20 Ways to Grow Spiritually with Your Teen in 2013

As I was thinking and praying about this upcoming year, I began thinking of ways that my family can grow spiritually together in the year 2013 and then I thought about ways that families at Stillmeadow can grow together too. It's important for me to say "together" because I really believe that my role as a father is not just to teach my children, but also allow them to teach me.  By learning from them I affirm that they have something to contribute and encourage them to do so!

So here is a starter list of ways that teens and parents and children can grow in Christ together in 2013.  

Pray Together

1. Pray for your school district officials and teachers. Find a list of people who serve in your district, put it on the fridge and pray.
2. Take time each day to look at the news headlines and choose one or more situations to pray for.
3. Go for prayer walks in your neighborhood.  What's a prayer walk? It's when you walk and pray for the people or places that you pass or that God comes to mind.
4. Pray over the prayer requests listed in the Stillmeadow weekly bulletin.
5. Ask your parent or teen how you can pray for them. Then do it. Right there. Right then. And through the week.

Serve Together

1. Find a way to serve your parent or teen in a way you normally don't.
2. Choose a ministry to serve in together.
3. Bake cookies and give them out to neighbors.
4. Visit a shut in from your church together.
5. Serve at the York Rescue Mission with the Stillmeadow youth ministry. We go the first Friday of every month (including THIS Friday!)

Engage Scripture Together

1. Tell your teen or parent what God is teaching you through the Bible and ask what God is teaching them.
2. Memorize a scripture per week.  Want good verses to memorize? Just check the back of your bible or google "Scripture Memory Verses" and you'll find a ton of places to start!
3. Read a passage at whatever meal you regularly eat together. You can find great memory plans on Bible Gateway or on the YouVersion Bible App. 

Practice Gratitude together

1. Take a moment each day to thank your parent or teen for something they did.
2. Write thank you notes to the teachers and volunteers and supervisors in your life. List specific ways they have blessed you.
3. Write thank you notes to fire fighters and other civil servants.
4. At each meal or before school or bed have every one share one thing or person they are thankful for.

Do Justice Together

1. Adopt a compassion child as a family.  You can go through Nazarene Compassionate Ministries or Compassion International.
2. Buy double the ingredients for one meal a week and leave the doubles in the Stillnaz Food Pantry or at the drop bin in the front of your grocery store.
3. Strategize and practice random acts of kindness together.

This is just a starter list.  There are many other ways to grow together.  If you think of some, I'd love to hear them!

A Blessing in the Advent Season

A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse,
and a branch will grow from its roots.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. (Isaiah 11.1-4a)

My friends, it is Advent, and the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Let us pray that we will bear the fruit of repentance in our lives.
Let us pray that we will be people of righteousness, justice and faithfulness.
Let us pray that we will not judge by what the eye sees or decide by what the ears hears.
Indeed, let us pray that we will have eyes to see and ears to hear the good news.
Let us pray that we will have eyes that will see beyond our stereotypes,
…ears that will listen closely to the stories of our neighbours,
…eyes to see each others gifts,
…ears to hear each others joys and sorrows.
Let us pray that we will have the eyes to see a shoot that shall come out of the charred stump of Jesse, out of the charred stump of our own lives.
Let us pray, Amen, come soon Lord Jesus.

Some quality thoughts by Brian Walsh on Empire Remixed.
Here's the complete post...focused on judgmentalism.

StatAttak

A shirt company that wants to make stats about countries known. Creative approach. Check it out.

Joy

What does joy look like?

I've been thinking about the passage in Hebrews where the writer describes Jesus going to his death "for the joy set before him". Here it sounds like the destination (the result of his death and resurrection) is the joy for Jesus. In this we see that joy is not the fleeting bounciness of a beach ball, but more like a tenacious bull dog that won't let go.

I read somewhere (I think it was John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted) that "joy is serious business." Which makes me ask myself, how often am I intentionally developing this. I know that I ask myself how I can love others, but I don't often ask myself how I can be joyful. But as I think about it, being joyful invites others to experience the same joy...love and joy are intimately connected. Maybe I'm being picky...but I feel challenged to ask myself on a regular basis...am I set on the joy before me?

So...what brings you joy?

The Simple Way Fire

On June 20, the Simple Way community experienced a gut-wrenching 7 alarm fire that completely destroyed several homes in their community as well as their community center. This is the community that Shane Clairborne (author of Irresistible Revolution) is a part of.

If you would like to donate some money to The Simple Way or to the Kingsington neighborhood as they re-establish themselves after this tragedy, please click here.

Teachings To Tune In To

As I prepared to teach my section on social gospel, my friend Doug recommended that I listen to Tim Keller's thoughts on justice that he heard from a teaching Tim did at the Reform and Resurge conference in 2006. I first listened to his thoughts on justice and was very encouraged and slightly blown away with his exploration of scriptures take on justice. And so I went and listened to his Church in Culture teaching too. Apparently Church in Culture was the first teaching and richly informs his teaching on justice.

He has some very interesting thoughts on why Christians ought to live in cities and on why justice is important to have imbedded within all we do as Christ followers.

Resurgence is kindly making these teachings available for free, so I thought I'd link them here.

Being the Church in our Culture
Preaching the Gospel
Doing Justice

Social Action

So, my good friend, Doug has asked me to partner with him in facilitating a conversation among friends next weekend. It sounds like fun. We'll be covering general topics like ecclesiology, community, culture and social action (the topic laid on my shoulders). The topics are general enough to be mined for quite some time. So the set up is this: 20 minute presentation followed by 45-50 minutes of question driven discussion.

My responsibility is to talk about social action in 20 minutes, packing enough fodder for an in-depth discussion.

As I've been praying and thinking over this, a three step process has come to my mind as a way to understand a persons or community's movement toward social action.

From ignorance to awareness.

From awareness to compassion.

From compassion to action.

As I discussed this with Doug, he thought that covering each step would be too much for a 20 minute session, so for the time being we're going to explore what it looks like to bring a person/community from ignorance to awareness. Here's where I'd like some feedback.

1. What do you think keeps individuals/communities from being aware of the needs of those around them?


2. What do you think are some steps that faith communities can take to raise awareness?


3. How do communities choose which issues to shed light upon?


4. What do you think are the most pressing issues?
   
   

Darfur Crisis on Google Earth

Many of you know about the genocide and extreme crisis happening in Darfur. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has partnered with Google Earth to highlight the tragedies and bring global attention to these atrocities. Click on the picture and find out what they're doing. Use it as a way to pray and seek God's justice for this place.

creation groans

Somalia and Ethiopia conflicts...

Peace on earth to all men and women...

Irresistible Revolution

Shane Claiborne, author of irresistible revolution and friend of The Simple Way, did a little survey on "Christians about their (mis)conceptions of Jesus. It was fun just to see how many people think Jesus loved homosexuals or ate kosher. But I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less tahn 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire adn worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.

"When the worlds of poverty and wealth collide, the resulting powerful fusion can change the world...I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God's image in the other. It's no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end."

Irresistible Revolution, 113-114

Chechen Brutality

Can you say middle ages?

This account is humiliating. A story that makes you wonder how humanity can get to this level and makes you hope for redemption and grace.

In reading Romans, I think I finally get chapter 5. Evil can never increase to the amount that grace will not be able to surmount it. Grace always goes beyond evil. From the beginning, love created the world and remakes the world, while evil can only destroy. As Rob Bell says, "love wins."

Let's pray for that in this story...

Again, you may need a NYTimes free account to view the article and video.

Child Labor Story: Alone

This is a well-done portrait of the awful child labor saga happening in Africa.

Listen to the commentary on the pictures. You might need a free membership to view them, but it's worth it.

It's a story about a 9 year old boy named Alone who lives with his grandma and crushes stones to make sure he and his grandma can live. It takes him about 3 weeks to make $3.00 from crushing stones into powder.

He has one toy: an aluminum cover of an auto air filter.

Further Thoughts on Just Worship

"An ancient saying suggested that there are two wings by which we rise, one being personal piety and the other community charity. No one can fly by flapping only one wing. It is impossible to be sincere in our worship of God without expecting to do the will of God. It is equally impossible to do the will of God without the guidance and empowering of a vital personal relationship with God."

Harvey and Lois Seifert "Liberation of Life"

I have been reading Ephesians 5 where it talks about imitating Christ. I had never noticed before, but in verse 10 Paul talks about finding out "what pleases the Lord", and in 17 he says "understand what the Lord's will is." I believe these two are connected. What pleases the Lord is what his will is. Worship that pleases God is worship that flows out of a life that understands and lives His will.

By the way, I am posting this from Panera Bread...yeehaw free wireless...thanks Brian for the enlightenment...

Day 4: Songs of Justice

Well, my time wrapped up nicely yesterday at the Emergent Worship, Art, Liturgy and Preaching conference. Randy and I had a great trip home, even though it was raining much of the way...(I got to drive the VW...what a sweet ride.)...I'll never think of Twizzlers the same way again.

Well, Randy and I started thinking of nick-names for some of the Emergent leaders present at the conference. First there was Robert "Hands" Webber. I've never seen a dude use his hands so well in a presentation. Then there was Doug "Shorty" Pagitt. That guy was flippin huge. And we can't forget Barry "Yellow Pants" Taylor. He had some seriously yellow pants on. That's all we could think of, but I'm sure there will be more eventually.

The final session basically asked these questions: Can we worship God without serving Him? Can we sing praises and not love our neighbor? Can we read the Scripture together without remembering our starving brothers and sisters in Africa? Can we be redeemed without changing the world around us?

Claude, from Africa, spoke about how the gospel was presented in his churches. The gospel was about Jesus saving you from your sins to get you into heaven. The church was the place to wait for Jesus to come back. So, when the genocides came in Rwanda, the churches did nothing. As a matter of fact, there was a memorable story that two survivors told of a band of men bearing machetes and clubs singing worship songs. How empty those songs were. How empty are our songs if we do nothing to partner with God to change the world.

My question would be: how can I help my students bring about change? How can I make them aware? How can I stop the bastard gospel of "salvation only in heaven" and bear the truth of God's desire to change the hear and now?