area is far from the city grind where people function at a slower tempo. It’s an area suited for learning the lessons of the land as Yeshua taught them.
Many of His parables were derived from this earthy reality. In one of them He said “…the kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field, that a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). This is how we feel–that there is a field in the Galilee, where a portion of Messiah’s kingdom can again be planted. It will be worth selling what we have to buy that field and dedicate it wholly to the Master’s use.
This is a project for the whole body of Messiah—those who live here in Israel and in the nations. We are inspired for you to join us in establishing this unique home to prepare workers for the harvest. “The harvest is the end of the age” (Matthew 13:39).
We invite you to sow a generous gift and partner with us monthly in order for the “place” to be purchased and the vision of a national equipping center come to life.
Sow a generous gift today
