Stepping Up (Primetime Teaching)

WE’RE TEACHING THIS

Have you ever had a moment where you knew you needed to step up? Maybe you always sat on the bench during the basketball game, and your coach finally called in you to play. Or maybe you got selected to take a really advanced course in school. No matter the situation, you knew that you had two choices: either step up to the opportunity or step back and miss it altogether. And while these challenges aren’t just limited to middle school, we do have the chance to start becoming a step up kind of person right now. This was exactly where a man named Joshua found himself in the Old Testament. Joshua was just a normal guy facing some really challenging circumstances. Through his story, we can learn to step up and reach the potential God has for us the process. 

THINK ABOUT THIS

by Stuart Hill

When our son was a freshman in high school, he was told it was unrealistic for him to think he could graduate as class valedictorian and excel on the football field. He had to choose one or the other. It would be too hard. It had never been done. He was being unrealistic. It was simply impossible.

Impossible? What does that mean?

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali once said: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

I’m all for this in theory. But when I hear this as a parent, I realize Muhammad Ali and I may land on different pages. In other words, it feels at times like Kellee and I are so afraid of our kids failing or making a mistake that we drain our kids of the courage to do anything spectacular. Students should fear stepping into greatness, into the seemingly impossible, because it is unknown and scary, but they should fear mediocrity ten billion times more because it is devastating. It takes very little effort or courage to be mediocre, but it does take an extreme amount of fear.

I am learning as a Dad that fear is an awful advisor. It causes me to ask the wrong questions. Fear bends me toward telling our kids what to think instead of teaching our children how to think. Instead of encouraging our kids to explore “What if?” fear counsels me to sound the retreat and huddle in safety. 

So, here are some things I’m learning to do as a dad myself to encourage my kids to go after more and not be held captive by fear:

Champion greatness. Greatness is not about accomplishment. It is not about what you do as much as who you are. Greatness comes from how you handle your experiences—regardless of how it turns out. It’s an intangible, an attitude, a philosophy rooted in kindness more than success, because the latter without the former is a tragedy.

Find someone that loves your student enough to tell them who they are and who they are not. The greatest gift our kids have received are trusted voices that declare they were created in the image of God. At the same time, our kids need to know who they are not. Challenges are relative. There’s a fine line between impossible and limitations. Finding other people who can help your kids determine both what’s possible and what’s simply a roadblock is huge.

Let your kids fail. To risk means our kids will stumble and fall. This proposition guarantees tears, frustration, and low-key profanity. But how our kids respond when they fall is what will make them who they are. Defeat is a better teacher than a thousand victories.

Remember: Impossible is opinion until proven fact. 

Notice Week One

Random.

Chaotic.

Circumstantial.

Sound familiar? If you live with an adolescent in your home, chances are these words describe quite a bit of your daily life experience. Teenagers engage all kinds of vital life tasks in random, chaotic, and circumstantial ways. Like their friendships. And dating relationships. And homework. And probably their interactions with you.

But we aren’t using the words random, chaotic, and circumstantial to describe any of those areas of life right now. We’re using them to describe what we’ve learned from research about the prayer life of teenagers.

Research shows that faith practices are important to what we call Sticky Faith—faith that lasts beyond high school and into college and young adulthood.* Yet often teenagers aren’t sure how to nurture their own spiritual growth. Our research at the Fuller Youth Institute has indicated that only about half of graduating youth group seniors pray once a day or read the Bible once a week. Beyond prayer and Scripture study, teenagers also don’t seem have experience with a host of other timeless faith practices that could make a difference in their day to day lives.

As a follow up to the Sticky Faith research, we are exploring what disciplines best connect kids with God and nurture lasting faith, in particular those that help integrate faith practices with all of life. Out of that exploration we’ve created this resource as an entry point for youth workers and parents to invite young people to create new faith rhythms.

You might notice that we’ve tried to create ideas that get both you and your kids talking. Research shows that parents are one of—if not the—biggest influences on their kids’ faith. Yes, even for teenagers. Further, our Sticky Faith research revealed that while it’s important for parents to talk with their kids about the kids’ faith, it’s just as important for parents to talk about their own faith journeys with their kids. We’re convinced you will all grow from these kinds of conversations.

The overall theme of this Every Day series is noticing God. Some people say “paying attention” is the core of the spiritual life. We think they’re on to something. So this journey over the next weeks (for many of you, this 8 week journey might work well to use during the Lent season as preparation for Easter) is an invitation to notice. Noticing might mean you have to stop, listen, change up your steps a bit. It might mean trying some new things as a family. One way to think of these practices is that they are ways we learn to pay attention to and notice God and God’s work in and around us.

Ideas to Engage Your Whole Family in Noticing God More

Below are some ideas and tips for you as you engage this journey together with your family. Please note that you won’t be able to implement all of these ideas, so pick one or two you’d like to focus on and give them a try together!

• Many parents have noticed that the moment they pull out the printed family devotion is the moment the kids shut down. If you’ve experienced this, think about ways to have these conversations or try these activities without using this (or another) resource as a cue sheet. Your kids will appreciate your own words and your authentic presence more than anything we could write for you.
• Read Psalm 103: 6-14 together. Wonder together what it means that the writer uses such big language for God’s love and for how dramatically God removes our sin. You might also ask: What does it mean that God is “slow to anger”? Do you think that describes our family, and why/why not? How do we need God to work in our family to make us all more like God in this area?
• Talk together about something your family might want to fast from as a family during this journey. If you do, be sure you choose as a family. Also consider how you can invite your kids to participate, but also give them permission not to participate. Remember that the point is creating ways we can notice God more during our everyday life.
• Acknowledge that certain sacrifices will likely mean something different to your kids than to you. For example, given the pervasive role digital technology plays in the lives of adolescents today (it’s truly all they have ever known), living without the internet or their cell phone is comparable to an adult imagining life without electricity. So rather than fighting with your teenager over instituting a blanket “No media on Sundays” rule, invite them to work together with you toward something that’s manageable as a practice everyone is willing to try together. In the end they might long for more time apart from their digital connectivity, but that desire will have to come from them, not you, in order to really be effective.
• Find a local or global outreach opportunity or cause to support as a family. If you’re giving up something together that involves time and/or money, also decide together what you’ll do with that time and/or money. Maybe you can channel money to help build a well in another community, or maybe you can visit pediatric cancer patients in your city at the local children’s hospital. Do some research, incorporating your kids’ web savvy, and try something new together.
• If you’re doing this during Lent and you attend an Ash Wednesday service together, ask on the way to or from the service or over dinner, “Why do we wear the ashes on our bodies today?” and explore what it means to different members of your family. Be sure you answer this—and every—question yourself!
• This week the DAILY GUIDE invites your kids to read and re-read Psalm 25:1-7. Consider doing the same and sharing together about the impressions the passage has made on each of you at the end of the week.
• In the DAILY GUIDE we invite your kids to consider incorporating the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 into their daily and weekly rhythm of prayer. You might also want to do this in your family as a way to reinforce, wonder about, and be changed by this prayer. In fact, we encourage you to consider using the DAILY GUIDE yourself throughout this 8-week series!

Our hope is that this resource leads to new long-term rhythms for your family and for your children in their own life with God. Here’s to nurturing Sticky Faith…Every Day!

Noticing God

This Sunday we are beginning a new series called, "Noticing God". This will be a 8 week study during Lent. Our hopes through this series is to reimagine our walk with God through new spiritual practices and help us see God throughout our day. We don't pay attention in the midst of our often chaotic lives. We hope that during Lent we all slow down, stop, listen, see, and walk towards reflecting on what Jesus accomplished on the cross for us and how we can respond by the way we live out our lives.