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Posts Tagged ‘youth’

Talking to Kids About Movies: “The A-Team”

Posted in Christian Culture, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

“Pity the fool” – I can still hear our 10-year-old son laying this line from the original A-Team­ television show that ran from 1983-86. I must admit that I was not a regular viewer, but for some random reason, we saw it last night in Flagstaff, AZ, on our way home to Texas—and we both enjoyed it.

Virtually all of the characteristics of the TV show are maintained in the film: same characters, same plotlines, new high-tech ways of exploding things—and everything explodes—and, although some people die, it is so cleanly done, you sometimes wonder if they were killed or not!  We laughed a lot, and although the film was a bit too long, maybe it was just because it was midnight when it was over!

The main audience for this film is probably 10-15 year-old boys and then the mid-thirties guys who want to relive their childhood. No matter which children we are talking about, here are a few things that would make good conversation about the film.

  1. Make sure everyone knows the movie is really a cartoon! Just like the coyote gets boulders dropped on him and Elmer Fudd’s rifle blows up in his face, there is lots of violence but it is not real—and not intended to be.
  2. What a great film to instill the value of team work! Much of the film is spent getting the team together—twice—after being split apart.  The bad guys even put them in different countries because they know that individually they are harmless; together they are impossible to stop.
  3. It’s a great opportunity to talk about how you deal with conflicts of conscience. B.A. Baracus (the Mr. T character) becomes a pacifist in a stint in prison and tells the team that he can’t kill anybody anymore.  He sticks to his position even though he is threatened with death and could easily fight his way out of it.  What a great ethical situation to talk about. Of course, Hannibal is able to share another viewpoint and the real Baracus comes back, but even that is an opportunity to talk about how we train our consciences.
  4. Take the opportunity to teach your kids about Gandhi and the non-violence movement that he used to overthrow the British in India.  Both Baracas and Hannibal use Gandhi to ground their philosophies, so it is a natural time to teach about a man who changed western culture. I myself would extend that conversation to Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Dr. King consciously imitated Gandhi, so there is an obvious connection.

Don’t get too heavy though. It is just a cartoon.  Let the kids enjoy it.

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What is Your Teen Doing On The Mission Trip?

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Fifteen minutes ago I left the fellowship room of the North County Church of Christ, which is hosting an LST YoungFriends group from Dallas. The group in the fuzzy picture is just one of five, composed of teens from the Dallas youth group, some of the North County church teens, and some teens from the community. They are in their C-Groups (Conversation Groups), talking about the story of Jesus and about their lives.  And this is Monday afternoon of summer vacation!

LST YoungFriends is just a mission package for church youth mission trips. What makes it pretty unique is that it is evangelistic! Yes, YoungFriends includes community projects: tomorrow the group is working in a food distribution program; Wednesday it is going to give sandwiches to the homeless in San Diego; and, Friday the group will visit a school in a lower income and higher risk area of Escondido. But what makes YoungFriends different is that the group is partnering with the local teens to offer a way to talk about their own faith—or lack of it.

We did a little review of their training this morning before the first C-Group. We talked about the skepticism local teens might have about joining C-Groups and how to try to alleviate their fears.  We talked about being sensitive to talking about our stuff with kids that have much less. We practiced good relationship-building practices, like share from your own life first, and then let others share as they become comfortable with you and trust you.  I can’t wait to listen to the debriefing from these first groups today, to hear what this Dallas youth group has learned from just the first day of truly reaching out to others from their own lives and with the story of Jesus.

But my question to you today is this: why is an evangelistic youth mission trip so unusual? Take your pick from the following suggestions:

  1. Few adults, including parents and youth ministers, have evangelistic experiences, so they do not even think about it for their young people.
  2. Service projects are easier to plan and more predictable. Anything that involves interaction with people on the other end is a little more difficult to pull off.
  3. Some adult leaders have had such bad personal experiences with combative evangelism or forced evangelism, that they really don’t believe in any form of active evangelism any more.
  4. Doing something evangelistic sounds much more challenging to our teens and might be harder to sell to them!
  5. Some don’t think the kids know enough to tell anyone else about Jesus. Many of the kids in the youth group have not made their own decision for Jesus.

If you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear from you.  What I do know is that our young people MUST find their own faith and learn to verbalize it in a way that communicates to their peers, or we adults will have failed to raise our children in the Way of the Lord!

So allow me the moment of euphoria, watching this bunch of very normal Dallas teenagers, being silly, being loud, but being like Jesus in a very special way, sharing their faith with someone who needs to hear.

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Emergencies on Short-term Mission Trips

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2010| 4 Comments »

LST once had a team in Madagascar. The evangelist’s daughter was kidnapped in front of the church building where the college team was working by a local gang, looking for a reward. After just a couple of hour,  the girl managed to escape unharmed. The family reported the name of the gang leader to the police who arrested and jailed him immediately. The gang leader, however, bribed his way out of jail and vowed to kill the minister and his family. The LST team was staying in the home of this family.

What would your church/organization do now?

Here are the two most important questions for you to consider?

  1. Are you as a church/organization prepared to deal with this situation for your church members—which means, do you have the personnel, funds, and a plan to take care of your people?
  2. Secondly, how quickly can you implement your plan?

Just to ease your mind, I’ll tell you that within the hour, LST immediately moved the team into a high security hotel, and then flew the team out of the country within twenty-four hours. In addition, LST staff met them in France, let them talk through their experience and their fears, then arranged for them to finish the last three weeks of their mission trip with a church in southern France. When they returned home, not only was the team emotionally and physically healthy, but they also couldn’t stop talking about how God worked it all out for good—whew!

Make sure that either your church or organization has both an Emergency Management Plan and the personnel and funds to implement it twenty-four hours a day while your team is on the field.  Here is a short list of the type of emergencies that you should be prepared to handle:

  1. Travel emergencies – lost documents, canceled flights, unexpected fees, passenger error (goes to wrong airport, checks in too late, etc.)
  2. Medical emergencies – accidents, illness on site, flare up of pre-existing conditions, sudden death
  3. Political emergencies — political violence, curfews, closed airports, police harassment (one LST team suddenly was required to get special visas), political extortion (demanding bribes).
  4. Natural emergencies – typhoon, flooding, earthquake,
  5. Team emergencies – unexpected death or emergency at home, emotional/spiritual breakdown, unexplainable hostility (often culture shock), immoral behavior, disregard of authority, misuse of people or funds.

Emergencies don’t happen often. In thirty years of sending short-term mission teams, LST has dealt, however, with everything mentioned above at least once. You can’t remove all threats, you can’t prevent all emergencies—even with the best preparation and training—but you can be intelligently prepared for the inevitable.

P.S. If you would like a copy of the Let’s Start Talking Emergency Management Policy, I would be happy to send you one. It’s too long to post here. Just email me at LST@LST.org with Emergency Management Policy in the subject line.

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How to Talk to Your Kids About “The Prince of Persia”

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, Talking To Kids About Movies, tagged , , , on June 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Prince of Persia (2010) is based on a 1989 video game, so the obvious audience for the film is young teens—probably boys more than girls. Parents and grandparents who take their kids and grandkids will not be embarrassed or bored.

You will probably find it a diminished, postmodern Indiana Jones film, by which I mean lots of humor, snakes, whips, a beautiful but slightly treacherous girl, and supernatural weapons of mass destruction. Jake Gyllenhaal is not Harrison Ford, but Ben Kingsley makes a great villain and Alfred Molina has some very funny lines. The ostrich races are a great touch.

As you drive home from the film with the minivan full of kids, here are some conversation starters that might help the kids think about the film both intelligently and spiritually.  Remember, these are conversation topics, not lecture topics—oops, got a little preachy, didn’t I J!

  1. You don’t have to be born a prince to be a prince! Dastan was a street kid with nothing but a strong sense of justice and right. Then he was an adopted kid with lots of stuff, but no power or future. He continued to stand out and become the best of the brothers because of his courage and his character. Kids don’t all start out equal; many start with huge disadvantages, but all can become people who others look up to, people who do good and not evil.
  2. Beauty can be used for good or evil! This is a great topic for boys and girls both. The princess had great beauty which gave her both opportunity and power.  She had to make many choices of whether to use it for good causes that helped others or just for her own benefit. And sometimes her beauty got her into trouble. Beauty can’t be the goal; beauty is just a tool to be used for good or bad.
  3. Good people have bad things happen to them. Dastan did not try to kill his father, but he is blamed for it and has to run. The city of Alamut is conquered even though it had not rebelled. Life is not fair, so the only real question is what you do when you are treated unfairly.
  4. Stand up for what you believe to be right. In real life you don’t get a do-over! In the film Dastan knows from the beginning that attacking the city is wrong, but he lacks the self-confidence to speak up against his older brothers. In the film, he gets a second chance, but in real life that rarely happens. Teach your children to be strong and courageous and to not be afraid. Stand up and speak up for what is right—all the time.

If your teens are a little older and would like something really challenging, ask them if they know  the prince of Persia story in the Bible. Then when you get home, point them to Daniel 10 and let them think about the role of angels in spiritual warfare.  You won’t have the answers to all of their questions, but it’s a great chapter to open our eyes to the unseen realities of the world we live in as well.

Prince of Persia is a typical Disney film, very clean with just a touch of violence to rate it for older children. And by the way, don’t miss the small political jabs in references to taxes and WMDs.

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Tips for Good Short-Term Missions: Take the Whole Family!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2010| 1 Comment »

Family is the core unit of Creation and the best metaphor for the church of God.  So why should it surprise anyone that families are just great on short-term mission trips.  When Sherrylee and I started LST, our children were 7, 5, and 3, and they went with us every summer. At that time, we got lots of people asking if it was a good use of money to take the children. Terrible question—as if it would be better use of God’s money for Dad or Mom to leave for weeks at a time.  Here’s what we learned about taking families on short-term mission trips!

  1. Your children can have no better Christian experience than first seeing Mom and Dad sharing their faith, then later, working beside them. If you care at all that your children find their own faith and don’t reject yours, then sharing short-term mission projects with them is the best opportunity.
  2. Children are a magnet in foreign countries. Wherever we would go, people gathered around our children, loved on them, wanted to talk to them. This brought us into contact with people in a very natural and friendly way that we would have otherwise never met.
  3. Whole families are a rarity in mission churches. Many women without their husbands find their way to our mission churches. Or you have a college student without parents.  The example of Dad and Mom with their kids all worshipping and serving God together is very special to those we serve.
  4. Multigenerational families are even more special! The only thing better than the whole family going together is the whole family with Grandpa and Grandma—who are probably in the prime of life—and faith.  LST has sent many three-generation family units, so we know the impact on those we serve.  Our daughter and her new husband went with her Grandparents to the Ukraine nine years ago—and they still tell stories about it.
  5. Taking whole families requires sacrifices on everyone’s part, but since when were sacrifices bad for anyone! Our middle child was a baseball player. Every year, we left the country after 2-3 weeks of summer baseball season, which was hard on him.  We always signed him up, bought the uniform, and paid the fees so he could play the 3 or 4 games that happened before we left, but we did not let it keep us home.  We did buy newspapers everyday so he could keep up with the baseball scores, and we made special arrangements with Americans overseas to record the mid-summer All-Star Game. Then when we came through, we made a big deal out of watching it together.  Was it a sacrifice? Yes! But he learned very early that in our family, God’s work came first. And today he is a man of God, which is all we could have prayed for.

I am convinced that if we learn as a family to serve God first, we will do church better. First the little family, then the big family.

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Tips for Good Short-Term Missions, Part Two: To Mom and Dad

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on April 29, 2010| 1 Comment »

The biggest hindrance to Christian youth and college students participating in short-term missions is their parents. I really hate to say that but after thirty years of recruiting college students for summer mission projects, I know this to be true.

Here are a few thoughts for Moms and Dads to think about to help them be more comfortable with what their young people want to do for God.

1. If your goal for your child is that he/she holds on to—even grows in—the faith you have tried to share with them, you need to let them go when they feel called. A great study done by a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University may be all I need to cite:  His study of 25,000 young people in churches of Christ showed that a “summer mission experience” was the top factor correlating with those students who continued in their faith after high school.

2. Before you ask your child to be “sensible” and …….(you fill in the blank with summer school, job, visit Grandma, internship, etc), you should ask yourself what message you are sending about the place of the kingdom in his/her life. Young people tend to “walk by faith” a little more naturally than we adults who have learned what the worst case scenarios are and who try to cover ourselves with insurance against such.

3. Check to see if you are afraid for yourself or are you afraid for your child. Some parents have not traveled much, never been out of the country, never had a passport (even if you are governor of Alaska!). No wonder you are a bit anxious about releasing your student to go to China or Africa or ………  Millions of Americans go overseas every year—for much less important reasons that sharing their faith.   “Be strong and courageous and do not be afraid.” We have to teach our children Christian bravery.

4. You don’t want to teach your children fear of random violence! One year we had a grandmother who offered to pay her granddaughter to stay safely in Oklahoma.  While the daughter was safely in Germany, the Edmond post office massacre occurred near her “safe” home in Oklahoma.  Unless we want to be crippled by fear, we cannot be live our lives afraid of random violence.

5. The best response to your child is to say YES–and to go with them! There is no better activity for Mom and/or Dad than to share some special time serving with your young person in serving the Lord.  Yes, you can do that any weekend at home, but to really step out on faith together, going somewhere very different, meeting people that are very different, but doing the most important task in the world together—there is nothing like it!

Sherrylee and I sometimes wondered if we were ruining our children by taking them with us each summer to do Let’s Start Talking—from early children through their teen years.  I guess I better let them tell you what it has meant to them. . . . but I know that God used it for good, and they are all people of strong faith.  Isn’t that what you want for your children?

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GREAT CHURCHES AND EMERGENT CHURCHES- PART 11b

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2010| 5 Comments »

I suspect that it is people like me that drove the postmoderns to emergence!

As a college student back in the late 1960s, attending a Christian college, I volunteered twelve weeks each summer for four years to work on mission campaigns in the northeast United States.  Our teams went door-to-door, inviting people to study the Bible with us.  We typically had 30-40 Bible studies per week with people of all faiths and no faith. Our single goal was to help each person to be born again—as we understood the process.

We were not mean-spirited, but we often retweeted Paul’s words: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.” We did not doubt that what we were teaching was true—for everyone.  We were typically immature. I have certainly learned better what the gospel is and can present it more appropriately now, but we were not at all unusual for those times.

Recently, a college student wrote to me, requesting funds for her mission trip.  She wrote:  “We will be helping in any way that we can at a children’s home by painting, serving food, ministering to churches, and even playing with the children. . . . In this short time we hope to spread the word of God to the homeless children . . .  and help them see that there is hope.”

We will definitely contribute to this Christian girl’s mission, but I found her description of this mission trip a bit disconcerting, and all the more so because I know from our own work with students that she is as mainstream in her time as I was in mine.  She has a heart full of compassion, but is not yet aware that “people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

Great churches know that compassionate service is integral to evangelism. Every church should be known for its compassion; every church should be known in its community—perhaps the world—for loving the unloved, helping the needy, protecting the weak, and serving everyone.  Then their message will be heard in a more receptive context.

Here’s the problem: virtually all of our young people—I’m talking about under 29 years old—understand missions as the Emergents have defined it, i.e., living a life of compassionate service because you are a follower of Jesus. In doing so you are redeeming the creation here and now.  And who can argue with this wonderful description of missions—but incomplete!

Also, they are right that churches/Christians have separated evangelism (missions) and compassionate service (benevolence) by what we today would call silo thinking.  Look at traditional church budgets for proof. I’m glad to be among those called back to a better understanding of our mission.

I do know, however, that a growing aversion to telling the Good News as God’s truth for all creation with words— typical of the Emergents and many of the youth in our churches—is everywhere. Our churches have substituted service projects for proclamation; our youth mission trips are exclusively service projects.  Two young ministers that I have heard recently both have publically preached the need for less emphasis on evangelism and more on Christian service—as if these two were mutually exclusive.

Great churches know that evangelism is integral to compassion. One of the saddest stories I know is about a young woman who was part of our ministry for a couple of years, sharing her faith boldly with people all over the world. She decided to spend an extended time in Germany, where she began sharing the story of Jesus with a Muslim asylum seeker who was very open to the conversation.  After a couple of months of conversation, this young Christian abandoned her faith in Jesus—completely. The reason she gave was that this Muslim person was more charitable and more loving, serving others with greater concern and greater humility than she had ever experienced in herself or the Christians she knew.

Jesus healed and preached. In fact, in every NT passage the order is first preaching, then healing—if that makes any difference.  If He had healed every sick person and raised every dead person, but had not preached the kingdom of God, how would the masses have avoided dying in their sins?  If He had only preached, would anyone have listened?

Since I started with my own confession, let me end with repentance. For thirty years, my wife and I have led the Let’s Start Talking Ministry. The method has been the same for all those years: LST workers offer to help people practice their English (compassionate service) while using the story of Jesus in the Gospels as the text (evangelism). Our experience is that most people become interested in what they are reading and begin to ask questions of the Christian, which leads to a natural conversation about Jesus, which for some, leads to saving faith.

I do believe that ministry and message are married in our method; however, the balance is probably 10% service and 90% evangelism.  In the future, I am committed to introducing more opportunities for our short-term mission teams to be involved in more compassionate service wherever we send them.  My hope is that we will include the local Christians as well as those who are not yet Christians in this service, so that working shoulder to shoulder, doing good, the non-Christians will see that we Christ followers so love the world!

That’s my plan. Yours may need to balance the other direction. I do believe that every ministry of compassion should not just have a vague goal of hopefully someday somebody noticing that we are Christians.  Each should give prayerful thought and planning to how people who are helped will learn about Jesus.

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Observations on Great Churches # 7 – Age of Conversion!

Posted in Great Churches Series, tagged , , , , , , on March 26, 2010| 1 Comment »

The Pew Forum recently surveyed the changing religious scene in America, and although not highlighted, one of the obvious conclusions from the report is that most religious decisions, including conversion, abandonment, and switching, are made before a person’s 24th birthday.  (http://pewforum.org/Faith-in-Flux.aspx)

My own experience is the same. Other workers in Germany often teased our mission team about not having planted a church, just a youth group! (Notice the just in that sentence!) We did have mostly children, university students, and young working adults.  But ten years after we began, we had a church of young marrieds, which after another few years was a church of young families. The church had matured into a vibrant community of faith.

Great churches focus evangelistic efforts on young people! Most churches focus on 30-50 year olds and then wonder why they don’t grow. Most people have already made their religious decisions and very few—comparatively—are in a searching mode any longer.  Here are my suggestions for focusing on young people:

  1. Every new church plant should be near a university and should include a campus ministry as one of its main thrusts. I would include a particular outreach to international students on that campus.
  2. Churches should plan events like camps, weekends, concerts, for highschoolers from the community, not just church kids (but these are great for church kids too!) These should have priority over gospel meetings, lectureships, and potlucks for adults.
  3. Worship services do not have to be completely focused on youth, but if your services are exclusively for the 50 year olds, then that is who you will attract (Not!).  What can you do for the teens/college-aged youth in your service?
  4. Youth mission trips should be a high priority for your church, and you should take non-Christian youth with you! There is no better evangelism than an unbeliever seeing a believer in action.
  5. Special Bible studies for youth—and not just a Sunday school class—are essential. Unaffiliated youth are not going to get up and come to Sunday school, but they might meet you at Starbucks on Thursday afternoon after school for a small group study.
  6. The minister and church leaders other than a youth minister MUST be involved with this outreach. Especially 18-24 year-olds want to be considered full members, fully adult, but in some ways, they don’t even understand what that means yet. Mentoring groups are great for this age group.
  7. Church budgets should reflect the emphasis on seeking young people.

I’m sure many of you have other ideas which I would love to see you share. Remember, I’m not talking about maintaining the church kids—although that will be a byproduct—but rather, reaching out to younger people during their age of decision.  If I were going to the mission field now, I would focus 80% of my time and energy on people 25 years old or less.

Question: What portion of your church’s time, resources, and energy are focused on evangelistic outreach to young people?

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