- We are officially at 71% Faith Promise! God is continuing to work behind the scenes--I am aware of enough Faith Promises still to come that should put me at 76% or better! Please keep praying for full funding SOON! My hope is to be fully funded before Christmas so that I can enjoy Christmas with my family before leaving without thinking about support.
- Kingdom Come Training has been AWESOME! I am so thankful for this training in how to develop healthy partnerships with my team. The class will end on Wednesday, and then I will just continue with a weekly coaching meeting until we hit the 100% mark.
On a youth ministry level, I have a few thoughts I wanted to share.
- First, I wanted to follow up on some of the book reviews I did a while back. Specifically, I had reviewed Burned by Ellen Hopkins but had not yet touched on other books in this series. Since then, I read Crank and part of Tricks as well. Crank did seem to have a bit more of a point--basically that drugs will lead you to consequences including an addiction that is not easily overcome. However, it was still "filthy" in my opinion--very sexualized, focused on a girl losing her virginity, and the language and overall tenor of the book was very dark. Whatever redeemable quality may have been in Crank was more than made up for by Tricks. I could not finish this book because it was so dirty. The title says it all. This was seriously literary porn geared toward teenagers. Please don't let your kids read this stuff!
- I received an awesome reminder this week about how the church should be approaching youth ministry. My home church is in revival with the Fox family, and Dr. Bryce Fox shared a story that broke my heart. He spoke of a young girl at a church camp who was weeping after the service. When he asked her how he could pray for her, she began to share this story. She had been trying to reach one of the "roughest and toughest" boys at her school for Jesus. She was spending time with him, trying to show him the love of Christ. She finally invited him to church, but he said (paraphrased), "If I decided I wanted to find God and would find him at church, then I'd go. But if I want to find God, and they play games at church, then I don't want to go." The girl began to cry harder and said, "I can't bring him with me to church because I know we will play games!" Youth workers, I don't share this to communicate that we should never play games and have fun with our students. I do share it as a reminder that students are looking for TRUTH and REALITY, and unfortunately there are times and situations when they don't find those things in a student ministry. Let us remember our priority--to share the life-giving hope of the Gospel with every adolescent we can!
- I am also wrestling again with a topic I have wrestled with many times in the past--how do we effectively reach FAMILIES as youth pastors?? Anyone who works with students understands where I'm going with this. If a family comes to Jesus, the chances of a student remaining faithful to God in adulthood are much higher. While I am confident that God can save anyone despite their circumstances, how awesome would it be if we were successfully reaching whole families rather than just individuals! What does it look like to run a "family youth ministry?" We need to engage this question--and then engage it again--and again. This is not something that we can solve overnight, but as youth pastors, we cannot give up on wrestling with the potential our ministries have to transform homes, reconcile familial relationships, and strengthen the church as a whole rather than just youth group attendance. We have an obligation to help families mirror the kind of family discipleship described in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Unfortunately, we are often starting with a student who is curious about God and whose parents maybe couldn't care less. I plan to post some ideas about how to approach this, but I'd love to hear your thoughts first. Any takers?
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