Our Mission, Should We Choose to Accept It

The leaders of our Youth and Family Ministry at the Winchester Church of Christ met Sunday night and talked about our new mission statement. Without further ado, here it is:

"Partnering with families to prepare young people for a lifetime of loving God, loving others, and following Jesus."

Here are some thoughts that accompany the first three parts of this mission statement:

"Partnering With Families." We believe that parents are the most important figures in a young person's life for developing lasting faith. Is that belief reflected in what we do in our ministry? Are we ministering and equipping our families and not just our young people?

"Preparing Young People." Here's something we must also keep in mind: some of our young people will be involved without the support of their parents. Are we doing a good job of preparing them as well?

"For a Lifetime." How are we helping young people successfully transition from high school into the next stage of life? Are we doing everything we can to increase the likelihood that our young people will stay faithful after graduation and for the rest of their lives?

5 Years In...

Chuck Morris, who teaches youth ministry courses at Freed-Hardeman, recently asked me what I would tell his students as someone who's been at this for nearly five years. These are the two things that immediately came to my mind:

1. Change Takes Time. 

Idealism and optimism are good, but the reality for me has been this: significant change in ministry--in thinking, in attitudes, in programming, in whatever--takes time.

2. Focus on Principles Instead of Specific Models.

Here's an example of a principle: young people need meaningful relationships with faithful adults to increase the likelihood that they will remain faithful. Now there is a plethora of specific models out there to put this principle into action. I spent too much time trying to force-fit ready-made models onto our youth ministry instead of allowing our context to determine how the principle would best fit.

The Story

We began a new series last night called "The Story." Our students will (hopefully) be reading through the books of Luke and Acts over the next 8 weeks. The text we're using comes from a campaign called Community Bible Experience by the publishing house Biblica. It's the NIV version, but with chapter and verse numbers removed from the text to improve readability. (I am grateful to CBE for sending me the text as a free sample after I attended the National Youth Workers Convention! I am also thankful for my wife, Lauren, who bound all the booklets for our students!)

The people over at Community Bible Experience share three problems with the way we read the Bible:

Talkin' About My Generation

I LOVE infographics. An infographic communicates important statistical information in a visually appealing way for people with decreasing attention spans (which is anyone who grew up on television and uses social media). Here's a great one about my generation, 18-29 year-olds.


Created by: Online Graduate Programs

2012: A Book Odyssey

I am better at admiring books than reading them. If I loved reading books as much as browsing book stores, I would be very well-read. But alas, though my intentions are good, my practice is often lousy. So for the first time, I'm putting together a reading list for the coming year. The following list excludes the books I will be required to read for graduate courses and any "pleasure reading" (even though I think I will find pleasure in reading these). And most notably, I have each of these on my shelf already! No need to purchase more until I knock some of these out. So here they are, with categories and explanations:

Passing on the Faith by Merton P. Strommen and Richard A. Hardel

• Youth Ministry/ Family Ministry
• I'm currently reading Sticky Faith. Hopefully, Passing on the Faith will help me learn even more about how the family and the church can work together to create lasting faith in our children.

The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

• Christian Living
• I'll let the back cover speak for itself: Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., "uses his journey to demonstrate how the gospel--the whole gospel--was always meant to be a world-changing social revolution, a revolution that begins with us."

The Nativity Story

On Wednesday nights, we are in the midst of a four-part series called "Christmas Playlist." The song for week one was "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and we talked about how Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the hopes and expectations of Israel. Week two's song was "Silent Night" and we spent time simply digging into the birth narrative of Jesus. I briefly looked around on the web for a compilation of the Matthew and Luke versions but couldn't find one. So I combined them myself, complete with sub-headings that I thought might whet the appetite of my middle-school and high-school readers. Check it out and feel free to use it yourself:

Here’s the story of the birth of Jesus Christ:

To Bethlehem for the Census.

In those days, a decree went out from the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus that everyone in the empire should be registered. So each person went back to his hometown for this census. A man named Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to a town called Bethlehem in Judea, which is the city of King David. He went to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. And with him was his wife-to-be Mary, who was pregnant.

Prayer + Breakfast (3)

I have previously shared prayers adapted from Psalm 62 and Psalm 8 that we have used at our high school prayer breakfasts on Tuesday mornings. Here's one we recently prayed from Psalm 103:

Lord, we bless You.
With all that is within us, we bless You.
We bless You and we do not forget all your benefits:

You forgive our sins.
     We are thankful that You do not deal with us according to our sins.
     We are thankful that You do not repay us according to our sins.
     For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is your steadfast love for us.
     As far as the east is from the west, so far do You remove our sins from us.
You heal diseases.
You redeem lives from the pit.
You crown us with steadfast love and mercy.
You are good.

Lord, You are merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Lord, we bless You.