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WHY I TAKE MY SON TO YOUTH GROUP

By Tim Walker 

It’s funny how much I knew about parenting before I became one. I had all these absolute statements and strong ideas about what I would and wouldn’t do—usually based on how I felt my parents handled something or based on something I observed around me. “I’ll never let my kids pitch a fit in the store.” “I’ll never tell my kids, ‘Because I said so.’”

I knew so much—until I brought my son home from the hospital. Then I realized how little I knew. And it doesn’t get any better. Each new stage, each year, brings new challenges. Just when I think I have things figured out, some new surprise comes along. Now I look at new dads and have empathy instead of criticism.

I also have a new perspective on how my parents handled things, and realize that while they didn’t handle every situation perfectly, I’m certainly not capable of perfection either. There are too many factors that go into seeing a situation so clearly—my own history, my fears, my mood, plus my wife’s history, mood, and fears.

So at this point in the journey, with a middle school student in my house, I can honestly say I don’t know everything about being a dad. But I do know one thing—I can’t do this alone.

I can sense it every day. I can see my son looking for some other figure in his life, in addition to his dad and mom. I can feel him wanting to be a part of the grown-up world, and have other adults in his life who can connect with him. Cooler adults. Adults who can throw the football better than me. Adults who like the same teams he does.

And as much as I think I can be all that for my son, the reality is I can’t. I need other people. I’m not stepping down from my job. I’m still here as a dad, but I need other people who will pour good things into him. I need other people who will reinforce some of the things I’ve tried to teach him about God, about character, about being a man.

That’s what youth group is for me. It’s that place where my son can connect with other teens, but also other adults. The people in that room get that I struggle with is how to connect with my changing son. That’s what they are passionate about. And quite honestly, that’s what they are good at. Whether it’s through playing a silly game or having a time of worship, they are passionately pursuing ways to connect with kids like my son.

That’s why I drop him off at youth group. That’s why I pay the $10 for an outing, or sign the permission form, or become the carpool for his friends. Because I know I can’t do it alone. I also know that I have a role to play here. I’m still dad, but to help my son move to adulthood, I need other adults pouring into him as well. 

Perfect Parents

By Reggie Joiner

There’s something that bothers me. A lot of Christian parenting books I have read start with the premise that there is an ideal mom or dad. These superparents conduct morning devotions, pray together every night, play contemporary Christian music, put framed verses on their walls, stay neatly within their biblical roles as husband and wife, vote conservatively and attend church every week, where they give 10 percent of their income.

The problem is, I don’t find a lot of good parenting examples in the Bible. I am not dismissing “religious” parents. (I am sure the Pharisees would have made great revolutionary parents and could have been extremely focused on their families.) I’ve searched for some examples, but I just can’t find any paragons of parenting in Scripture. The Bible certainly lends advice about parenting, and there are a number of universal principles we should apply as parents, but you would have a hard time convincing me that David, Noah or Eli was an exceptional parent.

Don’t even try to point at the Proverbs 31 mom. What was her name? Oh yeah, she didn’t have one. You say, “What about Joseph and Mary? They raised Jesus and He turned out okay.” This is true, but He had a divine advantage because of His real father. Adam and Eve might have been good examples had they not single-handedly caused the downfall of the human race and subsequently raised one son who killed the other.

My point is this: Parenting is hard. Families are messy. There are no clear biblical examples. Anyone who claims they have discovered the secret to effective parenting is probably covering up something, just had a baby, or recently graduated from Bible College with a degree in youth ministry.

There is a degree of dysfunction in every family. Mine is no exception. When my dad was fifteen, he ran away from home and joined the Air Force to get away from his manipulative stepmom. My mother’s father and mother struggled with alcoholism and both committed suicide one year apart during her elementary years. Neither of my parents had the advantage of reading James Dobson or Gary Smalley books. They never attended a FamilyLife seminar. They simply got married (without any premarital counseling), had kids, and plowed their way through being family. The only thing that kept them going was their faith in God, and their love for my brother and me. As a result, their values of faith and family were effectively passed on to me.

Unfortunately, they passed along a few other things too. Traits like control issues, stubbornness, moodiness, insecurities, tendencies to manipulate, and a few others. Why? Because they had bad parents? No, they are human parents. Human parents tend to have human issues. Human parents struggle with the humanness their own human parents passed down to them.

It all started with the first mom and dad. Talk about a dysfunctional family. Adam was quick to blame Eve for causing him to fall into sin, and Eve passed the buck directly to the serpent. Then one of their sons killed the other one, and it all went downhill from there:

Noah had a drinking problem.

Abraham offered his wife to another man.

Rebekah schemed with her son to deceive her husband, Isaac.

Jacob’s sons sold their brother into slavery.

David had an affair, and his son started a rebellion.

Eli lost total control of how his boys acted in church.

In comparison to the parents described in the Bible, mine were incredible. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe God filled the pages of Scripture with bad parenting examples to encourage us? I know God desires for me to be a responsible parent, but my humanness sometimes gets in the way. When I read the variety of Christian books about parenting, they often make me feel overwhelmed and guilty. If I consider my own inherent faults and personality quirks, I am not sure I have it in me to be an A+ parent. When I read my Bible through, I am actually encouraged, and I am definitely aware that God has a way of doing something incredible in spite of my faults.

What would happen if parents began to see the family in the same way believers should view the church, as a human part of God’s design to demonstrate who He is to the world? Don’t miss the significance of that vantage point. Our humanness actually becomes the platform from which He demonstrates His power, goodness and love to His people. It is an amazing thought when you realize that both the church and the home are comprised of broken, imperfect people through whom God has chosen to tell His story.

What if it’s not God’s plan for parents or leaders to restore the church and the home to be a sublime, utopian state? What if, instead, it’s God plan to do an amazing work with the church and the home in order to put His grace on display? Imagine the Supreme Creator visibly and actively involved in both entities—healing, loving, restoring and re-creating a broken people in order to demonstrate His glory and plan of redemption.

God is at work telling a story of restoration and redemption through family. Never buy into the myth that you need to become the “right” kind of parent before God can use you in your children’s lives. Instead, learn to cooperate with whatever God desires to do in your heart today so your children will have a front-row seat to the grace and goodness of God.

(Excerpted from Think Orange, © 2009 by Reggie Joiner, David C. Cook Publishing)

 

Parents: Take The Step To Lead Your Students

Here is a cool article I found about being a spiritual leader to your students:

Taking a Step
By Sarah Anderson

Spiritual leader—two words people use a lot at church, and ones that they often direct right at you as a parent. Those words can be pretty intimidating. Leading our kids spiritually is one of those things we know we should do, maybe even want to do, but we’re just not sure how.

But when it comes to the influence you have on your kids spiritually, it is something we rarely learn how to do until we simply make the decision to do it. We can read books. We can listen to guidance. We can observe the pros. But we can’t really make any strides until we simply take the plunge and make the first move.

For a lot of us, there is nothing more scary than endeavoring to navigate our own spirituality, let alone talk with our kids about their spirituality. But we can’t be non-participants in this. We can’t watch from the sidelines and allow the youth pastor, the small group leader or the church as a whole take over a role designed and purposed for you as parents—as tempting, appealing and easy as that might be.

Your kids need you—more than they need a coolly dressed youth pastor. Your kids need you—more than they need a culturally relevant small group leader. Your kids need you—more than they need a spiritually impressive church. All of those can play an important role, but they don’t lessen your role. Your kids need you, because your kids are watching you, observing you, taking note of you and the value you place on what is going on with them spiritually. So fading into the background isn’t really an option.

So how do you even begin to engage your kids when it comes to their spiritual well being? For one, you start by asking questions. I remember hearing years ago that people can easily determine what I value and what matters to me by the questions I ask them. When I first got married, my dad would ask me if my new husband and I were “doing okay financially.” He asked this one question often enough that I knew, to him, it mattered that we were managing our money wisely. In the same way, the questions we ask our kids reveal what means the most to us. Are we only concerned with their grades, their whereabouts and their messy rooms? Or do we take the time to ask about their time at church? What did they most enjoy about their time there? Was there something that stuck out that they heard or talked about? Was there anything that challenged them or confused them? Begin a conversation, a dialogue, an ongoing connection that happens because you made the effort to care about what is happening at church.

Make yourself available. Don’t allow yourself to become invisible in your own teenager’s life. Kids notice your willingness to simply be there —whether they acknowledge it now or years later. Your presence alone is communicating a valuable message: “I care about you. You matter to me. So, I am going to make sure you have my attention. You have my time. You have me.” This could mean you make the effort to drop off or pick up your student from the student program or it could mean you are simply tuned into what is happening in the student ministry. Doing this communicates to both the youth pastor and to your student that what they are doing has validity, is important and matters enough to you for you to know what is going on.

Sometimes, leading your child spiritually takes time. Sometimes it is more comfortable to stay uninvolved in something that doesn’t come so easily and feels so odd. But even though it’s easier, if you don’t make the effort, you’ll miss out on some incredible experiences. With most things, when you give it time, things start to improve. The outlook isn’t so bad. It doesn’t feel so foreign. In fact, it may actually start to feel right.

No, it doesn’t happen overnight. And no, it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to go well. There will be some awkward silences. There will be times when you’ll wish you would have said something differently. But continued effort, renewed care and concern can go a long way. And the glimpses of payoff—though maybe brief—are enough to look past the awkward foibles that come with the learning process to see the potential.

When it comes to the spiritual lives of your kids, there is potential. So much potential. Nurture it in them, not by becoming a super parent, but by becoming their parent—a parent who cares too much to fade into the background and let someone else steer the reigns of their spiritual lives.

5 Ways to Make Your Teenager Indifferent to God

Here is another blog that I ran across recently, some great thoughts for parents that want their kids to excel in their relationship with God. Check out the original post here.

GUEST POST: 5 Ways to Make Your Teenager Indifferent to God

In youth ministry, one of the hardest things I’ve had to experience is leading students into a growing relationship with Jesus, while their parents are doing the opposite.  In a lot of cases, the parent wants the best for his/her teenager.  It’s just that their definition of “best” might not match up with mine.  There are some hard-and-fast rules to engage if you don’t want your teenager to care about God.  The following are just a few.

1. Make sure their extra-curricular activities are priority over church. You should always make sure that their scholarships are intact, and that they don’t get kicked off the team.  That’s definitely more important than their relationship with Christ and eternity, for that matter.

2. When your teenager screws up, ground them from church. Of course! If they don’t care that you take away their TV, cell phone, or friend time, hit them where it hurts.  Take away church.  Yeah – that oughta do it.

3. Don’t call them out when they need guidance. Always let them make their own mistakes.  And if they’re about to do something super-destructive, it’s probably best that they learn on their own.  Because learning it the hard way is always the necessary path, right?

4. Talk negatively about your church staff around your teenager. If your pastor messes up, make sure that you call a family meeting to roast him.  You should definitely let your teenager know that people can’t be trusted, especially incompetent church leaders.  Your teenager needs to know that trusting church leaders isn’t smart!  If they don’t trust church leaders, there’s a small chance they’ll ever accept God’s direction in their life.  And that’s the safer way to live.

5. Don’t model real faith. At the end of the day, the last thing you want to do, if you want your teenager to ignore God’s voice, is to follow it yourself.

Please know my heart on this issue.  We parents need to be leading our families to Jesus every chance we get.  Maybe it’s time to take inventory of who or what we’re actually leading our families to.

After all, actions speak louder than words.

A Must Read for Parents!

A few weeks ago I read a blog post by Tim Stevens from Granger Community Church in Indiana.  This is some great information for parents...you can check out the original post here or read below.

IF YOU DON’T PROTECT YOUR KIDS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD–WHO WILL?

Our kids are growing up in a different world. Here are a few things we do (or have done) to keep our kids safe…

• Internet filtering – Curiosity killed the cat and can do great harm to kids as well. We have used different products to filter and monitor our kids internet activities. Monitoring tells us where they are going. Filtering keeps bad stuff away that could hurt them. Currently we are using Family Safety which is a free add-on product that we have loaded on every computer they access. Not only can we restrict sites based on our values–we can also monitor what sites are capturing their attention. And we can change (ease) these restrictions as they get older.

• Computer game time — on a school day, they get 30  minutes of electronic game time (whether computer, Wii, Xbox, iPod, whatever). On non-school days, they get an hour. This limit forces them (mostly the boys) to find other things to do. They all love reading, and I think that is partially because we haven’t allowed their time to be monopolized by staring at a screen.

• Cell Phone privileges - we didn’t get cell phones for our teens until they were in 9th grade. Why then? Because that is when it became inconvenient to us that they didn’t have one. It was never really a safety issue–in middle school there was always a friend nearby who had a phone they could borrow.

• Cell Phone Limits – this is about helping them stay in the present and not always being pulled away into other conversations. Our cell phones have unlimited text messaging, but we actually pay an additional fee (called “Smart Limits” by AT&T) to limit the number of text messages and the time of day it works for phone calls (other than to us, of course).

• iPod Touch restrictions – our 7th grade son saved his money for a long time until he was able to buy an iPod Touch. The first thing I did was took it, enabled the “restrictions” feature, locked it out from Safari (internet surfing) and YouTube, set a password, and gave it back to him. I don’t need my adolescent son walking around with a pocket full of temptation.

• Email monitoring - when they first got email privileges, I restricted their incoming messages to an approved list to protect them from child predators. After awhile, I lifted that restriction but continued to monitor all their incoming and outgoing email. As the teens are getting older and more responsible, I’ve gone from 1) Monitor everything, to 2) Monitor occasionally, to 3) “You know I can monitor it if I want,” to 4) I trust you.

• Facebook monitoring – similar to email, we monitored all of their Facebook activity when they first began using it (around 8th grade). Then it was “as needed.”

• TV time — the biggest blessing to parents has been the invention of the DVR (or TIVO). Our kids don’t channel surf. There is no reason. We just keep the DVR stacked with shows that won’t hurt their hearts (which, of course, changes as they age). They get a limited time to watch, and when they do they can skip commercials (which saves time AND limits the consumer mentality from taking over). Parents: Think of a DVR as a parenting tool, not a tech gadget.

I haven’t even talked about the content of movies or shows, but the bottom line: You are the parent. If you don’t protect them from the digital world, who will? At the same time, if you don’t prepare them to live in a digital world without your oversight, who will? I am constantly doing the countdown: I know I have 17 months left to prepare Heather to totally stand on her own in the world. So we are constantly reevaluating our limits and lifting them as she is ready. It’s fun to go to the kids and say, “You’ve been doing great, making good choices. I’m going to ease the restriction in this area because I think you can handle it now.”