Parents update for 2/3/10

// February 4th, 2010 // Youth News

This week we started working through a series that goes with the movie To Save a Life. It uses themes and video clips from the movie to help the youth learn. In order for this series to be a success we had the youth commit to four rules: 1. Be real (we do not want the youth being fake) 2. Take risks (we want the youth to get out of their comfort zones) 3. Confidentiality is crucial (we want the youth to share but we want them to know that others will not be spreading rumors or gossiping to others about what people revealed of themselves) 4. Show lots of love (we do not want youth judging each other, we will love each other unconditionally). I feel that it is important share these rules with you so that if your youth do not want to share specifics about what is happening this is why.

This week the purpose was to “Help students realize that if they are going to love the hurting and lonely, then they first need to know how much God loves them.” To start the discussion we talked about icebergs and how you can only see about 10% of what the iceberg really looks like. We then had discussed how we, as humans, often put masks on so that people do not really know what we are like.

Two of our youth were asked to talk about their masks and shared with the group what they had been hiding. We then split into our family (or small) groups. Each person in each of the families then shared with their families facts about themselves that the others in the group might not have known about them including some masks that they were waring.

Jason then gave his message about how in the Roman city of Ephesus people who were to have a deformity (including being the wrong gender) were destined to be no more then a slave or a prostitute. Paul writes to Ephesus “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons and daughters through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure end will – to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” This was God saying, “you are mine and you are loved.” The youth were reminded that God’s love amazing and never failing. We were then given the opportunity to hear from another of the youth share their story.

To finish up the night the kids got back in their family groups and were reminded that even when we screw up God still loves us and he is not afraid to show it. Lastly the youth were given the opportunity to take a challenge card. They did not know what the card had on it but if they took it they were committing themselves to complete the task on the card.

One other opportunity the youth have in this series is to write notes of encouragement to each other. The notes are given to the leaders to distribute at the beginning of the following week.

We look forward to next week when we will help the youth identify those who are the most in need.

-Geoff Bazuin-