9-3-20 This Week in Faith

Pray for Me Campaign-LAST WEEK TO SIGN UP! Don’t forget to sign up to pray for a kindergarten through 12 grader this year. This is a great opportunity to pray for kids in our church and build relationships with them. Click here for more info and to sign up!

September Memory for Kids

Even though we are not doing Sunday school right now, we want to continue offering monthly memory verses and catechisms for you to work on as a family. We have been choosing our memory verses from different CD’s produced by Seeds Family Worship. The music is a great way for kids [and parents] to get Scripture stuck in their heads. Getting God’s Word into the heads and hearts of our kids is one of the most valuable things we can do for them. This year, we are using their CD I Believe. They are also producing an online family devotional for these verses that you can find HERE. If you don’t already do family devotions, this might be a great place to start. 

Scripture Memory- Matthew 6:31-33

New City Catechism Question 23 and Question 24

Student Ministry Schedule

We are meeting for small groups in the month of August and will reevaluate around Labor Day. The session voted to cancel the church’s retreats for the fall so we will not be going on our annual End of Summer Retreat but we are working on what we might be able to do in town for some extra connection with students.

Middle School- Wednesdays from 6:00-7:30PM at Faith [in the Plaza]

High School- Sundays from 6:00-7:00 at Faith [in the Plaza]

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A Letter to Young Parents

This is something I needed to read today. It’s a letter written to young parents, and if you are just getting started in parenthood, this is a beautiful picture of what God is calling you to on the road ahead- the blessings and the challenges. But if you’ve been a parent for awhile, it’s a needed reminder of the big picture for those times when we get weighed down by the burdens of parenthood in its daily skirmishes and epic battles. 

"Because there’ll be days when a 17-year-old Liam is going to see you as the enemy, and all of a sudden you’ll realize that the Sermon on the Mount is not about war and foreign policy, nor is it just pie-in-the-sky piety: instead, you’ll hear those words anew and realize that in the command to love your enemies, Jesus is calling you to follow him as a parent, and sometimes even that task will look cruciform.”

But this letter also reminds us of the promises of baptism, the joys God gives us through parenthood, and the grace we find in him to endure.

Click here to read the letter by James K. A. Smith.

An Apologetic for the Christian Mess: 12 Things I Wish I Had Known as a Teen

This is a good list from someone who works with families and kids a lot. It would be interesting to go through the list with our kids and see which of these things they feel most challenged by at this moment in their lives, and which ones they find most challenging to remember and hold onto. It’s also helpful for me to read through this list and remember the difficulty I had holding on to some of these when I was a teenager. It’s definitely not easy to be a parent, but I forget sometimes that it’s hard to be a teenager too.

Click here to read the article by Chap Bettis.

11 Tips for Christian Parents from a Teenager’s Perspective

Similar to the article above, except a reverse perspective. This is a recent high school graduate talking about the things he wants his parents to know were most helpful for him as they worked to raise him and point him to Jesus.

Click here to read tea article by Brandon Houser.

Songs to Help Kids Love God: 14 Artists to Know

One of the things we can do to fill our kids heads and hearts with thoughts about God is to fill our homes with good music. There is so much good kids music to choose from, that points them to Jesus through Scripture, good theology, and humor. Our kids, until they are teenagers, sleep every night to Seeds Family worship. We’ve listened to Slugs and Bugs in the car. And there are even songs in this article that put the catechisms we are memorizing to music. Music is a great tool to form our kids because it gives us the opportunity to make the gospel the soundtrack of our homes.

Click here to read the article by Brett McCracken.

PODCAST: Are My Kids on Track

This is the beginning of a podcast series based on a book this group has written with the same name. It’s great material for considering the emotional, social and spiritual milestones to look for and celebrate in your kids at different ages. There are discussion questions to go along with each episode [or chapter if you wanted to read the book instead] that you could talk through with your spouse or a friend. It’s also something we’ve considered using, if parents were interested, to do a parent discussion at Faith. Let me know if that’s something you’d like to be a part of.

Click here to listen to the podcast from Raising Boys and Girls.