where do we draw the line?

I have been observing a growing and disturbing trend among parenting techniques the last few months. My observation: school education is slowly removing christianity from the life of the child.

We used to be sent to sunday school when we were young. It used to be so excited to go to church. It used to be exciting to study the Bible and we always compete to finish our assignment/ homework for sunday school/bible classes

We were taught to

• "put God first",
  
• "Quiet time is important and must be done everyday",
  
• "knowing the bible is the way to teach, mold and bring-up a child in the fear of the Lord"

These have been replaced with

• "Stay home and study - passing your exams are more imporatnt - You can serve God later when you finish your studies!"
• "Tuition and regular revision is important"
• "Ensuring your child in scoring straight As, 100% school attendence, colourful extra school curricular activities is the way to bring up the child"

We are now struggling with

• a decent prayer "mumbled" by a youth. the only constant is probably in praying before the exams!
  
• knowing where we put the bible, never mind knowing what's the first book of the bible or the last book.. "Did we leave it in church?" (I know someone who leaves the bible in church since the person feels that it is only sunday that the bible needs to be open ...and that only when and if the speaker asks us to do so...)
  
• our quiet time is away from chattering kids OR nagging parents... Our quiet time has taken the form of SLEEPING (more likely)
• making sure our kids stays in the competition in the rat race

Before long, we will stand to regret that

• Our child will lose the interest of studying the bible because it is not important as career, family, friends, tv, sports, etc are more important
  
• Our child will not discover the personal relationship with God - since quiet time, prayer and the joy of serving God is not taught
• Our child will not know our God as the bible is not taught.
• Our child will not go to church because we prohibited them from coming to church and knowing the imporatance of church life.
  
• Our child will not serve in the church because circular career and making money is more important
• Our child will not be a Christian because we taught our child the ways of the world.
• Our child will not go to heaven because they do not know Christ...
  

Where do we draw the line?

Youth Leaders

To Youth,

Your Youth Leader needs to be made aware - in creative, loving ways - how to meet your needs. Remember, you're in the process of sharing with him how to love you, and he's in the process of learning. If you're on the same train, don't expect him to get to the destination before you do.

"It takes two to tango"

Wisdom

"Wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it, you will have a bright future."

Proverbs 24:14

Aspiration #2 - Parents Involvement

The chinese saying goes, "an adult would have eaten more salt than a young person would have eaten rice".... and I think that the real essence of youth ministry is not to take the position and responsibilities of the parents to educate the youth, especially not in the areas of spiritual development.

Parents must recognise the fact that they have the most influence on their child's life. They spent more time at home, with the family (or at least they should) then anywhere else..... but modern living has driven us away from building core values from within the families. We the adults, the parents have unknowingly passed on the responsibilities of education to other media... particularly the TELEVISION.

Nowadays, anyting to do with children is a thriving business - look at McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut.... all their advertisements are targeted towards the kid..... look at children boutiques and shops mushrooming at every mall and shopping centre ..... notice the growing populations of kindergartens, nurseries, and child education centres at EVERY residential areas!!!! No wonder that child education franchises is one of the fastest and most popular franchise business in Malaysia!

I think the modern living aspirations are slowly driving us towards measuring success in our life to be reflected in our child's life! Is it a kiasu mentality? Is it a matter of life and death? is it a matter of our child being able to, at the very least, be able to survive in a dog-eat-dog world?

Assuming that we did it for the love of our child..... If the kindergartens, and nurseries, and tuition centres, and education centres help take care of the education, who then takes care of their spiritual development? The Maid? The ChildMinder? The Babysitter? The TV? The Computer? The Internet?

Where is your child's spiritual role model? Who is your child's spiritual role model?

It is my prayer to see more parents and adults getting involved in the lives of their own child or in the life of a youth.

The youth ministry in a church is not a place to babysit a child. The youth ministry is not someone who can "take over" the education and role models for the spiritual development of a child. It is not the role of the youth ministry to be the education centre or school for the child. Spiritual development in a youth does not work that way.

The parents must recognise that the youth ministry is there to assist in the spiritual development of the youth. I read somehwere that the youth ministry is the "Robin" as to the parents being the Batman, the "spiritual" hero, for the child.

So parents, recognise your role and responsibility - make yourself count in your shild's life!

PIP

WOW - we had our first edition of the Parents In Partnership Newsletter out this month and we had great reviews on it! Everybody gave the thumbs-up for the limited, privately circulated PIP Newsletter..... well..almost all.... someone commented that the fonts used were too small...they are after all moving up in age.... (hmmm....)

BUT overall, I had great fun doing it and the encouragements were amazingly healing to the soul.

So what happened????

continuing on happenings in 1Q 2006, looking back..... lotsa things to praise God for:

1. The parents in Partnership program kicked off with 20++ parents attended the meeting and it was an informative session.
2. The Youth Leadership training was planned and carried out with less than 2 weeks planning!!
3. We managed our first "off the block" meeting with yw@p meeting in yw@p cafe (no relations) but it was a cool affair
4. the waterfall trip was also an interesting affair - we had parents coming along!!!
5. in between we talked, learned, and laughed about relating to parents, friends, watched Left Behind 1 & 2....
6. We even managed an outstation speaker!!! (ok...prob that not so fair since it was afterall my dad!!! but still we had a great turnout!

All in all, we had lots of fun in 1Q, although we had pretty poor attendance with averages of 12 in 1Q (although we had better turnout in early part of the year, it sorta fizzled out towards march because of the exams)

But - we're gonna work harder.... and see how God will continue to bless....

1st Quarter 2006 Over

Well...time flies when you are having fun....

For me, time flew by also because of work ...but all in all, a mixture of fun, work and sweat..... no tears needed to be shed although it was a tough period for me at work but the cool dudes at yw@p and bsgc was my backup batteries.

Already totally running on flat batteries - God worked thru the youths to push me through!

I seriously know how exactly I survived 1st Quarter of 2006 but for the strength of God, the laughter of the youths and the support from me wifey - I guessed that's how I pulled thru!

I also proudly declare that I survived my first quarter in the youth ministry! Never thought that at my age and with my commitments and workload, I would be able to work on Yw@p but as God has it planned out... yw@p turned out to be a ministry TO me!!!