Being Told You’re Wonderful Can Be Dangerous… A Cautionary Tale

I read an important article last night. It’s an article every ministry person needs to read, as well as any person that finds himself/herself working with our youth. It seems like an epidemic lately. There seems to be a story every few days right now of a teacher or other professional who finds himself/herself on the wrong side of the law for becoming involved in an affair with a student. I know this is a little off topic for this blog but it is crucial that people in ministry get a handle on this. This simply cannot be… ever.

There are things we all can do.

Step One: You can’t touch the kids!
This is a rule. There are billions of available adults in the world. Anyone under 18 is off limits. This ain’t rocket science people. The Bible has this thing called the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you wouldn’t want an adult to enter into a physical relationship with your child, afford some other parent the same courtesy.

Step Two: Never be alone with a student.
The easiest way to make sure something like this doesn’t happen is to make sure it can’t happen. Never alone, never a problem.

Now that I’ve touched on the two that are obvious, let’s look a little deeper at what needs to happen.

Most of the cases I have read about involved, people who are already married, which leads to our next point.

Step Three: Work on your marriage!
The guy in the article says he fell into this affair because his marriage was shaky. This is where the title of this post comes from. There’s difficulty in the home and all of the sudden some pretty/handsome young thing is telling you you’re wonderful. Of course he/she thinks you’re wonderful. He/she may look like an adult, but he/she knows nothing! Next time someone outside your marriage starts to tell you you’re wonderful, remember this… They don’t know you, not the way your spouse does. Some of us need to ask ourselves the question “Is the reason my spouse is not telling me I’m wonderful, that I’m not being wonderful?” Marriage is work. It’s also God ordained. If your ministry is adversely affecting your marriage, you let the ministry go and work on the marriage. Get help. Save the marriage and don’t allow yourself to fall to temptation.

Step Four: Accountability
Sin loves a vacuum. The best way to avoid sneaking around in the dark is to have a same gender accountability partner who will call you on your garbage and keep bringing your life into the light. This is huge and crucial.

Step Five: Flee temptation!
It’s called temptation because it’s tempting. Get away from it. If you work with students and you find yourself becoming attracted to them, it’s time to switch careers. You’ll be able to find a million reasons why this is impractical, but how do they compare to prison?
Get help and get yourself out of the situation. Remember that 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Find the way out and take it. There are other ways to serve the Lord. Get help before you ruin some kids life, because that is ultimately what this type of behavior does. That’s why it’s a felony.

I know this was a bit off topic, and we’ll be back to creative arts ministry tomorrow, but this stuff ruins lives and families and brings dishonor to God. It’s happening too often and I just felt I needed to address it.

On Youth Ministry

This is a little off the arts ministry topic, but I think it’s important. On one of my ministry lists, someone posted a link to the new movie, Divided. This movie says that youth ministry is not biblical and favors a family ministry approach. While I love the idea of family ministry, families actually have to train up their children for it to work and our society’s condition reveals that this is not happening in a lot of households. I also disagree with the idea that youth ministry is not biblical. I believe it is a great supplement to family ministry and a great outreach tool for the church. I posted that I had a few problems with the premise of the film and someone asked what I thought should be done to stop losing the young people from our churches. This was my response.

First pray!!! Then…

1. More parental involvement in the spiritual well being of their children.
2. Churches being more intentional in involving youth in the life of the church. Tapping into their gifts and giving them real and age appropriate ways to serve. Not a token role so you can pat yourself on the back for having the youth involved. If you’re going to put a youth on a commission (or whatever) their input has to count. You mention my pastor (Bill Waugh) finding a use for my art gift and that was a key and crucial element in where I am today. I was a little older than youth by that time, but I was a baby believer and finding a place for me to fit was crucial. I believe that is the case for all believers.
3. Churches supporting youth leaders and youth ministries. (This was my main problem with the movie. If a church wants to switch to a family focused ministry as the movie suggests, fine, but the parents need to step up and they have to actually do it, not just decimate the youth ministry.) The average life of a youth leader in a church is about a year and a half and this is thoroughly unacceptable. I’ve talked to youth leaders all over the country. You’d be amazed how many of them are fired at the drop of a hat. If they’re being fired for heresy, fine, but it usually has more to do with disgruntled parents or reaching the “wrong kind of kid” (you know, kids who need Jesus). The danger zone in youth ministry is as a youth leader, I’m the person who gets to answer the questions your kids are too scared to ask you (this includes even the best parents). We need to show them a little more love and support.
4. Pastors need to have their youth leaders back. They need to correct the youth leader when necessary but they also need to stand up to unreasonable parents on the youth leader’s behalf. They’re crucial not disposable.
5. Youth leaders need to be intentional about involving the youth in the life of the church.
6. Parents need to be intentional about involving the youth in the life of the church.
7. Youth leaders need to remember that we are making disciples, keeping the teaching of the Word of God far in front of fun and games ministry.
8. Denominations and Districts need to steer their youth events toward teaching the Word of God and leave the politics and controversial issues at home. Nothing worse than feeling like you have to deprogram your students after taking them to a denominational event. Oh and by the way if you feel like you have to do that, the answer is to get involved with the planning of these events not just writing them off.
9. Volunteer youth ministry is not “warm body ministry” i.e. “we need someone to do this, take the first “warm body” we can get…” Youth ministry is a special calling. It’s not necessarily for the youngest person, or the hippest person. It’s the person who can put up with 20 of your teenagers all at once and still love them.
10. Parents, don’t expect the youth leader to fix your kid. Don’t think he can do in an hour a week what you haven’t been able to do in the rest of the week.
10b. Parents if we want kids to keep God number one in their lives we must demonstrate this to our kids. This means they don’t miss church and youth group every time some coach (or teacher or director) decides to have a game or a practice (or whatever) on Sunday morning or over a scheduled church function. If the coach could not field a team (or whatever) every time he had a game on Sunday morning, he’d soon learn how to schedule things leaving your child (and maybe even HIMSELF) time to worship his God.
11. We need to expect more from our kids. They are capable of doing great things for Jesus. That same Spirit that came upon David lives in your child if he is a believer. I once heard that we can’t have a message more than 12 minutes long for middle school students giving them one minute for every year. That’s crazy. They sit in 40 minute classes all year long. We get great things out of our kids by giving them great things to do. We get what we expect.
12. And this is second only to number one. Older members of the church (anyone no longer a youth) need to be intentional about building relationships with the youth. In this day and age many are far removed from their extended families, the church family filling that void is crucial. We lose a lot of students when they go off to college and the movie correctly points out this is getting younger. A lot of this is due I believe, to the idolatry of our society and has at least as much to do with the obsession of having enough extracurriculars to get into the best colleges, but I digress. What would happen if a caring person from church sent a college student a card every so often or better yet a care package? What if you had them over for dinner? What if you really got to know them? What if we prayed for them and with them? These connections will help be “the tie that binds” our students to the Church. Whoever said the teen years are the best years of a person’s life has a short memory. It’s a very hard time of adjustments greater than most they will face in the rest of their lives and they don’t have the benefit of years of experience to deal with them. They can’t always see Jesus but they can see you model him. And you’re never too old. One of the best assistants I ever had was old enough to be a grandfather to every one of my students and that’s what he was to many of them. He met them where they were. He loves them and they love him.

The church is a body, all parts are needed and like a body new cells come in as the older ones die off. We need to keep our youth connected. The family is a key building block in all of this and parents have the primary role in the spiritual development of their children. On this I am in total agreement with the film. I believe God has raised up youth ministries as a way to supplement this and cover it for parents who are falling short (and lets face it, even the best fall short sometimes) because God loves your children even more than you do. One last thing… Banish the idea that the youth are the church of future. They are the church of the right now and we need them right now. 80 percent of people who will ever come to Christ will do it by the age of 18. If this is the case, our youth are the forefront evangelists in the ripest mission field on earth. We need more ministry to youth not less.

These are my thoughts based on a long time of doing youth ministry and ministering to youth ministers. I welcome your comments or as I said on my original post, “Let the beatings begin.”

By the way you can see the movie for yourself here.
http://dividedthemovie.com/

The F Word

Don’t worry it’s not that one. It’s one that every artist especially every Christ following artist should know… Flexibility. Flexibility is a trait every artist should have and yet most of us seem to lack it. It manifests mainly in two ways.

The first is in the If only mentality. It only I had this, if only I had that. If only I had more money or better supplies or a better studio or a hotter computer with better software or whatever. You know what they are. Fill in your “if only” here. Literally write it on a piece of paper. Are you done? Good now throw the paper away and look around you. What do you have right now? Stop seeing your scarcity and start looking at what you have and use that. The biggest part of art is creativity, find what you have and use it. Our ancestors used burned sticks for charcoal, berries plants and on and on and on. Appreciate what you have and use it. Make the art you can make with what you have. It’s okay to ask God for more and better but make sure you’re faithfully using what God has given you. Think of times of lack as God building your creativity. He might even be using it to draw you out of yourself and teaching you to collaborate. Regardless of the circumstance, be creative, grateful and be flexible.

The other area we lack flexibility is much more insidious. It’s pride. We’re artists after all and there are certain things we deserve. Get that out of your head right now. The only thing we deserve in this life is Hell and thank God He gave us Jesus so we don’t get what we deserve. Before there was Madonna, there was “pre-madonna” (yes I know it’s really prima donna I was making a joke) and nobody liked her. Nobody really likes a diva either. We put up with their outlandish behavior because of their talents but we don’t like them. As Christ following artists our job is to represent Christ. No one was more entitled to be a Diva than the perfect Son of God and yet the Bible tells us over and over again how he humbled Himself to serve the ones He came to save. We can’t represent Him well by being demanding and inflexible divas. If you have ten minutes to do something, give the best ten minutes you have. If you have a budget of five dollars, use your creativity to make it look like it’s worth a lot more.

Learn the F Word and live it. Be flexible.

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Judges 19; Psalm 89,91
You can also download your own chart here.

A New Game for an Improved Presentation

Title page for my new game for HistoryMakerz

A few years ago I started a youth presentation called HistoryMakerz. The idea behind it is simple. We use young people from the Bible to encourage young people of today. In the presentation I tell the stories of people like David and Joseph (Genesis) and Mary to illustrate that these were not superheroes, They were ordinary people who put their lives in the hands of an extraordinary God and that if we will do the same thing God can use us to make a real difference in this world.

Well after some time I am getting the opportunity to present it again and to celebrate I am reworking some of the interactive elements of the presentation. Before each of the messages I try to have some kind of fun activity that brings people up to speed on the story. One of my favorite things to do for this are digital game shows. This is the latest, it’s called Who Said That? and it goes along with the story of David.

Go ahead and play the game and see how you do. All you need to do is click the image above. Please keep in mind this is created to be hosted like a game show so it does not keep score. If you get an answer wrong just go back and try again. Check it out and let me know what you think.

If any of you are in charge of any kind of youth group or conference contact me at amokarts@aol.com perhaps I could come and lead History Makerz at your event. It will be finished and ready to present my November 1, Lord willing. For more on HistoryMakerz go to http://radicallyreal.truepath.com/historymakerz

For those artists who read this, this is just another way to use art to teach biblical truth. How can you use your talent to tell these stories and share God’s message with the Church and the world around you?