Life2gether

This is a must-read article for church leaders (especially those who work with children and families). Instead of casting judgment on parents, we must “consider the possibility that an undisclosed or undiscovered disability may be driving problematic behavior.”

I also recommend this follow-up article entitled, “A Parent’s Greatest Fear,” where the author ends with this exhortation:

There may be parents who are trying their best visiting the church with kids who have bad genes, kids who experienced trauma or abuse, or kids who haven’t yet developed the skills to effectively self-regulate their emotions and behavior.  How do we welcome them and share with them the unconditional love Christ has for them? How do we as the church best communicate so we build the relationships necessary to cast influence in their family?

(HT: Jared Kennedy)

Here’s a brief description of Kenda Creasy Dean’s provocative book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church:

In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”–a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done?

In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God’s love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives. (Taken from Dean’s website)

• Buy the book here
• Read CNN’s take on it here

Ten years ago I taught 6th graders at Grace Christian School in Deephaven, Minnesota.  I loved it.  Pouring my life into young people was (and still is) a passion of mine.  After all those years, I recently heard from one of my former students.  It was so encouraging to hear about what God is doing in her life and how she remembers 6th grade as the year she started making a habit of reading the Bible on her own.  She is now a junior at Bethel University in Minnesota with a burden to share her faith in Christ.  I was so blessed to read this article and to be a small part of the story God is writing in her life.

So, if you’re a teacher, be encouraged.  You’re making a difference.  Many times you won’t get to see the fruit of your labor, but God is at work!  BTW … if you’re a former 6th grade student of mine, I’d love to hear from you!

The transition from high school to college is a difficult one for many students.  This is where the church can step in and play an important role in supporting and praying for these college-bound kids.  Walt Mueller, with Center for Parent Youth Understanding (CPYU) tells about the College Transition Initiative, a program to discover how you can learn more about helping these students in transition.  I posted the following articles on their website for further reading.

CPYU Articles

Mindy Meier: Sex on campus - Derek Melleby interviews author Minday Meier about Donna Freitas’ bookSex & the Soul

Finding campus community - What can be done to help students make wise decisions in how they spend their time and who they spend their time with in college

Preparing high school students for the realities of college life - The CCO interviews Derek Melleby

Youth group gone wild - What you can do now to prepare kids for college

Life after high school - CPYU interview with author and professor Dr. Tim Clydesdale about his book The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School

Why students abandon their faith - Lessons from William Wilberforce

God in the gap year - More and more students are taking a year off before heading to college

The beginnings of vocation - Deciding on a major. Download this article as a .pdf handout.

Choosing a college - Questions students should ask as they seek a college that will positively nurture the entirety of their being, by Matthew J. Reitnour

Life after high school: A conversation with ministry veteran Steven Garber - How youth ministries can help students with the transition from high school to college

Affirming doubt - Helping students ask and answer tough questions

Keeping faith from fraying - The American Family Association interviews CPYU’s Derek Melleby about the transition to college

College prep - Helping the teens you know transition to the university years

College Transition - A look at the transition from high school to college through the eyes of a high school guidance counselor and two college students

Navigating the college transition - CPYU’s own Derek Melleby, along with Susan den Herder, wrote this article for Comment Magazine

The lion, the witch and the college campus - Key issues students face when transitioning from high school to college and the relevancy of C.S. Lewis for college students

Conversations for the college bound - What high school students heading to college should think about before making the transition

Prepare for college: Read the Bible - Students who desire to transition smoothly from high school to college should read and understand the Bible

Switch looks like an intriguing book by the same authors as Made to Stick. In it they make 3 assertions about how to change things when change is hard.

• What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction.

• What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side.

• What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.  So shape the situation and you make change more likely.

Here’s a great example of this last idea by a 3rd grade teacher in Michigan.

If you’re interested, here’s my thoughts on making your teaching stick somewhat inspired by the Heath brothers’ first book, Made to Stick.

This little anecdote by John Piper is a powerful reminder to make God supreme in all your child’s learning no matter if you homeschool or send your kids to a Christian school or public school.

I remember the day when my non-academic, dyslexic son said to me, “Why should I care about spelling the way everybody else spells?” I countered, “Well, you won’t be able to communicate as well if you don’t learn how to spell the way everybody else spells.” “I don’t care about communicating well,” he replied. “Why should I care about communicating well?”

The blasphemous, standard, 20th century answer to this question is, “If you don’t learn how to spell and communicate, you won’t succeed in business and make as much money.  And above all, you won’t have a high self-esteem.”  What a Godless answer.

Here’s another answer; the one I gave my son. “Ben, you should care about communicating and learning how to spell because you were created in the image of God. And God’s a great communicator. You should want to communicate because you’ve got something infinitely important to communicate. You’ve got God to communicate. You’ve got salvation to communicate. You’ve got Jesus to communicate. You can’t be indifferent, Ben, to communication. God is love, and we scorn his love when we are indifferent about communicating good news to our neighbors, when they desperately need to hear these things. You need to care about communicating because language was God’s idea from the beginning. `In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God.’ It was God’s idea. He is not a God of chaos and confusion. He’s a God of beauty and order. He’s not a God of anarchy, even spelling anarchy.”

• Read the entire sermon by Piper entitled, “The Supremacy of God in Preaching”
• Listen to the interview with Preaching Today on this same topic
• Buy his classic work with the same title

Can giving children praise be doing more harm than good?  Here’s a clip with Po Bronson, co-author of Nurture Shock, speaking about the myth of praise.  You can read my reflections on what became the first chapter of his book here.

John Piper, from his message on Racial Harmony:

1. Help the children believe in God’s sovereign wisdom and goodness in creating them with the body that they have.

2. Help the children believe in God’s sovereign wisdom and goodness in making other people with the body that they have.

3. Help the children believe that they and all other children and adults are made in God’s image.

4. Teach the children that God tells us to do to others as we would like others to do to us.

5. Teach the children and model for them that their own sin is uglier than anybody they think is physically unattractive.

6. Teach the children that God loves them in spite of the ugliness of their sin and that he proved this by sending his Son to die for our sins and give forgiveness to all who would trust him.

7. Teach the children that because Jesus died for them and rose again, he becomes for them an all-satisfying Friend and Treasure.

8. Teach the children to love others who are different from them, not in order to be accepted by God, but because they already are accepted by God because of Jesus.

(Read, Listen, or Watch the whole sermon here)

Mark Driscoll gives a short history of Santa Claus here.

Here.