This is the first post in a series on Middle School Small Groups.
Our intent, for both the middle school and high school youth arenas, was to deepen disciples of Jesus.
Pastor Loretta Sunderland and I, at the end of one school/ministry year, were less than enthusiastic about youth group on Wednesday nights. We were thrilled to be able to offer spiritual teaching, instruction, fun things, etc at Youth Group, but felt like we weren’t seeing students deepen their walk and understanding of the Lord. We had lots of students. We had lots of fun. There were lots of activity. But the fruit of the Gospel was not being realized in the lives of the various groups of students coming out of Youth Group.
Hence the idea of a CORE group of selected students who seemed to be hungry for something deeper… for an intentional environment or meeting time where we could dive deeply into the hard work of discipleship.
Woah… there’s like a TON of rules in the Bible… 613 to be exact.
And some of the rules overlap, so a priority structure was put into place, but then different groups of people argued over which rules, or commandments were more important that the other.
This is the backdrop of Jesus’ teaching… a religious leaders as Jesus: “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?”
At this point, everyone leaned in to hear which group of people Jesus would endorse as the ones with the correct priorities. And true to form, Jesus picked a completely different commandment than the ones they all had placed in the primary positions.
I ask my kids this [almost] every night: “Who loves you?” Answer: “God, Mommy and Daddy.” Me: “Why did God make you?” Answer: “To love God and to love others.”
It’s a neat story about a tractor that a “little village” uses sort of incorrectly. The tractor does it’s main job of plowing a field, but the village people push and pull it instead of start it up. As a result, the pushing and pulling takes the villagers 3 months to prepare the field in time to plant. This worked well for the villagers as their efforts fed their whole village for the year. This satisfied everyone for many generations.
That is until Farmer Dave found the instruction manual for “The Big Red Tractor” and realized that the tractor could start on its own and the engine would push and pull the tractor across the little village’s fields!! At first no one would believe him, but then after Farmer Dave plowed all the fields in one night, they became believers!
The little village ends up being able to feed many other villages as well as their own as a result of using the tractor as it was meant to be used.
It’s a remarkable story. The author intends this story to be a parable about the church and how it often (quite ironically) doesn’t use the ability or the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the mission of God’s people. It’s a compelling story that calls the church to depend on the Holy Spirit to breathe life and empower God’s people to do great things in this world for Him.
Why did the [ancient Roman] emperors persecute Christians? Sometimes it was just because they hated Jesus and the Christians who followed him. Other times, Christians were killed or tortured, not because they worshiped Christ, but because they would not also worship false gods.
The Romans believed that their many gods made the empire rich and protected it. They were afraid that if the Christians offended these gods by not worshiping them, the gods might get angry at Rome and allow Rome’s enemies to conquer the empire.
Because Christians refused to worship these false gods, the Romans believed they were unpatriotic or, even worse, guilty of treason against the empire. So even though it wasn’t illegal to worship Jesus, it was illegal to refuse to worship the other gods as well.
Peril and Peace by Mindy and Brandon Withrow via Christian Focus Publications pg. 25-26
Fascinating… I always thought that it was illegal to worship Jesus in ancient Rome… like the pagans had a problem with this Christianity thing. This is not the case. It was the refusal to worship other gods that so infuriated the world of the day.
Interesting… this seems true in our 21st century world today as it was in ancient Rome… worshiping or following Jesus isn’t the problem or the issue. The rub is the refusal to worship “other gods”. Wow…
What “other gods” do we worship in 21st century America?
@ CPC 2012, breakout session speaker, Kit Rae made a great comment about normal, average, everyday life. He said:
Redeem the time you currently have with your children. One lady I know has redeemed bath time. She prints off characters of the Bible stories they learned in children’s ministry the past weekend, laminates them, then during her kids’ bath time, they do the story with the characters on the wet wall. Those laminated characters really stick!
This reminded me that we don’t have to add more time consuming things in our lives, but take advantage of the time we do have and make it fun, enjoyable and intentional!
Is it possible to gain the whole world and still lose?
John DeButts was the CEO of AT&T just prior to its breakup in the 1980’s. At the zenith of his power, he had more than 1,000,000 employees around the world. DeButts retired as a very wealthy man. Not long after that, he needed to have a leg amputated.
He later said, “In spite of all that money, power, prestige and influence, do you know that as I lay there in my hospital bed, not one person came to see me, called me on the phone, or dropped me a card? But, there at my bedside, tending to my needs day-by-day, was the woman I had ignored for 30 years.”
Fascinating. If you’re anything like me, we work and work to try and get as much as we can, all the while thinking in the end we will have made a difference… when, at the end, in utter irony, we look around and are troubled by the destruction we have left all around us.
You see, I’m learning from wise people who have told me the process of life (which is actually life, by the way) is what’s most important. It’s the relationships and interaction we have with our kids, spouse, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances that matter now as well as the development of our own character along the way. That way, at least, we won’t be working for something that eludes us (i.e. success), but cultivating the things right in front of us.
It’s easy to ignore the people closest to you. It’s much more difficult to consistently engage the people you love the most!
When I was in college the quote below was a popular one that we batted around often (I heard a variation of it @ CPC 2012):
What you call people with is what you call people to. What you call people to that you must sustain.
If you do ministry with hype and prize giveaways, then that us what your calling people “to” and you have to sustain that pace. I think you can have fun, but that should be secondary to sharing the life of the Gospel.
Having fun and doing goofy things should be a part of ministry because it’s part of being human.
Are you ever at a loss for words with your teenager? Need a few ideas to start a conversation with?
Sometimes all we need are some prompters… I came across a series of graphics and downloadable PDFs on Conversation Starters for Young Men that just might help.
Even though the graphics and documents are peppered with “young men” lingo, most of these ideas will work with girls as well.
True story: An All Pro Dad we know was at work one day when his wife walked in, holding their infant first-born, tears streaming down her face. She handed him the bawling child, said “I’ve had it!”, and walked out. He didn’t know if she’d gone home, gone somewhere else, or left the state.
They both arrived home around the same time.
“He wouldn’t stop crying all afternoon,” she said. “I suddenly realized that I couldn’t just take him back to Sears. That’s when I thought of you…”
We have these moments many times while we’re raising our kids. We lose our minds, lose our imagination, and we can’t think of anything original to do.
Here are a few novel ideas:
10 Parenting Ideas You (Probably) Never Thought Of
They were conjured up by dads who were probably not under stress at the time. We believe they might help.
“Copyright 2011 All Pro Dad. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission. For more fatherhood resources, visit AllProDad.com.”
CPC is known for their Resource Center. They’ve got a lot of publishers, content creators and services.
Before the first General Session, they opened the Resource Center to the masses that are attending this conference, and I did a preliminary walk-thru. Here are some things I came across that I liked:
The Gospel Project
Lifeway has created a 3 year, chronological curriculum series through the Bible for children. Their emphasis throughout the curriculum is:
…showing how Christ fits into the entire gospel story, pre-creation to eternity. And where each one of us fits into it, too.
This brand-new Christ-centered curriculum follows a chronological timeline of the Bible. Using this approach, children connect biblical events to God’s ultimate plan of redemption through Christ–resulting in a transformed life. His plan then… His plan for them today.
In Main Street, we also do a home-grown 3 year, chronological cycle through the Bible (and it’s neat that many publishing companies are doing this as well!) and I’m always looking for ways to augment this curriculum trajectory and content that we use.
A little over a week ago, I shared about the re:form curriculum I just recently acquired and have used a little @ Hayward Wesleyan.
Here at CPC, I was telling the people at Spark House (the people behind the re:form magic) how much I appreciate what they did with re:form. Then one of the representatives told me about a project they are working on for children and it’s in the same vein as the re:form videos.
It’s called Holy Moly and they are currently working on, if I remember correctly, a 3 year chronological curriculum through the Bible. I got a sampler pack with the story of David and Goliath materials. I can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned!
Website: Holy Moly @ Spark House (site is active but not updated, as this content is still being created).
Easy Risers
Really neat stadium seating option. These risers are expensive, but they are durable and extremely easy to move around and consolidate.
Easy risers is a 4 in 1 seating system featuring an amphitheater, music risers, discussion centers and craft stations all in one product. The entire system sets up in seconds and stacks together easily with minimal effort in a minimal space. The Amazing advantage of this product over chairs is the aspect of an elevated sight line for each row, giving the audience an unobstructed view which greatly enhances attention span.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about rites of passages and tradition-kinds of things that we should introduce and possibly implement in the rhythm of our faith community. These are neat ideas to contemplate.
Pure in Heart Ministries also puts on a purity conference.
I have not listened to this music yet, but I know that our church needs to update the Lullaby CD we give to new mothers. I want to look into this music that was highly touted.
