Sticky Faith Blog

What was your favorite bedtime story when you were a kid?

2013-04-23T12:00:09+00:00

Today’s guest post is from Kevin Becht, Area Director of Youth for Christ/Campus Life in Southern Indiana.

What was your favorite bedtime story when you were a kid?

My favorite was a classic story from my grandfather.

I was primarily raised by my grandparents. When bedtime came, I would lie on top of my grandfather’s bed, begging him to tell me stories of his childhood. My favorite was of the time he was sprayed by a skunk as he checked his box-traps on his way to school (uphill, both ways, in the snow I am sure).

The stories were simple, and not all of them stuck with me. But there was just something powerful about knowing that he knew what it was like to be a boy my age. You see, my grandfather was a World War II marine vet (those are stories he seldom told). He was still incredibly fit in his early 50s. His work ethic was amazing. I definitely put him on a very high pedestal. The stories he would tell made me realize he was human. He was like me. They made me realize I too had a story. They created a hunger in me to know others’ stories. Looking back on the fact that I didn't have a dad in the picture, these stories were even more vital to me knowing my own story.

Today, as I think back to that skunk story, I realize what was really happening as my grandfather told those stories. Ultimately, it created a desire in me to know God's Story, and for me, the stories of Jesus were the Father's "when I was a boy" stories. I understood that he was God on my level, because I had grown up hearing about Grandpa on my level. My family narrative was vital not only to my success as a person, but also to my knowing God's Story was for me.

I have come to realize that My Story is not just my "Christian Testimony," but that it truly is my "family narrative." With or without Jesus, the family we are born into shapes our story, and it is a story we should really get to know.

Here are a few suggestions to encourage family narratives in our homes and ministries:

Encourage the students in your ministry to seek out their “Family Narrative.” Challenge them to see who can find the most bizarre story from a parent, grandparent, or even a great-grandparent if they are still around. Then have a coffee house night of story sharing.
Seek out more of your own family narrative. On your next day off, spend some time visiting with an older family member if you live nearby. If not, I’m sure they would love a phone call.
Pass on your own family narrative to your own children, as well as the students in your ministry. Throughout my twenty-plus years of ministry, students still love to laugh at some of the silliest stories I have told over the years about my own life. Sometimes they surprise me with what they remember. Hopefully it builds a hunger for paying close attention to their own stories.

Don’t Send Them Off to College Without Leads

2013-04-17T11:17:17+00:00

Today’s guest post is from David Ludwig, Minister of Family Ministries at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. St. Andrew’s is part of the 2013 Sticky Faith Cohort.

Sending the kids off to college isn’t fun.

And I’m not talking about my actual, biological kids. They’re only 5 and 3—a little too young to be sending away to school…unless it’s pre-school.

The kids that I dislike sending off to college are the High School seniors who have allowed the Student Ministry team and I to enter into their lives during their formative years. I mean, these are the seniors who we’ve known for at least 4 years:

The ones who we’ve seen at their best—and their worst.
The ones who we’ve led on countless trips.
The ones who have shown up at our doorsteps in difficult times.
The ones in which we’ve finally seen flashes of maturity in their last year with us.
The ones who we constantly tell that we are their “biggest fans.”

Those are the kids I don’t like sending off to college.

It’s no fun sending them off to college because once they’re gone, our relationships with them will never be the same as they once were; and the statistics communicate that up to half of them will walk away from any type of Christian community in their first 18 months. The temptations to run in a direction opposite from the Kingdom of God are everywhere in a college setting, and that doesn’t help as we endeavor to release them with a continued desire to pursue God with others.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying it’s bad to release seniors into young adulthood—in fact, I think it’s the best thing. It’s just not fun.

One of the things that our Student Ministry team began doing a few years back was to help make a connection between our graduating seniors and a solid Christian community at the university they would be attending. Our hopes were that this continued Christian community would help them learn to love and revere God and love and respect others—even during their college years, which can often be so frantic and disjointed.

It takes some investigation, some contact work, and it definitely eats up some time; however, we’ve decided that it’s worth it. The effort has proven to connect a lot of our graduates to strong Christian communities at a time in their lives when they need them the most. It also communicates to the students that we aren’t kicking them out of the doors of the church upon their graduation; we hope to communicate that while they may be done with high school ministry, we (as a church) aren’t done supporting them in their faith journey.

Sending my kids off to college is never easy; however, it’s a little easier when I know that there are brothers and sisters in Christ in any university or college town who are ready to embrace, love, and care for them as they wrestle with following Christ into this next season.

Try this free Sticky Faith Curriculum sample, How Do I See Myself After Graduation?

Best Price on Sticky Faith E-Books Ever

2013-04-15T16:00:48+00:00

If you’ve been wondering when to buy a copy of Sticky Faith or when to encourage a friend or parents to do so, NOW is the time. To celebrate the Fuller Youth Institute’s involvement in 3 upcoming national conferences (Q in Los Angeles, Catalyst West Coast, and the Orange Conference), Zondervan (our publisher) is generously offering the e-versions of both the parent and youth leader versions of Sticky Faith for $2.99.

That’s less than my favorite drink at Starbucks.

This $2.99 deal ends on May 6, so act now—and encourage others to do the same—to take advantage of this low price on e-books.

At the Q Conference, I’ll be speaking at “Numb Generations”. Gabe Lyons, the founder of Q Ideas and author of The Next Christians: Seven Ways You Can Live the Gospel and Restore the World, invited me to explore how technology (and to some degree psychiatric medicines) are causing us to become “numb”, or lose touch with what’s happening in the present.

This “numbness” isn’t just in teenagers; it’s across adult generations also. If you check out this recent infographic from some new research by the Pew Research Center, here you’ll note that while 83% of 18-29 year-olds are using social media, so are 77% of 30-49 year-olds. As I’ll be sharing at Q, we can’t judge young people for their use of technology without putting our own use of technology under the microscope also.

Of course, technology is a wonderful tool. After all, it’s part of what allows us to offer specially discounted e-books. But each of us should ask ourselves and our young people: In what ways is technology causing us to miss out on present experiences and relationships?

How we’re revitalizing Confirmation

2013-03-28T11:15:51+00:00

Today’s story is from Lauren Eden, Student Ministry Associate at Mt Bethel United Methodist Church near Atlanta, GA. Mt Bethel is part of our 2013 Sticky Faith Cohort.

It’s a call every youth minister receives countless times a year. “Would you mind talking to my child about ____? They’d much rather talk to you than me.”

I have spent 10 years working in Youth Ministry, and every time I receive one of these calls it makes me feel good that a parent trusts me with their child’s spiritual growth.

However, every time I say “yes” to a request like this, I realize that I’m doing that student and their parent a disservice. The sad truth is that many parents are dropping their kids off for us to “sanitize them for Jesus” and then send them home to be more well behaved, respectful, moral citizens.

After becoming a parent myself, I’ve realized that I want to be the biggest influence in my kids’ lives. Not only that, but God calls me to point them toward Jesus every day through everything that I say and do. I pray for godly role models to come alongside my husband and I as we raise them, but my greatest desire is that our own conversations about Jesus start at a very young age and continue into adulthood.

I serve in a Methodist church, and in our denomination “Confirmation” is a big step in helping young people explore and own their own faith. In our context it consists of several weeks of classes and training in who Jesus is, spiritual gifts, church history, and other important topics that help students explore their own personal relationships with Jesus Christ. The goal is for every student to understand what their faith is all about before joining the church.

Because of the tradition and nature of Confirmation, I’ve seen many students come through the class, join the church, and never get connected to the Student Ministry or the church body as a whole. As a result, they drop off after their Confirmation experience in middle school. Then on Senior Sunday those same students come back and stand in front of the church when they’re about to go off to college or into the work world. I know they really don’t have a church home to come back to at all.

This began to burden our hearts as a staff, and we began to talk about how we could stop the bleed-out that takes place every year following Confirmation. In an attempt to combat this head on, our staff decided to try to do something a little bit different with Confirmation.

We rewrote the curriculum in an attempt to make connecting with Jesus the most important topic we cover.
We added a small group component to Confirmation so that students are connected with two other adults in the church other than their parents.
We also attempted to add a parent component to the class designed to help equip parents to talk to their kids about faith. One of our pastors led a parent class and taught parents the material the students would be learning the next week so that they were ready to have discussions at home.
Finally, we added a family week to the curriculum where we canceled Confirmation class that Sunday and asked parents to lead their students at home. For their at home “assignment” we wrote a short discussion for the parents to lead the students in, which they were trained to do ahead of time in the parent class. Then we encouraged both parents and students to fill out a “Relationship Map” (really, just a timeline from birth to their current age) that describes significant spiritual milestones in both the parent’s life and the student’s life. The goal was for them to recognize how far they’ve come on their spiritual journeys individually, and then to be able to share their journeys with one another.

At first we wondered whether or not this exercise would be well received, but then we realized that even if one parent takes it seriously, we’re one step closer to that parent becoming a significant spiritual influence in their kid’s life.

We were excited about creating an environment where faith talks could happen naturally. And guess what happened? The students came back the following week actually knowing their parents’ stories, having new insights into milestones in their own faith journeys, and having had the opportunity to share their own testimonies with their parents.

I can’t say that we have this whole “sticky faith” thing figured out, but I can say that this is one way that we’re headed in the right direction. I look forward to the day when I can have this invaluable time talking with my kids about their faith, and helping them realize the importance of owning their own walk with Christ.

Do you have a Confirmation program in your ministry? What are you doing differently to make it more “sticky”?

A Sticky Faith Web

2013-03-13T14:30:23+00:00

Today’s guest post is from Scott Ness, Associate Pastor at St John’s Lutheran Church in Grove City, Ohio. Scott’s studying building “faith webs” as part of his Doctor of Ministry project and living it out in his home and church.

Last April, my 2 nieces moved into our home.

My wife and I were already stretched thin raising our 4 children. We quickly found ourselves loving, caring for, disciplining, transporting, and raising children who were 8, 7, 6, 3, and 3 years old plus a 6 month old. We called in some reinforcements.

We were certainly concerned about instilling Sticky Faith in each of our kids. But we also had a more pressing concern: survival. For the kids and for us! We needed help. We wanted to be intentional. We wanted to pick specific people to be in each of their lives.

The congregation I serve has developed a concept we call The Faith Web. A Faith Web is a constellation of people who willingly and lovingly surround you with faith. It expands, or at least builds upon, the 5:1 ratio that the FYI team writes about in Sticky Faith. Our vision is to wrap our young people in a web of faithful youth, young adults, adults and grandparents.

Every church has warts and things we wish we could change. But more importantly, your church is also packed full of people who have incredible stories and experiences about what it means to love Jesus. I want my kids to know those people and hear those stories. The Faith Web is the vehicle that helps us make these connections happen.

Oma is a widowed pastors wife. She reeks of Jesus! And every morning she prays for my children. Every Tuesday she sits down with my niece Summer at the piano bench to teach her how to make music. Oma has confessed multiple times that she is not the best teacher. And Summer is far from the best student. But the music they make is the most precious sound. Oma is helping Summer play the song that Jesus has placed within her. Oma is in our Faith Web.

Every summer the high school youth group goes to a leadership academy. Before they leave town, they gather in the sanctuary to be matched up with a grade school student. These new pairs are prayer buddies. They commit to pray for one another all week and even exchange letters while the older ones are at camp. My son Ethan was matched up with a high school student named Jamie. This past Halloween, my wife and I were sick. It was Jamie who saved the day. He came over, and with a smile on his face and in his heart, he led all the kids door to door. Jamie is also the one that my kids sit next to in worship while I’m up front and my wife is busy elsewhere. Jamie is in our Faith Web.

Who’s in your Faith Web? That is, who are the people who are influencing your life, building your faith, and walking with you? Likewise, in whose Faith Web are you living? Who are you influencing, helping, praying for, and walking with everyday?

Intergenerational Pen Pals

2013-03-06T14:38:27+00:00

Today’s guest post is from Todd Rosspencer, Pastor for High Schoolers at Redlands Church, a Fuller grad, and part of the 2013 Sticky Faith Cohort.

Last Spring I became the new youth pastor at a church that boasts having a family feel, but struggles to connect the older and younger generations. Two weeks in, I was invited to a luncheon held for all the retirees in the congregation. Gladly accepting the invitation, I pondered how this could benefit both the old folks AND the youth. Then a divine coincidence occurred.

A few days before the luncheon I came across an article about a man who received 3-4 letters a week from his mother while he served in the Korean War. He was so deeply impacted by that loving support as a young man that later in life he decided to write letters to young people. He contacted a private university that empowers dozens of students a year as teaching missionaries. He acquired their contact info and wrote them all letters. Since then, he has written hundreds of letters to youth all over the globe.

Needless to say, I didn’t need to pray and fast before contacting the luncheon organizer. I asked permission to make an appeal to our retirees to become pen-pals to some teens in our ministry. He loved the idea and off we went to eat.

At the luncheon I spoke of the culture of abandonment in which today’s youth struggle to find adult support, modeling, and mentoring. We juxtaposed the teen life of 50 years ago against teen life today. Then I asked them to consider adopting a teenager and writing that young person one letter a month until Jesus comes. Seven adults signed up and began writing.

The parents responded first, expressing gratitude for the ways these older adults were loving and supporting their children. We heard about mixed responses from the kids. Some were disinterested or even miffed and discarded their letters. Some were intrigued. And some were deeply touched. Then we started hearing back from a few retirees who had received letters in return. Like a seed in April, it was beginning to sprout!

That was last year. Today I called Irwin, one of our older pen-pals, to update him on his 15-year old pen-pal Jay who has not responded to any of Irwin’s letters.

Jay’s dad is dying of brain cancer, and Jay is struggling to cope. After updating Irwin, I got shivers as he gently spoke of losing his mother when he was 16. The tender story revealed how he knew what Jay was enduring. Then Irwin said he’d write another letter this week.

Upon hanging up the phone, I prayed a prayer of gratitude. God put this relationship together, not me. And God is using this little pen-pal ministry to bring hope and healing in surprising ways.

How Prepared Are Your Students for College?

2013-03-04T17:20:00+00:00

According to our Sticky Faith research, 6 of 7 youth group graduates don’t feel their faith is ready for what they will face after high school.

Based on some research done on academic readiness in college students, high school graduates are only a tiny bit better prepared for what they will face academically. Three out of 4 college students are not prepared academically for what they will face in the classroom.

This infographic illustrates some important (and at times alarming) findings about the academic experiences of college students:

Half of all college students drop out before completing their degree.
5 out of 10 college students can’t find Ohio or New York on a map. (No data was collected on youth leaders or parents, perhaps thankfully.)
4 out of 5 college students pursuing a Math-related degree do not feel like their high school education was adequate.

While our Sticky Faith research did not examine academic challenges, I can imagine that the stress of feeling “over your head” in the classroom can add to the turbulence of the overall transition.

I can also imagine that feeling ill-prepared for the academic load could cause a college student to withdraw socially from Christian fellowship, whether it’s because they feel they need to spend more time studying or because of their emotional turmoil.

While most of us parents and leaders won’t be able to step in directly to help college students with their academic load, we can help them navigate their transition emotionally by:

Reminding them that their identity ultimately lies in Christ, not their grades.
Encouraging them that both we and God love (and like) them no matter what grades they are receiving. Maybe we even show that in a tangible way through a special note or care package.
Pointing them to Christian community. In times of stress and emotional overload, college students need Christian community more than ever.
Letting parents know about the academic stress their college students might be under and encourage them to be extra understanding, prayerful, and supportive.

You can also try this curriculum from the Fuller Youth Institute to help prepare high school students for faith beyond youth group!

What other ideas do you have for supporting college students in the midst of a challenging academic transition?

Experiments in Engaging Parents and Students…Together

2013-02-28T14:28:05+00:00

Guest post by Danita Brick, Director of Student Ministries at Shiloh United Methodist Church in Jasper, Indiana.

I’ve served on our church staff for four years. From the start, I've wanted to minister to parents of teens—teaching and encouraging them, walking alongside them and cheering while they take on the responsibility of being their kids’ spiritual mentors.

Attending a Sticky Faith conference in December, I came away with an even stronger desire to move in that direction, but I was still unsure how to add that to an already-full schedule.

We recently made a 6-week shift in our midweek programming for students, so I made a courageous plan: What if we invited all the parents of our middle schoolers to come to our Wednesday night program with their son or daughter for a parent/student study? Great idea! But what would we study?

Two days after I told our staff the idea, I received an E-Journal from FYI about the Sticky Faith Every Day Curriculum – free downloadable curriculum for an 8-week series that came with...(wait for it)… an at-home parent component. Perfect!

That same night during our middle school meeting, the students and I talked about life at home, communication with parents and family dinners. We read Deuteronomy 6:4-9. I then asked, “Who does scripture suggest might be the best teachers to pass faith onto the next generation?” They looked at their Bibles and squirmed a little. Finally, one boy raised his hand and said, “Well, I don’t know if this is right…I mean, (pause), it doesn’t really make sense, but it kind of sounds like…parents?"

I then dropped the bomb that I was inviting their parents in for a series. “Enthusiastic” does not exactly describe the mood in the room at that moment. In fact, a better description would be “deer in headlights.” I asked them to encourage their parents to come. Then seeing their total disbelief, I quickly changed it to, “Well, please don’t try to talk them out of it.”

We've met for three weeks so far. Each week, over half the students have a parent there. While the curriculum is originally designed for students to engage together at church and then take a Daily Guide and Family Ideas sheet home to the parents, I'm including the parents in the “at church” part. This allows parents and their kids to talk through questions about themselves and their faith while we're together (with enough other adult leaders to guide and talk with the students who don't have a parent in the room). So far we’ve talked about Noticing God, Unplugging and Receiving God’s Grace (weeks 1-3 of the series).

Adults and students are encouraged to do the activities in the Daily Guide (provided with the curriculum) throughout the week. I slightly modify the Family Ideas page to include ways to talk with each other about their individual Daily Guide experiences.

The main objective is to give parents and students a safe place and some guidelines for talking with each other. We’re finding this infinitely more valuable than trying to host a separate "training" for parents.

One mom (who actually attends a different church) told me last Sunday that their pastor asked for praises. Her daughter, a sixth grader, raised her hand and said, “I want to thank God that me and my mom have a place to go together on Wednesday nights to learn about God, and we have homework that lets us talk to each other about God every day.”

Now that is a win. Thanks, God. Thanks, Sticky Faith.

Danita Brick is Director of Student Ministries at Shiloh United Methodist Church in Jasper, Indiana. You can find her blog, Leave the Dishes, at danitabrick.com. She is married, has two grown children, and loves spending time with family and friends over a long meal around a dinner table.

Sticky Faith Every Day Week 3: Learning to Receive Grace

2013-02-25T11:17:14+00:00

Suddenly it’s the third week of Lent. While we know the thousands of leaders who downloaded our free 8-week Sticky Faith Every Day Curriculum are using it in a variety of ways, we also want to highlight the ways the curriculum can line up with the season of Lent.

Yesterday I was sharing with a group of students and parents together at a church in Huntsville, Alabama. We watched this video about how hard it is to receive grace without treating it like a gift that has strings attached:

I pulled a few questions from this discussion guide we created for the video, and had parents and students talking together about what it looks like in their families to live graciously toward one another.

One high school senior piped up during the discussion and shared how much it has meant to her that her parents find little ways to encourage their kids, like pointing out a strength or simply speaking a word of blessing before they leave for school in the morning. I love that her experience of grace includes receiving these simple gifts of encouragement from her parents. Free gifts, with no strings attached.

We also looked at the promise Paul shares in Ephesians 2, that we are saved by grace and out of that grace are invited to live a life as God’s handiwork—God’s work of art.

At the beginning of the morning we handed out red strings to each adult and teenager in the room. Later I asked each one to create something new out of that string—something that could remind them to live in gracious ways in their families and other relationships. I love thinking about the potential for strings that bind to become strings that set us free to live out good news in our relationships.

How have you used Sticky Faith Every Day resources, and what are you learning as students engage these themes?

Lent, Sex, and Noticing God

2013-02-13T11:27:20+00:00

It’s Ash Wednesday. One of my favorite days of the year.

Not because I’m morbid, but because I’ve grown to love the way Lent invites us to notice God in different ways. In particular through disciplines of abstinence. We often like making fun of this—like Twitter’s top 100 list of things people give up for Lent—but fasting is deeply rooted in Christian and Jewish history.

Which brings us to sex. It made the top 10 list of what folks gave up for Lent last year, trumped by Facebook, alcohol, Twitter itself, and of course chocolate (the favorite American default for Lent). And this year, Valentines Day is the day after Ash Wednesday. Given youth ministries’ propensity to do “Love, sex, and dating” series during February, I’m wondering how this year’s placement might instruct our approach to both Lent and sexuality.

Both might be opportunities to notice God more. This is precisely the theme behind our free 8-week curriculum Sticky Faith Every Day. Is it possible there are endless ways God is trying to capture our attention? Is it possible that our lives are so filled with distraction that we’re often missing something deeper God wants us to notice? We think the answer is yes. And perhaps human sexuality is one of the ways God wants us to notice and celebrate his goodness, creativity, and wonder.

Perhaps rather than guilt, shame, or close doors to young people’s experiences of wrestling with their sexuality, we can name and embrace it as part of the complex nature of God’s revelation to us.

That doesn’t mean we gloss over the brokenness that accompanies our sexuality, or the ways teenagers and adults misuse, misunderstand, and abuse sex. Not to mention how frustrating it can be to be young, unmarried, and attempting to honor God with your body. But young people often hear these messages so strongly from the church that to suggest we might actually notice God through our sexuality seems almost absurd.

So maybe rather than letting Lent and Valentine’s Day seem worlds apart, we can help the teenagers in our lives make peace with both this week. Even if they’re giving up chocolate.

Don’t miss out on the free curriculum we designed to be used alongside Lent. And if you’re using it, be sure to share your ideas with us!