A Culturally Relavent Gospel?

It is one thing to alter the events around the presentaion of the gospel, such as a Dance, Bowling Party, or Concert to meet the changing culture of youth today. It is an etirely different thing to change the gospel to fit the changing culture of the youth today.

One can hold virtualy any type of event, party, or get together and have the gospel lived out and presented there in order to bring people inot a relationship or at least be exposed to Christ, but as soon as the gospel is changed or altered in order to accomadate to what the culture says it wants or feels, you have lost the whole truth and power behind it.

Todays youth culture is not attacted to rallys and impersonal types of evangelism (such as door-to-door) like it was 15-20 years ago. Rallys used to be an amazing evangelical tool that were used to bring many poepl into a relationship with Christ, but with the culture changing to be ever distrusting and sceptic, they need to see the gospel lived out in a real and tangible way first. The best way for this is for peer-to-peer evangelism. Friends that reach out and accept all types of people, loving them as christ would. Not shying away when a chance presents itself to share the gospel, but boldly meeting their questions and sharing from their own experiences what Christ has meant o their own lives.

The church can help these conversations happen by having, oh say, a superbowl party. Here, the students can bring their friends to a place where they have a chance to hang out and show them what a community of believers is like. Also presenting them with a chance to hear about why the lives of their friends look different from others that they know and what the world says they should be like.

Now, is this changing the gospel, no, but is it changing the way it is presented, most certainly.

I Want to Live on My Own With My Parents

This is the time in the life of a Jr. Higher where they are starting to become an adult in several ways; physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This causes what may at times seem like very odd behavior. One day (or minute in some cases) they will love everything about you as their parent and will love spending time with you, then the next day (or minute) they will want nothing to do with you and will do anything they can to distance themselves from you. This is most certainly natural and part of their culture. So many areas of their lives are telling them that it is time to grow up and become an adult, but so many parts of their body still want to cling to their parents as guardians and protectors. This may even bounce back and forth between the two parents.

The best thing to be done is simply keep loving and praying for them in any way we can. This is a time in their life where they can be confused about many things and simply need time and prayer to figure it all out. I am not advocating simply leaving your child alone and letting whatever happens happen, but don't worry too much when it seems like one day they love and worship you and the next they won't even talk to you.

This reason is way websites such as MySpace have become so popular. It allows an area that is completely controlled by the teen. They can modify it to unbelievable extent while retaining their own identity and personality. It gives them there own 'room' so to speak in an online community amongst millions of other 'rooms'. It could be thought of kind of like a college dorm building, only the way in is a slight knowledge of html instead of a good SAT score.

Why am I crying?

Some of you may wonder what your young teen is going through, or if you're lucky enough, you may remember what it was like to be an awkward ball of conflicting feelings and emotions. I most certainly do recall what it was like.

One night while I was doing my algebra at the dinning room table, I was getting a little frustrated with not being able to completly understand what I was doing. I would have the concept grasped, and then suddenly it wouldn't be there any more. Well, after a while I started getting sniffly and the next thing I knew I was crying. I most certainly didn't need to be crying about some algebra assignment, and I even remember thinking, "Why am I crying? I'm not that upset about this stuff." Ofcoarse, my parents being the kind loving parents that they are came over and asked what was wrong and I most certainly couldn't tell them because I didn't really know. I'm sure you can tell what came out of my mouth though, "Nothing." Your basic one word pre-teen answer.

The goal of this post is simply to help us all remember that sometimes the kids we love so much don't have a lot of control over their emotions at this state. This is most certainly not an excuse for them to let their emotions rule them. If we can keep this up front when dealing with kids this age it may help us to understand some of their behavior. This is a link to an over all 'understanding puberty' webpage designed for youth workers, but i think it has some pretty good points for all of us. Remember, we can think about it for 5 or 10 minutes and move on, but right now, these kids are living it and dealing with it 24/7, the biggest thing we can do to help is to keep loving them and keep praying for them.

My Parents Used to be My Age?

Believe it or not, most teens today and most likely for the past 2000 years, have a difficult time actually realizing that their parents went through a lot of the same things that they are going through now. Sure the circumstances and technology have changed quite a bit, but the basic struggles are still there.

I, like most teens, had a difficult time thinking that my parents could have ever been my age, or ever went through what I went through. As I grew older and listened to what my parents told me and stories of how they met and what they did as kids, I learned a great deal about who they are today and what type of person they were when they were my age. Stories about my dads highschool years showed my indirectly what choices I should be making considering drugs, racism and sex. It opened a path of dialogue that was much more smooth than, "Sit down son, we need to talk about sex, drugs and all sorts of uncomfortable things." I am not opposed to directly telling your kids about these things, not at all, but showing them with your own experience can do so much more than a simple lecture can. Did I always use the open dialogue my parents presented me with, no, but I knew that they just might understand if I ever needed to talk with someone about what I was going through.

This is a link to an article that talks about these things. It's not too long and has some interesting points. If you do have a few minutes I think it is worth the few minutes it will take to read through it.

Goals and Positions

It is our goal and hope in creating this blog to help who ever happens to read it to better understand who their kids are, what they are going through, and how to relate to the culture that is created for them and by them in todays world. I am not trying to provide diffinitive answers to all things youth realted, but a guide using my experience and what I have learned from my parents.

I will be looking at popular youth websites and literature in order to help you sort through it all and find the 'good stuff' more easily. I am very much open to, and in fact need, your feedback, comments and questions. The more information I can get from you about what you would like to know about your teen, from video games to counseling tips to the newest lingo, the better this blog will be in meeting its goal of meeting your needs.

With all that said, I would like to open the floor with a simple invitation for questions you may have. Feel free to leave them in the comments section or send me an email through this site. Thanks everyone, I hope you're as excited about all this as I am.