The Sad Case of Kristin Helms

I heard a radio interview recently with the mother of Kristin Helms, an Orange County 15-year-old who committed suicide in 2006 after a 29-year-old man from Texas broke off their relationship. They met on the Internet.

The story is perplexing because Kristin's parents, by her mother's account, were not ignorant, or negligent, or disengaged, or aloof. And yet, their daughter, at the age of 14, was able to initate and sustain a relationship with a man twice her age that turned sexual and eventually led to her deep depression and suicide.

(Read background from the LA Times or listen to the KFI interview here.)

Kristin met Kiley Ryan Bowers through his webpage the summer before her ninth grade year. He in turn helped her set up a profile on MySpace.com and they began regular correspondence that included sending each other explicit photos. Kristin's parents weren't completely hip to the teen Internet scene - but their son was, and with his help, they discovered her MySpace profile (this was in the early stages of their relationship), deleted it, and took away her computer for five-and-a-half months.

But Kristin found a way. At El Toro High School, where access to MySpace was blocked, she was one of apparently many students who figured out how to beat the filter. The online relationship continued, and intensified, until in December 2005, Bowers traveled to California, met Kristin outside the Helms' home late one night, took her to a motel, and had sex with her. Five months later, Bowers broke off the relationship. From there, an emotional downward spiral began. Kristin became severely depressed, and last July, she killed herself.

We don't need to speculate about what happened. About a month before she died, Kristin shared everything with her mother Danielle, confessing that she'd kept up the relationship behind her parents' back. In the radio interview, Danielle described their relationship as close and open. Kristin did not fit the profile of a troubled kid. She got good grades and was pleasant at home - "an absolute joy to have as a daughter," Danielle says. Mrs. Helms purposefully worked from home for 18 years in order to be with her kids and acknowledges others would consider her "overprotective."

Yet, her daughter got involved sexually and then became suicidal over a 29-year-old from Texas. So the tougher question is why - and how? Bad enough that Kristin was seduced, but how could a breakup with a man she'd only physically encountered once drive her to suicide?

For one thing, Mrs. Helms rightly points out that girls are emotionally vulnerable and prone to flattery - the exact thing that makes them easy targets for men who are skilled at crafting writtten messages. "We always worry about our sons and pornography on the Internet, but the written word is incredibly powerful for the young ladies out there," she says. Her recommendation? No computers in bedrooms - and beyond that, parents need to remain vigilant about family computer access when parents are asleep or away.

But how could a 14-year-old feel such an emotional deficiency that she would risk her innocence on an Internet relationship, and give herself to a 29-year-old she'd never met? The powerful reality is that even 14-year-olds can experience deep emotions. "She was only 15 years old, just a child," Kristin's mother said at the sentencing hearing. Well, not quite. Kristin was not a child, nor an adult, but an adolescent, capable of experiencing bewildering adult emotions, even being in love. Trying to explain why the breakup had taken such a toll on her, Danielle says Kristin told her, "Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached." In other words, Kristin was secretly confronting emotions that she didn't know how to handle. Yet not every adolescent or pre-adolescent crush is love, either. An astute parent must learn to distinguish between drama and red flags of genuine emotional need.

We ignore the depth of our kids' emotions at our peril. For whatever reason, Kristin - and doubtless millions of other 14-year-olds like her - was desperate for the attention, intimacy and affirmation that Kiley Bowers gave her from four states away. The academic achievement, the attention of her parents, the relationships with her school friends were not filling her emotional tank. So what probably started as a harmless chat session or e-mail to Bowers' Geocities webpage paved the road for sex, and ultimately suicide.

Danielle Helms is taking the appeal to parents. "I know when mothers speak, it goes in one ear and out the other sometimes because we're always warning our children. And I want to be an example to the children and the parents. And if the kids can see that this is a real-life story, where we lost our beautiful, smart, incredible daughter, they might look at me and say, 'I'm going to be more careful.'" Powerful message: exercise vigilence, because the Internet is a predator's playground.

But my hope for the other would-be Kristins out there is that we not only protect, but nurture girls in such a way that the nagging unworthiness that plagues so many of them can be vanquished. Mary Pipher writes about this need in her landmark book Reviving Ophelia, observing that sometime prior to age 13, most girls' childhood exhuberance is crowded out by a crippling self-consciousness and nagging sense that they are not "enough": not pretty enough, not smart enough, not loveable, not intrinsically valuable. As a result, they begin to conform to a mold that isn't really them. They live to meet everyone's unhealthy expectations and not for their own good. Eating disorders, depression, promiscuity, and abuse are some of the symptoms.

It is, of course, during the pre-adolescent years that we can build a healthy sense of self in girls and then continue to bolster and reinforce that through high school. The real question isn't where to put the computer; it is what's missing in a girl's heart that she would look for love there?

"Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached."

Kids and Paris

Now that Paris Hilton has faded somewhat from the headlines, allow me to unceremoniously resurrect the issue so that I can draw your attention to a fascinating article that appeared in the Union-Tribune two weekends ago.

At first glance, the report is comforting: pre-teens, rather than idolizing Paris, largely frown on her antics and think she deserved to go to jail. But there's a deeper question behind that, which the article broached: if they now disapprove of Paris' bad behavior, will they continue to feel that way as they get older? The answer: not necessarily.

So what happens between the end of childhood innocence and the onset of full-fledged adolescence that causes a softening in moral convictions, if not a 180-degree shift? How do kids go from, "That's wrong" to "It's not my place to judge"?

From the article (also linked at right, titled "Out of the Mouths of Babes"): "The prevailing wisdom is that exposure to vast amounts of gossip...is leading America's impressionable 8-to-12-year-old girls into the gutter. But the reality is more complex.

"In interviews, tweens tend to be highly judgmental of the much-publicized antics, turning them into age-appropriate morality tales that would make their parents proud and bring comfort to those who fear the next generation will be made up of pantyless party girls known more for their DWIs than their GPAs."

But, the article goes on to note that child development experts aren't surprised by that at all. Pre-teens tend to think concretely (right is right and wrong is wrong and making me clear the table two nights in a row is NOT FAIR) and are, notes one expert quoted in the article, "really heavily under the influence of their parents." The turning point comes for many kids at age 12 or 13, when peer influence and the quest for cool supplant ethical instincts. As a result, kids who swore they'd never take drugs, dabble; those who condemned criminal behavior, shoplift; those who profess drunkeness to be a waste, consume. Or, as the editor of CosmoGirl magazine says, despite their attitudes when young, by the time they're in high school, "every kid is trying to have a Paris Hilton kind of night at their prom."

But the killer quote comes from a guy named David Walsh, founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family. Noting that kids today face an onslaught of adult influences, Walsh says they are nonetheless not emotionally equipped to deal with what they take in. "A kid can write a well-thought-out essay about why a behavior is not good, but that doesn't mean it's going to carry over into their behavior."

Walsh hits on something that's often ignored in the quest to "teach kids right from wrong". He is suggesting - and I agree - that there is more to a child and teenager's moral decision making than just recalling slogans or early convictions that were planted in them; rather, that their emotional development is a critical factor in being able to act and (not just) think morally. It's the reason why, for instance, Just Say No clubs and the DARE program and other such well-intentioned programs have such low success rates - not because they're not teaching valuable information, but because they assume that lack of information is at the bedrock of risky behaviors. (This further explains why "What were you thinking?" is seldom a useful question when confronting your child's poor moral choices: thinking isn't necessarily driving their behavior.) The other way to look at it is to acknowledge that in addition to being able to cognitively distinguish right from wrong, kids need to develop the skills and self-awareness - in other words, the emotional maturity - to execute good decisions.

I was one of those people who went into working with young people because I wanted to help them "make good choices". I have seen all kinds of schemes: parents offering gifts and money to kids who will keep themselves from drugs and alcohol; parents (and schools) who pay for grades; SADD contracts; anti-drug rallies; staged drunk driving crashes, usually presented the week before the prom; chastity rings; summer camps where kids swear off every vice known to man; graphic lectures on STDs; and on and on. These are sad enough. What's worse is the climate they create. When a student lapses, there is little left to dish out but guilt and shame: You know better! We trusted you! etc. etc.

What I know now, after 14 years, is that training up moral kids isn't as simple as getting them to make a solemn promise or repeat a mantra. It is starting from a point of realism, that these are unsophisticated kids grappling with a very sophisticated world, and then determining to come alongside them when they're pre-teens to outfit them with the tools they need to act according to a set of convictions. What are those tools? Certainly they would include things such as discernment, empathy, self-control & delayed gratification, other-awareness and centeredness (the world doesn't revolve around me), compassion, wisdom, grace, and autonomy - and more.

The subject of emotional intelligence has only been around for about 15 years, but it's not pop science and it's not psychobabble. Emotional Intelligence by Dr. Daniel Goleman is an excellent place to start, as is Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson (linked at right). We are emotional creatures as surely as we are physical and spiritual and intellectual, and emotional growth should be as highly valued as any other kind of growth, especially in light of how important those tools are in helping kids navigate the adult world they will soon inhabit.

Welcome 3rd Grade Parents

The past few weeks have been a time of transition in our ministry. Yet it didn't really hit me until this past weekend. Third graders - soon to be fourth graders - are so...little! They're kids, in every sense of the word. Did you know that a 10-year-old's body and heart are in such proportion that they are naturally constituted for physical activity - which explains why they can go and go and go?

But get ready. With this newsletter, we are welcoming them and you, their parents, to the world of (gulp) pre-teen ministry.

This is Hitting Home. We send out this newsletter, and a link to this blog, by e-mail every week to 4th, 5th, and 6th grade parents to keep them in the know about what's going on in "their" ministry at NCCC. We've found that paper handouts in class don't often reach the attention of the parents for whom they were intended. So in the newsletter you'll find info & links on all of our upcoming events. But, just as a good ministry is more than just "a bunch of stuff to do", we want this newsletter and these blogs to be a ministry to you.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that the home environment can make or break a child spiritually. Your influence is that profound. Yet for all the lip service paid in the American church to the idea that "parents are the primary disciplers of their children", there's an almost insurmountable wall that's been constructed between adult and children's ministries (also sometimes unfortunately known as "big church" and "childcare"): moms and dads come to church and do their thing, while children's ministry does its thing, and never do the two meet.

We're working to change that. For one thing, it's impossible that in one hour a week, we're going to get very far personally impacting a child. Now I don't discount the effect a strong leader can have on a child, even after only a few encounters. And yes, churches have resources at their disposal (the lights! the music! the excitement!) that allow us to create an environment you can't approach in your living room. But - and this remains true from the moment your child is born until they leave home around 18 (unless you surrender the responsibility) - parents are the most consistent, persistent, and willing influences in their child's life, bar none.

Consistent - Only a parent is in a position to spend the amount of time and enjoy the amount of access to their own child that they do. There is powerful influence that comes with being the last person they see when they go to bed at night and the first they see when they wake up in the morning. No one else has known your child intimately from the day they were born, and can attest to their growth and development like you can.

Persistent - No one else gets the chance for as regular an amount of contact, and therefore influence, on your child as you do. Again and again you are in a position to help them make sense of life, to learn from failures, to develop character.

Willing - No one loves your child more than you do. No one cares more over the long haul. Few would make the sacrifices you would, and have, for your kid.

Those are ideals. Not every parent participates as consistently as they ought to, or is as persistent as they might be, or sustains the will to be the necessary influence. But the reason that's a shame is that when a parent does assume those roles, nothing can supplant them. To put it another way, a parent stands at a position of unique potential, and to step into that role and fulfill that potential is to answer the call of duty of parenting.

Peers are not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influences in your child's life, not now or when they're teenagers...unless you let them assume that position. School is not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influence...unless by virtue of the lack of parental input or interest, the only guidance and wisdom a child receives comes from there. TV and movies are not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influences in your child's life...unless you've ceded family and personal time so much that Hollywood gets to be the chief determinant of norms and values in your child's mind.

So in view of this, our role is clear: we are about helping you step up to the role that has rightly been reserved for you, and helping you do it really well. This blog is written weekly by me, a guy with no special training and who is himself not a parent, but who brings 14 years of working with young people in a variety of contexts to the table, along with an understanding that any church program that aims to transform children without reaching into the home is overestimating its own efficacy.

So along with the "here's-what's-going-on news", this newsletter and blog are primarily about opening two dialogues: one, between you and your child (which is why we include weekly discussion questions that are based on what your child experienced in class on the weekend), and the other, between the church and you. We are happy to share resources and are working hard even now to develop programs for parents that are responsive to the issues facing 21st Century moms and dads. Please tell us - what are the greatest challenges in raising children, pre-teens, and teenagers, and how can the church best serve you? We don't want to succeed in spite of parents or in place of them, but because of them.

So, welcome. Explore the links. Learn about pre-teens. They're a great bunch. And let's make a weekly date to meet here.

...but God made it grow

I got a pretty unexpected phone call Thursday night.

Matt was a kid who came to our youth group at my old church in Virginia two years ago. He was a junior in high school and new to the church scene. It was easy to give Matt grace - he was genuinely ignorant of a lot of "church knowledge" we take for granted that kids have.

After I jumped coasts in 2005, Matt was one of a score of kids I lost contact with. Until last week. What happened to him is a testimony to the importance of time to spiritual growth, and a reminder that over and above our ministry efforts, no matter how noble or intensive, the one who makes things grow is God.

Matt came to us completely immersed in the world. He was not from a churched background and the combination of friendship that he found in our group and the fact that the message was radically different than anything he'd encountered kept him coming back. It didn't take him long to affiliate with us, and then to self-identify as a Christian. But Matt went the path that many teenage Christians do when confronted with the depth of their sin - he resolved to "try harder" for God. He became a disciplined striver, determined to be better. This is performance, not grace; denial, not repentance.

When I left Virginia he was still hanging on, wanting to be a Christian, but finding his will to be weak. I left genuinely uncertain what would happen between him and God. Frankly, too, there's a hubris that takes over once you get to know someone and understand their spiritual obstacles - a sense that you've done all you can and that "some people will just never change". Not that I'd given up on him, I just didn't see how or when the breakthrough might come; the deck was stacked against him. In a year he'd be off to college and his "Christian phase" would probably be over.

But what did happen was that Matt went off to college - away from the only Christian support network he had - and God showed up. At just the right time, Matt suddenly had the grace and love he'd wanted, but couldn't take hold of in high school - despite all of our best efforts. The Matt I talked to last week is a changed person. He has grown spiritually in a way he was striving after, but couldn't realize. He finally gets it.

What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 3? "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." That's verse 6; verse 7 is the humbler: "So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." I have long thought in ministry (and parenting is a form of ministry!) that a long-term perspective is the only one to have. Considering that God's timeline is eternal, "long term" means loooooong term. Now consider what's working against that reality. Ministries want results. Crusades count decisions. Many churches have adopted business models (not just business practices) to accomplish ministry to get things done now...bigger...better...with excellence.

And as parents - you want good grades (now), good behavior (now), on-target development (now), progress shown for the lessons or leagues you're investing in. In other words - are my kids doing well? Do they speak well, look well, act well, read well, add & subtract well? Results in the short-term are answered by gauging them. But the best way to predict long-term results is to gauge ourselves. If we believe God makes things grow, then the question we ought to direct inward is: how's the seed planting going? Have you prepped the soil? Are you tending diligently? Are you watering? Most importantly, are you patient enough for the results? Are you faithful?

2 Timothy 2:13 tells us that faithfulness is an unchangeable part of God's character. I am so faithless. Things don't happen on schedule and I fall apart. I start to doubt the calling. I question other people's motives. It's hard to be "just a seed planter" when you seldom, if ever, see them grow to fruition.

But it's our calling. We plant. We water. We wait. Sometimes we get to witness remarkable transformation in a person that you know could have only come from God. Then we wait some more. And maybe all the waiting serves the purpose of reminding us how central God is.

Letting Kids Do It

He grasped blindly beneath the seat of his wheelchair for one end of the seatbelt. His fingers fumbled it awkwardly as he brought the buckle up into his lap. He couldn't see that it was twisted backwards and that without adjustment it wouldn't be able to latch into the receiving end. I so badly wanted to take it from him, secure the belt, and push him out the door. Lunch was waiting. But the necessity of his autonomy outweighed my need for efficiency. For at least two minutes he tried without success to snap the ends together, before he finally looked to me for help. With the belt snapped into place, he resolutely gripped the wheels and began his long, slow journey to the lunchroom.

Thursday was my last day of substitute teaching. I've been a sub in the Oceanside School District for the last nine months. Being a stranger to a different group of kids nearly every day made for a great field experience. I'd forgotten how much young kids tattle (constantly!) and how important playground justice is in the mind of a 4th grader.

Some of my most enjoyable assignments, though, were in special ed. Every day there are victories - a concrete lesson in what kids can achieve when they are consistently presented with realistic goals and lovingly challenged to meet them. It's also a testament to the need to allow kids the time and space to accomplish things on their own.

Say what you will about the complexity and burden of the system, but one thing special ed gets right is that every student's program is individualized. Isn't this how it should be, even for normally developing kids? (Forget standardized tests - who wants a "standard" kid anyhow?) Each child is given goals - physical, linguistic, social, cognitive - that are attainable, yet a bit of a reach. The school's job is to periodically (though not constantly) assess the student's progress and, when necessary, re-write the goals to build on what's been achieved.

But none of the goals are the ultimate goal. What's happening, of course, is that as students meet ever-increasingly difficult benchmarks, they are gaining independence. Every word they learn to speak or sign is one more step toward unassisted communication. Every word they learn to read or number sequence they recognize means they can take a step away from the adults who have to do it for them - teachers, parents, caregivers - and a step towards becoming self-sufficient.

There's a parallel, I think, in parenting and education. Our job, from birth to 18, is to always be taking the training wheels off, so to speak, so that at the end of the process we've trained up a young person who can function independently of us. The more we continue to do for kids what they can and ought to be doing for themselves, the more we rob them of the chance to build autonomy - in other words, to grow up.

Simply put: Kids who are never allowed to make decisions don't ever learn to make good decisions. They lack the "lab" experience everyone should have growing up, when it's ok to make bad or wrong decisions and learn from them without too much pain. They're overprotected from failure and wrong answers and are stumped as to how to remedy bad decisions. Ask yourself: are you trying to turn out an 18-year-old who will never make a bad decision (an impossibility), or one who is able to learn from their bad decisions?

A case in point: People my age and younger are taking on tremendous amounts of debt. The skyrocketing cost of college and the pressure to be prematurely affluent has turned many of us to credit cards to finance out-of-control spending. When I was in high school, I didn't get much financial education beyond how to balance a fictitious checkbook. Talking about income was considered impolite, so I and others like me learned the real cost of living the hard way. Sooner or later society will catch on to this and start mandating comprehensive personal finance education in high schools; when they do, personal debt and bankruptcies among 20-somethings will decline.

But as it pertains to the 9-to-12-year-old set, what tasks should a child have mastered? Leaving room for individual differences, I would think that list would include the following:
Ordering for themselves at a restaurant
Interacting with a sales clerk at a store
Knowing their home address
Being able to complete a homework assignment, only consulting an adult when needed with help on directions or difficult questions
Basic time management - here is what I need to accomplish, here's the amount of time I should need, here's the amount of time I have
Basic money management - Dividing up money for saving, giving, and spending
Being able to talk to an adult
Being able to play a game with friends from start to finish, following rules and graciously accepting either victory or defeat

As they attempt these developmental tasks, our job is to stand at the side and coach, model, and encourage them. It is not to do it for them. We should always give kids just what they can handle - no more; but no less, to be sure. That's why in our class we've adopted the ethic that we don't do for kids what they can do for themselves. As kids make decisions, it increases their sense of ownership and responsibility, and it changes learning from "jumping through hoops" to equipping kids the with skills and attitudes to think and act Christian.

To take kids seriously spiritually is to believe - not just profess - that kids are the church of the future. Are we training them now to one day lead and run their church? Would kids take us seriously if we told them that was the case?

Can Parents and Kids be Friends?

From time to time I get e-mails from a website called "Raising Small Souls". It's a collection of articles by a woman named Ellen Braun. I don't agree with everything on her site, but this article intrigued me.

At issue: Can (and should) a parent be their child's friend? You can read the whole article here.

What I appreciate about the website is that she posts reader comments, supportive and negative, after each article, and the comments that followed this one were pretty interesting.

Braun writes: "What happens to the boundaries that are supposed to exist between parents and their children? We expect our children to be disciplined and learn to respect and honor us, yet we dub them buddies and pals. ...When we call our kids buddies, we are in effect inviting them into a world that lacks restrictions and formality. We cannot possibly expect them to talk and act respectfully toward us unless we have clearly established that there are boundaries between us and them."

Many readers keyed in on the use of the words "buddy" and "pal" and rightly pointed out that merely using one of those words doesn't create parity between parents and their children. But, the heart of Braun's argument holds true: kids cannot, in fact, be their parent's friend, attaining the same status as other adult friends. (Or can they?) And therefore, they should not be a parent's friend. (Or should they?)

This gets to be an issue in ministry, where we are eager to break down walls of unfamiliarity. In the spirit of being warm and welcoming, we are eager to position ourselves as trustworthy, fun, helpful, supportive - everything you'd want in a friend. Relationships are the means by which we do ministry. We come alongside kids, guide them, lead them, counsel them, hurt with them, encourage them.

Does this make us their friends?

Yes and no. Successful ministries to youth and children have long moved past an authoritarian model in favor of a relational one, in which kids are urged and persuaded to follow Christ, but not coerced into it. Just this weekend we talked in class about the difference between committing yourself to Christ because you felt you should vs. committing because you really wanted to. I have a feeling we wouldn't get very far with kids if the first thing we did when they walked in the door was hit them with all of the rules and continually emphasize why the relationship dynamic between them and us was forever unbalanced in our favor.

So at the least, we must be friendly, even if we don't assume the role of friend. But, boundaries exist. Kids will misbehave. They'll speak inappropriately. They'll react immaturely. We're not operating in a "Lord of the Flies" environment; there need to be rules. And ultimately, adults need to enforce them.

The key, then, is how to discipline (and by this I mean to correct, reprimand, restitute, impose consequences - the whole ball of wax) in a way that doesn't shift what has been a collegial, nurturing relationship to one where power defines roles.

The root of authority lies in a concept called "legitimacy," which is the psychological belief that the person in authority over me has the right to govern me. Absent legitimacy, a government crumbles. Many times, cases of teenage rebellion or estrangement are in fact a rejection of the parent's legitimacy. ("You're such a hypocrite! You have no right to tell me what to do anymore!") To the extent that a parent - or any authority figure - can cultivate friendly relations with a child and still maintain his or her legitimacy in that child's eyes, that parent has not risked or lost anything.

But the key is, legitimacy is something that rests in the mind of the child. We can assert it, but we can't demand it. When we want to bolster our authority, we may speak louder, we may punish more severely, we may insist on our right to make rules - and all of this might very well convince us that we're rightfully in charge. But we're not the ones who need convincing! Instead, we should focus on the child, recognizing that for each child the line between authority figure and "buddy" or friend lies in a different place.

So how do we establish legitimacy and maintain it? I would offer the following:

1. Mean the words we say.
2. Listen sincerely and allow kids to express disagreement.
3. Find out who else your child respects as an authority figure and probe why? Is it a teacher, principal, coach - what do they do to maintain the balance between helpful and in-charge?
4. Admit mistakes and ask for forgiveness.
5. Never punish (or "consequence" if you prefer) out of anger, but only out of a desire to teach a better behavior. "Let me show you a better way to do that" needs to become a frequently-used phrase in our arsenal.
6. Examine and reexamine our motives. Why are we making the rules we do? Is the intent clear to the child? Is there another way we could make them (choose one: safe, responsible, healthy, respectful) than by what we're asking them to do? Would we want to comply with what we're asking?

Like it or not, the nature of working with kids - in homes, schools, Little Leagues, churches - has changed. The task is not to issue directives but to come alongside them - doing things with them rather than to them. We're not their friends. But we do desire for them what any friend would: that at the end of life's trials, they emerge as people of character.

Catalina, here we come

We're going to summer camp!

Our interest and participation in Forest Home Winter Camp has grown substantially in the last couple of years, and many of you have asked if we would be going back for the summer. Unfortunately, our group was too big for Forest Home to accomodate in the weeks they had openings. So in March we started looking for sites we could rent to do our own. The potential sites were few.

But - amazingly - Campus by the Sea, which is owned by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and located on Catalina Island was available the weekend we wanted. And - amazingly - the boat company still had all the seats available that we will need. We booked both, and camp is on.

Camp will run Friday, August 10-Sunday, August 12 and include an afternoon in Avalon, followed by a short boat ride to the camp facility. Our church will program Friday night through Sunday morning, so we can tailor the message and theme to what we think our kids need.

The cost is $235 for the weekend - higher than winter camp, but the boat ride to and from the island was an extra expense. If you've been the beneficiary of a Christian camping experience, you know how profound a camp set in nature can be.

This will be a major event for our ministry. Our goals will be to bond kids to one another and to their adult leaders, who are our current small group leaders serving on the weekends.

Please consider sending your child - it'll be worth it!

Dear Mom, You Matter

Dear Mom,

It's Mother's Day again. I sometimes wonder if having everyone celebrate on the same day makes it somehow less unique or special for you? But then again, we're all ultimately celebrating for the same reason: you matter. Dad is great, and his day is coming, but today is about you.

They say now that even infants can register differing responses, based on what they expect when they see either mom or dad approaching to pick them up: dad means it's time to play; mom means comfort and safety are near. I'm starting to think we never really lose that.

Moms are more intuitive than dads. We guys struggle with being emotionally "in touch" anyhow - we certainly have the full range, but we don't get what they are. But you're perceptive. You knew when I lost the spelling bee in 5th grade that my feelings were hurt, and that I was intimidated to start junior high, and that I was crushed when my hamsters died, even though 11-year-olds should be tougher than that. You knew when it was reasonable to expect my sisters and I to get along, and when each of us needed our privacy and space.

Remember the time we were at the store, and I really wanted that Star Wars figure, and so did my cousin who was with us, and then he agreed to buy something else so I could have it? Just by giving a name to what he'd done, you taught me that day what "generous" was and that it was a good thing. I learned "sensitive" the same way. Who needs formal character education with a teacher like that?

Moms notice when you need your hair cut, and when it's time for new shoes or longer pants, and when it's time to see the dentist and register for summer sports. You kept a mental schedule flawlessly until there was just too much going on, and then you kept on us relentlessly so you could keep the written calendar accurate. Could Dad have pulled this off? Maybe - but the point is that thanks to you, he didn't have to. You made Dad better. Moms do that.

Our culture doesn't favor the elderly - we're into the newest, the freshest, the youngest. But you always had a healthy respect for heritage, and I don't mean old things like buildings or antiques, I mean people. We were always visiting the homes of your older relatives and later, regretably, their graves. We planted flowers at the cemetary every year. You still do. (Remember when you and I tracked down those 19th Century ancestors' graves in Minnesota? I loved that.) You taught me that the past was not to be cast aside, but to be valued. You advised us once to tape record all of Grandma's old stories because otherwise they'd be lost when she died. We didn't, and you were right.

Remember how you pulled me out of school to watch the 1980 Presidential Inauguration, because you thought it was important that I see it? Or how you insisted we pay attention when the Berlin Wall came down, because it was history in the making? You were more right than we could fathom then. And of course you knew what you were doing when you took us North Dakota-born kids on cross-country trips every other summer. Our horizons were and still are far broader than most of the kids we grew up with.

And I want to let you in on a secret: even when I began to pull away, as all boys do when they get to be teenagers, your influence and opinion still mattered. A lot. That's something I hope the moms (and dads) of the kids I minister to realize.

We live half a country apart now, but still the things I associate with the words family and home and compassion and, of course, mom, are tied up in what I experienced growing up as your son. Maybe in that sense, Mother's Day does mean the same thing to everyone.

Happy Mother's Day,

Mark

We have not yet begun to fight

In just over a month, our sixth graders will graduate up to the junior high ministry, and our current 3rd graders will join us in Room 100. I will miss this 6th grade class. They have brought an infectious energy to our room and in a ministry where atmosphere counts for a lot, that's priceless.

Youth and children's ministry is always a limited engagement - it's a matter of time until the kids you work with "age out" of what you're doing and are ready for the next level. Sadly, I know what the statistics say - that many who make childhood commitments to Christ don't keep them once they're teenagers, or they backslide, or they rebel; and that once in college, 75% of those who wore the name "Christian" in high school walk away from the faith, some to return later, others not.

But I'm also stubborn enough to believe that ministry matters. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't do it. I'm not ready to throw up my hands when it comes to children & youth and say, "Well, the world's going to have its way with them" or "It's inevitable that they'll walk away from the Lord" or the fatalistic "We can't control it anyhow - it's all in God's hands." No, I believe that we have not yet begun to fight.

Exciting things are happening in youth ministry in America. Leaders are better trained then ever before. Youth and family ministers are choosing that for their lifelong ministry rather than treating it as a stepping stone to adult ministry. We are coming to a consensus that youth ministry is family ministry. We are catching the vision that students can accomplish great things in expressing their faith and in acts of service if we believe in them and give them our time and resources. Publishers are getting better at producing age-appropriate, relevant materials for various age groups. The understanding is growing that life application is more valuable than rote learning. And on and on.

We will never reach the point where we have youth ministry down to a science (regardless of what these marketing materials for Sunday School products claim), because working with kids and teenagers is truly an art, but it's a practiced art, and we're getting smarter about how to be effective at discipleship, not just fun production.

I know a handful of students at Virginia Tech. I was in immediate contact with three of them the day of the shootings. One, whom I ministered to in high school, has a great grasp of the vision of impacting a campus. At the end of his freshman year, he joined a fraternity - and immediately started a Bible study within it. He has been candid about the campus ministries' inabilities to reach the non-Christian student population as a whole. He told me that in the wake of April 16, some Scientologists set up a tent on campus and offered counseling. He and his two roommates' response? To invite them over to dinner in order to engage with them. The contributing factors to this kid's walk weren't unusual - active, supportive parents; a solid Christian foundation; a strong youth group; a handful of accountable relationships - but they were present over the long haul (birth-18 years). As a result, he is oriented for a lifetime of discipleship and disciplemaking.

So in spite of the bad news, I'm incredibly hopeful. We know what works with students. We know that they don't have to walk backwards through their high school and college years, always on the defensive. We can have great hope that if we are faithful in building into kids, our efforts will not be in vain.

The "formula", if there was such a thing, would look like this:
The positive contributors (love, discipline, support, etc.), consistently applied, minus negative or destructive influences = a person ready to be touched and used by God.

And so, a kid's church involvement, over the long haul, really does matter. Consistency matters. I'd love to deliver 100 6th graders every year to the junior high and look down the road 6 years to see those same 100 faces heading off to college still secure in their faith.

Wouldn't you like to see the same?

I was thinking too small

This could not have been orchestrated.

The setting was a 5th-6th grade event at Horizon Christian Fellowship on Friday night. We took a handful of kids down, and I drove two. One was a ministry regular, the other a friend he invited. Three hours later, the inviter and I were engaged with the invitee in a deep discussion about sin, forgiveness, and eternal life.

Experiences like these a real shot in the arm. I had lamented to a co-worker a couple of weeks ago that much of the work in ministry has little to do with the gospel. You do a lot of arranging, organizing, troubleshooting, and envisioning - and you hope that work is facilitating the spread of the gospel, but a lot of it is labor without any apparent fruit.

And then...bam! The opportunity to articulate the heart of God's purpose falls in your lap, and you balance the euphoria with wondering why that can't always happen.

The answer is complicated, but the crux of it is that we minister to individuals. Each brings his or her own set of preconceptions and experiences and family backgrounds and level of emotional maturity and myriad other factors that can affect spiritual interest and readiness. The ideal is that a person who is at the point of spiritual seeking will just then encounter the church. The reality is that churches and ministries contain lots of people who for various reasons are spiritually disinterested, unmotivated, or turned off.

So what is the job of a ministry like ours - or a church in general, for that matter? Is the mission to key in on those who are "ripe", so to speak, and to get them across the finish line, as many as possible? Or is it to walk alongside a kid until and after he or she is ready - if ever?

The mistake, I think, is in thinking that's an either/or question. But if we are - if I am - not careful, ministries can become focused on one to the exclusion of the other. I was guilty of this Friday night - I was thinking too small. In my mind, we were attending an "outreach", and I'd been to enough to know to keep my expectations low. Outreach = high on fun, lots of non-Christians, some soft references to Jesus and a closing prayer. My own expectations limited God - until he came roaring through to remind me that so much of what we want to engineer isn't really in our control anyhow.

So where's the balance? I'm not sure there is one. Just when we think we've created the "ideal" environment, and controlled for all the factors, the unexpected happens to throw the balance off. But these thoughts stand out:

We need to cast a wide net. The gospel message doesn't need to be made relevant - it is relevant, by nature, and therefore people outside the churched community are just as ready for it as people on the inside.

We need to be longsuffering with our kids' growth. I am really amused reading the marketing materials that come from publishers of Christian Ed materials. "Your kids will grow spiritually" or "Your kids' lives will change as they learn the word of God"...how in the world can they promise that? We can prepare the soil, we can plant seeds and water, but only God makes it grow. It's unwise to map out the end product of our input as if spiritual growth was a process of A+B=C, and similarly, to demand that kids mature spiritually according to our timetable.

We need to reconsider how we gauge success. What constitutes spiritual growth? What are our own assumptions and biases about what undergirds spiritual formation? Are we satisfied with "right answers" regardless of whether those answers are evidenced in a child's life?

Are we providing enough and the right opportunities for our kids to use their Christianity? Do we bring them into enough contact with the non-Christian and non-affluent world? Have we too narrowly prescribed the outlets available to them? Do we know how to capitalize on teachable moments?

"Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!" -- William Carey, missionary to India and Father of Modern Missions