April 2017 - samluce.com

Around ten years ago I started following a few blogs on the internet as they were a relatively new thing. I found that there were many about lots of things that were very helpful but there were very few that provided wisdom and resources for kids and youth pastors. I think I remember there being about four to five blogs for kids pastors (David Wakerly, Jonathan Cliff, Matt Mckee, The Kidologist, I think were about it.) I can’t remember now what prompted it but I decided to jump into the blogosphere and in the following years, I shared what I was thinking about what I was processing through, good books, good ideas, and a few really bad ideas that sounded good at the time. So I thought I would share a few thoughts on blogging for a decade.

The more you do something the easier it becomes
Writing down your thoughts reveals the gradual changes we generally find imperceptible in our day-to-day lives. I have changed in the last ten years more than I even realize. Looking over posts that I wrote ten years ago I find myself strongly disagreeing with myself. Which feels weird but it also helps me be more gracious with others because in ten years from now I’ll disagree with some of what I am writing at this point in my life.
Sustained disciplined writing is the rings of an oak tree. You can see what happened in the life of the tree by studying its rings. I find it interesting to look back through my archive and see what God was doing and what things I was wrestling with at that season of my life.
In the past ten years, I have connected with people I would never have met any other way. The community I have discovered through my blog and because of my blog has been a means of God’s grace to me in more ways you will ever fully know. For that, I am profoundly thankful. The reason I started blogging and continue to blog is to be to others what I wish I had I started and in the family community ministry community, I have found what I always wanted as an isolated kids pastor who knew no one and painfully aware of his own inadequacy. Thank you, for taking the time to read my meandering thoughts. Thank you, for your comments your help and friendship. I am grateful to God for his grace and for your grace as well. I look forward to the next ten years with you all.

One of the things that we often hear in conferences and online is we need to be partnering with parents. I could not agree more. We live in a transient culture like we never seen in history. People change churches, change cities and change jobs with a frequency that is unrivaled. As you look through church history, there was a very strong emphasis on family worship the idea that our kids are spiritually educated by the church primarily is a relatively new idea. These two realities create an atmosphere that is both challenging and dangerous.

It is because of the lack of family worship and the transient nature of the family that we must be more intentional about partnering with families like never before. Most conversations I have with other kids pastor, and youth pastors about partnering with parents usually end in agreement that it should be done but at a loss for how to make that happen. We have tried things over the years that didn’t work. One of the mistakes I made over the years was to create programs or resources that didn’t meet the needs of the families I serve. They were good but not strategic. I was answering questions parents weren’t asking.

What if in partnering with parents we don’t try and create programs and resources that meet our needs but what if we answered questions our parents were asking? I think part of our problem in partnering with parents is we are giving them things that aren’t useful or are only helpful to some. Parents don’t need more info. If you have three kids in school at any given time, you will be buried under the avalanche of things to do things to be signed, and that doesn’t even include everything for every sport or activity. What if we stopped giving them information about that we think they need and start answering questions they keep asking us. What if we took that question and asked: “Does this need to be a program or a resource?”

We have a few of these in our church our Baby Dedication is a program and a resource, our baptisms are a program and a resource. This last week we put the final touches on a resource that we have worked on for a while. We call it first steps, next steps. The idea is to give three short answers to questions our parents ask us often as a “First Step.” Just enough to be helpful but not too much to overwhelm. If people want more than those three short answers provide we have “Next Steps” which is a website with a six to eight-page paper available to elaborate on the question that the three questions only begins to cover.

Here is a look at what our First Step card and Next Steps paper look like.