New Video Blog for Parents
Check it out at
collide.westefc.org
It’s going to be good dialogue, discussion, and conversation. See you there!
Competent in the Word
Do I really need to be a Bible scholar?
I often asked this question in college as I was doing the work of youth ministry classes. I didn’t really remember any of my youth leaders knowing a lot about the Bible or about what God’s Word had to say to me or to them. For the most part I turned out okay in college (I dyed my hair once and played a few harmless pranks…) The pastor at my local church was a student of God’s Word and knew a lot about Scripture, but people who were in leadership were not required to be “competent.” The definition of competent is “to have the necessary skill, ability, or expertise to do something that is required.” Being competent in God’s Word means we are equipped for the tasks God brings our way. I would suggest to each of us that the task of parenting requires we have more than a rudimentary knowledge of what God’s Word says about who God is. Parenting requires a growing, vibrant understanding of theology and Scripture to inform our practice in life. Scripture has all sorts of things to say about parenting, but more importantly, Scripture has all sorts of things to say about who the God we say we serve is and how He functions with His creation. Scripture is our guiding light, it is without error and written by God. For us to let it sit on a nightstand and collect dust is to say it is unimportant or not worth our time.
So, do I just read or what?
For a long time, I was convinced that being competent in the Word meant that I knew where passages of Scripture were, that I had some of it memorized, and that I was reading it regularly. At some point, I realized that deeper study was required for me to really grapple with the cultural contexts and understandings that are pervasive through all of Scripture. There are things in Scripture I read at face value that didn’t seem to mesh with the way I was experiencing God. For instance, in the Old Testament, God seems to be a God of wrath and anger and a God that punishes mercilessly. As I read these stories at face value, I knew God is “different” in the New Testament. However, as I read Scripture like Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, Psalm 102:26, Malachi 3:6, 2 Timothy 2:13, James 1:17 and others I realized that God is unchanging! How could the God portrayed in the Old Testament be the same God in the New Testament? It took me studying the words of God and examining what I was reading in different places to understand that the same characteristics God displays in the Old Testament are the ones that require Him to have a perfect sacrifice of His Son. In fact, in some ways, the more we understand God’s wrath, the more we see His “anger” at the cross. His wrath is poured out on Jesus who became a substitute for some of the Old Testament requirements (2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13) and therefore demonstrates some of God’s unchanging characteristics (that are hard for me to understand, admittedly) throughout Scripture. Competency in God’s Word requires we dig deeply into the text. Examining the whole of Scripture and being willing to ask hard questions of the text allow us to grow in our understanding when it comes to this perfect book written by God.
Theology informs our practice in parenting
Most of you have a lot of experience parenting your kids to this point. When we first had Isaiah, I began to live out a lot of the things I knew about God. I had always seen God as a “father” but had never experienced being a father. I didn’t understand the sadness, anger, or discipline of God until I had kids. Had I not been a student of God’s Word, I would have never been even able to make those connections and grow in those areas. The way we view God informs our practice in all areas of life, but in this area of parenting, I think there are strong ties between how God parents His kids and how we are to parent ours. Obviously, we will make mistakes and God won’t, but the principles and values God gives are coming from some expertise and wisdom found in His character.
Dad/Mom…should I….?
One of the most direct applications I can think of as an impetus to being competent in the Word is when one of our kids comes to us and ask us a question about what God says about sex, alcohol, friends, family, siblings, pornography, cheating, shame, guilt, depression, sadness, change, etc. When that happens, sometimes we find ourselves reeling trying to understand where such a question might come from. We want to know who told them about the issue at hand. We want to know if they are having sex or if they are depressed. Teenagers often ask these questions because they are gleaning information as they shape their worldview. They are asking people closest to them (even though they may not let on to you that you are) what God’s Word says. It’s in these moments that, if you are competent in the Word, you’ll be able to answer the questions “in season and out of season” or you will have the tools to study and find what you need to really grow in this area. I am not suggesting you give your teenager a list of verses to go and read, rather I am suggesting that in these moments a dialogue can take place rooted deeply in your understanding and competency of Scripture.
Our teenagers must also be competent in God’s Word.
Competency in any area comes through three things.
1. Teaching/Learning
2. Experience
3. Giftedness
It is imperative we give our teenagers opportunities to grow in all three of these areas.
In the area of teaching/learning, we need to be the primary teachers and they are the learners. From an early age you taught your kids how to walk, talk, eat, play, and how to go to the bathroom. However, at some point the needs turned to things much more complex. Instead of teaching kids how to share, you found yourself trying to teach social skills so your teenager could make friends. Instead of teaching them to go to the bathroom, you were trying to teach them to shave in the bathroom because their body was doing strange things to them. It’s the same way with teaching Scripture to your kids/teenagers. At an early age they are geared for simple memorization, learning basic concepts about who God is, and practicing basic principles found in Scripture. As they get older, the learning becomes more complex and it is necessary to begin to answer some of the “bigger” questions of life through Scripture. This is the spot where many of us find ourselves unprepared. If we had the tools and were competent in studying God’s Word, I think our teenagers would have a more solid foundation to turn to for answers to their questions in moments of turmoil or misunderstanding.
In the area of experience, we need to show our teenagers what it means to study Scripture give them opportunities to use a Strong’s Concordance or other commentaries, or get them a book called How to Study the Bible for All It’s Worth and go through it with them. Have them teach you a section of Scripture. Let them experience what it means and feels like to be competent in God’s Word from a young age. Part of this experience is building confidence in God’s Word and in their ability to study it. When I was a cubby in AWANA, there was incredible affirmation I was doing something right. I may have only memorized words on a page at that point, but there was affirmation and feedback. When kids become teenagers that affirmation and feedback often stops and it is left completely up to the teenager to figure out how they are supposed to interact with God’s Word. Do you know that any “good” Jewish teenager has to have the first five books of our Old Testament memorized by the age of 13? Talk about a way to develop confidence in their lives! I’m sure there is feedback and a movement forward in the area of experience for the Jewish teen in that environment, and I think it is time we learn something from that and begin to move towards an experiential model of teaching our teenagers how to study God’s Word.
Giftedness is a buzzword in some sense. As you teach and lead experience with your teenagers, many of you will find a giftedness to learn the word of God within your teenager. The trick is being able to cultivate that. I see so many students who have the capacity to be future teachers/preachers in our local churches if only their parents would be able to draw out some of the learning capacities at their current age. I also see many potential young evangelists who, if grounded in God’s Word, would be a powerful force in the kingdom of God. However, there are many young leaders who will disqualify themselves from leadership because their competency in God’s Word is rudimentary at best.
Let’s get serious about this idea of competency in God’s Word so we can let our theology inform our practice both in our parenting and in our teenagers’ lives.
Letting God’s Word “transform” you
If competency in God’s Word is having Scripture “inform” and “transform” our lives, then we must discuss a little bit about transformation. (2 Corinthians 3:18 is clear about this transformation.) I think one of the clear marks of being competent in the Word is that your life is changed because you are studying, internalizing, gathering data about what God’s Word says and then living it out. If your entire view of the world you live in was shaped by Scripture, that might qualify as transformation. Early in my college career I discovered I was getting headaches when I sat in the back of the room and tried watching the white board or the projector screen. I began to have intense migraines, so I looked into what was causing these. I found my vision had deteriorated enough that I needed to have corrective lenses so I could see clearly at a distance. I remember putting my glasses on for the first time and thinking I had a whole new lease on life. I could see clearly! When God’s Word becomes the lens we look at everything through, we have a new lease on life. We can now view the world through the lens of what God has for us and what He has for our world. We can see people as God sees them; we can make decisions how God would and we can lead our families how God would want us to lead. There was transformation in what I could see with my “new eyes,” and when we are competent in the Word, there should be transformation for what we can see through those lenses. For many of us, there will be different levels of studying God’s Word and, therefore, different levels of living out God’s Word. The strength of prescription may be different for everyone, but there is still a lens to look through as we become competent in this area.
Confessions of a Youth Pastor on Parenting and Studying Scripture
I honestly believe we have a great Sunday School program here at West Free. There are good teachers, there is an intentional plan of teaching, there seems to be consistent attendance from our students (at least the younger ones that are required to come) and there seems to be momentum in the classrooms. In the recent past, I have been deceived into believing that the Sunday School hour of teaching is the most important hour in our students’ lives. Somehow, I told myself, if we could get our students to really dive into God’s Word for that hour, it would spark some sort of studying on a regular basis on their own or with others. But as I have zoomed out of that hour and observed teenagers at our church, I quickly realized the most brilliant students of God’s Word have simply been taught the basics of studying God’s Word in their home. They are taught to ask questions, given allowance to ask those hard questions, and pushed to seek answers. It has nothing to do with Sunday School. Sunday School is only the place where these “brilliant” minds are identified. It happens in our homes. It happens through modeling. It really happens through teaching, experience, and giftedness. When we, as parents, are willing to cultivate all three of those things in our students’ lives, we will begin to see the competency grow in our families and our teenagers.
I don’t think this area is an area to take lightly. While all of the rest of the characteristics may flow out of communion with God, being competent in the Word is crucial to have “right thinking” in the area of theology and practice. If we don’t have “right thinking” we can end up in a place that is incredibly dangerous. Being competent in the Word is how we know what all of the rest of the characteristics are and how they should manifest themselves in our lives.
Communion with God
My toughest “C”
When we took our spiritual assessments the last three years as a church, I quickly realized this “C” is not my forte. I still cannot figure out why. I do things that would be seen as communion with God. I regularly play guitar and sing worship songs, I go for long walks, I pray (and sing) in the shower, and I deeply desire this personal relationship with Jesus. I DO all of the things that would be indicative of having communion with God. So what is the problem? Why is this the lowest number in all of the areas for me? Could it be I just do all of these with a bad heart? Maybe I am evaluating myself too harshly and not in a positive light? Maybe I have a wrong definition of what “communion” means? Really, think about it. I have a higher score in the area of “Committed to the Lost” than I do in this area. Sharing my faith with others is really scary; it’s really hard, and it takes some effort, guts and time, and yet, Communion with God is the area in which I struggle?
If you are like me and you scored low in this area, you might be asking the same questions. The truth is, the things I do still don’t produce the feelings and products of communion. If I were to have communion with another individual, I would experience deep conversations. We would
hang out together. There would be a transfer of ideas and dreaming together that would be healthy and productive. There would be laughing, crying, and sharing life together. If I were to be in a relationship as I think of having communion with someone, I would have intimacy with that person. The closest relationship I can think of is the relationship I have with my wife. But the reason I score low in this area is that I don’t have a relationship with Jesus like I have with my spouse.
At this point, you might be thinking, “How unspiritual can one get?” I know, I know, I’m supposed to get this one. A pastor is supposed to be the most intimate with God out of anyone (I’m not sure where in Scripture it actually says that!). And yet, I struggle with this one. The reason this “C” is first, is because I believe all of the other C’s somewhat hinge on this one. But let me try and give some definition and skeleton to this hard area.
Defining communion
People try to define communion with God as “worship to God.” They would say this is really defined by the way we sing on Sunday mornings, the way that we pray on Wednesdays or the way that we “do worship” on our own. For some, it might be taking a hike through the woods or looking at the stars to engage in their own personal worship of their Savior. But I think maybe, just maybe, these things are an incomplete picture of what communion with God really is. They are only a small part of what it means to understand this “C.” Communion with God might be defined as “a passion for God that draws me to Him and motivates me to live for Him.” When we use this definition, we leave the things we do behind and find the things that invoke passion. Passion is another hard-to-understand word. We use passion when we talk about sports players and their passion for the game. We use the word passion when we talk about relationships where love is involved. There is a movie called “Passion of the Christ.” But how might one measure passion? Is it simply something that is found within and if I feel passionate I must be doing well in this area? If this is the answer, then I know why I answer poorly on the assessment in this area. Often, I don’t feel passionate for the things this particular definition offers. I don’t feel as though I am connected deeply with God and don’t have a passionate desire to take big steps towards Him.
From definition to discipline
I think a passion for God that draws me to Him involves discipline. It involves having the fortitude to seek God even in the moments when faith seems to turn to fear, closeness is gone with God, and God seems so far away. It is in these moments of fear where, when I choose faith, I am demonstrating my ability to have Communion with God. Out of these moments, I become motivated for Him and often am motivated by Him to live in light of who He is. When I am regularly disciplined in areas of reading Scripture, prayer, fasting, meditating, and seeking God’s face, there seems to be a communion that develops. The spirit of God seems to take hold of my mind and I am doing the things that would allow a pathway of faith to develop.
A leg under your chair
A chair generally has four legs (Okay, not generally, it does!). If you pull one of those legs out from under it, that chair would fall over. It’s a similar story with high school students who move on to college and fail to have spiritual disciplines in their lives. The chair legs holding them up in their lives have been parents, family, friends, structure, school, church, and youth group. When they go to college, all of that goes away and the chair legs are pulled out from under them. If they have not developed spiritual disciplines in their lives to really weather the storm of change, they will fall and crumble. As a parent, we must understand that our kids become who we are. If we are regularly involved in reading God’s Word, praying, and seeking God, I wonder if many of our students would come away from high school with not just a picture of what it means to be disciplined, but actually practicing these things. What if we spent 18 years developing these disciplines in the lives of our teenagers so that they would be habits? I think the first year of college would be a different statistical story. For many of you, you don’t have 18 years left with your teenager. You might have less than a year. You might have a couple years, and if you are fortunate, you have six or more. No matter how much time you have left with your teenager, now is the time to get to work on the disciplines in your own lives to make habits for the future. When a teenager goes off to college, there is certainly change for the teenager, but did you know over 65% of parents report dealing with some sort of circumstantial depression? What is going to carry you through that? If you have a relationship with God and you are moving towards communion with Him, there would be a “leg under your chair” to hold you up!
The way we are wired…organized/spontaneous
There are two different types of people in the area of discipline. One is the type of person that folds all of their shirts the same way, puts them in the same drawer in the same order and may even wear those shirts on the same day of the week each week. They would see themselves as very disciplined and structured. The opposite group would see them as obsessive compulsive! The other group has no idea where any of their shirts are and once they find one, they need to go wash it (assuming they can find the soap) so they can wear it. We have different levels of natural organization. For those of you who are organized to the point of OCD, you have read the above section and nodded your head. “Yes, we need discipline.” Those of you with less organizational skills said, “I would love to be disciplined in these areas, but I don’t think I could do these things daily or in a time structure.” The good news is all of us are wired the way we are for a reason. Understanding how you are wired will help you in this area of spiritual discipline. For those organizational zealots, simply adding this to your daily routine is something you need to do. Reading God’s Word, praying, and disciplining yourself to seek God’s face is an addition to an already full day. But it’s more than an addition. It’s saying “no” to something else for many of you. You are so organized you have actually organized God right out of the picture. It’s time to let Him have a place in your structure again. For those that are gifted with spontaneity, prioritize the disciplines with God and do them spontaneously. When you have a free moment, seek God’s face. Remind yourself by wearing a bracelet to read God’s Word or memorize Scripture. I know a man blessed with spontaneity that will do this discipline thing while he is using the restroom. He sees this as his reminder to have some quiet time. Whether you are organized or spontaneous, discipline is necessary in this area of communion with God.
Confessions of a youth pastor on parenting and disciplines
Sometimes I think I can instill disciplines in our students with a series (currently we are doing a series on transformation which is focused on disciplines.) I think something I say, some accountability within small groups, or modeling prayer will somehow teach students the principles talked about above in the “Communion with God” section. But the truth is the students who are really good at disciplines coming out of high school are the ones with parents who are also engaged in these disciplines in different ways. Those are the students who are a product of consistent marinated discipleship of their parents. I would love to say our student ministry has produced amazing disciples of Jesus. The truth is, the amazing disciples of Jesus who have come from here come from families where audacious faith is lived and God-seeking disciplines have been cultivated.
I need to grow in this area of communion with God, and I invite each of you to grow with me. As we seek God together, as we understand priorities and disciplines and begin to implement those in our lives, I believe we will see God radically transform our hearts and minds to be parents that honor God first with a byproduct of modeling for teenagers what it means to be in communion with God.
Imperative Growth for Parents of Teenagers
Building your relationship with Jesus is the most important thing you can do
I am going to do a series of posts specifically targeting parents of teenagers. My hope is that these posts will help grow and mature each of us in our faith as we parent our kids. The reality is kids become who their parents are in one way or another, so taking a deep introspective look at who we are will give us insight into who our kids will become.
Living the example of a Christ follower in front of our kids should not be the catalyst for living out our faith in our daily lives. This should be driven and motivated by a desire to better know our Savior, the one who died for the punishment of my sin. When the drive to live for Christ is all about being an example for our teenager, this simply becomes an exercise in futility. If we want to develop fully devoted followers of Christ, I think we must first be fully devoted followers of Christ.
When we live audacious faith, our kids are deeply influenced by that faith
I heard a story of a young teenage girl who was walking in rebellion from her folks. She was dating a guy who was obviously not good for her and was a force in her life to the point of influencing her to do negative things. Her father repeatedly tried to make things right with her and persuade her to end the relationship, but she was unwilling. They dated for a few years. During those few years, the father began to meet with another man. He kept asking the other man what he should do about his daughter. The advice given was, “Why don’t you do something with your faith that is meaningful? Why don’t you start actually living for Jesus?” It wasn’t that the man was living for himself or that he was living a horribly sinful life, it was that he was living an apathetic faith. He started a non profit that focused on having compassion for those in need. Two years into this successful venture, his daughter asked him if she could work for him. As they were sitting together one night, he asked her if she was still dating the young man. She said, “Dad, I knew that when you started living your faith, my boyfriend was not the one for me. I want to be with someone that lives on the edge, like you.”
It was an unintended consequence of truly living his faith, but his daughter saw the change in his life, she saw the issues that surrounded him and wanted to be a part of it. There is something compelling, something persuasive about someone actually living out what Jesus has done in their life!
If the 7 C’s are a description of a fully devoted follower of Christ, then shouldn’t we always be living in light of these?
For the next few days, I want to address what it means to have the characteristics of Christ present in our lives as parents. This is not a teaching/instruction blog, rather it is a dialogue. I would love to have any input from you as a parent on what you see as important in each of these areas. There are 7 C’s each of us could focus on in the area of our own spiritual growth. They allow us to be honest with ourselves and with each other as to whether we are growing towards Jesus or simply living apathetically within the realms of the four walls of our “safe” church. If we were to live “on the edge”, could we reach our culture for Christ? Could we change the statistics of teenagers that walk away from the church? Could we revolutionize society and the passionless world we live in?
I believe that we can. But it starts with our own growth, our own spiritual development. Hearing from God is not something that is easily definable or even explainable, but as we hear from God in these areas, let us be open to the idea that we may need to change the habits, the issues that confront us daily for the sake of our own relationship with Jesus with an intended consequence of how our teenagers will respond to Jesus Christ in the future.
A note about youth ministry at West E. Free
I believe deeply that parents and youth ministry must partner together. Teenagers are only influenced by the local church about four hours per week. Parents have the opportunity to disciple their kids 55-60 hours per week, so if discipleship is going to be effective and helpful to our teenagers, we must be willing to partner together. As I have processed what is most helpful in this area of partnership, it seems there are really two levels. The first is regarding our direct contact with the teenagers. At church we teach them specific topics, so informing you as to what your kids are learning is important. The other level of partnership is helping you as a parent learn and grow in the area of spiritual formation as well as parenting skills. Obviously, I don’t possess many of those parenting skills because I have not experienced what it means to parent a teenager. The spiritual formation section of partnership is where I want to focus my personal energy and then work to develop partnership between “seasoned” parents and “starting” parents. When this begins to happen, I think we will experience some intense transformation and partnership between church and the family.
If you have been in my office you know the wall is painted orange. What many of you don’t realize is that I actually dislike the color orange. It reminds me of some sort of carpet straight out of yesteryear. However, orange is speaking volumes to me each and every day. If family and church are represented by color, family would be considered “red” because it is a loving entity. It is a heart relationship of a family a loving, nurturing environment. And if church were a color, it would be yellow, the light of the world. When we blend the two colors, we create orange. My office is orange so I might always be pushed to think of blending the church and family together to better disciple our young teenagers.
Are you in? Are you willing to do the hard work at home of being the “youth pastor” to your teenager? If we are willing as parents to do this, I believe our homes would be much less apathetic and scary and much more alive and vibrant in the world of faith and values. I am not saying this will be easy, but I am saying it could be extremely rewarding to join in this blending of family and church.
Choosing the Right College
In our class for parents of teenagers these past couple Sunday’s we have talked about this subject. Here are some resources for you!
I remember those days well. The fall before I graduated was filled with anticipation, excitement, stress and the inability to sleep. I had all sorts of things that I was working on for school, all sorts of applications that I wanted to fill out, grants and scholarships to apply for, and no time to do any of it! And then something happened. Someone began to dialogue with me about how this process can be mapped out, charted, processed, and thought through well to eliminate some (and I do repeat SOME) of the stress. There is always stress in change and there is always hardship when we have transition, but the thought of choosing the right college doesn’t have to be completely overwhelming. We are doing a short seminar on “Choosing the Right College” for teenagers after AFW tomorrow night and I am excited to get to talk to our Seniors about some of the things that they can be thinking about and through.
I have a couple random thoughts for those of you that are Seniors. Remember, college is NOT the end all/be all of your life. It is a time in your life where you will experience all new things but college will quickly become routine much like High School is. Enjoy your senior year of High School. Remember to continue to live in the present and invest in those around you such that you leave a legacy in the lives of the people that you have influence with now! One other thought, college is NOT for everyone right away. If you are struggling to know exactly what you want to do eventually, you may want to choose a different path than a four year school. You may want to do some Junior College work and get some of the General Education Requirements out of the way. You may want to experience a short term (but longer) mission trip for a few months. You may want to do some online courses or really do an internship to figure out of the area of internship is where God would have you be long term.
This blog is meant to give them a couple of online resources to plow through and look at. Here they are! I’m praying for all of you that are looking to head to college and all of you that are looking to do something else post high school. May God direct you and keep you and may his face shine upon you!
http://www.christiancollegeguide.net/
Oh man! The above resource has some awesome stuff on it. Articles on how to decide where to go to find financial aid, planning a visit to the college that you are thinking about, how to discern the will of God in this area, and so much more. There are invaluable things to read and delve deeply into here. Click and find all sorts of stuff here. Show your parents, there is awesome stuff for parents here as well.
http://www.quintcareers.com/college_application_timeline.html
If you were like me in High School, you didn’t have the capacity to plan the next morning no less the next year of your life. The above resource helps to map out some of the things that you’ll need to be doing in the next several months in regards to choosing the right college and making sure that you stay qualified and ready to step into the collegiate world. I would add to each of these stages of the senior year that you pray like crazy and stay open to the leading of our God in your life. There are things that will change spur of the moment and while for some of you that is not comfortable, it is inevitable and sometimes how God operates. Stay flexible and work through the applications and such things with diligence and fervor.
http://www.christiancollegeguide.net/choosingacollege/2008/2.14.html
Here’s a great article on a checklist that you can use when you visit a campus. It is helpful to know what you might be looking for as you head onto campus for a weekend or two.
http://www.quintcareers.com/first-year_success.html
This article may be something that you file for when you get to August 2010 and you are headed to college. It is a great resource for some basic ideas on what you could do to really help you succeed where you are going!
FOR PARENTS
http://www.christiancollegeguide.net/parentsguide/
I hear from parents often that this is the scary time in their life as well as a stressful time. Here are some good articles for you as well!
Again, my hope in doing these practical trainings is to open the box of mystery and help people understand that this process is one that for too long as been one that is frustrating and stressful. I think we can live in the present and really enjoy as God leads us to where he would have us be Post High school!
Books for “Parenting Teenagers” Class
Today, we started our parenting teenagers class. I mentioned several books and wanted to give you the option and information to buy the books.
Soul Searching (This is the one with statistics.)
Teaching Generosity and Thankfulness to Teenagers.
I don’t know that it is that hard to teach tithing to teenagers. Pastor Ken gave a brilliant message this morning talking about tithing being a matter of the heart. He talked about needing to teach these values to our kids. While I don’t think that it is that hard to teach our kids the values, the world that they live in is very obstinate towards to the values of giving. Read the excerpt below regarding consumerism and then some practical ways to teach our kids to be generous and thankful.
According to the Journal of Consumer Research, the worse kids feel about themselves, the more obsessed they become with buying stuff. And because self-esteem takes a big hit during adolescence, countless retailers and brands are vying for the attention of teenagers trying to purchase their identity.
Author John Rosemond says that while adults generally attain 10% to 20% of the things they desire, kids are accustomed to receiving about 80% of what they want. And parents often make sure their teenagers aren’t deprived of any luxury. No wonder materialism has such a strong hold on kids today.
The problem is that “stuff” can’t meet our deepest needs or heal our hurts. Only God, the giver of all good gifts, can do that. Being content with—and grateful for—what we have is rooted in this knowledge of the source of all our blessings.
God not only promises to meet all our needs but commands us to give thanks in all circumstances, even the tough ones. As parents, you can help teenagers be grateful for what they already have and help them start to see the blessings in challenges and adversity.
Here are some practical ideas for instilling a sense of gratitude in your teenagers. Try them this month as a family to enhance your Thanksgiving celebrations:
1. Keep a gratitude journal together. Regularly write down things—big or small—for which you’re thankful, even during tough times.
2. Offer a fresh perspective. Have family members each write their names on a piece of paper. Pass around the papers, and have each person write down what they’d be thankful for if they were the person named.
3. Bring proof of your thanks. Add a twist to Thanksgiving dinner by having everyone bring to the table three objects for which they’re thankful. These objects represent: 1.) something new this year, 2.) something intangible, and 3.) something basic to their lives. Take turns sharing your objects.
4. Serve others. Volunteer as a family to express your gratitude and to foster generosity. Watch for more about service opportunities in next month’s newsletter.
Great Questions
to Ask Your Kids
Get teenagers talking about ways to incorporate gratitude into their lives all year long.
1. How content are you? Would your life be better if you had more money or more stuff? Explain.
2. What are you most thankful for, and why? What would you do if these things were taken away from you?
3. When is it hard for you to be thankful? What kinds of things are most difficult to be grateful for, and why?
4. How is it possible to “be thankful in all circumstances” (see 1 Thessalonians 5:18)
5. How does it feel to be appreciated? How do you express thanks to others?
Taken from “The Parentlink”
Your Passion Becomes their Passion
Check out this article. Enjoy!
We sometimes forget that who we are is who are teenagers’ often become!
-Pastor Chris.
The “Facebook”
Parents and “The Facebook”
For years, I have been fascinated by the issues in social networking that pertain to relationship building and development. I have often wondered if there is a false relationship that is happening because of the medium of technology, specifically the “Facebook.” There seems to be authenticity issues, self identity issues, informational overload issues, and a myriad of other such problematic regimes that plague or screens in the office, at home, and at play.
As I have begun to think about the “community of faith” I wonder if we are in the midst of a revolution that is literally shaping the things to come as we speak. Jesse Rice writes in “The Church of Facebook” that we are absolutely in such a phase. We are living what people in the 60’s lived when air conditioning was introduced as a viable means of cooling a house. Things changed. People began to move out of their Victorian style homes and into ranch homes because the deep porches were no longer needed to protect the home from the brutal heat that was customary in the southern United States. There was a movement towards the south in terms of people migration. People stopped being on their front or back porches because they could now spend the majority of their times indoors and air conditioning, the means of conditioning the environment, absolutely revolutionized the current world as it was known. Facebook is doing some of the same things in our culture. Sure, there are some of the same principles and values and contexts that are translated from schoolyard and parking lot to the digital world of facebook (for instance, the conversations about who might be dating who, etc) but now there is a new definition for the word “Friend.” No longer is friend someone who stood around in the circle of people that one would stand face to face with, rather, friend is someone that can have access to all information that one might put on display using the social networking tool called facebook.
As parents, what are we willing to do with the world of “Facebook?” Are we willing to engage students where they are at as we would if they were standing in front of us? Are we willing to coach in this area of the unknown as it continues to shape and mold our culture and society? My challenge to you as parents is that you be involved with your teenager’s life both online and offline. Does this mean that you must get a facebook? Absolutely not. It simply means that you are intentional about the coaching of the digitial world, that you are aware of it and willing to have the conversation with your teenager. Disciple them, challenge them, coach them as their world and your world, really our world, continues to morph and change. I’m praying for each of you!
Adolescent Culture: A Post about why ‘teenagers’ exist
Did you know that the term ‘teenager’ is relatively new? It’s not new to any of you that would be reading this blog, but as we look back through history, the term ‘teenager’ came about somewhere in 1941. There are many reasons that the creation of the new subgroup of people were created.
You can check out this article to read a little more about how that creation happened. Click here.
In the above article, Stonestreet points out that in other cultures and societies, adolescents as we know them today were doing things that we don’t allow our 13-18 year olds to even think about such as farming, making a living, marrying, going to war and having kids. We see many of those things today as “adult” type things. The creation of “youth ministry” within the church came with the creation of the term adolescent. The church has always looked to address the spiritual needs of each age group. Christian education has been around much longer than the 1940′s because Christian education began to address the spiritual needs of children because they were a designated age group much earlier than the 1940′s. It’s amazing to think that other cultures are not engaging in this teenager war between parents and adolescence, rather, they are simply sending their ‘adolescents’ off to war, get married, and have babies. They are growing up quickly in other cultures.
It may have been at one time that the age of 18 was when one would become a full fledged adult because they could do things like fight in a war, smoke a cigarette, or vote. But I don’t see that as being true. There is clear documentation that 18 year old’s rarely see themselves as being released into the world of adulthood. So maybe the age of adulthood is 21, when one can have some sort of alcoholic beverage. But again, our culture perpetuates that this is still not the age of adulthood because those that are turning 21 are too young to do other things, like support themselves financially or be married.
Current trends suggest that there is actually a pre, mid, and post adolescence that is happening because there is not clear distinction in where the adolescent becomes an adult. The western American culture has defined by practice that the age of adulthood happens when a few things are in place in one’s life.
- Education is gained – Going to college is essential for the modern day student and is expected of most of our students that they will go from high school to some sort of collegiate event where they will continue their studies and education.
- Financially Free – When our adolescence are able to support themselves and live within their own means, then they are free to be called adults in our society. The current trend would suggest that fewer and fewer college students are taking jobs that would support them full time out of college which, in some cases, means that they are financially dependent on someone else.
- Marriage Occurs – Unfortunately for those that will remain single for the majority of their lives, our culture often sees marriage as something that is a ticket into the world of adulthood. One of the first questions that someone will be asked out of college is whether or not they are getting married or have a girl or boyfriend. Marriage seems to be the mark of transition from adolescence to adulthood. Mark Regnerus actually argues that early marriage seems to grow kids up into adulthood more so than an adolescent waiting until the average age of 28 (for a man) to get married. You can read that article by clicking here.
So there really is no “age” that our culture says that one is an a full fledged adult. It is more of a stage of life issue in our culture and not a clear cut distinguished practice of moving one from childhood to adulthood. Instead, we have this muddy area of adolescence that may or may not be grown out of depending on whether the cultural norms are met.
How can parents deal with this with their child and teenager? My suggestion is that there is a parent initiated event at a certain age letting that teenager and adolescent know that they are now an adult. This let’s them know that they are capable and expected to make decisions for themselves, be financially stable in their own lives and able to be sustaining when it comes to living life. I have seen this age declared at 18, 20, 24, and 25. My suggestion is that this event happens as one leaves high school as usually the teenager will continue to live at home during the high school years. When they graduate from high school, generally, there is a movement to another stage of life.
Teens are wrestling with who they are and what identity they want to take. And if parents are willing to help move the process forward in moving them into adulthood, this could give opportunities for parents to coach, work alongside, and mentor their child rather than having to be the decision maker and suffer consequences of choices that children make. In other cultures, both in other contexts and time periods, choices were made in the adolescent years that had consequences, but since the children were now in the realm of adulthood, they quickly realized how to deal with these issues of consequences by making better choices. This may be one of the hardest things for a parent to experience, to see their kids screw up and suffer consequences. I know that even for me with a 2 year old, it is hard for me to watch as he continues to put his hand on something hot after I have warned him that it is hot. He suffers the consequence and listens the next time I say that something is hot. The same is true with parents of a teenager or post adolescent. I have no doubt that it is incredibly hard and that the consequences to actions are much steeper. But there are times that your child needs to experience pain and consequence as they live in the realm of adulthood.
Teenagers and adolescents can live up to the expectations that are placed upon them. In fact, they may be the most adept age group to be able to do so because they are teachable, moldable, flexible, and ready to act and move quickly in their relationships and organizations. You can read a little more from the Harris brothers, who have lived up to high expectations and are doing hard things as adolescents. They are defying the nostalgia that says that they need to be lazy teenagers and not accomplish anything. Click here to read their blog.
This blog is certainly not the end of the discussion, I would welcome your input and thought in this area. Read through some of the articles above and let’s continue to process what adolescence really is and what healthy transition to adulthood looks like in the area of faith and practice.
