Shoal Creek Student Family Weekly Update 9/30

Hey Buya and Crash Families, here are all the things to pay attention to for students!

1. Crash Sunday Morning Change-Up Coming Oct 19th! Sunday October 19th will be the first Sunday where we offer a weekly, Crash (9th-12th grade) student service, at second service ONLY. Truly sorry to the high school families that are only able to attend first service, but we have found that there aren’t enough students attending our first service student ministry program to warrant doing two Crash services each Sunday. If you’re unable to attend the 11am service, we 

2. We need some help with the Chad Rogers “Running With The Angels” Memorial Run. The run needs about 20 more spots, especially with water and course stations. If you have some time on Saturday to support Chad’s Run, would you sign up to volunteer here?

3. Buya Event Calendar – I’m DYING to get some Buya “just-for-fun” events on the calendar, but I desperately need some families of Buya students to join me! If you’d like to see Buya do some events for its middle school students, would you please read this?

Shoal Creek Buya Families - An Opportunity For Your Middle Schoolers To Become Owners

Hi Buya Families! 

I just wanted to reach out to you and touch base with you about something that's really important to me, and for the Buya students. And that's getting some Buya events on the calendar for the students.

Creating "just for fun" events, outside of Sunday mornings, is sooooo insanely critical to our students feeling like Shoal Creek is their "home". A middle schooler's love language is F-U-N, and by creating just-for-fun events, we show them that we really care about them, and that we are inviting them to call SC their home for spiritual growth now, and for when they graduate up into HS.

What breaks my heart more than anything else is when I see students transition out of Kidzone, then struggle to feel "connected" to Buya, and then eventually never make it up into Crash. The biggest damage in students struggling to connect at the Buya is that most who disassociate from the student ministries at the Buya age level fail to ever reconnect to the student ministries at the Crash level. Meaning, if they fail to "attach" at the Buya level, I rarely see them become interested in our small group structure or other opportunities for spiritual growth at the Crash level. Once they disassociate, they tend to disassociate for good. High school tends to be the most critical age for identity development, but if we can't keep them interested now, we won't have a chance to be effective in their lives then.

I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for the students themselves to take some ownership in their student ministry by asking them, "What would you like to do for fun to make Buya really YOURS?"

Ownership is always proof of the deepest level of internalization. My hope is that we could help the students see themselves as OWNERS of Buya, and not just "attendees." I'm soooo willing to let them do whatever they want to do to help them understand that Buya is theirs, NOT mine.

Would you consider doing 2 things for me to help give our Buya students the greatest chance of internalizing a lasting faith in Jesus in their time here at Shoal Creek?

1 - Would you ask them what types of things they think need to happen to make Buya the best it can be, and then let me know their responses? Especially when it comes to helping them feel connected, which will probably come in the form of brainstorming event ideas that they'd like to come to and invite their friends to.

2 - Would you help them be the owners of Buya that I know they can be? Meaning, would you be willing to work with your student, me and other Buya families to plan and execute one event before Christmas arrives? 

My goal is to use your student's and family's ideas to create an event calendar to start to distribute and get the students excited. And I know the students will get way excited when they see upcoming stuff just for them, and what a cool opportunity for their maturation when they get to say, "I came up with that idea!"

Please, talk with your family, then reply back to me if this resonates with you at all. Even if you aren't able to come up with any ideas, but are just willing to help make things happen, that's perfect too! I do have ideas waiting in the wings, I'm just looking for families who'd like to be a part of making those ideas a reality.

THANKS!

Shoal Creek ParenTeen - The Power of Hope

There really isn't much worse than being in a state of continual hopelessness. Hopelessness that drags on drains the life, and will to keep pushing on, right out of our souls. I think since our teens are still in the earlier stages of their lives, and since they therefore haven't had as many experiences of having "pushed through" successfully into better better waters, they are more at risk of being captured by hopelessness.

However, according to this recently released study/article, having conversations with hopeless and potentially depressed teens actually CAN have a measurable effect on their ability to believe that people and circumstances CAN change and get better. For example:

Researchers started noticing back in the 1980s that many teens felt that social and personality traits were immutable — that someone who is once a loser is always a loser.

So what if we could convince kids that things can change for the better — would that help mitigate the high rates of depression? Yeager tested that out. The results of his latest study, published Monday in Clinical Psychological Science, suggests that it does.

The study divided 600 ninth-graders into two groups. Half participated in a brief intervention program designed to help them understand that people and circumstances can change. These teenagers were shown several articles, including one about brain plasticity, and another about how neither bullies nor victims of bullying are intrinsically bad.

"We didn't want to say something to teenagers that wasn't believable," Yeager says. "We just wanted to inject some doubt into that problematic world view that people couldn't change."

The students also read advice from older students reassuring them that high school gets better, and they were asked to draw from their own experience and write about how personalities can change.

Nine months later, the researchers checked up on all the students. Among those who didn't participate in the intervention, rates of depression symptoms such as feeling constantly sad and feeling unmotivated rose from 18 percent to 25 percent — about what the researchers expected, Yeager says. The group that participated in this intervention showed no increase in depressive symptoms, even if they said they were bullied.

What I take from this is that we all know how hard it can be to see beyond our current difficult circumstances. We all know hard it can be to be hopeful and willing to persevere when it feels like nothing is going our way. Because our teens haven't yet survived as many battles as we have, they tend to be prey to hopelessness, for they doubt that things really can change for the better.

Our job is to "inject" a sense of hope into their hopelessness by sharing from our own stories how we too once were hopeless (in whatever relatable circumstance we can think of), but how we DID survive, and things DID get better. Sharing our stories of making it through the tough times really CAN make a difference in the life of a teen who may be facing a seemingly hopeless situation.

It's just up to us to open up and get verbal about it!

Shoal Creek Student Family Weekly Update 9/23

Hey Buya and Crash Families, here are all the things to pay attention to for students!

1. Check out Justin Talley's "At Second Glance", a review of the message given this past Sunday in Shoal Creek's Student Ministries. Find it here.

2. Crash Students - Wear Clothes You Can Get Dirty To Small Groups tomorrow night - We're gonna spend some time trying to get the Attic ready for reopening, which means we need to rip up carpet and do some other various stuff. So please wear clothes that you aren't afraid to get dirty in.

3. Crash Sunday Morning Change-Up Coming in Sept! After just seeing what would happen with a combined 6th-12th grade service on Sundays, we've gotten enough feedback to know that the Crash students need their own space on Sundays. Sometime in September this will happen as we will move back into the Attic for a high school only, 11am service. Read more about it here.

At Second Glance - Role Models

A second look at this past week's message from Shoal Creek's Student Ministries...

This past week in Shoal Creek's student ministries we asked the question, "How should a role model help me become the person I need to become?" We tried to answer that question by suggesting that a truly transformational role model will help you become who you need to become in three ways.

1. A transformational role model will invite us into their life. Meaning, they give you access to see who they really are and what they're really all about. They don't show off their strengths only to withhold their weaknesses. By inviting you into their life, what they're really doing is earning your trust. Trust is the relational currency we exchange with someone, and by which we give someone permission to be influential in the shaping of our life. When a role model invites us into their world, and when we enter and determine whether or not their world is something that's attractive to us or not, we in return give them access into the shaping process of our world.

2. A transformational role model will challenge our weaknesses. Just like a chain, we truly are only as strong as our weakest link. We have a tendency to want to only make our strengths stronger in life, and the downfall of that is that it can lead to our weaknesses becoming even more of a fatal error in our lives. Transformational role models will not just pat us on the back and give us hi five's for jobs well done. They'll see the weak spots in our lives and not be satisfied to just ignore them, because they know our weaknesses are keeping us from the lives we can achieve. A good role model will create conflict in our lives, even if we don't want them to, because the best version of ourself is worth fighting for.

3. A transformational role model will see Jesus as their ultimate role model, and will help us understand how to make Jesus our own ultimate role model. We seek out and allow role models to make an impact in our lives mainly because we are aware of our own deficiencies and short comings. As we mature, we become increasingly aware that we are not the finished product of who we want to be. We also come into increased contact with the brokenness of the world, and this increased awareness of brokenness in ourselves and the world lines up a seemingly never ending set of problems that block our way forward. What a truly life-changing and transformational role model will do is help us understand every problem is at its root a spiritual problem. Every obstacle we face, every brokenness we come in contact with, is really spiritual in nature. There isn't a single problem you or I face that doesn't have spiritual implications in our lives. Therefore, what the role model can help us see is that since every problem is really a spiritual problem, only a spiritual answer will do. They will lead us to then see Jesus, his life and his teachings, as the ultimate answer to the problems we face. They can share with us their understanding of what a relationship with Jesus is like, and be a voice to guide us in pursuing our own relationship with Jesus.

If you're someone looking for a role model of this description, then please come by Shoal Creek! We'd love to connect you with someone who will help you understand who Jesus is for you!

Weekend Links

Here's a list of several links, post, articles I came across this past week that could bring some insight into your life--hope you enjoy!

When Joy Is Hard To Come By




"I'm not a student first."---Say what? Here's a blog post and video recommended by Haley Seba that proposes that before we see ourselves as students, we should see ourselves as Christ's.

4 Things Every World Changer Does

"Needless to say, there is a great need for social justice and activism in today's world. But what can one little person do to make a difference?"

Tweet of the Week

The cross is the place where the Judge takes the Judgement.
— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) September 9, 2014

Shoal Creek ParenTeen - Cell Phones...It's Ok To Say...

Cell phone rules can be a way sticky subject in families. It's hard to know what lines we are justified in drawing for our teens. We don't want to be unjust, but there are serious, sometimes life-altering, consequences that can stem from poor choices we make with our cell phones. 

Here's a real "contract" that a family used with their teenager. Maybe use this as a reference point in deciding what could work for your own family if you're having trouble coming up with a usable model.

Dan and Denise’s fourteen-year-old son has two cell phone contracts: one with his cell phone carrier and one with them. In order to clarify their family’s cell phone expectations and protocol, Dan and Denise printed the following guidelines and had their son sign them and post them in his room.

1 - It is our phone. We bought it. We pay for it. We are loaning it to you. Aren’t we great?

2 - We will always know the password.

3 - If it rings, answer it. Say hello and use good manners. Never ignore a phone call if the screen reads, “Mom” or “Dad.”

4 - Hand the phone to one of your parents before bed every night.

5 - If it falls into the toilet, smashes on the ground, or vanishes into thin air, you are responsible for the replacement costs or repairs.

6 - Put it away in public (for example, in church, in restaurants, in movie theaters, wherever you are with other people). You are not rude; do not allow your phone to change that.

7 - Do not use your phone to lie to, fool, or deceive another human being. Do not involve yourself in conversations that are hurtful to others. Be a good friend first.

8 - Do not text, email, or say anything through this device you would not say in person.

9 - No porn. Nothing you wouldn’t want your mother to see.

10 - Do not send or receive pictures of your private parts or anyone else’s private parts. Don’t laugh. Despite your intelligence, someday you might be tempted to do this. It is risky and could ruin your life.

11 - Take pictures, but don’t forget to live your experiences. Keep your eyes up. See the world happening around you. Stare out a window. Listen to the birds. Take a walk.

12 - Leave your phone home sometimes and be okay with that decision. Learn to live without it.

13 - Download music that is new or classic or different from what your peers listen to. Your generation has access to music like never before in history. Take advantage of that gift. Expand your horizons.

14 - Play a game with words or puzzles or brainteasers every now and then.

15 - You will mess up. We will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. We will always be learning. We are on your team. We are in this together. 

(original article here)

Shoal Creek Student Family Weekly Update 9/16

Hey Buya and Crash Families, here are all the things to pay attention to for students!

1. Check out Justin Talley's "At Second Glance", a review of the message given this past Sunday in Shoal Creek's Student Ministries. Find it here.

2. Crash Sunday Morning Change-Up Coming in Sept! After just seeing what would happen with a combined 6th-12th grade service on Sundays, we've gotten enough feedback to know that the Crash students need their own space on Sundays. Sometime in September this will happen as we will move back into the Attic for a high school only, 11am service. Read more about it here.

3. Don't forget about Communion tomorrow night, from 6:30-8pm in the SC Auditorium! An amazing time of spiritual connection through reflection on God's truths.

At Second Glance - The Boundaries We Need

A second look at this past week's message from Shoal Creek's Student Ministries...

This past Sunday at Shoal Creek, we asked the question, "Why do we need boundaries?" We tried to answer it by saying that without boundaries, we will run into things that will hurt us. And I think that for the most part, as kind of a general rule, we agree with that. There are good reasons behind the planning and setting of rules and boundaries that I must observe when I get in my car and onto the highway. Mainly, that my life and the lives of others be preserved through my (and hopefully) their adherence to the boundaries MDOT sets before us.

So as a general rule, when we can connect the dots between prescribed boundaries and our safety, we find it easy to live in concordance with rules and boundaries. The problem, the rub, comes when we doubt that a certain boundary is indeed "for our own good." When aiming this conversation at the spiritual, we are really asking deep in our hearts, "Is God good? Is God for me, or against me, or at least unconcerned with me at all?"

To get right to it, this whole argument comes down to TRUST. We are either people who trust God (and therefore are more readily compliant with the boundaries He sets), or we are people who struggle to trust in a God (and are therefore less readily compliant to what He may be asking).

To grow in trust with God, we must pursue God as a community while going through the trials and doubts that we face daily. Community, being together with others seeking the same goal (in this case, the goal being to grow closer to God), is vital to personal growth. It is so extremely tantamount to real, personal connection with God that we share with other humans the humanly struggles we face. Otherwise, what we regularly fall into, and what we may be facing even now, is extreme distrust that God really does care about me and what the best for me.

I promise you, the God of the Christian Bible DOES love you and want what's best for you--even if other external or internal forces are trying to convince you otherwise! However, I will never be able to share my story with you, my understanding of God's unconditional love that exists deeper than any adversity, if I never get a chance to talk with you and know what makes it hard for you to trust God.

If we want to grow closer to God, we MUST talk about what keeps us from trusting Him. Otherwise, if we're not communally working on trusting Him, we'll turn our backs on Him whenever He suggests we follow a certain course of action, or make a certain decision, that might be counterintuitive to what we're feeling or thinking in the moment.

I think I'm seeing just how deep "self-preservation" runs in my soul. How, when push comes to shove, I want to preserve or elevate my way of life (thinking/feeling) above your way of life. Inside me resides an "I want what I want, and you better not get in the way of me getting what I want!" type of core. 

But I'm also learning that when I elevate my desires to being more important to me than anything else, I end up hurting myself and the people I care about. The only healthy way forward, I think, is to learn to live by God's will, God's design, God's desires for my life.

That means that the most important thing I can do in any day that I take breath is to work on trying to trust God more, which might mean me needing to talk with others about the obstacles that are keeping me from being able to do so. 

Shoal Creek ParenTeen - What do you do if your teenager doesn't want to spend time with you?

Every parent has felt the pain of being rejected by their child. There are times when our kids are in a mood, or in a funk, or even for no discernible reason at all, where they just plain don't want to be close to you.

For some of us, those times of rejection aren't the exception, but are the rule.

There are so many, many dynamics that can play into this that are too numerable to discuss here. It's impossible to see into all the minute factors that play into the interpersonal relationships we have with our children. So I don't want to bring to you any magical recipe or false hope by saying, "If you'll just do these three things..."

Instead, I want to share with you Nora's Story. You can read the entire article here, but here's a little snapshot of what you'll be getting if you've ever felt the same way that Nora has felt.

Longing for a deeper relationship, Nora has tried to connect with Sam. But every time she offers to take him out for a meal or do something fun, he refuses. He’d rather shut himself in his room and go online or play video games than be with her.

But Sam does love going to movies.

So Nora has become a student of film. She tracks movie release dates, visits movie websites, and has learned the nuances of various directors and actors.

Shoal Creek Student Family Weekly Update 9/9

Hey Buya and Crash Families, here are all the things to pay attention to for students!

1. Crash Sunday Morning Change-Up Coming in Sept! After just seeing what would happen with a combined 6th-12th grade service on Sundays, we've gotten enough feedback to know that the Crash students need their own space on Sundays. Sometime in September this will happen as we will move back into the Attic for a high school only, 11am service.

OF SPECIAL NOTE - We absolutely need the help of students and adults to make this happen. Specifically, if you're a student, would you like to a planning meeting THIS Wed, Aug 27th, at 7pm in the Attic to help us plan September?

2. Have students that want to earn cash doing child care for Shoal Creek FPU classes? FPU classes start next Tuesday, Sep 16, and continue every Tuesday after that for several weeks. Students need to be at Shoal Creek from 6:15pm and stay til 8:30pm. We will have an adult child care supervisor but need students as well. Contact Sean (sean.hoeflicker@shoalcreek.org) ASAP if interested.

3. Crash Small groups will be starting up again Wed Sept 3rd, in The Attic, 6:30pm-8:15pm. Message Justin Talley or reply to this if you have any questions.

Shoal Creek ParenTeen - Three Ways To Parent

This week I came across an audio excerpt from Walt Mueller (founder of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding) that reflected on a study done by the Barna Group (a faith-based polling company). The audio excerpt from Walt was basically a summation from this article and book that suggest parents use one of three different strategies when it comes to the way we parent. 

Strategy 1: "Parenting by Default"

In this approach, parents do whatever comes naturally to the parent, as influenced by cultural norms and traditions. The objective is to keep everyone - parent, child, and others - as happy as possible, without having the process of parenting dominate other important or prioritized aspects of the parent’s life.

Strategy 2: "Trial and Error Parenting"

This approach is based on the notion that every parent is an amateur at raising children, there are no absolute guidelines to follow, and that the best that parents can do is to experiment, observe outcomes, and improve based upon their successes and failures in child rearing. In this incremental approach, the goals of parenting are to continually improve and to perform better than most other parents.

Strategy 3: "Revolutionary Parenting"

This approach requires the parent to take God’s words on life and family at face value, and to apply those words faithfully and consistently.

And one last quote that kind of gives some context on how these strategies contrast:

Perhaps the most startling difference in these approaches has to do with the desired outcomes...Those who engage in revolutionary parenting define success as intentionally facilitating faith-based transformation in the lives of their children, rather than simply accepting the aging and survival of the child as a satisfactory result.

I think the main thing Barna and Walt are trying to communicate to parents is this--There are three ways to parent:

1. Parent in whatever way feels right to you.
2. Compare yourselves to other families and try to be better than them.
3. Parent in a way that reflects who God is to our kids, and parent with the intent purposes of wanting our kids to grow up with the desire to reflect God in their own lives as their number one desire.

Easier said than done, right? Well, it just so happens that this entire month at Shoal Creek we're doing a family series that speaks to four things our kids need. So I think attending this month's services, or watching the services online if you can't make it in, would be a great place to start discovering what it could look like for you to parent with the intent of putting God in the center of your family's life.

Shoal Creek Student Family Weekly Update 9/2

Hey Buya and Crash Families, here are all the things to pay attention to for students!

1. Check out Justin Talley's "At Second Glance", a review of the message given this past Sunday in Shoal Creek's Student Ministries. Find it here.

2. Crash Sunday Morning Change-Up Coming in Sept! After just seeing what would happen with a combined 6th-12th grade service on Sundays, we've gotten enough feedback to know that the Crash students need their own space on Sundays. Sometime in September this will happen as we will move back into the Attic for a high school only, 11am service.

• PLEASE READ THIS POST for the details of what we're thinking the new format will look like, and especially read it to see the help we're needing!

3. Crash Small groups will start THIS Wed Sept 3rd, in UNDERGROUND, 6:30pm-8:15pm. Message Justin Talley or reply to this if you have any questions.

4. Servers needed for Poe Banquet this Thursday, 6-8pm. Any students available to help serve and bus tables this Thursday as Derek and Shea try to garner support for their mission of transforming lives in our area? I can give out service hours! Please let me know if you can help!

At Second Glance - Sharing Your Life and Faith

A second look at this past week's message from Shoal Creek's Student Ministries...

This past week in our Shoal Creek student ministries we talked about "Sharing Our Lives and Faith." We took a look at scripture from John 1:1-9. Verses 4-5 really stuck out to me the most, and here they are:

The Word (Jesus) gave life to everything that was created,
and his (Jesus') life brought light to everyone.
The light (Jesus) shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it (Jesus).

These verses stuck out to me the most because I find that what my heart desires, what my heart absolutely needs more than anything else, is a permanent light source that will never go out. I may think that I want more money, cooler stuff, more free time, better friendships, or a higher social status. I may think that having more any of those physical or abstract desires would bring me more joy and satisfaction in life. But if I attach my emotional well-being to any of those things, if I let the desire for those things to "light up my life" and affect the way I operate and make decisions, than I will be plunged into darkness when those things are taken away from me.

Any created thing ultimately has an expiration date. Objects, money, things, people--they all run out, get used up, become drained. They're all like batteries. Each are limited in their capacity to give. Each are limited in the amount of light they can provide. So anyone who's lighting their life by any of those things will be plunged into darkness (again) when:  the money runs out, the popularity is gone, the athletic ability doesn't exist anymore, the relationship is over.

What we need more than anything else is to understand Jesus is the only light that will never be extinguished. And therefore, we need to let our lives be guided by His light. 

Meaning...

...our worth needs to come from understanding how much He loves us instead of our worth coming from what other people say about us. 

...our sense of security needs to come from understanding that He provides us with the income we need instead of us finding security in accumulating possessions. 

...any goodness we experience or bring into the world comes from Him instead of thinking that we are our own saviors. 

We experience darknesses every day, every week. Our family and friends do, too. We lose the non-Jesus things we've wrongly put our hope in, and then we are overwhelmed and crushed by the darkness, joylessness and hopelessness that shroud us.

What we need, and what our friends and family need, more than anything else, is a permanent light source--a permanent fixture of hope, love, faithfulness and joy--that will always be available and accessible through whatever struggle we found ourselves having to go through. Jesus is that light. He says,

“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”