The dog ate my homework.

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:33:55 -0400

Middle schoolers are experts at making excuses…for pretty much everything. “I didn’t do it” and “It’s not my fault” flow from their mouths much like toddlers and the word “No.”
And let’s not even get started on the blame-diffusing “I didn’t mean to start talking about her, but I was mad and it just came out. She knows I don’t really hate her.”
How do you respond to students amid their mistakes? And how do you encourage parents to press on when students repeat these mistakes so often?
If you’re the parent, how do you stay hopeful that your middle schooler will, indeed, become the person God created them to be amid a flood of “I didn’t do it’s,” uncontrolled emotions and unresolved conflict?
Maybe we should start with our own excuses.
I don’t know about you, but I have plenty of defenses for myself. I snapped at you because I’m tired. Lost my temper because that dish just fell on the floor and shattered. Said that word in that tone because you said that word in that tone first.
What’s your excuse?
Paul David Tripp says this about our personal defenses:
“What’s actually true is that when I come to the Lord after I’ve blown it, I’ve only one argument to make. It’s not the argument of the difficulty of the environment that I am in. It’s not the argument of the difficult people that I’m near. It’s not the argument of good intentions that were thwarted in some way. No, I have only one argument. It’s right there in the first verse of Psalm 51, as David confesses his sin with Bathsheba. I come to the Lord with only one appeal, his mercy. I’ve no other defense. I’ve no other standing. I’ve no other hope. I can’t escape the reality of my biggest problem—me! So I appeal to the one thing in my life that’s sure and will never fail. I appeal to the one thing that guaranteed not only my acceptance with God, but the hope of new beginnings and fresh starts. I appeal on the basis of the greatest gift I ever have or ever will be given. I leave the courtroom of my own defense, I come out of hiding, and I admit who I am.
But I’m not afraid, because I’ve been personally and eternally blessed. Because of what Jesus did, God looks on me with mercy. It’s my only appeal; it’s the source of my hope; it’s my life” (Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy 22).
We call them students because they attend school, but don’t middle schoolers study us more than they study for class? Our response to students amid their messes—big and small—is ultimately determined by how we deal with our own sin before God. We’ve outgrown “the dog ate my homework,” but sophistication doesn’t make excuses any more competent to wipe away sin.
“Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins” (Psalm 51:1).
~ Laura Wampach Slezak

God’s Word, First-Hand

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:14 -0500

“Is it a sin that I think the Bible is boring?”
I sat across the table from two 6th grade girls, weighing my response.
Possible response #1: “Boring? Have you read your Bible?!? Ever read Genesis? 1 Samuel? Esther? Luke? I’d hardly call murder, incest, war, romance and raising the dead boring.”
But these girls grew up in church. They’ve heard the “exciting” stories, and what was interesting the first time had lost its luster after the 10th retelling.
Possible response #2: “You’re right, reading the Bible IS boring. Let’s make it more exciting!” and add a bunch of creative, media-packed teaching methods to keep students are always highly stimulated when we study God’s Word.
(Okay, I actually do #2. People learn more when they’re participating and playing. A youth leaders it’s our privilege to help students experience God’s Word in a fresh way.)
Yet that’s still not the solution to these girls’ boredom. Creative teaching will convince students that you are not boring and that you’re not bored with the Bible. And that’s worth something, but not everything.
Of course the girls are asking the wrong question. Compared to the fiction books they read—even for school—the Bible probably does seem dull, or at least difficult to understand. But it’s the only book they will ever read that is “living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12).
No other book can stake that claim.
Do our students know THAT? Do they know God speaks right to our faces through his Word? That the Holy Spirit whispers to us as we take in Scripture? That this “book,” has the power to read us, to transform our souls?
And THAT is the thought they need to hear—no, what they need to taste and touch themselves. They need first-hand experience with God’s Word to know it’s life-changing.
More than teaching students the Bible, we need to teach students to handle the Bible—not like a paperback novel or a textbook, but as the ever-living Word of God. Only when students experience God speaking to them and changing them first-hand through his Word will they discover it’s anything but boring. (That’s true for us as leaders, too.)
5 First-Hand Experiences:
1. Read Scripture with students, not to students. Wait for everyone to find a passage in their Bible (or a borrowed one) before reading it. Ask students who know their Bibles to help the ones who don’t. Even better, set up students in small groups to read the passages with each other instead of hand-feeding it to them.
2. Get students to reimagine and retell the story themselves.
Students learn 95% of what they teach to others, so acting out a passage, drawing a poster-size mural or comic strip to retell the story, etc. will not only diffuse boredom but also help students internalize the story.
3. Pray Scripture together.
This is where Scripture penetrates the heart. Type out Psalm 139 with blanks for students to insert their own names. Show students how to pray Paul’s prayer requests (i.e. 1 Thessalonians 1, Colossians 1, Philippians 1) for one another.
4. Set students up to do word or subject studies—and then teach each other their findings.
Don’t be afraid to stretch students to critical thinking! With your help, they can do it. Practice using sites like biblegateway.com and blueletterbible.org. I still make students use print concordances, tools in the backs of their Bibles and other study resources, too, to help them look more deeply and build different skills.
5. Write your own Psalm.
This month’s free download guides students to write a prayer modeled after Psalm 13, bringing Scripture to life in a fresh way. (Thanks to Doug Holliday for compiling this tool.)
~ Laura Wampach

Give Middle Schoolers Your Ear! How To Love Students By Heart Listening

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:19:38 -0500

Ever notice talking with middle schoolers can feel a lot like juggling?
How often do we find ourselves surrounded by an energetic group of students, all telling us a different story—at the same time?
In these moments (and these moments strike almost every week, don’t they?) I’m struck by how deeply middle schoolers long to be listened to, to be valued, to know someone really cares about them and about what matters to them.
These moments also make me wonder how often anyone really does listen to a middle schooler…how often adults speak to them with compassion, not just correction or condemnation.
As a youth worker, you have an incredible opportunity to love a middle schooler through listening! Here are 3 ways to move your conversations from “juggling” to heart listening.
1. Listen more than you speak. Listen to the kind of words students use. Listen to the way they talk about their families. About their friends. What emotions lie beneath their statements? What do they share about how they view themselves? With insecurity, arrogance, self-defeatism, confidence? What hopes and fears do they express in their stories, in their mannerisms? Listening well provides you a wealth of insight on how to minister to students.
2. Ask good questions! Whether students are naturally chatty or reserved, asking great questions helps students share what’s really going on inside. Look for open-ended questions—ones that require an answer other than “yes” or “no.” Jesus was a master at asking questions like this! Here are just a few from Cadre’s Ministry is Relationships Workshop that will take your conversations below the surface:
• What is one thing you would love to smash with a hammer if you would not get in trouble for it and why?
• Who is crazy about you—and how does that person show it?
• What story do you enjoy hearing your parents or other relatives tell about something YOU did or said when you were little?
• What is the greatest misconception people have about you?
• If you could wave a magic wand and have whatever you wished for in any part of your life, what would it be?
• What do you think God’s opinion is of you? If you could read His mind, what would God be thinking of you right now?
3. At ministry events, talk to students more than you talk to other adults. This is self-explanatory, but oh so important.
Heart Listening Resources
The Kids’ Book of Questions by Gregory Stock
Would You Rather…? by Doug Fields
Arrow Leadership’s Mentoring Questions for heart listening with adults, this monthly email includes a great question and suggestions on what to listen for, how to respond and ways to coach the person through the conversation it sparks. Subscribe to Mentoring Questions
Happy Listening! ~Laura Wampach

The Elf Edition: A Few of Our Favorite Middle School Things

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:33:47 -0500

A Christmas present to you:
• Service Projects That Make Middle Schoolers Shine: A Field Guide. Download this free 14-page toolbox for making the most of serving with your students.
A few of my favorites from 2009…some new, some classic, all a part of what’s made ministry with middle schoolers rich this year!
• Ways to incorporate prayer with students:
Pray WITH…right in the moment of your conversation with a student
Prayer Partners…connecting adults & students in your church to pray with each other
Prayer Triplets…of 3 students who pray together regularly for each other and their spiritually lost friends
• My middle schoolers’ favorite Christmas album (still)
Let it Snow Baby…Let it Reindeer (Relient K)
• Favorite way to spend time with middle schoolers right now
I’m getting married in 9 weeks, so often I will pick a student up after school and include her in wedding shopping or other errands. The time affords plenty of conversation and relationship-building. The students actually really like being included in this part of my life, and I have more time to spend with students if I combine tasks!
This is NOT the only way I connect with them right now—but it’s freeing to remember it’s okay to incorporate students into our everyday lives.
• Favorite youth room furniture:
Side table from Target ($14.99)
This lightweight, simple side table comes in several colors, is easy to assemble & move and the legs can be easily removed. (I’m using the removable legs for a teaching illustration this week!)
• Favorite Concept
Kavannah: the Jewish concept of living with expectancy of God working in & around us. Bracelets serve as a great reminder!
To explore this concept and much more about following Jesus as a ministry, experience Cadre’s new Disciplemaking is Relationships workshop.
• Favorite Half.com Specials
These out-of-print resources are among the most-used in my own student ministry this past year. Call them outdated if you wish, but I call them well-tested classics. Thanks to Half.com, you can still get them from resellers—for as little as 75 cents each!
Team-Building:
Building Community in Youth Groups
Youth Group Trust Builders
Character Curriculum:
Who Am I To God?
Who Am I With Others?
Five-Sense Experiences with the Trinity:
The Spirit Moves
God is Near
Christ in Me
• Favorite non-middle school students to adapt FOR middle school:
Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
Discovery your primary ways of connecting with God—like love languages for your relationship with God!
Good Sex 2.0 by Jim Hancock and Kara Powell
While this curriculum is designed for high school students, many of the optional/bonus studies and activities are great for middle school—especially if you adapt the questions.
Knowing the Bible 101 by Bruce Bickel & Stan Jantz
• Book That Captivated My Students This Year:
90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper
This book isn’t new, but it became one of the biggest sources of “stumping” questions from students about God, theology and the afterlife.
• Shameless Plug for My Favorite Middle School Equipping Event:
Here’s what another youth leader said about EQUIP this past summer:
Doing Equip with our middle schoolers this summer was a great experience for them. We joined up with some other churches in the Twin Cities area and brought a few of our middle schoolers on a mini road trip. We don't frequently do events just for middle schoolers, so I think they really enjoyed the time just for them, and we had some great conversations there about living and sharing their faith. One of our middle schoolers has been bringing 4 neighborhood friends to The Edge regularly this year, which is really fun to see.
Mark your calendars for the Minneapolis EQUIP June 25-27, 2010…or host your own!

Experimenting: How equipping labs can help students discover their gifts & passions

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:28:30 -0500

It’s easy to see that as middle schoolers start growing into their adult selves, their brains are changing—especially when we attempt a small group discussion that includes 6th and 8th graders, for example.
Our brains don’t stop developing til we’re in our mid-20s—so during the years between middle school and young adulthood, we are in a long process of discovering new ways of thinking and making connections between the concrete thinking of childhood to the abstract patterns of thought that makes up our adult minds.
If we tell a group of grade school children “God loves you,” most of them will take this truth at face value. Until they reach middle school. If we tell a group of middle schoolers, “God wants to change the world through you,” they will need to see HOW in order to really embrace it.
Middle schoolers are growing an urge to taste, touch and feel what they once simply accepted. Experimentation helps to bring both worlds together. Some people find the “E” word, well, frightening. And I can see why.
But I love it.
Experimenting enables students to discover their God-given gifts and passions hands-on. Which means they might just embrace them and be used by God to change the world.
Spiritual gifts inventories and other testing tools may be helpful for assessing adults’ wiring, but are of little use in middle school because they force students to assess who they are long before they’ve lived enough to discover it.
Middle schoolers need to experiment—to “try on” different ministry hats. In the process they’ll discover who God’s made them and get to affirm each other in the same process.
Almost any experience can become a lab if it sets students up to try out an area of ministry, service and interaction with people that is a potential area of gifting and passion. (For examples, see the July issue of Batteries.)
Any of these make good service projects. But what makes them great ministry labs is:
1. The commitment to teach students new things they may love doing.
2. The willingness to let students “try out” a wide variety of things they may or may not be gifted to do well—and be okay with the messiness that may ensue.
3. The intentionality of talking students through their experiences to help them find a good fit.
This month’s free download includes questions to help you develop your own equipping labs.
~Laura Wampach