Why a parent-youth blog?
originally posted on 5.21.2008
Great question! It’s certainly not because I think I have any great insights that will benefit the wider blogosphere! I do not; I simply intend for this to be a ‘family resource’ for our church. (But do check out CJ’s blog if you haven’t yet; you’ll find it at www.sovereigngraceministries.org Recent posts include excerpts from the forthcoming book on worldliness and the chapter on modesty in particular.)
There are two basic reasons why we created this:
- A convenient means of communication with parents and youth: I don’t want to send you lots of emails, but I think it can serve to have a format like this where helpful information and updates are posted for you. You can come here to find things like application questions from a youth-parent meeting, application from a sermon for youth or parents, and announcements related to some upcoming events. That’s my intention for this: simply a helpful mode of communication, which hopefully serves you. (Which leads me to the second reason…)
- An expression of care for parents: I have a pastor friend who posts “Thursday Thoughts for Parents,” an idea that l’d like to steal and use here. I’m going to seek to make it my goal to always be reading or re-reading some helpful parenting resource, and I will seek to provide a “Thursday Thought” from that resource. I invite you to read along with me; the first book I’ll be reading through is Instructing a Child’s Heart by Tedd and Margy Tripp. By early July, I’ll start some “Thursday Thoughts” for you, in case they serve.
So, thanks for stopping by! I do hope this format serves you for that is my goal.
Tab
Parent-Youth Structures
originally posted on 5.23.2008
I want to say first, to all the parents, thanks so very much for all of your kind encouragement and support as it relates to the adjustments we’re making to our parent-youth ministry. I thought it would be helpful to clarify (and expand) on what we discussed. So here, in a nutshell, is what we’re seeking to do…
- //six 14// Meetings (for middle and high school youth and their parents): This will now be a monthly context (Saturday evenings), with the exception of months where we do a fun, relational-building time (like the fan favorite, the corn maze!). By making this a monthly context, we serve middle school youth and parents more frequently, while still providing the high school youth and parents about as many contexts as they enjoyed last year (between bi-monthly //six 14// meetings and youth care groups during the school year). We’re planning to experiment with a new element in these meetings called “community group” in which youth and parents together meet in small groups to begin to interact about the topic for the evening. This also serves to provide the parents an opportunity to observe their youth in group settings of a spiritual nature, which can aid in their discipleship of their youth.
- Age of Opportunity Meetings (for parents of middle and high school youth, though all parents are welcome to attend): These would meet roughly on a monthly basis (Saturday evenings), though not during the summer and not during months when we have a marriage event planned instead. At this time we have seven of these meetings planned for the coming ministry year, and they will have as their back-bone the fine book Age of Opportunity by Paul Tripp. In this context, parents of youth can also pursue fellowship expressly around their parenting that we might better support and care for one another.
- High School Growth Group (for 9th to 12th graders and their parents): As I’ve considered further how we can seek to accelerate spiritual growth in our high school youth, it does seem like a supplemental, optional context (in addition to the above) could serve. This would be a monthly (Saturday morning) context with me, in which we would read and discuss some good resources, related to sound doctrine and vibrant spiritual life, and pray together to express and cultivate a passion for the Lord Jesus Christ and a love for His purposes in and through the local church. Some mini-small group times would likely also occur where we would be reciting a memory verse or catching up on how well we’re meeting our goals for the spiritual disciplines.
I think the last-mentioned high school youth and parent context does a couple of things: it provides a supplemental context for accelerated growth, and it also provides a context in which parents can observe some of the sort of discipling we would encourage them to undertake with their youth. As my good friend Mark Mullery once said to Josh and me, all parents of youth need at least three things: teaching related to parenting, fellowship related to parenting, and modeling (or experience) related to parenting. My hope is that through these contexts we can provide those three things to the parents we most love and respect the world.
It’s a great honor to seek to care for you in this way, and I’m so very grateful for each one of you!
Tab
