8-27-20 This Week in Faith
/Pray for Me Campaign- 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!
August 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.
John 3:36- Click here for the song.
New City Catechism Question 21 and Question 22
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 6:00-7:00PM at Faith [in the Plaza]
High School- Sundays from 6:00-7:00 at Faith [in the Plaza]
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The Back-to-School Supplies Parents Need
Even as our kids begin school again, and some things begin to normalize, there is still a sense of anxiety over waiting to see how this new normal will play out in our homes and community. We’ve bought all the back to school supplies, and classes have begun. But there are some fundamental things we need to bring with us into this school year that will equip us to lead our families in following God faithfully through this year. I especially like her first encouragement, Embrace the value of waiting.
Click here to read the article by Jen Pollock Michel.
A Family Worship Pep Talk
A new school year is an opportunity to make new commitments for the good of our families. Especially now, when many of our usual habits and schedules were scrapped, we have the chance to begin again to introduce what’s most important back into our daily/weekly routines. This is a good encouragement to address the common reasons and fears that keep us from family worship. These guys have written a new book on how to get started and sustain pursuing Jesus in our families called Family Discipleship: Leading Your Home Through Time, Moments, and Milestones [if you’re interested, it’s available at Faith in the resource center in the foyer or the library!]. As I pray for the families in our church, I pray our homes would be places where we seek Jesus together with our families and equip our kids for a lifetime of faith.
Click here to read the article by Matt Chandler and Adam Griffin.
The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
This is a book review of a recently released secular book on the increase of young women making transgender transitions. While the review isn’t able to dive deeply into all the findings of the book, he makes some important observations. What’s driving this increase is not necessarily what we think. And the social pressures, as well as social opportunities, turn transgenderism into an appealing response to a common experience of growing girls feeling uncomfortable with their changing bodies. It’s an important observation because it illustrates the need for us as parents to be proactive in talking to our kids about their bodies and the value they possess from being made in the image of God. There are lots of great resources to help you begin, or continue, these vital conversations. We want our voices as parents to be first and loudest in our kids’ ears so they are shaped more by what God has to say about these things than what their friends or the internet has to say.
Click here to read the article by Tim Challies.
Don’t Date in Isolation
This is another recent article by JD Greear on dating [see his article in last week’s blog post]. He covers an important topic we want our kids to understand about dating- they need wise, Godly community around them when they date because they will inevitably have blind spots while they are dating. Common thinking today would suggest you should follow your heart and not let anyone contradict it. But there’s so much a person can’t see when they are already infatuated with the other person. And students today have an incredible ability to compartmentalize their lives- a certain group of friends and rules to live by that are completely different at school, at home, and at church. I’d encourage you to read this article with your teenagers as they think about what’s most important to have in place as they think about beginning to date. So often, the tendency I see is for students, when they start dating someone, to disappear from church. But that’s the exact time they need healthy, Christian community the most. This is a good reminder of why.
Click here to read the article by JD Greear.
PODCAST: The Flip-Side of the Statistic: Teenagers Who Didn’t Leave the Church after Graduation
This is an interesting 40 minute interview with 2 guys, one a college student and one a recent college graduate, on what they see as the things from their high school experience with church and family that most influenced them sticking with their faith through college. So often we talk about the students that walk away from the faith after high school, but these guys flourished in their faith during their college years. I’ll admit the host is not the best interviewer, but it’s worth a listen to hear what these young men have to say was most vital to their faith, not just what the statistics say.
Click here to listen to the podcast interview from Rooted Ministry.
