student ministry | leadership | parenting | life
Dating isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s difficult and usually ends badly. Recently, I did a teaching on how to win at dating. I hope you find it helpful.
Two quick things:
1. We break halfway through the video and have students read Scriptures together…in case you were wondering why it’s sort of Scripture empty.
2. The best line in this video was stolen from Andy Stanley.
Awkward Series: Gauges from Lifeline Student Ministries on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago, we launched our Awkward series. This is a 4 week teaching series on sexuality. We call it Awkward because talking with students about sex is, well, awkward.
Our kickoff teaching was one of my favorites of the year. We focused on the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife the truth is that sometimes when we follow God’s design we get punished, at least for the short term.
I thought I would share my notes. I’m also willing to share the entire 4 week series for an outlandish sum of money. OK, actually, you can just have it. Just email me. Enjoy…
Last night we kicked off a teaching series on sexuality. We’re calling it, “The Awkward” series because talking about sex with students is, well, awkward.
While I was landing my teaching last night, I experienced one of the highlights of my ministry year. I began bringing my talk to a close by encouraging our students to think about their boundaries. Specifically, I challenged them to verbalize their boundaries. “Look, if you don’t tell him what your boundaries are, don’t blame him for crossing them!”
After this section, I turned my attention toward those in the room, students and small group leaders alike, who had boundaries. Sadly, I think that is most of us. The sexual tension created by our over-sexualized culture along with the extension of adolescence that most emerging adults experience, the task of perfect purity before marriage is practically impossible. At the very least, I am realizing, we need to adjust our language. We are often guilty of creating an unrealistic expectation for our students–an expectation, that when broken leads to unspeakable shame.
And so, I said to our students, “Many of you here tonight had boundaries. At some point, maybe a few years ago, maybe last week, you found yourself in a situation and, well, you crossed some lines. What do you do now? Do you just throw in the towel? ‘Well, I guess it’s too late for me. I guess it doesn’t matter what I do.’ Is it too late for you? Are you ruined? I want to remind you that in the Gospel stories, every time Jesus encountered a person who had failed morally He responded with love and grace. I’m not talking about little mistakes either. He responded with kindness and grace to prostitutes and other people who had made a complete mess of their lives. He never responded with guilt or anger. Please understand that God loves you deeply. He’s not angry. He’s calling you back to Him and back to boundaries. It is never to late to begin again. It’s never too late to begin following God’s design again.”
As I spoke these words, I saw one of our girls in the audience burst into tears. They weren’t tears of shame, they were tears of gratitude. It was almost as if she had been waiting for someone to tell her that she was still OK, that she wasn’t ruined and that she had a future–that there was hope. How long had she been carrying that weight of shame? In that moment, I almost couldn’t continue. I recognized the power of God’s grace intersecting with human brokenness. It was a beautiful moment and I realized again, how important student ministry is.
Here’s my question: How many of our students are waiting for someone to tell them that God still loves them, that they still have a future, that there is grace? When we talk to student about sexuality, let’s balance expectations with grace. Too often we talk about boundaries like they are a cliff. If you cross them, well, then it’s all over. You’ve lost everything. I understand the deep consequences that come with sexual sin but we have to understand our audience. Because of the prevalence of pornography and the intense pressure placed on our students, they will make mistakes. We must realize that many of our students have already made mistakes and are already living with profound shame. Let’s change our language and let’s walk with them through their mistakes and missteps. Let’s speak the powerful words of God’s grace.
Elisa Talmage absolutely rocked this teaching. Among other things, she did a great job describing how ridiculous it is that we compare ourselves to models on magazine covers. I’ll probably make my daughters watch this video tomorrow.
Awkward: Lies About Sexuality – Body Image from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.
Here’s a video teaching from our Awkward Series. It was originally part of a longer video including a few other teachers from our team. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Awkward: Lies About Sexuality – Pornography from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.
No one wants to crash morally. No one sets a goal of bringing sexual baggage into their marriage. It’s usually a gradual process that begins with wandering down a path we shouldn’t be on. Check it out.
Awkward: Wandering from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.
Back in the day I attended a conservative Christian college–one of those colleges that you only apply to if you want to be a pastor, missionary, play the organ or marry someone who does. It was elite. The average incoming GPA of a freshman student when I graduated was 3.9. It was like the Hogwarts of ministry except that Harry Potter was obviously out of bounds, what, with that devilish magic and all.
Anyway, I loved it. I remember looking out from my chapel seat overlooking a crowd of a thousand future leaders thinking, “These people are going to change the world. This is army. These people are going to take Jesus to the darkest of places.” And they did. My classmates planted churches in the most forsaken places on earth. They became undercover missionaries in closed Islamic countries. They flew missionary planes into remote jungle outposts and they’ve planted and led churches all over the world. My classmates were and are an extraordinary group of men and women. And yet, they are incredibly ordinary and broken–just like you and me.
My junior year I was somehow approved to be an RA. To be honest, I was probably the worst RA ever to patrol the halls of my storied dorm. But, my new position exposed me to privileged information. I discovered early in the fall semester that our dorm had a massive problem…pornography. As it turns out, the facilities staff was finding an alarming amount of pornographic material in the garbage. I suppose it was a good thing that it was in the trash but it’s very presence exposed a problem. Many of us who were training to be the future leaders of the church were struggling with varying degrees of porn addiction.
The thought of pastors, missionaries and other ministry leaders hiding in the dark with unseen porn addictions terrified me. This insidious monster would destroy what God was planning for our generation of leaders. Before we took Jesus to the darkest of places in the world we needed to take him to the darkest places in our own hearts. .
In college I played volleyball. Yes, they have this sport for guys. I was the captain of my team and so enjoyed a degree of influence. I decided I would do something desperate and awkward.
After practice one day, as we sprawled across the gym floor stretching our aching legs, I dropped a bomb. I announced that I knew we were all struggling with pornography. I told them about the garbage in the garbage that was worse than garbage. I told them that this couldn’t go on. We had to rid ourselves of this darkness now before it embedded itself in our hearts. We couldn’t carry this monster into ministry. We decided that every Monday after practice we would get naked. Not like that. I mean we would sit around and confess–starkly and uninhibited. We would tell each other what we looked at, how often and what we did. We would systematically drag our darkness out into the light. We would expose ourselves. Naked. No more hiding in the dark.
The first couple of weeks were a mess. Our meetings took forever as each of us stared at the floor, mumbling through our dirty laundry. There were moments of helplessness and utter shame. We dug up garbage from the past and dragged it into the light. We prayed. No, we begged for help.
Then, with gentle love and unwavering commitment we began to look each other in the eye. We reminded each other of grace and unconditional love but demanded repentance. “I love you but you can’t stay here.” Our sessions began to get shorter. The darkness was being pushed back. Then there was the week when no one messed up.
“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:19-21)
Sin, hidden in secret darkness has immense power. The shame is paralyzing. But sin, pulled into the light of community through confession loses its power. We experienced freedom and victory because we painfully and systematically dragged our sin into the light.
If you want freedom there is but one way–confession and accountability. Drag it into the light.
image credited to nkzs via stock.xchng
This morning I ran across a post on one of my favorite blogs. A guy named Walt Mueller has a great site for youth workers and parents. You should really check it out.
In his latest post, Walt links to a GQ Magazine article by Scott Christian. The article describes how even secular culture is beginning to admit that pornography might not be so great for your mind. Here’s the link to Walt’s post: Learning My Lines…
You can check out the GQ post itself from Walt’s blog but it has a rather provocative picture in it. Just giving you a heads up.
Also, Walt’s The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is a great resource.
Lastly, I’ve personally blogged quite a lot about the dangers of porn. You can check out a few posts if you’re interested:
4 Traps That Will Derail a Girl’s Dreams
image credited to hankinsphoto.com
Recently I spoke to a group of parents about sexuality and their kids. A parent in the audience asked one of the most common questions I hear: “When should I talk to my kids about sex?” Great question! Let me answer it with a story…
Last month my friend and his family were trick or treating with their kids. In that blind lust for candy that kids develop around Halloween they ran off ahead of him. My friend and his wife weren’t concerned because they were in a safe and normal suburban neighborhood. None of these homes were crack houses or meth labs. There were no confederate flags or gun ranges. It was a normal, upstanding neighborhood—the kind of place where your grandma or great aunt Gertrude might live.
Anyway, the kids ‘trick or treated’ a house, a man answered the door and handed the kids candy. Looking over his shoulder toward the TV in the living room the kids couldn’t help but notice what the man was watching. The guy was watching porn while handing out candy to children on Halloween. That is creeptastic.
My friend’s 5th grade son encountered pornography for the first time while he was trick or treating. How does that even happen? And yet, how did any of us first encounter pornography? It’s usually accidental or random. Very few kids go looking for porn. Pornography has a way of finding us.
When I was in 6th grade, I walked over to my friend’s house expecting to play Tecmo Bowl on his NES. Instead, he popped in a VHS he had found in his parents’ closet, the images from which are still burned into my mind. Porn has a way of finding us.
As parents, we need to be clear about something: Porn will find your kids. It’s inevitable. Recent research reveals that 98% of people in our culture have seen pornography. I’m pretty sure the 2% were lying.
There may have been a day in our culture when the goal of parenting was to protect our kids from ever seeing pornography but that day is long gone–lost somewhere in the 1950s. I’ve heard its locked in a vault somewhere with the Andy Griffith Show.
THE FIRST WORD
Is the pull of pornography inevitable? Do we just surrender? Do we shrug and allow our kids to be lured into the web of pornography? No way! We need a different and more honest approach.
If we know that our kid will inevitably see pornography, the question we need to wrestle with is: “What will our kids do when they see pornography?” We want them to respond in the right way. This requires preparation and a preemptive strike. I believe our kids need to know what pornography is before they ever see it. We must get in the first word on pornography.
I’m not saying that we explain what sex and pornography are when our kids are kindergarteners. That would be crazy. However, they do need to know that not everything on the Internet is safe. They need to understand that there are pictures and videos out there that will hurt their minds.
They need to be coached on how to respond when a friend wants to show them a picture that is inappropriate. Essentially, they need to understand from an early age that pornography is out there and that it will hurt them.
THE LAST WORD
Not only do we need to get in the first word, we need to get in the last word. What I mean is that we want our kids to process what they see with us, not their friend down the street or through Google search. This requires building a massive amount of trust because telling anyone, let alone your parents, that you looked at pornography is an incredibly shameful and embarrassing moment.
And yet, we knew from the Scriptures that when sin is dragged out into the light it loses its power. Pornography addictions take root in the darkness. They begin when a kid accidentally stumbles on pornography, feels incredibly shameful and yet powerfully intrigued but doesn’t tell anyone because he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing.
Your kids will see pornography. How will you prepare them for it? Is your relationship open and strong enough for them to feel safe confessing to you? How will you walk with them once it happens?
image credited to maura
The other night I was helping my son Keegan with his homework. The fact that my 2nd grade son has homework every night is crazy talk. When I was in 2nd grade, my homework was to pit my He-Man and G.I. Joe figures against each other in epic combat for hours on end on end.
Anyway, he was attempting to glue words that he had cut out on a piece of paper in alphabetical order. You might say he was struggling. Elmer’s glue and 2nd grade fingers aren’t a great combination. And, the funny thing about glue is that it is quite effective at cementing two pieces of paper together. This is great except for when you’re in 2nd grade and you keep putting the words in the wrong order.
Once the glue has been applied, pulling the two pieces of paper apart is a rather nasty affair. The funny thing is that the papers become one and trying to pull them apart results in ripping the papers and spilling glue everywhere. The end result was papers glued to the table, fingers stuck together, and a seven year old repeatedly banging his head against the table
In his defense, the entire episode was technically my fault. He was working as fast as he could because I had just purchased the new Lego: Marvel Super Heroes video game and promised him that we could play it as soon as his homework was done. He was essentially doing his homework at ludicrous speed which is never a good idea unless your name is Dark Helmet or Colonel Sanders.
It was about this time that I realized that sex is a lot like the glue my son was using for his homework. I didn’t come to this realization during the homework session of course…that would have been weird. Nor did I realize it while we were playing Lego: Marvel Super Heroes because that game is so fun that any sort of distraction, even thinking about sex is impossible.
I came to this realization about sex and glue over coffee with one of our small group leaders as he talked about a student in his group. His student had slept with his girlfriend and now he was struggling because things hadn’t turned out like he thought they would. As it turns out, things were getting pretty complicated.
Often, I think I’ve had a genius idea and then realize that I actually stole the idea from someone else. This happens in our office all the time, usually after someone reads my blog and realizes that I stole another one of their ideas and played it off like it was mine. I assure you this is unintentional. I’m terrible with names and intellectual property.
With this whole sex and glue image, it turns out I’ve stolen the idea from someone fairly high up…God. In the book of Genesis, God describes sex as forging two people into one person in a way that can’t be broken apart. There is something incredibly powerful about sex. It’s like glue. It cements two people together. There is no undoing the unity that sex brings. That’s why when people talk about how so and so still has a piece of their heart they are speaking the truth.
The thing that bothers me is how our culture presents sex as just something fun to do that doesn’t have lasting consequences. Based on what I’ve read from the Inventor of sex and what I’ve observed over and over again in the lives of friends and students, sex is like glue. It forges a bond between bodies and souls. It creates beautiful and lasting unity and intimacy in the context of marriage but when two people who have been cemented together are pulled apart there is lasting emotional and relational damage.
image credited to me and the sysop
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