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.”