Busy Busy Busy

Busy, I get it.

Conversations with parents and students keep pointing and taking us to the conclusion that students and families are super busy and perhaps even operating on an overload.  So as student ministries we see this affect and impact our momentum.  It’s hard to grow a church when the members show up once a month for worship.  It’s hard to grow a student ministry when students show up once a month.  Attendance has such a big influence on momentum, excitement is generated when students look around and see many more students at worship with them. 

The reverse is true too.  When students show up and many of the “regulars” are missing it deflates the energy and momentum.  If a youth group goes three weeks in a row with 30 students the momentum gets going and then they hit the fourth week and have 17 its like letting the helium out of  a balloon.  Then you are back at square one.

 In the olden days (7 to15 years ago) it wasn’t like this, at least not in our neck of the woods.  I know youth pastors in the Midwest and west coast have shared with me that they have experienced the same issue.

I don’t think it is because Christian students, as a whole, have lost interest in their church’s youth group.  I don’t believe that it is because they have all become apathetic, sure there are a few just like in big church.  Gone are the days of Wednesday evenings and Sundays being protected for worship and church involvement, even in the Bible belt.

Simply from observations, no scientific data to back this up, I think the root cause of this is busyness.  It seems to me that students today are busier than ever.  This translates that parents are busier today as well.

I know, speaking as a parent, we often have something almost every night of the week.  This winter we juggled wrestling practice and matches, ballet/dance class, gymnastics, homework, small group, youth group.  It can be hectic.  As a parent I’ll say that this is the choice we have made.  My kids don’t have to do all those extra curricular events.  We want them to do those things to help them be more rounded.   But at what cost?  



It boils down to prioritizing.  What are we going to cut out of our lives or sacrifice?  Meals together, family time, the ability to just relax those are just some of the few, that’s my perspective as a parent.



From a youth pastor's perspective I have  noticed parents cutting out corporate worship, youth group, small group, family worship, personal quiet times, serving in church.  When we start making the cuts why does it seem we cut the things that will help us and our children grow stronger and more mature spiritually?
What is most important?  What are the goals for my children?  These are the questions I have to ask myself as dad and as the spiritual leader and the one who disciples my children.

In our staff meeting the other day one of our elders made this statement which has been rolling through my mind and this statement was made after I started to write this post:

“God gives you all the time you need.  It is up to you to manage the time He has given you.”

That’s what it boils down to.  How will I steward the time God has given me and my family as a parent? 

Some things to think about as you try to figure out how you are going to get the kids from school to ball practice and find time to cook supper.

What are my goals for my children?

What do I have to do vs. what do I want to do?

Project Care4Kids

I'm so stoked about a new outreach we are starting here at Nags Head Church!  I know that many of us who serve on staff in churches sort of have an entrepreneurial spirit.  So when there is something new I get to be involved in I get excited.

In 2015 there were 670,000 children in foster care in the United States.  Unfortunately this number is growing each year.  We aren't, as a nation, making headway in helping parents to be better parents.  What is the church doing about it?  In our church we have some who are foster parents and some who have been in the past.  We are encouraging more to get involved.

But what can we do as the church to help meet immediate needs in foster care?  Our church is launching a new outreach to the community, Project Care4Kids. 
Project Care4Kids has four areas of focus:

1. Encouraging people to be foster parents
2. Meeting temporary needs of foster children and their foster parents
3. Supporting our local crisis pregnancy center
4. 
Supporting and promoting adoption

This past Sunday I was able to bring the message in "big church" and our focus was on sanctity of life.  At the end of the message I called the church to action and had an overwhelming response.  We asked them to respond on a communication card.  I have a big stack of these cards on my desk  right now.  We asked people to commit to prayer, giving financially, meeting practical needs, going on mission trips, adopting and foster parenting.  Many indicated they would pray and most committed to other areas as well, even adoption and foster parenting!  The response is overwhelming.

One element of this new outreach/ministry is really going to make in impact in our community.  We formed a team of volunteers from our church (over 30 committed to this on Sunday) who will put together backpacks for foster kids.  These backpacks will be packed according to different age ranges.  In the pack will be age appropriate toys, stuffed animal, school supplies, toothbrush, toothpaste, body wash, shampoo, etc.   Local foster parents will be able to call a "hotline" number, set it up on google voice, when they get the call that they will be receiving a child in their home.  So when they get the call that at 7pm social service will be bringing them an 8 year old foster child they can then turn and call us and someone from our team will drop the back pack to their house.  We will also drop a duffle bag because many of these kids show up with all their belongings in a trash bag.  A trash bag!  What message does this send to the child?  We will also let the foster parent know we are available to help with other needs if they let us know, clothes, shoes, coats, etc.

We will be having in March a Project Care4Kids launch party.  We will gather together on a Saturday morning and divide up supplies, organize and pack backpacks and duffle bags.  We will be also making a "no sew" fleece blanket for each child and teen.  It's going to be a fun time of serving together, building relationships and meeting needs.

We are getting going on this new outreach.  We aren't sure how it will all work out, we don't have all the answers but we are willing to dive in and do something, to put feet to our prayers.
If you would like to know more about this outreach project please feel free to contact me.

Discipleship - Connection (Part 2)

Find Part 1 Here.

Our connection to God should naturally lead us to be connected with other believers in a local body of believers, the church. (1 Corinthians 12) As we study the New Testament church we find that gathering together with other believers was a priority. (Acts 2) How do we teach our children that this connection to other believers is part of being a follower of Christ?

• Set the example. Much of our life is intertwined with other believers, our church. Both Mish and I are involved in Connection groups where we meet weekly to connect with others from the church. We are connected through serving with others in the church.

• The Church is a Priority - In our home church attendance isn't optional. It is a priority in our home just as it was with the early church in Acts 2 (they met daily so perhaps not as much as them). Our children will grow up knowing that involvement with and in the church is not an option but a priority. This is how I grew up. Sleeping in on Sunday morning wasn't a choice in our family growing up. I was forced to go to church my whole life. Guess where I am at every Sunday morning? Why? I was taught connection with the church is vital to spiritual health and growth. I was required to go to church but at the same time taught the reason why I should be involved in the church.
  

• Fellowship with other believers is important. Why? We belong to each other. Romans 12:5 There is a connection to each other. Christ died for you and Christ died for me. Our connection came at the high price of redemption. The church is where we find our "belonging". Life as a believer is meant to be lived out in fellowship with other believers. My desire is for my children to realize that their family is more than just their physical family. Their family is much larger because the church is their family as well.

My prayer is that our children, as they grow, will connect first with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Second I pray that they will learn by our example and teaching as their parents the importance of being connected with a local body of believers. Not just be church attenders but to live our life in fellowship with the church.

Communicating with Parents

We launched our new and improved weekly update for parents today. It shot out to the www on it's own automatically at 11am. I look forward to using this new tool. Hopefully the new layout will help communicate what is going on. The best part is the e-mail can be forwarded to other parents who can sign up to receive the update each week. Hopefully this will be used as a tool to reach parents who are seeking answers and also looking for something positive and life impacting for their teen.

You can check out the web version here

For a few weeks now, in our old regular e-mail format, I have been asking parents to get involved in the Rock-a-thon this Friday night without any response. Today I got several responses. Could it be the new layout? I like to think so.

Article on Age Segmentation in the Church

Nate, our worship and arts dude, sent me a link to a great article.  Here it is.  A good read for church leaders and parents of teens.  Don't think you are interested in reading the article?  Read some of the things the article shares below:

"The statistics are grim. Rainer Research estimates that 70 percent of young people leave the church by age 22."

"If adults in a church caught a vision that every kid needs to have their name known by five adults in the church, then an adult who's interested in computers can connect with a teen who is interested in computers. And it's through things like service that we get to know each other and can follow up later to deepen the relationship."

"But one of our more interesting findings is that it's also very important for parents to share about their own spiritual journeys with kids. Teenagers don't know how their parents came to know Jesus."

"The pastor is crucial. I'm a big believer in the priesthood of all believers. Yet the reality is that the behavior and attitudes of the pastor ultimately set the course for the church."

"Technology today is a lot like a driver's license was for the previous generation. When I got my driver's license, all of a sudden I could do things with my friends and have relationships that I couldn't without my driver's license. And cell phones do that for kids today."

Now are you interested?  Read the article here.

Parent Pod

During the summer our youth group has our weekly get together at the beach.  A couple years ago we started the "Parent Pod".  The parents would bring their beach chairs and gather together and hang out together while the students played in the water and had their Bible study.

I'm excited to announce that now the Parent Pod will be carried into the school year.  Several parents have expressed interest in getting together to do a parenting teen study together on Sunday evenings while their kids are at Contagious.    Pastor Tom, currently the parent of a teen and he has also raised three older daughters, will be leading the study.  What a great opportunity to get together with others who are traveling the same road and share thoughts, prayer requests, and do life together.

If you are a parent of a teen at NHC I would encourage you to plug into the Parent Pod connection group.  Contact youth@nagsheadchurch.org if you would like to get involved.

Principles for Parents

This is from the Principles for Parents seminar we hosted in the spring and it was led by Herb Owen:

"We put our children in great danger when we allow them to operate under authority that is weak or distant or does not follow biblical principles.  The danger becomes far greater when we allow our children to be in a situation whre they are under the authority of no one at all.  We have then allowed them to be in a place of rebellion."

Something for us parents to think about as we draw close to the weekend and our kids start asking to go do this or that or stay at _____'s house.

Last NIght at Contagious

Each summer we move our weekly youth group meeting to the beach.  Last night was our first youth group on the beach for this year.  We had a whole bunch of students come to Contagious on the beach last night.  We turned Seth, the master griller, loose on the new grill last night.  We consumed 60 hot dogs and chef Seth says we will need more than 60 dogs next week.  

Students spent Hang Time playing volleyball, tossing a football and swimming in the ocean.  A few went surfing with Mike, one of our family group leaders.  Waves were good, ocean temp was in the low 70's.  

We wrapped up our study on stress.  For the past several weeks we have been studying the life of Abraham and how he handled stressful events in his life.  Last night we looked at the stress that comes from loss as we studied how Abraham handled the loss of his wife, Sarah, his companion for a long time, his friend, in a land where he had no home but lived in a tent and had no property to give Sarah a proper burial.  You can read more about this in Genesis 23

The Parent Pod had several parents hanging out together.  Over the summer the Parent Pod will be visited by each of our pastors and our worship leader, Nate, as they share how parents can help students learn the purpose God has for us as followers of Christ.

It was a beautiful evening on the beach.  I'm already looking forward to next week as we reach even more students to discover life in Christ!  Maybe we will get some pics to post next week.

Parent of Teen Ministry Evaluation

Just finished up an evaluation of our parent of teen ministry.  I would love to see our parenting ministry to be one of our strongest ministries.  As a youth pastor I know the youth ministry would benefit greatly from a strong parenting ministry.  My prayer is that we are simply a compliment to a parent's toolbox of discipleship of their teen.  Parent ministry is part of youth ministry.  The trick is getting parents involved and building an effective parent ministry with parents ministering to parents.

Purpose:

To assist parents in the discipleship of their teens and to provide an avenue of fellowship and connections between parents.

Strengths:

• Parent Pod during the summer months providing weekly fellowship and providing some resources for follow up to the youth’s lesson during the week at home.
• Monthly newsletter with resources and event calendar
• Weekly update e-mail
• Occasional e-mail links to resources
• Parent page on the youth web site with helpful resources and online event calendar
• Annual parenting seminar

Weaknesses:

• Not meeting regularly outside of the Parent Pod
• Not much involvement/volunteering in the ministry.  Example - Helping with events, etc.
• Not getting much feedback from parents on the resources, web page, newsletters, etc.
• Not seeing many parents of teens bringing in other parents of teens 

Ideas:

• Calendar a quarterly meeting for the Parent Pod for the rest of 2009
• Find a Parent Pod coach, a parent to be the point person for the ministry
• Build a team of event/activity parents from the Parent Pod
• Create a survey for parents to find out what resources we provide are helpful and what they would like to see more of.
• Include some resources and tips on reaching out to other parents in our communications with our student’s parents.
• Get parents input on the topics/scripture for us to study at Contagious Youth
• Connect parents with  other parents through a Connections group that does a study on parenting teens
• Track which classes the parents have taken and encourage them to complete all the classes of NHCU
• Pastors to attend some Parent Pods this summer and share some tips in involving their teens in discipleship; missions; ministry; worship; fellowship
• Create  a parent facebook page where parents of teens can get together and share prayer requests and resources with each other