September 22, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

The Lifebook Movement Challenge

The Lifebook Movement Challenge

As we are praying for our Schools this week, we will be challenging our Middle School Students to take God’s Word to school in the form of THE LIFEBOOK. Take this opportunity to encourage your Middle School Student to take a bold step by sharing the Lifebook.

WHAT IS THE LIFE BOOK?

GOD’S WORD IN A SMALL, INTERACTIVE BOOK THAT STUDENTS LOVE TO HAND OUT.

The Life Book contains a short recap of the Old Testament, the entire Gospel of John (ESV), scriptural answers to issues teens face, and an opportunity to trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Throughout The Life Book there are interactive handwritten reactions in the margins from 5 characters including an adult youth leader, and four teenagers ranging from an agnostic to strong believer. The physical properties of the book are similar to a CD case (5″ x 5″) and can be viewed online at: thelifebook.com/read

September 22, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

See You At the Pole Campus Prayer Guide

everyschool.com campus prayer guide link

Prayer is priority when it comes to campus ministry and outreach. Students, youth leaders, parents, everyone can get involved. A team of praying people will have a significant influence at your school. Below are specific ways to pray.

Pray for students:

The campus is made up of a tapestry of many different students, all of whom have the need to experience the truth of Jesus Christ and be loved unconditionally. Christian students on campus are in a strategic position to communicate this love and truth. Here is how to pray for students:

PRAY…

for the safety of the students and faculty at the school.
that Christian students will be strengthened in their faith and confidence in Christ, and serve as campus missionaries.
that students who have emotional, physical or family needs will be ministered to by the Christians at school.
that everyone on campus would have a chance to hear the gospel and clearly understand how it relates to them personally.
that students will come to know Christ personally.
for God’s blessing on ministries and clubs at the school and Christ will be glorified.

Pray for educators:

School boards, principals, teachers and counselors have great responsibility, and are in key positions of influence.

PRAY…

that educators at each school will experience the love and concern of Christians.
that educators would come to know Christ personally.
that God would give wisdom to the administrators, teachers, counselors, school board members and superintendent of the school district.
that all staff, teacher assistants, cooks, bus drivers and maintenance personnel would be encouraged in their work.

Pray for Christian youth leaders and parents:

Youth leaders that represent churches and Christian organizations and parents are vital to ministry at local schools.

PRAY…

that youth leaders and parents from churches and organizations will be encouraged and empowered by God’s Spirit to reach out to schools and students.
that students and school educators will experience the concern of Christian youth leaders and parents.
that students and educators will come to know Christ personally through the witness of youth leaders and parents.
that youth leaders will be effective and fruitful in all the good work they do with youth.
that youth leaders, churches and organizations will unite and support one another as they reach students.

Consider every school a PRAYER ZONE. For more help on prayer check out everyschool.com

August 25, 2014 Pastor B Culture, Students

What I Learned From the ALS Challenge

Millions of people, with probably billions of ice cubes, are chilling out and ponying up to help find a cure for a horrible and fatal disease. ALS was first diagnosed over 75 years ago, and yet it remained in the shadows of obscurity until a courageous young man named Peter Frates decided to champion awareness and expedite a cure for it.

Peter Frates is a man who could have (and justifiably so) given into the diagnosis and lived out his remaining years in a slow progression to its end. Instead, he lives every day to the fullest, pouring all the heart and soul he can muster into finding a remedy for the enemy that has stricken him at such a young age.

“You can overcome obstacles and make your life count.”

While a level of controversy swirls around the ethics of stem cell use that ALS research is funding, Frates’ determination to pursue a greater purpose as he lives each challenging day has definitely grabbed our attention.

But I know someone even more remarkable when it came to facing the pain and trails of His life on this earth. Listen to this description of Jesus Christ our Savior:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people;then you won’t become weary and give up(Hebrews 12:1-3, NLT).

Jesus knew that His days were numbered, and that the end was going to be shameful and agonizing. But rather than resign Himself to self-pity and sullenness, He set His gaze on the life that His death would provide for all the world and the joy of saving humanity. The Bible says that He even “disregarded” the shame of the cross, which author John Piper brilliantly pictures Jesus expressing this way:

“Listen to me, Shame, do you see that joy in front of me? Compared to that, you are less than nothing…You think you can distract me. I won’t even look at you. I have a joy set before me…You are a fool, Shame. You are a despicable fool. That abandonment, that loneliness, this cross —these tools of yours—they are all my sacred suffering, and will save my disciples, not destroy them. You are a fool. Your filthy hands fulfill holy prophecy.

Farewell, Shame. It is finished.”

—From John Piper, DesiringGod.org

“Remember how much of an impact you can make for eternity by simply sharing your faith.”

So what about you? Are you trapped by shame, or still wallowing in sullenness because of your circumstances? You can overcome obstacles and make your life count. Just remember to keep your gaze fixed on Jesus Christ, who endured more than anyone had or ever will—all for the sake (and the likes) of you and me.

What are you willing to sacrifice for the ultimate cause—THE Cause Jesus has called all of His followers to—sharing His message of grace and making disciples who make disciples. What if passionate, committed Christian teens initiating conversations with their unreached friends went as viral as the Ice Bucket Challenge? We’d see millions find the cure for their fatal spiritual disease—life apart from a relationship with Jesus

You know the cure! It’s time to spread the word!

Flashpoint: Ignite Into Action

When you think about all the good that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is accomplishing on an earthly level, remember how much of an impact you can make for eternity by simply sharing your faith and praying for your friends who don’t know Jesus!

Accelerant: Fuel for THE Cause

Pray: Father, we pray also for all those who suffer from the disease of sin, and we thank You that the cure has been accomplished through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Read: Romans 5:3-4. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

Get: Reverse…Live Differently. This 21 day student devotional is a great way to head into your new school year with your focus on making your life count for God! Because Reverse is all about living with a God-focus in a me-focused world. The way God designed us to live—in relationship with Him. Knowing Him and making Him known.

Discussion Guide for Leaders

Big Idea: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has rallied millions to a cause, and is a great reminder that as Christ followers, we’re call to an even greater Cause—THE Cause of Christ. We know the cure for an even greater spiritual disease that is fatal to everyone.

Key Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-4

Discussion Questions:

Which is harder – dumping an ice bucket over your head, or sharing your faith?
In what ways can you “fix your eyes on Jesus”?
Who could you share your faith with this week?
How can you apply this Soul Fuel to THE Cause?

August 20, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

Middle School Serve Opportunity

August 20, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

All Access Wednesday, Aug 27 @ SWC 6-8pm

Q What is All Access? All Access is a foyer event geared for students to invest and invite a friend. The Oakwood Student Ministry, grades 6-12, meet in the SWC for a night of high energy worship and a relevant message, challenging students to follow Christ. 6:00pm begins with food and hang time, then high energy music, a relevant speaker, and response time. 8pm is dismissal time.

August 3, 2014 Pastor B Culture, Students

Bored with Church and God: Thoughts for PARENTS with YOUNG TEENS

see part 1: doubts
and part 2: transition

Bored with Church and God

When your kid was 9, he loved going to church, loved his Sunday school class, and seemed to have a real relationship with God.

But now, as a young teen, he seems bored. Maybe he’s even expressed this: “Church is boring; I don’t want to go.”

This is a natural occurrence in the lives of young teens. But the reasoning behind this boredom isn’t the same for every child. Here are a few possibilities:

Not Connected
Children (prior to the teen years) need fewer reasons to find church or Christianity engaging. A few fun moments in Sunday school or the reality of Christ in their parents’ lives can be enough. But young teens start to perceive a disconnect (if one exists) between real life and “church-world.” If they don’t sense a relational connection with people in the church (youth group leaders, other kids, adults in the church), it’s easy for them to make the small leap to boredom.

Young teens have a passionate need to be valued and noticed. Any place that doesn’t validate who they are as individuals, any place where they don’t feel known, can quickly feel awkward or boring to them.

Churchianity
Unless your family happens to attend a church with worship and sermons that connect with your young teen (this isn’t common, and isn’t normally the aim of most churches), attending church can begin to feel like a monumental waste of time to young teens – even if they still have an active faith in God.

The forms most churches use (in song, spoken word and format) are pretty foreign to the world of a teenager. Frankly, they’re often pretty foreign to the world of adults too! But the variance from “church-world” to the world of adults is almost always less than to the world of teens.

Faith System Disconnect
Probably the most common, and most healthy reason for young teens to feel boredom is their developmental need to grow up in faith. Pre-teens and children approach faith issues, obviously, with the mind of a child. But a young teen’s new ability to grasp (or at least entertain) abstract ideas begs all their concrete spiritual conclusions and understandings into question.

This shift in thinking ability has enormous spiritual implications for young teens, because pretty much everything we talk about at church, or in relation to faith in God, is abstract. Its like kids have a backpack of faith system “bits.” And during their young teen years, situations arise that call these bits to the forefront. When it becomes obvious to a teen that their childhood spiritual answer to a given situation or question doesn’t offer a strong enough answer anymore, they are forced to ignore this issue or struggle to allow their beliefs to evolve into a more adult form.

Don’t be freaked out by this process. Don’t be thrown by your teen’s expression of boredom. Instead, find constructive ways to come alongside her during this transition time of life.

Processing Boredom with Your Young Teen
Here are some ideas for coming alongside your young teen and her spiritual boredom:

Live it out. If your teen sees a vibrant and real faith being lived out day-to-day in your life (and being verbally expressed also), it will go a long ways toward helping him consider what an adult faith system should look like.
Talk about it. Our natural tendency is to lecture our kids about why they’re bored (“you need to do this”). Instead, work to create open lines of communication about faith and church. Process your child’s questions and reservations without jumping to easy answers.
Look for relational connections. Help your teen be (or stay) connected to the people of the church, not just the program. Look for creative ways to foster these relationships – with their peers and with other adults who will care about them.
Debrief. After a church service or youth group meeting, talk about what went on. Be careful that this doesn’t come across as a test. Helping your teen see the life-connection between what’s talked about at church and their world is a wonderful way to encourage the growth of their faith.

July 29, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

Fusion Flipped Series This Month 9:15am @ SWC

Session 1 Summary: Up in a Tree (July 27)

What are you afraid of? Spiders? The dark? People who twerk? Most of us have at least a few things that scare us. Sometimes they’re surface fears. Simple fears. But most of us also have a few deeper fears. Those are the ones that we don’t talk about as much. And, if we’re not careful, they will cause us to miss out on some really great things in life. Zacchaeus was a little man with some big fear. Fear that controlled him and caused him to keep a safe distance from everyone, including Jesus. In his story we find that getting to know Jesus, and what He really cares about, can flip our fear and lead us closer to Him.

Bottom Line:

Jesus wants to love you, not judge you.

Session 2 Summary: Losing Control (Aug 3)

Who really calls the shots in your life? Think about the most powerful person you know. Reality is, no matter how powerful that person is, there are some things he or she still can’t control. Jesus met a man like that. This guy had assistants for his assistants. Everyone followed his orders. But at the end of the day, someone he cared about was really sick and there was nothing he could do to change that. However, he understood something about authority that we could all learn from. He understood that when his ability had run out, Jesus’ ability kept going. And trusting Him to be in charge flipped everything.

Bottom Line:

When your ability runs out, Jesus’ ability keeps going.

Session 3 Summary: Peel the Label (Aug 10)

Funny. Pretty. Jock. Nerd. Popular. Smart. Not Smart. We all have a tendency to label the people around us. In fact, we tend to label ourselves too. We think about ourselves in terms of categories. But have you ever thought you gave someone the right label only to find out that they were totally different? Or have you ever heard someone else label you and thought, “that isn’t really me”? That’s the problem with labels. They aren’t always true. And even if they are, they’re always changing. Nearly everyone who met Jesus had their lives flipped, and in the case of a woman with the worst possible label, He changed her whole identity. He gave her a new label that would last. One that changed her whole world and can change ours too. Because there’s a label that beats all other labels: His.

Bottom Line:

There’s a label that beats all other labels: His.

July 24, 2014 Pastor B Parent Cue, Students

TRANSITION: Thoughts for Parents of Young Teens

see part 1: doubts

The young teen years summed up in one word: transition

Nikki is 11 years old, and in 6th grade. But she looks more like a 16 year-old. And I’ve had more than one mom comment to me that they would pay big money to have fingernails as nice as Nikki’s. But Nikki still loves to play with Barbie dolls. In fact, it’s not uncommon for her to bring a couple with her on youth group trips. The other kids tease her about it – but she’s naive enough to think they think it’s fun that Barbie is in tow. It’s not that Nikki is neither a child nor a teenager: she’s bits of both.

Then there’s a group of guys I used to call the “Punk Pokemons” (this was several years ago when Pokemon was big). Their group was five 8th grade guys – all taller than me – who were trying very hard to be tough. They wore baggy pants and spiked their hair. And they never smiled. Never. They were 100% committed to looking disinterested. But on a regular basis, they would gather in the back corner of our junior high room at church to trade Pokemon cards (those goofy little trading cards that were popular with kids at the time). It was hilarious to see the snarling wannabe tough guys saying things like, “I”ll give you two Pikachus for one Mewtwo.”

Nikki and the Punk Pokemons are in transition. Not quite adults, but not kids anymore either.

If you ask me to define the young teen years in one word, I’d have to use the word “transition.” Everything about the world of a young teen is somewhere in-between where they’ve been and where they’re headed.

The signs of “work in progress” show up in every area of a young teen’s life, including her faith. She’s finding that her “childish” faith system isn’t working anymore, faith-bit by faith-bit. She begins the search – sometimes consciously and proactively, sometimes not – for a richer, more complex adult faith system. And much of this is accomplished through experimentation.

Here’s what I mean: your young teen might show less interest in church, but more interest in spiritual things. By spiritual things, I don’t necessarily mean youth group retreats and the church children’s choir. For a young teen, the dimensions of the spiritual life are just opening up, and they’re noticing depth and spirituality in music, in movies, in TV shows, in conversations with friends, even listening in on adult conversation.

But they’re in transition! They’ll continue to have pieces of childish faith and elements of an adult faith at the same time. Just as you would never try to rush the physical growth of your child (by pumping them full of hormones or steroids), it’s a bad move to attempt to rush this spiritual transition also. But you can help them: by listening, discussing, staying open and not threatened. Watch for these signs of transition in faith, and ask open-ended, non-threatening questions to help them develop their faith-thinking.

Share more openly about your own spiritual journey: your longings and doubts, your hopes and a-ha moments, places where you’ve seen God active in your life in the past week.

And most of all: be aware that this transition means they won’t stay this way for long; so cherish this time!

Mark Oestreicher is a partner in The Youth Cartel, a veteran youth worker, and a parent of a 20 year-old daughter and 16 year-old son. He speaks frequently to parents, and is the author or co-author of six books for parents, including A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Guys, A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Girls, A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains, A Parents Guide to Understanding Social Media, A Parents Guide to Understanding Sex & Dating, and Understanding Your Young Teen. With his own “apprentice adults,” he co-authored a book for teenagers: 99 Thoughts on Raising Your Parents.

June 18, 2014June 18, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Students

Duckster Summer has Begun!!!

June 8, 2014June 8, 2014 Pastor B Oakwood, Parent Cue, Students

XP3 Students: BUILD Parent CUE

BUILD: Parent CUE

We’re Teaching This:

What is the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced? Maybe it’s a basketball game against your archrival. Maybe it’s passing your math class. Maybe it’s just trying to get up and go to school on time. Whatever it is, you’re probably familiar with the little knot that forms in your stomach. The nerves. The feeling of being completely overwhelmed. The Bible tells the story of a guy named Nehemiah who was all too familiar with that feeling. In fact, it isn’t just one story—there’s a whole book in the Bible named after him. Growing up in service to a king in Babylon and then Persia, Nehemiah probably didn’t think his life would make much of a story. But when he learns that his family’s homeland is in ruins, something changes in Nehemiah. He decides to do something about it—to go there. To build. Nehemiah decided to face, head-on, the God-sized challenge of rebuilding the wall surrounding Jerusalem and creating a safe place for his people. And through his story, we may just find the tools we need to face the challenge of improving our town or our school. It’s time to build.

Think About This:

Where did you grow up? Was it a small town with little to do outside of farming. Or was it a big city with tall buildings and a public transit system? Or something in between? No matter where you grew up, one thing is for sure—it still affects you. Whether its in our taste for certain types of food, our comfort level with certain groups of people, or the dialect with which we speak, there are always traces of where we grew up tucked in the folds of our personality. And that’s a great thing! Environment is one of the things that God uses to mold us into unique individuals.

But does your student know that?

The reality is, life begins long before you move out on your own. Not only does their current town profoundly shape them, but it’s also the first place students will have the opportunity to invest themselves—to care, or to serve others. It’s the first place they learn to assign value to the people around them. What students learn in their hometown will be what they carry into every town after that.

So if our hometown is so important, why is it that so many of us get the idea that the real-world exists after high-school? And how can we teach our students to make the most of their time here?

Focus on now. College is coming. The real world is coming. But for today, your student is right here. While it’s important to talk about the future, we also need to fight the urge to talk only about what comes next. The truth is, if your student is in high school, he or she already has a limited amount of time left in your home and possibly in your town. By teaching them to use this time wisely and value the impact they can have right now, we are also teaching them a principle that they will take into their future. The principle of caring for where you live.

Try This

As parents, it’s easy to talk about the glory days of college or our experiences when we moved out on our own. Those stories are often more exciting or have better morals to them. But, even in our well meaning way, we sometimes accidentally communicate that our lives didn’t start until after we left home.

Try sharing a story of what it was like growing up where you lived as a student. Was it a big city or a small town? Was there a lot to do or were you often bored? Most importantly, in what ways does your hometown shape who you are today? As you share, you may just find your student starting to value his or her own experience more exactly where they are.

Get connected to a wider community of parents at www.orangeparents.org.