Beyond the Event: A Youth Ministry Podcast
Bringing together influential voices from the CIY community to walk alongside you in your journey to maintain momentum between the mountaintop experiences of youth ministry.
Beyond the Event: A Youth Ministry Podcast
BTE4.07 NextGen Discipleship from Birth to Graduation: Part 1 with Jon Lee and Lane Moss
Mailbag questions or topic suggestions? Text us!
What if the key to enriching your spiritual journey lies in subtraction, not addition? In our latest episode, I reconnect with my good friend Lane, who shares his enlightening reflections from his sabbatical. Instead of adding new routines, Lane discovered the power of letting go. This revelation sets a reflective tone for our episode, as we chat with John Lee from Northeast Christian Church about nurturing cohesive family ministries that span from birth through high school.
Jon helps us explore the innovative strategies employed in youth leadership and the importance of transitions in a child's faith journey. From student-led teachings to the strategic timing of small groups, we examine how these initiatives help young people articulate and embrace their faith.
The episode takes a practical turn as we discuss how to empower parents to take an active role in their children's spiritual development. By offering workshops and resources that speak to generational contexts, parents can engage in meaningful faith conversations at home. We wrap up by highlighting the significance of a church-parent partnership in fostering a culture of discipleship, providing insights into building a strong spiritual foundation for young people. With collaborative strategies and church support, families can thrive in their faith journey together.
Be sure to check out the new video version of this podcast on YouTube!
Want to connect with us? Here's how!
- www.ciy.com
- youtube.com/christinyouth
- @christinyouth on Instagram
- CIY Community Facebook Group
- Email us at podcast@ciy.com
Hi, I'm Brad Warren. This is Beyond the Event, a youth ministry podcast presented by Christ in Youth, where we help you maintain momentum between the mountaintops. Super excited for today's episode. We're going to do two of these that are not meant to be sequential, they're just two perspectives on the same idea. This is the first installation of that. So we are going to be having a conversation with a guy I like a lot.
Speaker 1:His name is John Lee. He is at Northeast Christian Church in Louisville Kentucky Not to be confused with Southeast Christian Church in Louisville Kentucky. He's been there for about 12 years but he's in a family minister role and want to talk to him about what it looks like to have a cohesive family ministry rather than a bunch of siloed individual ministries like student ministry, elementary ministry, preschool ministry, whatever that may be. What does it look like to actually create just one big family ministry that share some really important goals and values? So we are going to do that and that's going to be great, but first you get to hear from my good buddy, Lane, hey Lane, hey, Brad. Welcome to Beyond the Event.
Speaker 2:It's so good to be here. I know it's so good to be here. If there's one thing I like more than the event, it's beyond it. I'll tell you that right now. This is where the magic happens, that's for sure, lane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how are you so good? Here's a funny thing. Normally we would have had like this is the seventh episode of this podcast this season. Okay, and typically I try to get you on like episode one, episode two, because I just love you and I love hanging out with you, and that's selfish on my part. But had to wait to week seven because you've been on sabbatical, that's true, yeah, yeah, so you were on sabbatical from sometime in September to sometime in November, no October.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. September, september to middle of September, end of October.
Speaker 1:Middle of September to the end of October. That's right, and I have not gotten to talk to you a lot about it, so we're going to talk about it right now. I love that, because I have you pinned down Right and everyone else is going to get to listen to it, and that's going to be so fun, I hope. Does that sound great to you? I mean, it sounds amazing to me. Okay, I'm curious about what you.
Speaker 1:I know you had a ton of experiences on sabbatical. I know you went a bunch of places, got to spend time in California with our buddy Logan and Ana Love them. You got to go to the Grand Canyon. Wait, that wasn't part of sabbatical. That was pre-sabbatical, that was pre whatever. Yeah, pre-game, pre-game sabbatical by taking the kids to the grand Canyon. I love it. Uh, I feel like people go into sabbatical sometimes expecting things like hey, I'm going to come out of this feeling rested, I am going to come out of this feeling refreshed, I'm going to have new ideas. I'm getting you know like. These are the things. What surprised you, though? What did you when you got to the end? What were you like? Whoa, I was not expecting to feel that or to think that that's a good question.
Speaker 2:I you know I intentionally I tried really hard to not go into sabbatical with a bunch of expectations. I met with my my.
Speaker 2:We're different. Well, I had just talked to some people who had taken one and, based on their wisdom, that is why I tried to not go in with a ton of expectation. So I did try to go in with some intentionality, establishing some different rhythms and things like that. I think what I think, what I didn't expect, is it took me until about week three probably the end of week three, honestly, of six weeks. So so, almost halfway through yeah, it took me about halfway through for God to finally, um, get through to me that it needed to be more about subtraction than addition. So I went into it thinking I'm going to add all these things. I'm going to do, I'm going to do this stuff, I'm going to add this spiritual rhythm and this spiritual rhythm and this physical rhythm and these, I'm going to add these things and then I'm going to come out of it feeling really refreshed and and I, and I think that what I learned was that, um, I got to, I got to a place, like I said, about the end of week three, beginning of week four, where God finally just kind of said like there's too much, like this, we got to get rid of some stuff before we can add some stuff and not just schedule things, because sabbatical is by default, you know, at least for me, it was getting rid of a lot of schedule things. So that already happened.
Speaker 2:But what I found was that there's a lot in my heart and in my head that needed to be given up, that needed to go, that needed to be excavated before there could be any um, anything else built and so, and so it really became a lot about, um, subtraction, and, and one of the you know, one of the primary lessons was I had to. If there was an expectation that I took into it, it was just that it was kind of an abstract one, which was just simply that I'm going to have something to quantify after this. I'm going to have some, I'm going to have some lessons learned, I'm going to have some these kinds of things, and and maybe that's true and I'm talking in circles but I realized that God wants my attention, just to have my attention, and not so that he can tell me something specific or he can do something specific, or he can. I can learn a specific, but it's just like.
Speaker 2:No like, maybe it's just about having, it's just about giving God, it's just about paying attention to God and not about paying attention to God for some other reason or so, that something else happens, and so not having to quantify something there was, there was honestly massive freedom in that, um, and just going like oh, I don't have to quantify what my biggest lessons learned are here, I don't have to, you know, whatever else, I can just kind of be, and that was actually really, really sweet.
Speaker 1:I love that? Yeah, because I would have the same mentality Like I've not taken a sabbatical yet, I guess I will someday you should. But like I would think, well, it's funny, my seven-year anniversary is coming up, which here we go, like technically it would make me, but I don't want to take it yet. Um so, but yeah, like, all right, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this over the course of this, however many weeks, and like just to hear you say, wait, it was actually about doing way less. Um kind of important. All right, let's do some quick hitters. Okay, quick hit, quick hitters for sabbatical. How long did it take you to shut off work brain?
Speaker 2:You know, I, I'm. I was fortunate that it didn't actually take me all that long. I tend to do, if I don't, I don't do a lot of things really really well, but one of the things that I tend to do fairly well is I can is is work, life balance. See, obviously that changes seasonally, but whenever I go home from work, I'm, I'm pretty home, like I'm, I'm pretty, I'm able to be pretty present, and so, um and so I had that kind of going for me already just a little bit. But also we actually spent I launched, on sabbatical literally from an airport in Colorado Springs as we wrapped up our staff retreat, which was a spiritually focused staff retreat. So I was able to, I had kind of a running start in terms of shutting off my brain, which I was very, very thankful for, cause I do think that that gave me a tremendous headstart in that regard. So, yeah, so, not very, so, not very long enough, I mean less than a week inside it, just a few days.
Speaker 1:That was beautiful. Let's talk about what a quick hitter is really quick, sorry um I like learned to slap butt better I was I was trying to, like you know, build a little rhythm, get it going, and you're just like you. Well, now I forgot them all. Sorry, 36, is that better? No one one afternoon, it sounds like, was what it was. Uh, no favorite experience. So you got to do that.
Speaker 2:You probably wouldn't have gotten to do if you didn't go on sabbatical to a small church out there and then got to spend the next part of that week with, as you mentioned, good friends Logan and Anna Greer and their kids, who I just love and adore, and so I'll say probably that.
Speaker 1:That's super fun. Yeah, I had one more, but I actually did legitimately forget it. I was like, oh, we're going to do like rapid fire round and then I swing hard. Well, yeah, and you know what Sabbatical is about subtraction. I tried to add a new rhythm and I shouldn't have tried to add a new rhythm and that's what I learned just now, in this moment. Well, I'm glad you had a great sabbatical Lane. I am glad that you are back. Oh, I remember what it was. Oh, what'd you miss most about work?
Speaker 2:Besides me. Well, yeah, bill Warren, that's who it was I missed. I'm a pretty social guy and so I just I missed seeing all my friends and being able to be with those friends. And then also though also missed it was reg season, where, like, registration opens and seeing like that's always very celebratory and I always love that and it's very encouraging. It's a fun day and so it is. It's an encouraging season, to kind of see it. It's a high stress season as we try to lock in contracts and those kinds of things, but it's also a very encouraging one, and so I missed yeah, so I missed that.
Speaker 1:Okay, but sabbatical was a gift, total, total gift yeah, well, it was not a gift for me because I had to go six weeks without seeing you, so maybe you should think about other people sometimes um, you're right, just kidding. All right, uh, it's time for the mailbag. Michael isn't here. Want to take this opportunity to give a huge thanks to our good friend, sam fleming uh for being here stepping in for michael recording the podcast today hey, sam however, sam is not going to lead the mailbag.
Speaker 1:I am Okay, I'm in control. Jeez Control freak, I am the captain now. Sorry, michael Tim Gray, go blue. Tim Gray wants to know what your favorite Thanksgiving day food or dessert is Turkey.
Speaker 2:Smoked turkey Like really good turkey For this, and there are people that say that they don't like Thanksgiving food. All due respect to their moms they have never had it cooked right or their aunts or their dads, or whoever cooks their or their spouse. Whoever cooks their food isn't doing it right. If you don't like it, we deep fry our turkey. Yeah, and it's so legit.
Speaker 1:It's outrageously good deep fry. I can make an entire meal out of just the skin off of a deep fry turkey oh my gosh, it's so good, oh my gosh. It's so good. Oh, that's gross, it's the bacon of the poultry world.
Speaker 2:It is the skin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the poultry world. Some would say that turkey bacon is the bacon of the poultry world.
Speaker 3:They would be wrong. It's not, yeah as a matter of fact it is not.
Speaker 1:It's turkey skin. I think it is funny that your wife prides herself, oh, and she's so good at it On her Thanksgiving sides. Yeah, like, makes just a ton of them. And you said that your favorite Thanksgiving food is the one thing. That you make yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you're, listening to this Kelly Moss. Kelly, I went over to your house one time for Thanksgiving cause I was stuck here, Couldn't go with my family. Uh, and it was beautiful, it was really great. Kelly made a ton of stuff. She made this corn yeah, that. She was like mortified by yeah. She was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I ruined this corn. This is terrible. I'm so sorry everybody about the corn and I was like this is the best corn I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you hold yourself to a pretty high standard. It was really good. She does an unbelievable job with the sides and, oh man, that's my favorite meal of the Thanksgiving season is. A couple days after Thanksgiving, she makes an outrageous gumbo with the smoked turkey, and it is, and I pine for it all year long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, a couple more. You want to go more fun or more serious?
Speaker 2:next, Dealer's choice. You claim to be the captain now, so I'm going to let you steer this ship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm vesting a small portion of my power into you, oh okay. Okay, great. What is Casey Lanier? We love Casey. She's the best Casey wants to know. Uh, what is your favorite throwback ciy moment? The one you think about over and over again?
Speaker 2:favorite throwback ci moment dude, that's tough, it's. It's tough to. It's tough to not say the bell um the the bell in 2013 had a big like 550 pound bell on all of our stages and all the complications that came with that and everything but it was, but that was really really sweet and people still talk about it, which is pretty cool. Um, um, but also um 2016,. Uh, we did this like really cool like butterfly. I was going to say the butterfly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was going to be mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was so dope, I didn't mean to steal it. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's good we're in agreement.
Speaker 1:Okay, great yeah.
Speaker 2:It was I did love, I loved the back. It was really really rad. Like the cool, those like types of reveals are always really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like those. I also really liked the what do we call them? Like the Joseph videos. Yeah, the Joseph mini theater, the mini theater videos. Yes, yeah, those are awesome. I don't know why, but like when I think of my old COI memories as a student Dude, I like think of that. Yeah, shout out to Ali Huffer for all of the art direction and work on that. Shout out to Ali Huffer for all of the art direction on that.
Speaker 1:Who voiced him over? Pelsu? Was it Pelsu? To be honest, I don't know. Maybe I don't know it. It might have been Pelsu. It was someone with like a great, yeah, totally deep voice. Yep, ah, so good, uh, okay, last one Matt Berry. In your opinion, what are thanks, matt, for all these questions? Matt submitted so many questions and so you're going to hear his name a lot in the next several episodes. Matt Berry, in your opinion, what are some of the most effective tools we can supply leaders in our youth group with to encourage them to own? Wait, I cannot read. I just lost it. I just lost the ability to read. I need Michael. I miss Michael. Michael, come back, baby, come back. In your opinion, what are some of the most effective tools we can supply leaders in our youth group with to encourage their own further personal and spiritual growth okay, these might be different answers depending on what he means by leaders.
Speaker 2:If we're talking about students or adult leaders, adult leaders, we're going to go with adult leaders. In that case, I would encourage some. First of all, prioritize your meetings with them. So make those good. Don't make those an afterthought. So don't just do kind of like this after like, hey, everybody we're touching base and I don't really have anything prepared or anything like that, we're hanging out, we're getting coffee, yeah, Like it's great to be, it's great to be like informal enough that it's conversational and giving them ownership in those meetings.
Speaker 2:But when you have like a meeting with all of your leaders together, put energy into it, um, so that they know that, so that they know that it's valuable, Um, but in terms of their own personal growth and and growing their own faith. Terms of their own personal growth and growing their own faith, I think it varies from person to person and how those you know and how those people learn and study and everything else. But, man, I would encourage a couple of. There are some different resources on like the Bible app, on the YouVersion Bible app that are Bible through a year. I think that just getting your adult leaders in your scripture every day is massive, and so encouraging them that there are some very accessible tools to help do that. The Bible recap is a great one that does a chronological reading through the Bible every year and then has like a short accompanying podcast with it and you can do that in the U version. But there's all kinds of them, but that one's really really good. Um, Tara Lee Cobbles the girl that does that, and so her recap, kind of at the end of it, is great.
Speaker 2:So those kinds of things, uh, spiritual formation books that are approachable and practical, like the common rule by Justin Whitmore, early um made for people by him. Um, practicing the way by John Mark Comer is a really, really good one on spiritual formation. That's really practical, easy to read um, easy to implement. A lot of those kinds of things, Um. But also I would say like, if we're going to like, maybe do the common rules with your group with like a group of leaders, um, the rhythms journal that we did at move last year, if you're a youth pastor, uh, maybe take it on to do that with. Like, get somebody see how many of your leaders want to do a 21 day rhythms challenge with you, Um, and just try to do that as a team. Do the stuff you're challenging your students to do, um and encourage it, and then and do the stuff you're challenging your leaders to do. Do it with them. You know, speed of the leader, speed of the team.
Speaker 1:Speed of leader. Speed of the team. Speed of the leader. Speed of the team. I have a big statement. Okay, I would love to hear it. I'm going to throw it out there and you swat it down. Okay, if you feel like it should be swat down, okay, it should be mandatory for your leaders in student ministry to be in a small group Like an adult small group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, I different, different churches will take different philosophies on that, but I don't, I mean I don't disagree with it, um, like if they don't have their own authentic faith community, like that's the number one resource that you can give them to create that with your students. Yeah, that that's my opinion. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 2:You hate it. Truth bombs from Brad. We're rebranding this podcast.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to go talk to John Lee. It's going to be great. I can already tell that we're going to love this conversation. Can't wait.
Speaker 2:So I'm just excited to see how the beard's doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly, me too. You'd have to watch on YouTube if you want to get that piece of information. But always remember, if you want to submit questions to the mailbag, you can click the link in the show notes, or you can email us at podcastcycom, or I always post something in the CY community Facebook group so you can post them there. But, uh, that's enough on that. Without further ado, let's go talk to John Right. John Lee, thank you so much for being here with us today, excited to have you.
Speaker 3:Thanks, man, looking forward to it. This has been an exciting journey for us.
Speaker 1:Hey, so you've been in Northeast for a long time. How long?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I've been on staff now for 12 years.
Speaker 1:Which is like fairly consequential in the world of church staffing today. I mean, that's insane. So, uh well, here's what I want to ask. You were originally brought on as a youth pastor. Um, what made you want to do youth ministry specifically, like I know that's a big question. If we can do like cliff notes version, like why did you want to be involved specifically in youth ministry specifically, like I know that's a big question. If we can do like cliff notes version, like why did you want to be involved specifically in youth ministry?
Speaker 3:Uh well, first off, um shout out to Tim my, uh, my youth pastor growing up. Um is an opportunity to kind of follow a little bit in his footsteps and that inspiration, um, and how he led me. Um. I'm a youthful, a quirky guy who loves middle schoolers, so shout out to all my middle school pastors. They're obnoxious, they smell, they're loud.
Speaker 1:Middle school pastors.
Speaker 3:Well them, and then obviously our students, you know.
Speaker 2:Middle school students refuse to not have fun, like for better or worse, they just refuse to not have a good time.
Speaker 3:Exactly and you're never sure of what's going to happen. Yeah, for sure, I've got stories for days oh my gosh, but yeah, no joke. Middle school ministry, for sure, is kind of my niche where I like to pivot towards. I always like to describe it as kind of one of those last malleable years with students, um, high schoolers. I love them to death, uh, they're so passionate about what they're so passionate about, uh, whereas middle schoolers are still intrigued and very curious on what can be, uh and so that not concrete, um, you know flow in their relationship with Jesus. At that point in time, it's just really cool, um, to be a part of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like the reason I asked that question is I feel like a lot of people get into youth ministry this isn't everybody's story, but you alluded to this just now. A lot of people get into youth ministry because they made important decisions about their life and ministry and journey following Jesus in those years between sixth grade and twelfth grade and they're like oh, I know this is a time of huge impact and I want to be involved in students' lives during this window of time when I know that the Lord really reached me in some unique and specific ways unique in specific ways. So you kind of said that like I wanted to be in youth ministry for that reason. You said the junior high or the last like malleable years. Yeah, so I'm curious what the mentality shift for you was when you decided or were asked or whatever that kind of journey looked like. Uh, going from I'm focused on students and specifically I really really love junior high students to, hey, from the time a kid is born until they graduate from high school.
Speaker 3:Um, honestly, what changes it for, I would assume, most people is having kids of your own. So I've got two boys, a five-year-old and a seven-year-old, and trying to articulate the gospel as if they were middle school students doesn't work, it just it doesn't. And so being able to have transitioned into a position now where I do oversee birth through high school, it made me critically think about how do we walk through all of the steps in forming a foundation for students so that they could leave high school and not just go to college, but that we actually launched them into a world successfully where their foundation was concrete, a world successfully where their foundation was concrete.
Speaker 1:Okay, so when you stepped into that role at Northeast which? How long have you been in that role? I'm going on just over two years now, just over two years, were the, were the ministries within that kind of like siloed, segmented a little bit, or was there already a bit of cohesion there, like what was that all like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there there was some gelling. We have the right staff here, which is phenomenal. So, stepping into it, I've had the opportunity to hire a couple of people to fill some roles, but we have had a rock solid team where the lines were dotted to work with each other, but strategically there wasn't a whole lot happening within handoffs, and I'm not going to say it's perfect right now either, like we've still working on what all this looks like, but there's now a cohesive effort to help in those transitional phases from birth through high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very cool, do you do? I'm curious if you resonate with that as a dad of three boys, one of whom is in junior high, two of whom are in high school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy that that absolutely and what you said about you know you can't, you don't articulate the gospel to a child the same way that you do to a middle schooler or really necessarily to the same way that you do a. You know sophomore, junior, you know senior, high school. One of the things I'm curious about is with your approach to the, you know, to the to just kind of the whole, the whole scope of birth to graduation. And I don't and I know that you know, in an ideal world you have, you know you you've got a lot of students that you see for that entire duration, but obviously you got kids moving in and out. You know throughout, somewhere in that range.
Speaker 2:But is your, do you all approach it by? Do you just kind of try to rearticulate with each stage of growth and cognitive abilities and everything else, or is it? Do you really take kind of more of a building approach to like, now in junior high we want to build on what they did in children's church or preteen ministry. Now in high school we want to build on what they didn't. Does that make sense? Is it kind of a?
Speaker 2:reteaching or is it a building?
Speaker 3:It's, it's a. Ironically it's a bit of of both and, and what I mean by that is there are nuances in each of the ministry areas that they walk through to help teach new things, new principles, but our effort is to help make a child's faith more their own as they progress through our ministries. So, whether we like it or not, kids that come to kids' church come because their parents bring them, so part of their faith is an identity through their parents. And so as we move towards that sophomore junior year the most critical year, when a kid gets their driver's license and can choose to go to church we want at that point in time for them to articulate their faith that it's their own, that they own that piece so that it might win on a Wednesday night when we hold youth.
Speaker 1:So hard question maybe. How does that impact your strategy with a first grader when you're thinking about creating independence for them in their faith when they're 16 years old? I'm curious practically, how that actually plays out in Northeast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so for me we take a bit of a leap and we're still in the water, if you will, testing it to see how it's working.
Speaker 3:But one of the structure models that we shifted in our hour and 10 hour and 15 minute program that we have each week was to move our small group meetup to happen at the front of our service and then to move large group to the end.
Speaker 3:And this is one of the things that I noticed. If you were a decently smart six or seven year old and you went to a large group and listened to the best of your ability, you could articulate what you heard. But what I didn't like about that was leading a kid and helping him drink the water instead of showing him where the water was and letting him do it himself, if that makes sense. Yeah, so our small group opportunity now allows kids, especially in elementary and a little bit easier in upper elementary, let's be real but for them to be able to go explore the word, the self-discovery in their relationship and the meaning of that story, what it means to them in those small group contexts, but then go rehear it in powerful ways, whether that be video, object lessons or acting it out with students up on stage getting fun with some of the grow curriculum stuff that we use personally, so that they can rehear what they've already learned themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Is that a model that that is consistent in middle school and high school student as well? Small groups on the front end of programming and then it's not.
Speaker 3:We break out of uh, our high school into groups. Um, it's just the way that service is geared up for a Wednesday night with uh 90 minutes we have because it's kind of jam-packed into both, where they do a full service with worship and stuff, and then into a teaching. But it's pretty cool because, especially in our summer programming I know I'm getting into details here, but our high school pastor does not teach at all and this may get into a question later on on like student involvement and leadership and making faith their own but we have a student teaching team, like a theological team, that comes through to teach eight to 10 weeks in a row throughout the entire summer. So it helps students engage in their faith in a meaningful way in that way too, Hearing from their peers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah way and that way too, Hearing from their peers, yeah, that's awesome, yeah. So I think the thing that makes this conversation like hard for some people and by some people I mean me, um is some brads, some, some brads some brads out there, just really struggle with this.
Speaker 1:I feel like your position is super important. However, I also feel like the things that you're saying a church could theoretically be like yeah, we can achieve that by doing this in elementary programming, this in middle school programming, this in high school programming, like over the two years that you've been in this role specifically and I'm not asking this because I think your job is not important. I want to be very clear about that but I do want to ask you, like why is your job important? You know what I mean. Yeah, so typical pastor's plate inside of their.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, um, so typical pastors play inside of their. You know, siloed ministry area is going to be volunteer teams, students doing their best to hit um, student leadership groups doing their best to try to attempt to do something with parents more than just a parent informational meeting. My role is a bigger bridge to the resources that we have for parents than it is for anything student-wise. Now my job also is like the management side of what it looks like to work with personnel. Somebody's got to do it. You got to work with, you know, a larger team. So it's helping connect those dots and working between different ministries within our organization. But my, my bread and butter and pride is truly trying to figure out what we're doing as a church holistically birth through high school for our parents to walk through this, because we'd be foolish to think that the 90 minutes you know to maybe two and a half hours we get a week with our students is going to be the thing that holistically shapes their face for the long run.
Speaker 2:That's great and, yeah, I mean you're, you're totally right at. You know, youth ministries are, you know, best case scenario, are partners in what parents are already doing, right, like you know, absolutely. So what is that? Has that taken on any kind of practical shape? For, again, ideal world, students are coming with their families, parents are coming as well, all that kind of stuff. But, as you mentioned, as students get older, oftentimes they're coming by themselves. Maybe parents aren't. They're coming as friends, do you have? Is there? Have you done anything practically to engage parents who aren't attending church with their like with their students?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we're in such an interesting phase um generationally, if you will, on the most disengaged parents we've ever had in the church world with Gen Z and Gen Alpha Um.
Speaker 3:So where we're, what? What ironically is happening is we're having more engagement um at um, I guess adversely, from our students who are passionate about Jesus, talking to their parents about Jesus and what we could ever do, which is beautiful. We've seen students baptizing their parents, which is amazing, a dream, you know, in our context, of what we would hope to happen in the, in the family unit. Um, that's, you know, broken is a harsh word, but it, you know it is, is. I mean, you've got kids leaving their parents.
Speaker 3:But what we've attempted to do is we run, twice a year, parent workshops that try to hit on culturally relevant topics that sometimes some people can say that's a little too spicy for me. I don't know if we're going to get into that one, but they're relevant and parents, with or without a faith background, want to know where the church stands or wants to walk alongside their kids. So people have shown up and have appreciated at least some of the vulnerability, instead of just kind of hiding behind the curtain waiting for an accident to happen or somebody to say the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:So is your connection to parents meant to be similar no matter what age a kid is in your ministry meant to be similar no matter what age a kid is in your ministry? Is the idea that the parent knows what to expect of Northeast Christian Church whether they have a four-year-old or a second grader or a senior in high school? Is that kind of the idea?
Speaker 3:That's the idea that a parent can know what to expect for their child um a year on end, um, but then also like benchmarks, milestones on like what where should my kid be in a foundational aspect in their faith yeah, so, which is really neat, I want to dig like way into that.
Speaker 1:So how does that actually play out like what, what? How are you resourcing your parents?
Speaker 1:Okay so cause, I think a lot, I really here's why I really think a lot of churches um get uh like going back to why youth pastors go into ministry. No, youth pastors go into ministry because they want to talk to kids' parents. You know, they want to program, they want to play games, they want to build relationships, they want to do all kinds of things that are great. But like I feel like a lot of people in ministry can almost get I'm going to use the word bogged down by like programming and kind of miss the forest for the trees. So that's why I'm asking that question and I'm interested to see how you've kind of addressed this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one of the biggest things that a part of my current role is right now is helping create the more tangibles for our parents. We've got a ton of vision targets as a church, but one of our specifically is to disproportionately invest in the youth, especially the most committed. And we can disproportionately invest in the youth by providing excellent Wednesday night or Sunday morning programming, depending on age. But there are people that want to go above and beyond. So you talk about being bogged down. Unfortunately, in culture, that's part of a choice. You're choosing, unfortunately, sometimes to say this is more important than this. It's just life choices. So we wanted to create content that allows a parent who says you know, this is the most important thing. It's going to take a little bit more time and energy on my part, but I want to invest in this because I believe this to be disproportionately the most important thing for my child.
Speaker 3:So I'm in the process right now for sixth through 12th grade on creating a I guess parent pathway is kind of what it's called that'll allow parents to have content to equip them to help disciple their child, and I think at the heart of it, no parent doesn't want to disciple their child, or whether they know it or not, they're discipling them towards something, and every believer wants to disciple them towards knowing and understanding.
Speaker 3:Love Jesus. What I feel like most parents have expressed a lacking in is the tools to do it, and there's a ton of great resources I could list off stuff from Preston, sprinkle or whoever to walk you through amazing, tangible discipleship models. But one of the things that I want to iterate in any program is a program's not going to fix a kid. It's a relationship they want with their parent to help disciple and influence them. So in the model of what I'm currently creating, there's an opportunity for some really cool workshops to take place twice a year, but then the rest of the content is self-led by the parent. Because I want to put the power in the parent's lap for them to have those hard conversations that they can all explore, those answers together, even if you don't know, but then also provide them with a base of content that can help inform them on a biblical worldview, on how to, how to uh, you know approach anything within our culture.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:That's great, yeah, it is. Oftentimes it is, it's a. It's a for parents. Oftentimes, I think, just like, just lack confidence, um to to have some of like the conversations that they would love to have, or they're they're afraid of pushing their kid away somehow, or you know, whatever it is they're afraid of losing them.
Speaker 2:Um, and yeah, encouragement would be no, no, no, no, like, find where to get the resources to build the confidence. I feel like you can effectively have these kinds of conversations because guess what, your, your, your kids are having them right. It's like let's have them in a place where you know yeah, I totally agree, that's good.
Speaker 3:No, I love it, and I think one of the other things too is and we can all share an understanding, especially being around students the current generations right now are different than our generation in youth ministry and are different than the generation before that and different than the boomer generation, and so helping parents even get a better understanding of what's happening within gen z and gen alpha, it almost takes precedent.
Speaker 3:And understanding that and then, as you understand what's happening in that cultural context of now, with these generations working towards an understanding of what a culture of discipleship and intentionality looks like in the home, like that's. Those are the. That's, honestly, those are the first two months of just a commitment from a parent. Now I want you to come to a session to understand this generation first, because nobody knows what the hexagony means. Still, we're gonna digress and move on. But then what does it look like as an intentional parent to begin to understand on healthy rhythms and restrictions in your house that build a culture of discipleship before we can even start the program? Because that's what's broken right there in and of itself.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's so funny because generational stuff like that just really fascinates me, because the more I have looked at research that's done by like very smart people about some of the different generations, starting with my own, the more you see that generations like stereotypes, generational stereotypes almost form as like a reaction to their parents stereo like generational stereotypes. You know what I mean. So I've, I've, and it's like that has to, and we all grew up in homes with parents, it's you know that that creates distance, when there's like a lack of understanding, where the parents are like this is the way we do things and the kids are like is it? Though you know? So it's. It's fascinating that you're saying one of the first steps is like to build that bridge, um, with like some generational intelligence. That's really cool with like some generational intelligence.
Speaker 3:That's really cool. Yeah, I just, I, just, I think it's, I think that's the key is, students want to be heard. Yeah, and oftentimes, you know, I have many conversations with parents who are like well, you know how come that came out in small group and I had no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like, and I always tell them like, hey, are you, do you want you? I was like, and I always tell them like, hey, do you want me to tell you the fluffy answer you want the last 10%. And it goes back to what is the culture in your home, on being able to be approachable and be able to talk to. And if you can't create that environment inside your house or you've lost it, how do you rebuild it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I'm sure takes a long time. I mean, I'm fortunate that I feel like I never didn't have that in my home, Like but yeah, it is so true. Like if, if a kid gets to a point where they feel like they can't talk about things in the home with the parent, like how much effort and how long would that take in order to rebuild that trust feels like it would be very difficult. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, can I, can I go back to this? Because I think this is huge. One of the things that I've, one of the trends that I've seen is is, I say, trend, um, it's generations of believers who don't know how to articulate their faith. Um, and and not just articulate, and not just articulate their faith. A lot of, and not just articulate their faith. I think there's a lot of believers that can articulate theological truths about who God is, about who Jesus is, hopefully, about who the Holy Spirit is, but very few of even those believers can clearly articulate what Jesus has done for them. Yeah, know how to tell their story. Yeah, know how to tell their story. What does? What has that meant for their life? And so?
Speaker 2:So I want to go back to just for a second, because I think it's key, because now you're talking about not just student ministry, right now you're talking about generational ministry, as you're talking about equipping your high school students to be able to articulate their faith, and putting together this theological team or this teaching team that works throughout the summer to do teaching, because ideally, then, what you're doing is you're creating a new generation of parents who are more clearly able to articulate what Jesus has done for me and, honestly, I think that if there's parents who are more comfortable talking to their kids about, this is what Jesus has done for me. This isn't just who Jesus is. This isn't just. This isn't just what you know, that like some facts and some truths, those are all good, but this is specifically my story. This is who I was, this is who I am because of Jesus and because of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in my life and, um, then I think that that makes them all of a sudden way more approachable as well, um, to their kids.
Speaker 2:As they, as they try to articulate struggles that they have and and what they're wrestling with with faith or with doubt or with sin or with whatever it is temptation then they're, then, all of a sudden, they feel more comfortable talking to their, talking to their parents about that. So what's that team look like for you? As you do that and I don't know if it's a, you said, a theological team, you know and so how many kids is that? How do they get on that? Is there an age range? Is that upperclassmen? Only, unpack it just a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So primarily high school, the way that we have tried to help equip and build a student leader is to be somebody more than just a door greeter. One of the favorite sayings I have is that the same Holy Spirit living in me is the same Holy Spirit inside of our students. There is no such thing as a junior Holy Spirit. So empower and equip. So it takes time, so I'll tell you right now. If you don't feel like you got anything on your plate, add this to your plate because it will allow your ministry to flourish in a new light because it's self-led.
Speaker 3:So we do a my Story series. We have, at least the last two years it's been a part of our overarching goals for anybody literally birthed through high school to be able to know their story and where it fits into the story of the grander story of God, and they had to figure out their goals from that. But with that, one of the things that was birthed was creating more student leadership opportunities between social media teams, photography teams and this theological team that comes through to help learn and equip and understand what public speaking looks like and how to articulate and share their story in a bigger way than what we are able to walk through inside of our my Story series, but oftentimes those are the students who will come through in our summer to help take over and get a platform to come and teach a sermon and it's a full sermon. We're charging students to find a way to help teach on a scriptural basis for 15 to 18 minutes to their peers and it's intimidating for some kids right out of the gate, and other kids are flourishing because they have the opportunity.
Speaker 3:The unique and beautiful thing about it is the first year we did it, we didn't know what to expect and we ended up having to extend that sermon series, if you will, to allow for the amount of students who found power and joy in being able to share their story and the impact. That's happened. And what's cool is that it's bled its way into middle school in beautiful ways on students owning their faith and articulating it in front of their peers. Students owning their faith and articulating it in front of their peers in a little bit more of a unique setting, but in settings that we find super helpful and super appropriate for a middle schooler to stand up in front of their peers and share.
Speaker 2:So rad.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious. That's funny that you said that, Lane, because I have wonderful parents. I have lovely parents. I've never heard them. I didn't realize that I've never heard them talk.
Speaker 3:I like.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that I had never heard them talk about that until you said that just now, that they've, like they raised us to believe in Jesus and um, taught me some really important like tenets of what a life of faith looks like. But I have never heard my parents be like, hey, this is something I struggle with and this is how Jesus has helped me or them talking about him helping them overcome or transform or really anything in any way, which is kind of a funny thing to think about looking back on now. So I think it's really cool that you have your students doing that. Is that something you coach parents on as well, like in some of these meetings, or have you had any luck with that?
Speaker 3:No, yeah, it is. So when I talked earlier about those parent workshops, um, we've, we've walked through, um, what that looks like inside the home. Um, which is beautiful, uh, for parents to figure that out. And it's cool because in some of them we're just talking about the whole rhythm restriction kind of lingo about right now. But what that provides the opportunity is those conversations to happen more naturally around a dinner table, because they're restricting technology in some meaningful way for a first or second grader so that it's forcing conversation to happen at the table. And oh, when you have that opportunity now, here's ways to take advantage of it to share your own faith.
Speaker 3:It's very cool to see parents get excited about what's happening and see their kids. And what's neat is and I empathize for any of the youth pastors who don't feel the support from their lead pastor I encourage it, like, start with prayer and then go talk to them about finding that support. But allowing there to be space and room for those stories to be shared on a Sunday morning in a large group setting to adults almost stirs the pot for those parents and even the older generation to say I got to get my stuff together. This kid is 16 and he's doing more with his faith right now than I've done in the last 10 years.
Speaker 1:It's awesome, oh man, that's why we do what we do. We love it.
Speaker 3:That's so incredible.
Speaker 1:That's right, um, okay. So, uh, we've been talking for a while and I I want to kind of get to something and make sure that we have plenty of time, um to talk about it. So, um, I want to talk about you. Go to Northeast Christian church, which is um, in the grand scheme of things, a large church. Uh, and I know that you are very sensitive to the fact that, like, not every church is privileged to like be in the position that you guys are in to have like an extra pastor necessarily. So I want to talk about two different groups of people who are probably listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1:One is, um, a youth minister at, like, a medium to small size church who, um has, um, you know, no team and has the burden for, like, the student ministry kind of entirely on their back and has a very, very full plate. Um, I want to talk to that person. And I also want to talk to a person who might be at a larger church but does not have somebody in your position and has, like, maybe, a student ministry team and an elementary ministry team and a preschool ministry team, but they all kind of like exist in their own world. I'm curious what you think like the most important first steps are to kind of start walking down this road of having a cohesive, like family ministry. What do you guys call it Next gen ministry? Is that what you do, family ministry, family ministry? What do you guys call it Next gen ministry? Is that what you do, family ministry, family ministry? Okay, to having like a cohesive family ministry model and philosophy and values and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3:Sure, in the larger church. First it takes intentionality I know that's a little bit of a loaded word and you know what do you exactly mean by that. It's going to take one of the people on one of those teams to be intentional to say this is important. So if, if you know that you're swimming and you're, you know, drowning in all the the week to week and month to month, to do's and the events and the camp seasons and the retreat seasons, um, all of that's still going to be there and it's going to take effort and intentionality for somebody to say, hey, our parents matter.
Speaker 3:But what's more important first, in my opinion, with saying it's important and intentional, that we're going to prioritize this, is to take time to swim with the fish.
Speaker 3:And what I mean by that is it's hard to identify what is the core issue inside of your context of ministry until you actually ask people what the issue is. If you don't take time to spend with parents, then you're gonna miss the mark on how to help raise up spiritual leaders in the house, as those parents and I know it's easy for us to point the finger and say that's spiritual formation or adult ministry, that's their job. You gotta get, I said know, it's easy for us to point the finger and say that's spiritual formation or adult ministry, that's their job. You got to get that, I said. But it's a partnership in what we do and you guys identified that earlier in our you know show. Today, where we're talking through. Nobody got into youth ministry to hang out with parents. But parents will always have more discipleship opportunities than you'll ever have as a youth pastor 100% discipleship opportunities that you'll ever have as a youth pastor.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent, that's right. Swim with the fish. So that's what I would say is the first thing to do is that's. You know, if you have success with sending out emails and a survey, go for it. They're trash in our context. I don't do those, I just go set up coffee meetings.
Speaker 3:Hey, talk to me, what's hard to talk about Jesus, about with your kid right now? Where do you guys find intentional rhythms or time to do that? And that's honestly what ended up creating some of this pathway stuff alongside of our lead pastor that is passionate about helping equip this next generation and parents more specifically. But that's what I would say. You got to figure out. Who's that one person that's listening right now that says you know, this is important. And I'm going to go ahead and just cast vision for what it would look like in our larger church context to have unity across our ministries and then to build out a roadmap. What are our baseline metrics, our baseline values that we want kids to know in each of these phases of life and say, okay, this is what we hit, let's repeat, this is what we're going to do. You know, for Priest K, we want kids to know that the simple truth that Jesus loves them and wants to be their friend.
Speaker 1:Right, you know that the simple truth that Jesus loves them and wants to be their friend, right, you know. So put yourself in the shoes of uh. Your context, primarily as youth ministry youth pastor who catches this vision is, like, this is important. I want to do this Now. I have to go talk to an uh, an elementary pastor and a preschool pastor, um, and try to get them on board with this and then also try to like, coordinate some first steps. How, like, what's the dream scenario for how that conversation even goes? Like, what are you asking?
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think. I think it would be broadcasting and helping the elementary team and the preschool. You know, pastor, understand that right now, if we look at the context of ministry and we look at this generation, there's some signs that point towards us failing our kids and going off to college and them not having a firm foundation. So if we can lean into and understanding that, if we emphasize strategy and emphasize intentionality as a holistic approach, then we have a greater chance at helping launch a kid off into the real world with something better than just what we have to offer. And again, I believe it's truly through parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no doubt. And and cause, every runner's got to. Every runner in a relay has got to buy into their role, right, like, like, if I don't start this strong, then when I like cause, we all cause, like it or not at some point in every ministry is going to hand the baton to somebody else, right, until maybe you get into like adult ministry or something like that, but like a children's pastor, ideally, is going to hand the baton off to a youth pastor, maybe even a, or a preteen pastor, middle school pastor, who's going to hand the baton to the next? Who's going to hand the baton to the next who's going to? And so there's gotta be some kind of vision casting, right, and just like, hey, we are, we're running the same race here, like, we're not running separate races, we're running the same race. And so we just got to maximize our, you know, we got to maximize our leg of the race and then hand the baton off cleanly and set the next leg up really, really well If we're going to run, if we're going to run it well, and so I.
Speaker 2:But I think that takes especially if you're at a medium to a small church that's got to take a lot of humility, right, because you don't have one person saying, hey, this is whatever. I am saying that this is what everyone's going to do now it's. I can put myself in a position, you know, as a having been a former youth pastor at a, at a medium to small church, to go. You know, I could have been young and idealistic and just gone to a children's minister and said, hey, like, here's my plan for how we're going to take kids from, you know, birth to graduation and here's how you're. You know, well then you're stepping on a lot of toes there and stepping on some programs and some philosophies that that children's pastor is proud of and has worked really hard on, and so there's going to have to be a lot of humility too, of like. Okay, once we've established that we're running the same race together, what do we need to do? What's the give and take look like in order for us to pass and receive batons?
Speaker 3:well, you know so there's got to be a ton of humility in that process right. Yep, there is, and you know, huge shout out to all the nursery directors, pastors, re-cares, you guys rock, Absolutely. Nursery directors, pastors, you guys rock. There's a patience greater than me and I'll ever have. I promise that. But the cool thing is is like I have somebody on my team right now that is so passionate about the littles, not because they love holding babies and I dare anybody to say it's just childcare, because it's. It is not childcare.
Speaker 3:Like there are no way or foundational opportunities in their nursery, right now that we are teaching kids simple truths about who God is and empowering, more importantly, a generation of parents who feel the urge to come back to the church after being gone for so long and say oh man, I got a kid that I got to raise and I'm responsible for, and Jesus meant something to me when I was a kid, so I better start now. And I got a director, I got a team lead over that. That's like we're going to raise the bark, we're going to meet these parents. This is a huge priority.
Speaker 1:Well, and to your point, if you can catch parents, then if you can catch parents when a kid is two years old and get them bought into this idea that they play the most integral role in the spiritual formation of their child, then you're not having to like play catch up when that student is in sixth grade and is already like in the middle of asking some really hard questions and making some really important decisions.
Speaker 3:So I want to say this because I think this is super important when you're looking at vision casting big church, small church, whatever it is, as a youth pastor to rally the parents or a family pastor or a kid's pastor or a nursery direct doesn't matter. One of the foundational things that we've taught parents to begin to understand is that it's no one else's responsibility to be the primary discipler of your child other than you. And I think what we've noticed within our context and our culture is that the church has become the same thing as what most of our kids go to. They get taken to soccer practice to go get taught by the coach to learn, to practice to get better. They go to school to learn by the teacher to go grow in their academics. They go to ballet to learn to be a better dancer, and they do all those things from the professional. We are a partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Just as much as a parent is that professional in their faith and that's the tool to equip them, to help them understand the vision of like oh wow, this isn't just a drop off thing. I actually have to participate in my kid's faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like you don't want to negate the fact that and I don't think that you're saying this but that other adults and other peers in a student's life play a key role in their faith journey. Absolutely you don't want to take that away. But at the same time you want to emphasize yeah, but you like to emphasize to the parent like this is not going to do what you want it to do unless you are like fully bought into. This process is a hard conversation yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, that's. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:But how encouraging is it for a parent to hear early on from a family ministry staff, from nursery on up, like, hey, here's the plan, like here's what we're going to be doing, you know. Like it's not just, we want you to know that when your child is here, like we're not just we are not just thinking about the next 90 minutes, we are thinking about the next 18 years, and so here's, so, here's our plan and here's how, like we aim to partner with and to grow with and to do all of these things. That's so encouraging as a parent, that's so encouraging to me to go like, oh, it's not just childcare, you know, it's not just. You know, whatever, it's this, and this is a thing that I can, you know this, this is what the partnership looks like. That's, I mean, I. I think that's really, really special.
Speaker 1:Well, and for you like you just went through a couple of big transitions, kind of in a row, where you had some kids going from eighth grade to ninth grade, you had some kids going from fifth grade to sixth grade, those types of things and to just like know that the way that you interact with those ministries is going to feel familiar and the way that you interact with those ministries is going to continue to support you in the ways that you have already felt supported by the ministry before, I think is just like a huge comfort thing and helps to like build momentum as they cause.
Speaker 1:You mentioned confidence earlier and I do think a lot of parents lack confidence and there is in my mind like a fear that maybe your elementary minister like crushes it at this and is like really good at instilling confidence in parents and then they hand off to the student ministry team and that same like fervor for equipping parents is not there and all of a sudden those kids are facing like new and different challenges and all of a sudden parents start like questioning themselves and asking like am I equipped to do this? Can I have these conversations? You know, I just feel like the ramifications of this are huge. Maybe I'm rambling, I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, I think that's super valid and I think what's funny is even to look at it in the context of, you know, some of our smaller churches or even mid-sized churches, where the youth pastor that is inheriting these kids is 24 years old, maybe freshly married, doesn't have kids and doesn't understand that role and I articulated this at the beginning that my lens shifted as soon as I had kids, so I don't know what that means for that person that's 24, other than I would encourage you to swim with the fish. So go get parents on a team that can help you discern how and what they need to equip other parents.
Speaker 2:No doubt I just a couple of things. I mean. I remember being when I, when my boys were real young and knocks my youngest, he, he's been the, he's been the one that's consistently just kind of like a terrorist. He has, just like he, he just thinks a lot Right, and not that the other boys, like they, don't think and ask great questions and everything else, but he is constantly, ever since he was a little dude and I remember, like you know, singing with them at night and praying with them and kissing them goodnight and walking out of the room and you know, and the two bigger boys were asleep and I thought Knox was asleep too, and so you think you're home free as a parent, is asleep too, and so you think you're home free as a parent, just like you know.
Speaker 2:It's that, it's that wonderful feeling. Everybody's asleep. And as I'm walking out the door I just hear Knox go dad. I turned around. I was like what, buddy? And he's like come here. So I walked over to him and he said if Satan is defeated, why do I still do bad stuff?
Speaker 2:And I was just like, gotta know, man, I'll see you tomorrow, like I did my best yeah, let me just drop you off at church miss renee's gonna no, I it really was, though it was, and it was one of those moments where I was just like sheesh man, like my job is to study and communicate scripture and truths and these kinds of things, and I broke out into a sweat and so we talked about it for a minute and then we did pick it up again the next day, but, but there's a but. There's a lot of those kinds of conversations that kids are asking them you know they want to. You know they want to know.
Speaker 2:And so parents need to like you know, just to give parents going to be. So let me just, like you know, relieve anyone of like feeling like that's the kind of confidence they need. That's it's not, but knowing that they can like comfortably sit in those questions with their kids, you know, and it's OK to, and then and then though, yeah, then to be able to then go and and partner with partner with people at church that do it practically and I don't think I'm shifting gears too hard here, Maybe I am, but practically for you all in your family ministry. How much autonomy does each ministry have in their like program and philosophy? Does that make sense, Like in like their teaching series? Is that, is everybody operating independently but under the same umbrella, or is there like some or like, are you moving through certain things annually together? What's?
Speaker 3:that look like We've made a goal is to create same page series for parents where, no matter preschool through high school, their student will hear the same Bible teaching and that they can all be on the same page and have that kind of a conversation on the way home or at the dinner table at night or through the midweek, with some of the content that we send home with parents for our you know, k through five ministries and so Do you mean like, hold on, I have a, I got to jump in. Do you?
Speaker 1:mean like thematically, like everybody is talking about grace or everybody is talking about sin, or do you mean like you're finding a way to teach Romans eight to three-year-olds?
Speaker 3:A little bit of the More of the first. Okay, but more importantly, I think, where we found the most success is, again, one of our vision targets is to be a church that knows and honors the Bible, and so by doing that, you got to read it, and so we said same page series.
Speaker 3:Super easy. Let's work through the you know book of Job and we're gonna all the whole church we're doing the book of job and it might take two weekends to do it, but we all work through it and then it allows our parents to have um their baseline of knowledge around it and whatever formational experience happened in their service. But then the take-home content that we give. Hey, here's what we did when we walked through this and here's some really cool questions for you to talk about. A same page discovery series.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, sorry, I kind of I feel like I derailed that train a little bit, but was that?
Speaker 2:was that where you were heading? Yeah, that really was. That really was my question, and I love, yeah, talking about just like, what are these, what are our values as a church, how you know, and how does that translate to each area of our ministry? That was really, yeah. How often do you do that?
Speaker 3:It can depend on the year. I want to say this past year, I think, we had eight or 10 weekends that were geared like that that's super cool, which is really neat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's different and again, so I didn't really explain our context in ministry but high school ministry we moved off of doing programs Sunday mornings because we've noticed that a failure to launch a student into the real world was a failure to integrate them into what the real world looked like in church. And so we have a student section, which is cool. It's rowdy, it gets mentioned from our lead pastor because he thinks it's pretty cool too, but we just occupy a section at our 11 o'clock service and we integrate them in a multi-generational experience.
Speaker 2:So it's not weird when they go to college and that's their experience oh too, totally yeah, and and shout out to and and just just because this is a little bit of a soap box of mine, churches, incorporate students into your service let them let them serve in your adult services. Let them serve and that. And please sacrifice professional environments For perfection.
Speaker 1:Whatever your idea of perfection is. Yeah for the sake of discipleship, we did an episode of this podcast with Jeremy Stevenson about students serving. That is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done, absolutely so if you're listening to this and you haven't listened to that, there's a whole conversation about that Cause. That is a huge deal.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, for sure. Yeah, I want somebody to come to Northeast and say do high schoolers run this church?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you can be like, yeah, people serve people. Come on, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, we we've got to wrap up. I've taken up like so much of your time, I know, but I do want to ask you this question what? So two years you've been kind of on this journey of what, and you've been super humble this whole conversation and said I'm still learning, we're still kind of throwing stuff at the wall, we're still figuring this out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What has been, in your mind, the biggest obstacle to like implementing a strategy like this and what would be your like? Because I don't want people to think, you know, we kind of talked about that hypothetical situation where a student pastor goes to coffee with elementary pastor and, uh, preschool pastor and they all sit down and decide, okay, we're going to resource parents really well, and that's great, kumbaya. But what is like a hard thing that you've had to deal with as you've been on this journey?
Speaker 3:That's a fantastic question. Yeah, I mean I can be, you know, pointing it and look at you know it's taken me way too long to write this curriculum. Like this is a frustration. This stuff should be in people's hands right now.
Speaker 1:Um so it takes a great deal of time. That is an important thing to say.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've been working at this for a year, um minus a hard drive crash, which was unfortunate. I've only got four months out of nine months of content that I'm trying to write right now and I'm about to just have to put on the burners and go hard at it for the first quarter and get it ready for summer launch. But I think I would point back to the parents who are just disengaged. It's been the most frustrating.
Speaker 3:The hardest thing to figure out and I think the hardest thing to figure out is the responsibility of the church. What do we own and what is uncontrollable? Yeah, how do we partner with students and provide those mentors, those small group leaders, those adult figures in their life that can have that influence where a parent might be totally absent and don't even care, you know, two rips to the world on what it looks like for them and their kid to have a relationship with Jesus. And it's in a world where church has brought up all the time and deconstructing and all this stuff. Like at some point, parents, I love you so much, reconstruct it for your kid's sake.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Put it back together. Yeah, because at the end of the day, jesus matters more than anything in this world and all we want to do is help, partner with our parents and understand the marriage of what a home and the bride can look like in a beautiful way what absolutely percentage of your parents would, you guess, have like bought into this on some level? We're well over half. I'd'd say that.
Speaker 3:That's so cool it is, yeah, it's, it's really neat to see. So, again, I talked about it earlier, but those parent workshops are probably one of the biggest things and you just got to be able to be vulnerable and confident in your teaching and if you don't feel comfortable, find a teacher to come in and help teach, lean in on your lead pastor. We just walked through human sexuality and we're getting ready to walk through sexual identity and they're hard conversations but it matters because it's relevant to the conversations that are happening at home. And so if you're not able to put yourself in the place of being the parent at home, getting grilled by these questions, or why they can't, or why they shouldn't, or no, you can't be with that person, then you're doing a disservice to your parents. Be vulnerable, be humble, but you can't let your limitations on your knowledge limit the influence and impact that you need to learn to have in those avenues, no doubt.
Speaker 1:Lots to chew on today. Lots to chew on today, John. Thanks a bunch, Lane. Do you have anything else?
Speaker 2:No, just quickly. Resources you mentioned. Preston Sprinkle has some good resources. He's so great. He's so great YMS guest a couple times, which is great. I don't know when. This is Shameless plug before YMS. It is Well then, get registered for YMS 25, because Preston will be there.
Speaker 1:In like two weeks.
Speaker 2:That's okay, we got room.
Speaker 1:We got room.
Speaker 2:San Diego has room. So then, the, but also, like Justin Whitmore Early has a great book called Habits for the Household that are so good, just about creating some of those rhythms and habits within your home that again don't aren't. It's not about having all the answers, about being comfortable sitting in space with your kids and and, and like you talked about, uh, john, is is just like the, the vulnerability and humility of growing together, you know, and of taking and of taking steps together. Um, is just so yeah, so sweet. So, dude, I love it. Awesome man, grateful for your ministry, bro.
Speaker 3:So good. Thank you and for anybody listening. You can reach out to these guys. If you know them, email them, shoot them an email and if they can connect you to me, I would be more than happy to have a conversation. And, if anything, just pray with people and help uplift you.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, I love it, man. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks a bunch, john.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you bro.
Speaker 3:You bet, guys Appreciate y'all.
Speaker 1:Lane, thanks for jumping on that conversation with me. I thought it was so good as a parent.
Speaker 2:I'm not a parent. I'm curious, as a parent, how you felt about that conversation. Oh, it's so encouraging, and I mean, um, the we always say kind of around our house you'll never walk alone. And that is true. We want that to be true of our sons, we want them to know that, but we also want that to be for Kelly and I to know that too. And you're never, you never walk alone in parenting. You never walk alone, because that's what the church is for you can be for you, you know, um, so you're not alone in, um, you know, in the spiritual development of your children. Um, I just think it's, if people will buy into that, then it can be so, so, so encouraging.
Speaker 1:So love what they're doing. Yeah, it seems like they're like laying that out in a really cool way out there too, so anyway, uh, I thought that was a really great conversation. Appreciate you being here for it. Will you Lane close us out by reading our blessing with joy?
Speaker 2:May God show you grace and bless you. May he make his face shine on you. May you experience the love of Christ, through whom God gives you fullness of life. May you be strengthened by his power, through whom God gives you fullness of life. May you be strengthened by his power. May Christ himself make his home in your heart, that you would be full of his love and grace and that those you serve would see Jesus in you.
Speaker 1:Today's episode was produced by Michael Hester, Lauren Bryan and me. Special shout out to guest producer sam fleming for jumping in. Appreciate you, sam. Thanks for being here. Uh, huge thanks to john lee. Huge thanks to lane moss. I thought it was a great conversation. Excited to circle back on this again in a couple of weeks with ann wilson and john luzatter. It's going to be a wonderful conversation. Remember, hey, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can subscribe on YouTube. Whatever you want to do In the meantime, you can reach out to us on the CY community Facebook group or by email at podcast at CYcom. We'll see you next time.