FaithEngineer

Lately, I have noticed something that seems to be on the increase.  I am concerned with the boredom of an entire generation.  Check out the facebook and status updates of young adolescents and you’ll be sure to see the infamous statement, “I AM BORED.” I am sure that this isn’t something entirely new, but I do see it as a growing problem. In the midst of incredible advances in technology, entertainment, and communication, teens and children are complaining that they simply have nothing to do. With a 5 year old, 9 year old, and 11 year old, it’s a phrase that comes up often at our house. If we hear complaining about boredom at our house, the first step is usually cleaning their room or reading a book. But even with consequences, our children still want us to entertain them and help them find something to do.

I think this problem has huge implications for the church as well. If the younger millennials grow up in a society where they are constantly entertained, it will affect how we reach them. We must start getting to the root of the problem. One area of concern is the pace of our society. Everything is based on instant gratification and no waiting. From fast food to movies on demand to instant messaging, everything has been geared toward providing them what they want when they want it.  I still have hope, but it will require action on our part.

At the risk of sounding old, I actually remember before we had game systems, cell phones, and home computers. As kids, we spent much of our time simply being kids, playing and enjoying our time with friends. As adults, I feel we have a responsibility to help guide and direct the younger generation to learn how to live life to the fullest. I think we can teach and model some important truths.

So What’s the Cure?

• Let’s teach them to develop a Holy curiosity – When you look at the world with wonder and anticipation, you simply cannot become bored. When you explore and learn, you will grow in maturity and in knowledge.
• Let’s teach them to be still and know God – If we cannot teach our children to slow down, what will happen as they grow older? Jesus spent regular time in silence and solitude with God the Father, and we need to do the same thing. It brings us into God’s presence, it allows us to avoid stress by bringing our requests before God, and it strengthens us with the power of the Holy Spirit.
• Let’s teach them to use their imagination and creativity - I’m afraid we are preventing them from finding solutions to their problems. When they are bored, they can become incredibly creative. It’s in those times when they come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. Let’s not stifle their creativity. Instead encourage them to discover something to do when they are bored.
• Let’s teach them to serve others – At the root of boredom is selfishness. Everything is focused on my needs and wants. When we find ways to serve others, it helps refocus our priorities on the two greatest commandments. Loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving others as ourselves.
• Let’s teach them the power of reading the Bible and other great books – I am thankful that my children love books. I love seeing them pick up books, but still way too often I hear the phrase “I am bored.”  I want to create in them a love of reading. It’s amazing what they can learn from great stories. And I especially want them to spend time reading their Bible. It is such a great joy to hear them reading Bible stories to each other.

I encourage you to join in the conversation. What else would you add to this list?

Over the past 14 years, I have been to numerous conference for students. I’ve taken groups to all of the major conferences, but there is one that stands out as my favorite. I have seen how a weekend spent in the Bible can totally change a teenager’s life.  I started attending the PlanetWisdom Student conference when it was organized by Shepherd Ministries with Dawson McAllister teaching and Al Denson leading the worship (yeah, I’m getting old)  Mark Matlock has done the teaching for a while now, but one thing has remained the same.  While bands have changed (Dutton, Addison Road, Plumb, and Mercy Me), the quality of the conference is top notch year after year. You can expect great teaching from the Bible, great worship, and some times of great fun orchestrated by the Skit Guys.

I was really disappointed to see that the conference was cutting back this year and not coming to Charlotte. But when we found out they were offering the weekend as a simulcast, we immediately signed up. Tonight we are hosting this conference and are expecting teens from many different local churches to attend. I think it is a great idea to bring local teensagers together to worship and learn together.

It’s not too late to attend. The cost is only $15 at the door for the entire weekend. We open the doors at Cornerstone tonight at 6pm for pizza ($3 per student) and worship will kick off at 7:30. Our Sunday night worship team will be kicking things off. The conference will go to about 11:30pm tonight and start back up at 9am tomorrow morning. Everything will wrap up around 5:30 tomorrow night. For more information, visit the PlanetWisdom website, watch the video below, or contact me. Help us spread the word and get local teenagers to attend!

We kicked off our study of Crazy Love with the youth and college students from Cornerstone this past Thursday night. I wanted to share the links back to my comments on each chapter of the book. I’ll be adding the later chapters to this list as we go through the study.  You can also find out more about the book at the official Crazy Love Book website.  We have a few more books available if you missed Thursday night so see us at church to get your copy.   We are reading chapters 1 & 2 for next week’s study.

Posts in this series:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7

I’m not a huge fan of curriculum for youth.  I’ve seen far too many lessons that were long and culturally irrelevant, and most of the time they didn’t even make sense. If I see another youth lesson where they ask people to dress up in Biblical costumes I think I will drop kick the writer into the 21st century!  For the most part, over the last thirteen years of working with youth, I have written my own lessons.  I like getting ideas from others, but I couldn’t find the right mix of Biblical teaching and conversational questions that fit my teaching style.  With our recent changes to our youth ministry at Cornerstone, I knew I needed to come up with a plan for equipping and preparing our different youth leaders.

We have made the change from one large youth meeting each week to multiple smaller groups meeting at the same time.  We all meet together for announcements and some activities, but then we split up into different age groups.  I did want all the groups studying the same thing each week, so I started looking at several different options.  I really liked the content and messages from the XP3 curriculum by the reThink group, but it is geared for one teacher to teach a large group and then break up into smaller discussion groups.  We have tried that before and it is tough to teach a lesson that connects with a large group of students ranging from 6th to 12th grades. The lessons were also very long.  I looked at some others that I won’t mention here that seemed like they came straight out of 1980, and then I finally found what we we’re looking for. Simply Youth Ministry just recently released a curriculum for small groups called the Live Curriculum.  I talked with another youth pastor who was using it, and we made up our mind to jump in.  So far it’s been great.

The lessons are easy to customize and share.  It is online based, so I can login, make any specific changes that I feel are necessary, and then share with the rest of our leaders.  They can then customize the lessons for their group and teaching style, and print out the lessons and student sheets, all from their homes.  The lessons are intended to create discussion, and there are even text message questions and parent emails you can send during the week.  You can also choose the order in which you teach the lessons.  The cost sounds a little high ($499), but you are buying into a four-year plan so it really becomes cheaper than all the other options that I have seen.  I’m not easily impressed, but I think this will really help our youth ministry and save some valuable time for our leaders.

When choosing a curriculum, don’t choose something because everyone else is using it.  You have to evaluate your ministry and style, and then find something that will be a good fit.  In many cases, you may have to write your own, but don’t rule out looking at all curriculum.

The blog here has been a little slow this week. We have added a second Sunday service at Cornerstone and have kicked off our new youth ministry structure. I have been busy with all the details of getting everything off the ground. I did want to share with you a new youth website that we will be using to let our teens know about upcoming events. I had to bring myself back up to speed on a CSS formatting and working with html templates, but I’m happy with how it turned out. We have added the ability to subscribe to announcements by email or by txt messaging. We have also created a church facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mycornerstone, so if you’re on facebook, become a fan of what God is doing at Cornerstone!

Youth Overview | cornerstoneyouth

On our youth retreat, I gave our students a survey.  One of the questions was “Do your parents engage you in conversations about spiritual matters?”  Here are their answers …

• Never - 9.5% of students
• Infrequently - 43% of students
• Regularly - 47.5% of students

The numbers are actually higher than I expected.  What may be surprising to parents is that there is a very strong correlation between spiritual growth and parental involvement.   In other words, what happens at home is far more important than what happens at church.  Our job in ministry is not just to teach our youth, but to equip and encourage their parents to do the same.

Have you seen this in your ministry? What are your thoughts about equipping and training parents?

We’re taking the next two days to spend time with the youth.  We’ll be having fun, but I will also be teaching during the retreat. Our retreat will be in Charlotte, where we will be going to the National Whitewater Center and Carowinds.  We are planning on making some changes to the way we do youth ministry and this retreat will help nail down some of those changes. Pray for us that we will have a safe trip and that God will use this time to shape our ministry into what He wants it to be.

Here’s where we will be on Tuesday

Here’s where we will be on Wednesday

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Saw this over on Simply Youth Ministry this morning.  It’s a 4-year curriculum for doing small groups in youth ministry.  It looks interesting because it’s based online.  You can manage your leaders and lessons through the web.  It’s a little pricey, but it’s also for 4-years.   I’ll definitely check it out since we’re thinking about expanding small groups for our Cornerstone youth.

We’ve created Live Curriculum as a cohesive, four-year plan for your small group ministry, using a 36-week ministry year. The lessons are designed to flow from one topic to the next, and each year builds on the previous years. But we know that every ministry is different. That’s why we give you the option of taking it apart, shifting around the pieces, and using the lessons in whatever order you’d like. You can pick and choose which lesson you want to use when, if that’s what works best for you and your ministry. It’s all good!

(thanks to Josh for the heads up)

Live Curriculum

Every year, I challenge our youth to read through the New Testament during the summer.  Reading three chapters a day, you can read through the New Testament in three months.   I’m a little late issuing the challenge this year because our schools are just now letting out, but I think we all need to read the Bible consisently.  The summer is a great time to start.  Here is some info that I have posted before about different reading plans.

photo by knowhimonline

We’ve decided to shake things up a little this summer for the youth ministry at Cornerstone. Instead of regularly meeting on Sunday nights for our weekly time together, we have decided to leave the building.  Some of our activities will be fun, some will be challenging, and all of them will be focused on growing in Christ.

Last week we met at the New River Trail and had a joint meeting with the youth from Cliffview.  Yesterday, we all piled into several cars and showed up at a local trailer park unannounced.  We setup a bubble machine, and got out soccer balls and basketballs and frisbees, and then started rounding up the children.  It started out slowly, but by the end, we had a crowd.  We gave out free food and even flip-flops and shoes.   By the time we left, the children were giving us hugs and asking when we were coming back.  We plan on going back and even possibly leading a Bible camp for the kids.

Why did we do this? Just to show the love of Christ to our community.  We are serious about engaging our community for Christ, and by building relationships we can show the love of Christ in tangible ways.  The truth is that when we show love, we earn the right to share the Gospel.  We want to see lives transformed by God, and we want out teenagers to experience first-hand the thrill of serving their community.

Each week, we plan on providing different opportunities for service and growth for our youth.  Then this fall, we will be relaunching our youth ministry with some exciting new changes.  I’m excited as we pray and seek God’s vision and direction for the youth at Cornerstone.

We had a great service yesterday at Cornerstone.  We are blessed to have a great group of teenagers who really love God and love each other. I started in youth ministry 13 years ago, and I have seen many students grow and mature in their faith.  Out of all the students I have seen come through our youth group, I think this has been the most accepting and friendly group.  They have gone out of their way to make others feel welcome and to show love to everyone.

Galax is located between two counties, so we actually have students from three different school systems.  We also have several home-school students as well.   It is amazing to see how these students, who are normally rivals in sports and school activities, have all come together to build strong friendships.  They attended each others graduation ceremonies, they have hung out together, and they are excited about their future together.  I challenged them yesterday with a verse from Matthew 10:16.  As a church, we are sending them out into a world that can be very cruel.  But we want our students to show that same love and compassion to a lost and hurting world.  Here is a short video that we showed on Sunday morning.  We surprised Richie, who is one of the graduating seniors, by using a recording of him singing and playing this song.  (we created the video using the online service animoto.com)

photo by Ben Ehmke

I’ve been thinking about the many teenagers that I have spent time with over the past 13 years of youth ministry.  Some of the teens have really excelled in life and faith, while others have struggled.  While thinking about the teens who have done well, one characteristic seemed to be consistent:   An attitude of service…

Some teens just naturally go out of their way to help.  They want to do everything they can to serve others.   I’ve seen them reach out to others who are hurting, I’ve seen them help me around the church, and I’ve seen them minister on mission trips.   But how do you teach service?   I know we can model it, I know we can teach and preach the life of Jesus, and I know we can give them experiences to practice it, but it still seems that so many teens don’t understand the importance of service.

I’m concerned when I look at the youth of our church (and even my own children) and see selfish attitudes and desires.  I think that our children and teens should naturally help others without being asked. They should see a need and respond to it. We should have high expectations when it comes to serving others.

It is a daily process to die to yourself and put others first, and I hope and pray that as a pastor and father, I can teach and model what it is like to be a follower of Christ.   But I would love to hear your ideas on how to teach our children and youth how to be servants.  Join in the comments below and share your thoughts.

At Cornerstone, we have been talking about overcoming fear. Our fears can paralyze us and prevent us from moving forward or following God.  At youth last night, we talked about the story of Benaiah, from 2 Samuel 23:20-21. Benaiah chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day and killed it. While it is definitely one of the more obscure stories from the Old Testament, this story has captivated me and motivated me to not live a safe and comfortable life.

Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in D.C., wrote a book called In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day. Guess what it was about? The entire book was based on the life of Benaiah. How he conquered his fears and became one of King David’s mighty men and David’s chief bodyguard. I read this book when I was facing a tough decision in my personal life. I felt God leading me into full-time ministry, but I still had doubts.  This book, along with God continuing to speak to my heart, gave me the courage to quit my engineering job and jump head-first into pastoring a church. Since that time, I have seen God move in incredible ways, and I have no doubt that I made the right decision.

What if the life you really want, and the future God wants for you, is hiding right now in your biggest problem, your worst failure … your greatest fear?

Mark has shared several video and graphic resources for a sermon or teaching series on the book at the Chase the Lion website. Lifeway has even developed it into a great small group study. If you haven’t read this, then go get it. It is a great book.  Mark’s second book, Wild Goose Chase is equally good. It’s about following the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a poster that I printed out and gave all of our youth last night.  You can find more resources like this on the Chase the Lion website.

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshipping what’s right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze a new trail. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don’t try to be who you’re not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away. Chase the lion!

Over the years, I’ve talked with youth groups numerous times about dating, relationships, purity, and sex. I’ve seen many different curriculums spring up and then disappear, and I usually end up teaching lessons I have developed myself. This year, I decided to do something different.

I read on someone’s blog (I can’t remember who now) that they showed a sermon series to their youth from Craig Groeschel at Lifechurch.tv.   This was the sermon series that ended up becoming the book Going All The Way, Preparing for a Marriage That Goes the Distance.  I have been using this book for pre-marriage counseling over the past year and I highly recommend it.  I reviewed it a while back here on this blog.

So here’s what we did.  During youth we showed each sermon, and then I took time to lead a discussion based on what we just watched and heard.  I firmly believe that we need to challenge our youth and our these videos generated some great discussion.   Our discussions typically lasted over 30 minutes after each sermon.  Our youth don’t need watered-down devotions, they need to hear the truth in a direct, powerful, and encouraging way.   Although these sermons were geared for an adult worship service, they touched on many of the same issues these guys and girls are facing.  I wouldn’t show sermons like this every week, but it worked well for this series.

If you are interested in doing something like this, check out the free resources that Lifechurch.tv offers on their open website.  If you just want to watch the sermons online, then you can find them here at the Lifechurch.tv website.

I’ve seen this on several different blogs lately, and it definitely gives you a good laugh at the expense of the current church culture. Unfortunately, I thought of several youth pastors that I have heard speak.  Youth Ministry is so much more than just being cool and relevant.  It is all about building meaningful relationships with students as we teach and model the truth of the Bible.   It’s all about Jesus, and we must get out of the way so that Jesus can be seen.

from the creators of this video: This is a video we produced for a free event for youth ministers. It was conceived as a satire for what I consider to be an unhealthy “rock star” culture that has been growing inside Christendom, as well as an encouragement for the unheralded heroes on the front lines of ministry.

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.