Category Archives: Parents

Youth Ministry and Marriage Ministry Includes Your Family

Youth Ministry and Marriage: Ministry Includes Your Family

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“Drugs?  Yes, I smoke marijuana”, said Jonathan (not actual name).  “My brother introduced it to me.  I actually like it.  I don’t see anything wrong with it?”  Jonathan was 12 and just about to turn 13.  Jonathan’s life experiences and communication maturity was that of a 19 year old.  To have “street smarts” is an understatement.  He was very experienced.  Due to a dysfunctional family life, Jonathan never experienced his innocence.  If you minister to the youth of today, I am sure you have many related stories like Jonathans.

My wife and I had the privilege to do individual coaching and mentoring to struggling teens in our church’s youth ministry.  When you minister individually to other parent’s troubled children, you are able to build a vast knowledge base of the current issues challenging teens today.  You are given many opportunities to diligently pray and ask God for wisdom in how to minister to their need.  You gain experience in leading them to victory in overcoming their sin.  You are helping change young people’s lives!

What if you are a youth minister that has a family?  Do you minister to your own children’s needs too?  When you are helping change lives in the youth outside your home, are you also ministering to the lives that live within your four walls?  Before answering, consider the following:

  • Church-Youth
    You conduct private session(s) to discover the root cause of the problem.
    Family-Your Children
    Do you meet individually with your children to see how they are really doing?
  • Church-Youth
    You Coach, mentor, and teach biblical principles of righteousness on how to overcome sin.
    Family-Your Children
    Do you take dedicated focused time to coach, mentor, and teach righteous biblical principles to help prevent them from falling into sin?
  • Church-Youth
    You create action step(s) and follow-up regularly to check progress.
    Family-Your Children
    Do you help create goals for moving closer to God and do periodic checks?
  • Church-Youth
    You pray with youth.
    Family-Your Children
    Do you pray often with your children?

Your calling in ministry should not bear the fruit of neglect within your family that God has blessed you with.  Intentionally attending to your family’s ministry needs first, before others, builds a “kingdom” focused family.   A spiritually strong family empowers you to effectively minister to others.  Those experiences and teachings to others can then be brought back into your family.   As you move back and forth increasingly feeding the gardens of youth and family, you will begin to create a spiritual sphere of momentum which increases in velocity.  Much like an ice skater who pulls their arms in tightly to their body to spin more quickly.  The force of your core circle of influence’s gravitational pull will start moving outer reaches of the church and community.  However, spiritual negligence to your family will produce an out of balance ministry.  Attempting to force momentum to something that is out of balance will eventually break.  Many times unfortunately, it’s the family that breaks first.

What are things you have done to balance family & ministry?

Youth Ministry and Marriage Its A Mans World

Youth Ministry and Marriage: It’s A Man’s World

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This is a man’s world, this is a man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

- James Brown from his song A Man’s World

To be honest, this is how I have often felt as a female youth worker on staff in a church. In my home country of The Netherlands, paid youth workers aren’t that common anyway, but the ones that exist are for the most part men. It’s not easy being a married woman and a youth worker, I can say from experience. Let me share a little bit of my story.

In our last church, the youth pastor left quite suddenly and because there seemed to be no one else, my husband took over the operational leadership of the youth ministry. We quickly discovered it wasn’t his thing… but as it turned out, it was mine and we changed roles.

The year after the church asked me to become responsible for the youth ministry and I did. Our youth group grew and so did my responsibilities, as did the amount of hours it took to do it right. I worked full-time in a managing position in a hospital, but decided to cut back on my hours to invest more time in the youth ministry. I ended up working 24 hours in the hospital and about the same in the youth ministry. And then I became pregnant with our son.

I told the church that they had to make a choice: they had to either put me on staff or I would have to quit because there was no way I’d be able to keep going like this and have a baby. The church had vision for a paid youth worker so they decided to put me on staff. My son was 6 months old when I started.

It’s been really tough on my marriage, that period. My husband worked a day job, I worked a lot of nights and weekends. Added to that, we had the care of our wonderful, but time-consuming son. We ended up sharing quick meals and hasty conversations. That became even worse when he had to quit his volunteer position in the youth ministry to focus on getting his PhD. We hardly saw each other anymore. It was tough on both of us, and definitely tough on our marriage. We constantly had fights, irritations ran high.

After a year and a half, I became seriously ill. Not life-threatening, but enough to really make me think. I was physically and emotionally exhausted from trying to do everything: be a good mom, a loving and caring wife, a good caretaker of our home and a great youth leader. My husband was exhausted as well, because he had to pick up a lot of my tasks when I wasn’t around. It was too much.

After much prayer, I decided to quit. As it turned out, I would have had to anyway because my husband got a job in Germany and we had to move. But my decision to quit came solely out of the necessity of putting my family and my marriage before my youth ministry.

It’s tough, being a female married youth worker on staff. I think the big difference is that most of the guys who do this have a wife who either works part time or doesn’t work at all, where as us women mostly have a husband who works full-time. That’s two people working full time with very different schedules. And when you add young kids to the picture, it becomes an almost impossible combination, at least it was for me.

I think it’s different when your kids are older, when they are in school and need less supervision. But even then you’d have to be very careful to balance family life and work. I think married female youth workers face unique challenges in this area… which are understandable, but still a shame because I think youth ministry could benefit from more female staff.

What helped me decide in the end is that being a mom and a wife are more important to me than being a (paid) youth leader. I had to scale back my role in youth ministry to protect my family and my marriage. And even now, two years later, I am still convinced it was the right thing to do.

baby-covering-ears

Guest Post: Voices Not Heard

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Our two daughters have a passion and talent for creating melodies and writing songs. As a Christmas gift, we bought them a series of components that when put together creates a home recording studio. After spending most of the day putting the system together, elation occurred as we all heard the first musical tones emerging from the studio monitors. However, confusion quickly overcame us when we discovered voices sung through the microphone were not being recorded in the software. The digital meter on the vocal track danced up and down in appropriate response to our voice, but still nothing was heard during play back.

“I know you can hear me! Why are you ignoring my voice?”
(I verbally grumbled)

Maybe you have experienced this frustration with your children? As you are talking, and/or barking perhaps your child presents you with a non-responsive numb-looking demeanor. You know the look. That dazed look like nobody’s home. “Hello, is anyone in there? Earth calling Tommy… can you hear me?” Or they say “yes ma’am” to every command and immediately do the opposite because they forgot. What happened during that split second that caused them to forget??? No matter what you try, their actions show that they are not listening. In reality, they are not caring to listen. What is causing this disconnect?

There are three types of voices that get ignored by our children:

  • Voice of Nag
  • Voice of Perfection
  • Voice of Control

Voice of Nag

I think I would be safe in saying no one likes to be nagged. Nagging is birthed when an expectation is not met and it continues to live until a) the expectation is met, or b) the consequence is carried out. If “a” or “b” never materialize over multiple expectations, the “Voice of Nag” becomes your prominent voice. Since your children will eventually ignore this prominent voice, the frightening truth is they will also bypass your infrequent voice of influence and wisdom.

Voice of Perfection

The voice of perfection is the verbal commentary from measuring your children’s performance against unachievable expectations. Phrases like “You never ____”, “You always_____”, “Why don’t you ever____”, are usually used to address a specific situation but are received by our children as their inability to ever achieve a certain ambiguous standard. Not only will this voice be ignored but it creates long-lasting insecurity wounds.

Voice of Control

The voice of control is a close relative to the voice of nag. However, the difference is there is no opportunity for the child to meet any expectations. In an extreme case, the voice of control removes all decision making responsibilities from the child. If a child is easy-going they become very passive and lazy. If a child is strong willed, they rebel and can’t wait to get away from the voice of control.

The solution to our digital studio dilemma boiled down to pressing the correct button at the correct time. Sounds very simple, but we easily overlooked that important element that awoke the software to hear us and capture what we were saying. When the voice of nag, voice of perfection, or voice of control speaks…mute it. Engage the voice of encouragement, voice of acceptance, and the voice of affirmation.

These are the voices of authoritative relationship they desire;
The voices they need to fulfill their full potential;
The voices that awaken their spirit to record what we are saying.

Happy New Years

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It is our hope that this new years eve, you take the time to pray as we pray for you. Youth workers, we pray for less stress, more volunteers, deeper relationships, and that extra coffee in the morning. Parents, we pray for rest, relaxation, love to your spouse and children, and that extra bit of patience when someone in your life screws up. Students, our prayer is that you have open hearts to the positive messages your leaders and adults are sending you, a little less homework, and a year full of joy and adventure that leaves you in awe of our God.

dating-how-far-is-too-far

Parents and Dating Teens: How Far Is Too Far?

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True love—everyone wants it, and no one wants to be alone; but why do so few people find it? Why do so many get hurt in the pursuit of love? Sometimes we’re interested in dating someone but that person has absolutely no interest in dating us. We can beg and ask and pray and plead—and it may accomplish nothing whatsoever. But what if there’s still a chance, even a remote, tiny, miniscule chance of this being “the” person for us?

Our culture reduces love to an emotion or physical arousal, but God views love as a commitment and a choice. It’s likely that some—maybe even most— of the students in your small group lack role models at home for a healthy marriage relationship. It’s an unfortunate sign of our times.

The world of relationships can be a crazy place for teenagers. Some young people feel pressure and stress to be in a relationship. They believe that the “norm” for all teenagers is to have a girlfriend or boyfriend. But this pressure doesn’t come from God, and it can lead to unwise or risky choices in your life. God doesn’t place this expectation on you; God wants us to wait on him to bring someone that will be a right match.

It’s Not About The Line

We could try to define what the line is: kissing, making out, and sex. We obviously would find Biblical evidence that sex outside of marriage is wrong. It was made only between a man and woman who had made an everlasting covenant with each other. But is making out too much? Is kissing? You will not find any hardline Scripture that says yes or not.

The problem with youth workers stating what the hardline is, is that we may overstep our bounds as adults with their parents. We need to let parents be the ones to define this. If a youth worker told my child that dating as a middle school student was okay and we had set precedence that it was not going to happen in this house, we would not be supporting the family and in fact, may be hurting the situation more than anything. We need to not overstep our bounds, even when a teen needs to vent about a parent.

Parents and Dating Teens: Great Insights and Research

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It is amazing how LITTLE research and wisdom from Christian bloggers is out there on dating for teenagers as well as parents who want to interact with dating teenagers. Yet, I have been able to come up with a few articles for you to read through and add to your understanding of dating teens and how parents can interact with them.

Sexting Teens Twice as Likely to Be Depressed [STUDY]
High school students who sext — the term for texting sexually suggestive or explicit messages or photos — are more likely to be depressed, a new study reveals.

What youth group never taught me about sex before marriage
A truly touching story about an adult’s struggle of dating and sex as a teen and what she wish she knew.

Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter
The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

Real Life Answers
Homeworld.com answers real questions from teens and parents on the topic of dating.

Relationships Then And Now: Changes In Social Values Change The Dating Scene
A unique look at how dating has changed with different expectations and mediums for communication.

Courtship Is NOT Old Fashioned
A great look at what the difference between courting and dating are and why courting is still alive.

Parents and Dating Teens: Intentional Conversations

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Maybe the number one conversation I have with teens and parents is on the topic of dating. I get asked everything from what is okay to do while dating from teens to if I know about a certain student and what I think about them. There are so many things that we can face, helicopter moms, teens who sneak behind their parents backs, and parents who simply do not know what the Bible has to say about these kind of relationships.

Here are three conversations that you need to be having in your ministry. All of them are essential and deserve your full attention.

Having Conversations With Teens

Hormones are raging and the opposite sex has become more than just friends. Society has advertising in television shows and on billboards that you need to just get naked with several boys. It’s normal. Strong emotions of infatuation disguise themselves as deep love, something they may not get a lot of with busy and tired families. The question is, as a youth leader, what are you and your volunteers saying about it?

Have you had discussions on what God thinks of dating, kissing, sex, and marriage? Do teens feel that you and your leadership are trusted people to talk with and know what you are talking about? Is it really a safe place to have these conversations? Do not shy away from these conversations. Study what the Bible says in 1 & 2 Samuel, Song of Solomon, and the New Testament. If you are dating or married, be a positive and public example to show them what it looks like. Finally, make sure you have proper boundaries and do not get yourself into a situation where you are in a one-on-one conversation with a teen of the opposite sex. Have trusted and available volunteers who can either have these conversations or sit in with you and be an accountable person.

Having Conversations with Parents

Parents are a key audience that we need to be engaged with on this topic of dating. They can either be one of the biggest assets and supporters on this topic or one of your worst nightmares. We need to win them with a firm and sound foundation on what Scripture says that is void of your own bias and experience. Then build a report with the parents by having a meeting or asking to give a sermon that hits on this topic. Finally, ask them questions, directly or indirectly, about what they think about it.

The hope is that you can begin the conversation with them and field any fears that they may have about the subject and how they are interacting with their children. Have resources on hand to either refer them to, or better, have them in your office to give them away. So when they do ask the questions, you will have a plethora of wisdom to draw from. The questions youth workers should not be answering is if parents should let their teens date or if a boy or girl is okay to see, we need to let them decide that point.

Keep the parents informed at all times. If you give a sermon on dating, let them see it a week or two in advanced. If you are asked to meet one-on-one with a student, let the parents ALWAYS know. Then keeps you and the student safe at all times and ensures that the words you are giving the students are the same as what the parents would say too.

Having Conversations with Resources and Church Staff

We need to have conversations with the staff of the church that we work with as well as those that we may need to bring into the discussion. Having senior pastors back your conversation and know exactly what you are talking about can go miles with interacting with students and parents. If a parent comes in concerned before or after you give a lesson on it, you have a huge supporter in your corner if you need to call on them.

I also stated that you need to have conversations with other resources that may need to be necessary to utilize. You need to know the phone number, “spiritual stance”, and history of counselors that have worked specifically with gender identity issues, rape, and parent/teen conflict. Ensure that all of the church staff have access to their information as well and develop a good relationship with these people, encase an emergency were to come up. We need to be prepared for all situations and know that we can have people to come around us when we need them.

What conversations are you having about dating and teens in your ministry?

Parents and Dating Teens: Biblical Perspective

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In my teenage years, dating was one of the greatest parts of that time as well as one of the most stressful. My parents made it a bit easier on me in that I was not allowed to date until I was sixteen. Even then, I had three years of trying to plan the right date, putting on a good show, and thinking of new surprises every time.

At that time, I wanted to know what God thought about dating, kissing, sex, and marriage, but was not sure where to look. My youth worker was a great mentor and shared so much wisdom. We could have easily discussed the book of Song of Solomon, the writings by Paul, or Jesus’ words on the subject, but instead we went straight to the text of Adam and Eve. While all of that was great advise on relationships, it was all based on a world of sin, not what God had conceived for relationships.

Genesis 1:26-31
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

A great article came out several months ago on how dating has changed:

Dating is about easy, quick, and affordable interactions. The whole nine yards that people used to go through have been condensed into one “new age of communication” with cell phones, text messaging, email, Facebook, bb messenger… Some parents who felt that things were too restricted in their time take a looser attitude toward their children dating, giving them greater freedom and ability to make their own decisions. [via YPulse]

God created marriage to be sacred and between a man and woman forever. The Bible tells us to stay away from sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5) There are many reasons for this and I’m sure your students could repeat many of them. Maybe an approach they haven’t heard is that you are “making-out” or more with someone else’s future husband or wife. God gives us these boundaries so that we don’t have to regret our choices.

A healthy marriage is a beautiful blessing from God. Some of your students come from families where parents have done a great job of modeling a healthy marriage. Many students don’t have that blessing. Encourage your teenagers this week to turn to God and pray that he would help them develop the habits and patterns that will someday lead to a healthy marriage. Remind them of the value of being a learner—even in the area of dating relationships.

Why does God care about who we date or love?