We had a few announcements/reminders:

• Download our app! It has our event calendar, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more! Find it on the Apple app store and Google Play store!
• Registration for the Dorney Park trip happening July 15th is open; click here to learn more and register online.
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

God So Loved the World: John 3 contains some of the most famous verses in the entire Bible, particularly verse 16. This chapter reveals a conversation between Jesus and man named Nicodemus, who was searching for truth and answers to his spiritual questions. This conversation was the focal point for what our students taught about this week. Keep the faith conversation going at home with these kinds of ideas:

• Take a look at some baby pictures with your teenager. Talk about when they were born. Recount the momentous occasion. Draw a correlation between physical birth and “being born again,” “getting saved,” or “beginning the life of a Christ-follower.” It’s a momentous, life-altering, celebratory event.
• Remind your child that, like Nicodemus, it’s always OK to ask questions about spiritual matters. Sometimes teenagers remain silent because they think they should already know the answers or they fear judgment from those around them. Make your home a safe place to explore matters of faith. And remember, if they ask questions you cannot answer, it’s OK to say, “I don’t know. Let’s find some answers together.”

You can watch both lessons below, or you can listen to them on our podcast feed:

Reimagining Church as Family by Rich Griffith and JJ Jones. I really appreciated and was challenged by this one; I think it’s an important book for any pastor and church leader to read, especially as the ‘traditional family’ becomes less and less common. You can read my full review here.

The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free by Julie L. Hall. This was a really fascinating book for me. I’ve been curious about it for a while, especially with the narcissists in my extended family life. What was most helpful was finding out so much of what I’ve experienced in the past was so predictable, which might sound weird, but it actually makes it feel less personal. It’s just how narcissists are. It’s still painful, but it makes it all make more sense. Definitely worth reading.

How to Be Married (to Melissa): A Hilarious Guide to a Happier, One-of-a-Kind Marriage by Dustin Nickerson. I got this one because I’m a fan of Nickerson’s comedy; he’s a former youth pastor turned comedian that is absolutely hilarious. I think I was expecting a comedy book … it is actually a marriage book with solid advice that also happens to be really funny. Fun read!

Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest by William Vanderbloemen. I got a copy of this one at the DYM100 conference I was at last fall. It’s super practical, strong advice on habits to be productive and grow as a leader. It gave me a lot to think about and some practices I want to get more intentional with.

Mental Health and the Church: A Ministry Handbook for Including Children and Adults with ADHD, Anxiety, Mood Disorders, and Other Common Mental Health Conditions by Stephen Grcevich. I got this one after attending the Disability and the Church Conference that I went to recently. It’s a really helpful book for learning and growing and gave me some really tangible next steps that I’m already working, including changing some of my communication patterns with teens in general. Pastors and church leaders definitely need to be reading books like this to meet the growing needs in our country.

We had a few announcements/reminders:

• Download our app! It has our event calendar, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more! Find it on the Apple app store and Google Play store!
• The final mandatory mission trip meeting is NEXT Sunday, June 7th, following church at 12:30pm. Bring a lunch and your mission trip folder!
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to small groups and the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

This week I continued a three-week series in the book of Ezekiel. We looked at Ezekiel 8-11, a really dark passage. God gives Ezekiel a vision of the temple in Jerusalem, where God’s own people and their leaders have filled His holy space with idols, telling themselves “The Lord doesn’t see it.” God’s presence begins to depart, but He offers a glimmer of hope: the exiles who turned back to Him will one day be brought home.

Two big ideas came out of it. First, our choices have consequences; the people didn’t fall into idol worship overnight, but drifted there one small compromise at a time, and the patterns we set now shape who we become. Second, it’s never too late; the exiles were just as guilty but turned back, and so did Paul, who went from murderer to apostle. We challenged students to ask God, “What is the choice you are asking me to make?” And then actually make it.

. Here are some follow up questions you can ask your student(s):

• The message talked about how bad choices usually happen gradually, one small compromise at a time. Can you think of an example of that, in your own life or someone else’s?
• The Israelites kept telling themselves “God doesn’t see it” to make their choices feel okay. Are there areas where it’s tempting to think that way?
• If you asked God “What’s the one choice you’re asking me to make right now?”, what do you think it would be?

Unfortunately, we had some sound glitches this week so we don’t have video or audio of the full message.

We had a few announcements/reminders:

• Download our app! It has our event calendar, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more! Find it on the Apple app store and Google Play store!
• Summer Intern Team: We are putting together a team of high school volunteer student interns to be a part of leading our Mondo Mondays and Summer Nights. If you’re interested, click here to give us your contact info and we’ll fill you in!
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to small groups and the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

This week I kicked off a three-week series in the book of Ezekiel. We met the prophet Ezekiel, a young man whose dreams had been crushed when the Babylonians conquered Israel and took him into exile. In the middle of that disappointment, God showed up in an overwhelming vision and called Ezekiel to deliver a message to his people, even warning him upfront that nobody would listen.

Two big ideas stood out: first, that God shows up, no matter where we are, what we’ve done, or how far we feel from Him, He pursues us. Second, that God measures success differently than we do. He doesn’t care about results, audience size, or impact metrics. He simply asks us to obey the next thing He puts in front of us, and He calls that faithfulness.

We challenged students this week to ask God one question: “What’s the one thing you’re asking me to do right now?” And then do it, whether anyone notices or not. Here are some follow up questions you can ask your student(s):

• Have you ever felt like you were “stuck in Babylon,” in a situation you didn’t choose that felt like your plans were falling apart? What did that feel like?
• God told Ezekiel his mission would “fail” by every normal measure and that nobody would listen. Does it change anything for you to think that God measures success by obedience, not results?
• If you actually asked God “What’s the one thing you’re asking me to do right now?” What do you think He’d say?

You can watch the lesson below, or you can listen to it on our podcast feed:

We had a few announcements/reminders:

• We have an app! It has all our events, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more in one place! It’s available on the Apple app store and the Google Play store!
• Summer Intern Team: We are putting together a team of high school volunteer student interns to be a part of leading our Mondo Mondays and Summer Nights. If you’re interested, click here to give us your contact info and we’ll fill you in!
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to small groups and the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

Our two-week series called Influencer will help students discover that authentic leadership begins with their identity in Christ and flows through their everyday examples rather than position or popularity. Pastor Matthew taught high school and middle school today. This weeks message is called Leading By Example. The big idea? Your influence comes from who you are, not just what you do. Here is a follow up question you can ask your student(s):

• Think about someone you know who has real integrity. What makes them different from people who just talk a good game?

You can watch the lesson below, or you can listen to it on our podcast feed:

One of the quotes that really jumped out at me was one from Dr. PJ Dunn, speaking of what it’s like for non-traditional families walking into church, put it this way: “Imagine being invited to a feast, only to be escorted to a folding table in the corner with plastic cups and leftover décor. Too often, this is how single adults feel in church spaces—welcomed, but not fully included. They may be offered a ministry ‘table,’ but it’s often separated, minimized, or temporary.”

I loved the personal stories from the authors; Dr. Rich Griffith’s descriptions of the challenges he has experienced as a single man who adopted sons was a powerful way of putting humanity to the call for transforming how we think about family in the church. The different authors spoke from the perspectives of single mothers, single fathers, foster parents, adoptive parents, grandparents who have become the parents to their grandchildren.

In the opening chapter, Dr. Jones writes, “I suggest a new model of family ministry: interdependent family ministry, in which every ministry in the church (not just family ministry) owns the discipleship of the family of faith.” Over the course of the book, the authors work towards that goal: challenging the readers to expand their definition of family ministry to something that encompasses the entire life of the church and every type of family. It was incredibly thought provoking and makes for an important resource for pastors and church leaders to read and consider. I know I came away from the book with a number of things on my radar now that were not before.

We had a few announcements/reminders:

• We have an app! It has all our events, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more in one place! It’s available on the Apple app store and the Google Play store!
• It’s the last week of small groups: We can’t wait to see everyone Wednesday (middle school) and Thursday (high school) night, 6:30-8:00pm!
• Summer Intern Team: We are putting together a team of high school volunteer student interns to be a part of leading our Mondo Mondays and Summer Nights. If you’re interested, click here to give us your contact info and we’ll fill you in!
• Special Needs Peer Buddies: Our Special Needs Ministry is going to host Peer Buddy Training on Sunday, May 17th from 10-11 AM. This is during the Student Quest hour. To learn more, email Eileen Voltz: evoltz@udel.edu.
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to small groups and the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

Our two-week series called Influencer will help students discover that authentic leadership begins with their identity in Christ and flows through their everyday examples rather than position or popularity. Pastor Matthew taught high school, Eden Foester taught middle school. This weeks message is called Choosing New Life. The big idea? Leadership starts with knowing who you are in Christ. Here is a follow up question you can ask your student(s):

• What are some messages that people your age hear most often about themselves that you think aren’t true?

You can watch both lessons below, or you can listen to them on our podcast feed:

Our student ministry lives online in a lot of different places and ways; email updates, church website, YouTube channel, Spotify podcast, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google Photo albums, Sunday recaps, our events calendar on the church website and a Google Calendar with just our student ministry events (it’s easy for our events to get lost in the chaos of all the other church events on the church website). You get the idea … we communicate a lot of different things, but it’s hard to remember where all to look.

It also has a function built into it that I will be able to turn on during our mission trips to provide short updates from each of our three mission trips directly to the app, making it easier for friends and family to keep up with each of our mission trips.

Learning how to create an app, and then learning how to convert it to android, was actually a fun process. I was able to build something from the ground up that pulls content from all of those different places. Now people are able to find our upcoming events, parent emails, all of our videos and podcast episodes, photo albums and all of our social links in one place. It’s super helpful and I’m hopeful it becomes a really useful tool for anyone connected to our student ministry!

The next step? I’ll be releasing a Brandywine Kids version for our children’s ministry in the near future as well. It will be similar in a lot of ways to our Brandywine Students app to make it easier for parents to know how to navigate each app.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. This is the book that inspired the cult sci-fi classic film Blade Runner, which I have watched more times than I can count. I really enjoyed reading this one; it’s actually very different from the film … yet still feels familiar. Kind of like an alternate universe where there are familiar names and places but you don’t really know how it’s going to turn out. Definitely glad I finally read it!

Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by David C. Pollock. This was a hefty read but deeply helpful. I am an adult third culture kid and it helped bring a lot of clarity to things I’ve noticed about myself or that I have struggled to process over the years with how my nomadic childhood (I had eighteen different bedrooms by the time I was 18 years old!) has impacted my adulthood.

Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man’s Voice from the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida. This is the second book by Higashida that I’ve read; his writing is so helpful. His approach is simple – he’s essentially answering questions about what his experience with autism has been like. I love that it’s from an adolescent’s point of view. Super helpful, highly recommend!

The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick. A futuristic novel where our world has destroyed itself and is looking for a fresh start elsewhere and discovers an alternate earth. Fun premise, fascinating story. I wish he had developed the characters more, but I still enjoyed it. I definitely will be reading more Philip K. Dick books.

Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson. I really appreciated Kwon and Thompson’s insights on the topic of reparations and what it means for our modern culture. Definitely thought provoking, wild to find out we paid reparations to slave honors when slaves were freed. There is much about our American story that still needs work.

Gender Roles and the People of God: Rethinking What We Were Taught about Men and Women in the Church by Alice Mathews. This one has been on my reading list for a few years now – I’m glad I finally got to it. Matthews does a great job of systematically working through the topic. It’s a strong book on the role of gender in the church and what that looks like for women’s position in the church.

AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep: Leading and Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Sean O’Callaghan and Paul A. Hoffman. Definitely a timely book, it’s subject matter is broader than simply the topic of AI. The authors do a good job wrestling through the different theological and ethical implications of modern technology, and in particular AI, for the Christian leader and pastor. It’s thought provoking and helpful!

Morning Star (Rid Rising Saga #3) by Pierce Brown. I’m reading this series because my oldest son is really into it and it’s fun talking with him about it. While the book series itself is half a dozen or more books and counting, this one essentially finishes the initial trilogy and leaves some doors open for future stories. I really enjoyed where it’s going, was caught off guard by some of the developments, and it left me curious to read more.

We had a few announcements/reminders:

• We have an app! It has all our events, updates, photos, social links, podcast feed, video feed, and more in one place! It’s available on the Apple app store and the Google Play store!
• Small groups: We can’t wait to see everyone Wednesday (middle school) and Thursday (high school) night, 6:30-8:00pm! We only have three left!
• Construction is continuing with the church renovations! For the next month or so, students will only be able to get to small groups and the Sunday student hour through the main entrance. Just follow the signs to the student area!

Below is the video from our packing list meeting for all three mission trips and the video from last week’s student worship night!