Cross training

As you may or may not know I am the youth director at my church. Our youth program is called Cross Training. We have discontinued the regular meetings of Cross Training for the summer and I am trying to think of a topic to study for the next year. At this time I am somewhere in between apologetics and creationism. Two great topics that deserve studying! I am leaning towards creationism. One of the resources I am looking into to put together a syllabus is http://www.drdino.com/. Dr. Hovind is very entertaining! More importantly I believe at this point he is also very biblical. I have come to realize that our youth desire to be entertained. So at this point I do need to entertain these kids, but I also need to share the truth of God's word with them. That comes into my thought process as I try to determine what to study at Cross Training. How do I keep these kids interested in eternity when everything they are interested is just a click away? I have a friend who is a youth leader in a church where the kids seem to be more interested in what Gods word has to say then they are at my church. I think that this interest goes back to the parents of these kids. These parents are at church whenever the doors are open. These parents love Jesus with all of their hearts. These parents live their faith! I really think that this is where my problem begins. With the parents. If we as parents show our children that we love the Lord Jesus Christ it will rub off on them! If we live our lives as Christ lived His life our children will see it and respond. It is a lot of work to entertain these kids! I just hope and pray that the entertainment will have eternal value. I pray that the time I spend with these young people will have some positive Christlike impact on them, that they will see that Christ is alive in me, and that they will want what Christ has to offer!

Cross Training

Cross Training is what we call our youth group at North Country Bible Fellowship. Last night was our last regularly scheduled meeting until next fall. We had 11 kids come out which is above average! I was very encouraged! We played a couple of wacky games and then my friend Doug shared his testimony with the kids. It was a great night! We had some new faces there. That always gets me excited! I know we had some kids who do not know Christ as their Lord. The gospel was clearly presented and I just pray that seeds were planted!

I have a question. How do you teach a teenager to respect property that is not their own? I have some kids that attend Cross Training on a regular basis that are very rowdy and don't seem to care if they abuse even destroy another persons property. Is that normal behavior for our teens today? I for one think that we as parents have lowered the bar for what we should expect from our children. We expect kids to do stupid things. We expect them to be disrespectful, disobedient, cruel, and neglectful. We don't lay down the law. We don't expect them to make a positive difference. Kids will be kids and that's OK. I don't think it is OK. I think we as parents need to not only expect more from our kids, we need to demand it! We have a generation of kids out there now who don't care about anything or anyone outside of themselves. What a tragedy! We expect these kids to grow up and lead this country? They can't even make their own bed or do their own laundry. They have been pampered from day one and expect the same treatment as young adults. As parents we are responsible to raise our children to be adults. As Christian parents we are raising our children according to biblical principles and standards. We are praying that our kids will grow to love God and His word. I think in a lot of cases our kids are no better off then the children of worldly parents. That should not be! We should expect even MORE from our kids. They are not just being kids! Kids can make a difference! Our kids will make a difference and it is up to us just what kind of difference these kids will make. Will we raise our kids for mediocrity or will we raise our kids to change the world for Gods glory. Remember, as Christians our kids are not our own! They are on loan from God! We will be held accountable for how we raise our kids! Scary thought! Let us make a difference in the lives of our kids.