I ran into a friend who is in his 80′s and he said how much he enjoyed Social Network and that I must see it. I saw the film. I left so wound up that I did not know what to do. I am wondering if anyone left the movie as disturbed as I was?

Why was I disturbed?

Beth Moore, one of my top 3 favorite Bible study teachers fashioned a poem. I will quote the last stanza and see if it has value to anyone out in cyberville

“My name is Pride. I am a cheater. You like me because you think I’m always looking out for you. Untrue. I’m looking to make a fool of you. God has so much for you,  I admit, but don’t worry….If you stick with me, you’ll never know.”

There is one thing worse than waiting on God…..wishing you had.

Mariners Church recently hosted a screening of the documentary, Race to Nowhere, a film that observes the effects of culture and the education system on teenagers.  Our conversation left us with many questions to ponder.  Consider bringing the following questions into conversations with your family, other parents, prayer time with God, or personal journaling time.

How much do I allow my “to-do” list to run my life?

Am I a learner and an explorer?

How much pressure did I feel as a teenager?

In what ways do I encourage learning and exploration with my kids?

In what ways do I contribute to giving them a “to-do” posture toward their education?

What are my hopes for my child?

Are any of those “hopes” I have for my child things that I need to let go of because they are more about me than them?

Love to hear what comes from these reflections!

Shared content with The Examined Life.

My son, Landon, is an artist. He currently works as an audio engineer in Orlando, a job that allows him to apply his gifts in the field of sound. During high school he fell in and out of love many times, but the love he developed for music endures today. In those years, he discovered how lyrics can articulate thoughts that are hard to say, and that certain bands seemed to express his internal world. He ventured to learn to play the guitar and went on to write and perform some of his own songs. Music became a vehicle to find his voice at an age when vocalizing the deeper things of the heart seemed very risky.

A couple months ago, my husband and I had the chance to revisit those years with Landon while he was staying with us in Dallas. Our conversation was poignant, honest, and at times repentant. It led me to reflect on what it means to be in relationship with one’s kids, because, truthfully, I was a marginal parent to Landon at that time, and I was a terrible friend.

It is rather ironic because, like Landon, I too am an artist. I spent my high school years expressing my heart not through music but through poetry. I was the Poet Laureate of my senior class and I remember what it felt like for words to bubble out onto paper from secret places in my soul. I recall how writing relieved some of the internal pressure that built while I was growing to know myself and my place in the world around me.

I imagine that Landon and I would have enjoyed connecting and dialoging about our similar passions, if I would have thought to initiate the conversation. But I didn’t.

I don’t think I thought much about relationship with my three kids while they were growing up. I thought a lot about how to be a good parent–evaluating what “good” parents do to get their children to be “good”. I loved my kids deeply, but I felt a lot of pressure to raise them well, and, looking back, I think that pressure often robbed me of the pleasure of their company and friendship. It also inhibited me from sharing my heart with them.

Parenting teenagers is hard work. There is so much that can go wrong. The stakes feel so high. I was concerned with managing grades, finding good colleges, and maintaining church attendance while avoiding sex, drugs, and inappropriate internet activity. I suspect I was more concerned with delivering the product of a “good” human being to the world than with being involved in developing a relationship with the real kid that lived in the room upstairs. I was fixated on their behavior without getting to know their hearts.

It is sometimes hard to remember that being a teenager is hard work, too. It is scary, messy, and emotionally-charged.

I now believe that being a good parent is more than trying to manage details and avoid potential chaos. It requires venturing into a relationship with our kids that offers understanding and an invitation to friendship. I think Landon would have appreciated that when he was in high school. I know I would have enjoyed it as well.

DEBBIE SWINDOLL serves as the Executive Director for the Evangelical Center for Spiritual Wisdom. ECSW’s mission is to resource evangelical churches in the area of spiritual formation through education and connection to practitioners in their local areas. She can be reached at debbie@ecswisdom.org.

Attended the meeting last night at Student Ministries. Was impressed by the body language of the high schoolers. What is it about us that makes them so uncomfortable? Really digging around in my soul for this answer. Is there any correlation between Kenton’s message about “religion asks us to pretend,” and the other blog on this site that speaks to the attrition rate of high schoolers in church? As a parent, am I modeling, teaching, living, breathing an authentic life for Jesus? or am I pretending?

That subject line is the title of a recently published book by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer.  It was based on a survey of “20 to 29-year-old evangelicals who attended church regularly but no longer do so.”  The results were truly startling.  Of the 1,000 young adults surveyed, here is what they found:

• 95% attended church regularly during the elementary and middle school years
• 55% attended church regularly during high school
• 11% were still going to church during college

The authors go on to say that, “I think this is one of the most revealing and yet challenging statistics in the entire survey – and something we didn’t expect…  Most people assume that students are lost in college, but it turns out that only 11 percent of those who have left the Church did so during the college years.  Almost 90 percent of them were lost in middle school and high school.  By the time they got to college they were already gone!..  We are losing many more people by middle school and many more by high school than we will ever lose in college…”

There seems to be an epidemic within the western Church.  Our young people are “leaving” the Church in their hearts while still children, then the vast majority of them are leaving physically once they become adults. 

Of those “who no longer believe that all of the accounts and stories in the Bible are true:

• 39.8% first had doubts in middle school
• 43.7% first had their doubts in high school
• 10.6% had their first doubts during college”

When asked why they have stopped attending church, the 20 to 29-year-olds stated these reasons most frequently:

• Boring service
• Legalism
• Hypocrisy – Leaders
• Too political

I think as parents of teens, we need to take a step back and see how we can counter this within our own homes.  Taking our kids to church every week is a good starting place, but that alone will not be adequate.  We need to take to heart this well-known verse from the Old Testament: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.   Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deut 6:6-7 NIV). 

I believe the concept we can take away from that verse is one of consistency.  In a continuous flow of conversations, we need to be talking to our teens about spiritual matters, helping them understand their own relationship to God, discussing relevant topics in the news, critiquing pop culture together and generally leaving a line of communication open at all times. 

What a great time to start a personal/household commitment for the new school year.  Let’s get to it!

“Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element of prayer. Men must be in earnest when they kneel at God’s footstool. Too often we get faint-hearted and quit praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will.”
E. M. Bound

Has anyone done a Kay Arthur study? I am enrolled this fall. Started reading, highlighting…rereading…circling…rereading…changing pens, getting overwhelmed, getting scared….talked it over with my best friend in the WORLD, she said, “it is like diagraming sentences” i said,” it is like learning a foreign language”…we both screamed…..”God uses Kay to teach us HIS language……Kay Arthur teaches you how to diagram His Word and understand His language. SO I CAN HEAR HIM! I will let you know how that goes……..I am excited!

I am trying to balance out the huge entitlement issue that we all struggle against with with our kids.  That means a whole lot of looking inside myself, at my character assets and defects, and why I made certain decisions over the years.  In this process, I am trying to show myself grace.

Some of my character defects are assets that have lost proportion. Like the genuine desire to help my son, can be exaggerated into a desire to fix him.

Instead of condemning myself when I identify something I don’t like, I’m trying to acknowledge my growth.   Instead of proving  I am a bad mom, it shows I’m willing to face reality and a readiness to choose health!