Like most parents I rejoiced the moment my daughters were able to dress themselves for bed at night. I was celebrating one more thing on my nightly list that I no longer had to do. Looking back I realize that moment of celebration cost me something. When the girls were young we were able to create space around the bedtime ritual. That space was used to talk about the day, to read bedtime stories and to giggle. Now the girls dress themselves, climb into bed, and even read their own bedtime stories. It happened without me even realizing it.

The older our kids get the harder it becomes to guard those spaces in life. By the time they are teenagers most of those spaces will be gone. Sometimes they vanish because we aren’t paying attention to them. Sometimes we simply don’t recognize their value until it is too late. I have been working hard during the last few months at recognizing those natural spaces in life that can be used to create moments with my children.

One of those moments for our family is in the car on the way to school in the morning. We talk about everything from Kidsplace on Sunday morning to why there is ice on the windshield. What about you? Are there moments of space in your life that are naturally created by your family’s rhythm? What are you doing to take advantage of those moments? I want to encourage you to use those times to ask questions about your teenager’s life and really listen to them. Improving communication is not always about creating new points of contact as much as recognizing and using the ones that are already present.

I am not an auto mechanic. This is a source of embarrassment to much of my wife’s side of the family. My father-in-law owned a funny car (dragster) and drove in the National Hot Rod Association. I am pretty sure I can change my oil. Sometimes, however, I use my lack of expertise as an excuse to not do things to my car that even I know should be done.

What’s that noise? Never mind, turn the radio up.

We live in a society that is characterized by specialization. While that has provided us with many advancements, there are times when farming out a job hurts us in the long run. Even though I am not a mechanic, I am glad I have learned to change my oil, add engine coolant, and fix a tire. If I left those things to a mechanic my car would be in worse shape then it is now.

As parents there are many jobs that we are tempted to leave to the “experts.” We depend on our student’s teachers to educate them. We expect their coaches to teach sportsmanship, and we expect the church to instill morality and spiritual passion. Each of these experts have their place, but none of them replace parents.

Youth ministry should supplement and reinforce your own spiritual guidance. The church should partner with you and give you resources useful in raising Christian young people, not compete with you or take your job away.

I want to encourage you as a parent to get involved in the spiritual life of your student. Don’t be afraid to talk about your own faith journey even if you don’t have all the answers. I would know nothing at all about auto mechanics if there wasn’t a moment when I decided to pick up a wrench. The conversation has to start somewhere.

I have been asking myself a lot of questions recently about what it means to be a parent. What is my job? Am I succeeding at it? All of us have more then one ball in the air, which means occasionally we drop one. The important thing is choosing which ball to let fall.

Sometimes we fail as parents because we have never defined success. Sometimes we fail because we have the same definition of success that we did when our kids were in kindergarten. (i.e. make sure they are wearing pants before leaving for school in the morning.) Some of us fail because we have defined success in such a way that no one could possibly do it.

I listened to Focus on the Family once define success in parenting as, “enough.” Your job is not to do everything right or perfect. It is to do enough to stack the deck of life in your kids favor all the while realizing the ultimate outcome isn’t in your control. They are the ones that will be standing before God giving an account for their actions. That is a hard lesson for me to learn, but I am trying to learn it now while I am still working on making sure my child is wearing their pants.

This year our youth ministry will be leading one of the services during our Holy Spirit emphasis week at Trinity. I have a sermon idea that I am working on for that service that I want to share with you. I am not sure where it came from. I found it scribbled in the margins of some meeting notes.

In Acts 7, Stephen is preaching before the Sanhedrin and he mentions that Moses was “educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” yet despite his training, Moses failed at his first attempt at being a deliverer. Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster and had to flee Egypt. What truly prepared Moses to be a deliverer wasn’t his education, it was his experience with God on Horeb.

I am not putting down education. I have a master’s degree from one of the best seminaries in the country, but I would trade that degree in a heartbeat for one moment on the mountain with God.

What does that have to do with youth ministry?

As leaders we are to be well trained. We should be informed of important trends in youth culture. We should understand the Word. But more than anything else we need a moment on the mountain of God. Students can tell the difference between someone who has studied God and someone who has been with God. It is easy to get caught up in training, ministry, and the business of life that and forget to look for the burning bush.

Tags: Youth Ministry

There were many lessons I learned in college that I could have done without. Did you know it takes approximately 100 packs of Post-it-notes to cover every inch of a professor’s office? Or that if a human being is Saran-wrapped to a sheet of plywood from head to toe, they will never get out on their own?

I did learn some valuable positive lessons as well. One of my favorite professors in pastoral theology described ministry as carrying around a pocket full of change. It may seem annoying to carry a pocketful of change, until you need a quarter.

When we spend time with someone we are putting change in our pocket with their name on it. Every time we go to a football game, band concert, or even just smile at a student in a youth service we are making a deposit. Sometimes the deposit will be small (like greeting a student at the front door of church), and sometimes the deposit will be large (when we show up at an away football game just to cheer them on), but it is all change.

We will have different amounts of change with different students, but no matter how much change we have (or don’t have) there will come a time when we will need to spend it. When a student is disruptive in a small group we may need to spend some change to help them settle down. When God gives us a word for a student, it may cost us some change to get them to hear it. When we are aware of a destructive behavior it will cost us some change to address the problem.

One of the mistakes I sometimes see bi-vocational youth pastors (volunteers) make is they overestimate the change they have in their pocket when they ask something from a student. They have been operating in the red for years and wonder why student’s don’t respond to their advice. That’s one of the cool things about events that allow hang out time with students, they give us the opportunity to earn some change. Last week we did a coffee at J & B’s for the Senior High to give them an opportunity to talk about the Bogota missions trip. Two of our volunteers (Sarah and Rachel) also did a Junior High girl’s only movie night last week. Our leaders you are always invited to events like these because these events are a valuable part of ministry. What happens at an altar service at camp is often a direct result of change earned on the bus ride to camp.

Tags: Youth Ministry