Harvest USA Impact Story

Did you know that Harvest USA trains church leaders and counselors to minister to sexual strugglers?

Did you know that Harvest USA equips parents to raise sexually-faithful kids?

This is a story about how our ministry has impacted lives in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Maria Greco, Executive Director, Cornerstone Counseling Ministries: So the city of Easton, and really the Greater Lehigh Valley, has experienced a revitalization in the last 20 or so years. And with that, we’ve seen God’s church do really incredible things throughout our community. I think one of the areas that the church is lacking in is approaching issues of sexual sin, be it sex addiction, pornography, same-sex attraction. I think that’s one of the areas that’s more difficult for the church to be broaching.

Cornerstone Counseling Ministries is a non-profit ministry dedicated to providing counseling services to clients in the Greater Lehigh Valley. An issue that we’ve seen pretty consistently in our clients is struggling through sexual brokenness. Now, we try to get our clients a good support system, to get them plugged back into their churches. But in talking with them, we realized that churches may not be a safe place to process through some of these issues.

Tim Zuck, Pastor of Forks Community Church: I saw that parents in my church more or less had a deer-in-the-headlights syndrome.

Cara Saliby, Director of Administration, New Covenant Church: They needed tools to be able to talk about different sexual sort of conversations and circumstances, and we didn’t have anything to really prepare them for those conversations.

Seth Lezon, Youth Pastor, Life in Christ Church: A lot of our students had questions that weren’t being answered by their families. Their parents didn’t have the tools, and even our volunteers didn’t have the tools to be able to give our students.

Maria Greco: We realized that we really needed help as counselors, and we needed to be equipped in these areas. So a couple years ago, I reached out to Harvest USA. I was familiar with them through looking at their resources online and through different colleagues who had been connected with them. And they really had a walking alongside of not only clients, but alongside of counselors, in order to help equip them to minister to those sexually struggling.

Brianna Consiglio, Administrative Assistant, Cornerstone Counseling Ministries: So Cornerstone Counseling Ministries served as the liaison between Harvest and about 10 other churches in the Lehigh Valley. Our experience was by far one of the easiest and best partnerships we’ve ever had.

Maria Greco: So we invited Harvest to come up and work with some of our counselors here on staff and a couple of other ministers, to really try to equip us with how to walk alongside hurting people. And from that, we realized that this is something that really needs to be in the hands of not only counselors, but other pastors and church leaders and elders and deacons. So I got together with several pastors in the community across the Lehigh Valley, and we decided to bring Harvest up to host a Raising Sexually Faithful Kids Conference.

Cara Saliby: We knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to just have a conference and be done, that we had a greater impact on our community. And Harvest provided the resources and really the inspiration to find ways to make that happen.

Brianna Consiglio: Harvest made us feel like a priority, and they were so willing and flexible to cater to the needs of the population that we were serving.

Parent (father): Sitting through the seminar and getting this new perspective and hearing all the facts really brought us to a point where we want to be intentional in having these “as you go” conversations, as they put it. We want to be the ones to get to our children first, having the conversations with them so that they have a good, godly, biblical perspective on sexual purity.

Seth Lezon: How can we listen better? How can we answer them in a way that will help them to come to the conclusion that the gospel is the only way, instead of shoving it down their throats?

Austin Greco, Youth Pastor, Cornerstone Church: The parents were taught to have intentional conversations as they come up. I try to do that with students and with my leaders in the same way.

Parent (mother): I think we’re a lot more intentional now about what we’re praying about for our boys. Not just for the Lord to protect them, but kind of for those open conversations to be happening, so that we can talk to them about the hard topics and the hard conversations, even now at such an early age.

Chrissy Sysko, Assistant Children’s Director, Cornerstone Church: Incredible tools that I learned about that I just want all the parents in our children’s ministry to be aware of, and to be able to take advantage of and implement into their homes.

Lauraine Masciantonio, Education Staff, Bright Hope Pregnancy Support Center: The biggest thing was the heart. You know, there’s a lot of things that we can talk to kids about, but the real issue is getting to their heart and where their heart is.

Maria Greco: This conference has impacted us greatly as a counseling center, and I know many of the churches who were involved with it took a lot away from this conference. One of the ways, specifically as a counseling center, that we wanted to continue supporting churches and our clients was to create a group for parents whose children are sexually struggling. So we created a group based on Harvest curriculum. We worked with their parent ministry team to really develop a group walking alongside parents who are walking alongside their children.

Harvest USA is a ministry that we trust. They have walked alongside of us as we are processing through difficult cases. They have provided us with resources and education. They have prayed with us, and they have helped serve us as we continue to serve those struggling. But even more than that, they present these issues through a biblical, a gracious, and a truthful way.