Suncreststudentlife’s Weblog

Because of the snow we have decided to cancel Student Life Worship tonight.  Based on the forecasts; things are not going to get better.

It is official Suncrest has a new St. John Student Life Pastor, Brendon Foulke.  I am a big fan of bullet points, so I will introduce you to him through some random fact bullet points.  Some will be serious and some will be goofy.

• He is married to a wonderful women, Amanda
• Grew up in Albany, NY
• He is a newlywed…He and Amanda got married in October
• Grew up in New York but hate all New York Sports teams
• Huge baseball fan… loves the Red Sox
• Amanda however is a St. Louis Cardinals fan!!!!!!!!
• His dad and brother are both in ministry
• Slammed his finger in a bathroom door in the first grade
• He loves to play soccer
• Attended Lincoln Christian University with Nash Propst, our Worship Arts Director for the Hobart Campus
• Was in the hospital once during nurses appreciate week, and got on the news
• Cousin is professional baseball player, Kevin Foulke
• Skateboarded as a kid
• Has a brother and 2 sisters
• I knew he could handle the job, when he survived a night with my high school guys community group

His first Sunday at Suncrest will be Super Bowl Sunday, please go out of your way to make him feel welcomed to our church.  I look forward to having him on our staff!

I ran across this article on Yahoo today.  I found it interesting, and thought it would be a good chance to share some advice with parents.  Since I am always telling students how to be better kids, I thought I would take a shot at helping parents be better parents.  Having worked with teens for years I think this is some decent advice.  Please note that it comes from a secular source, so we might not agree with everything, I still think we can learn some things from it.

Let’s face it, friends play an enormous part of our children’s self-esteem and success quotient for life. I’m often asked whether parents really can influence their children’s ability to make friends. My answer is always a resounding: “Yes!” After all, parents can be a tremendous impact on kids’ social lives, but they can hinder and even harm their children’s friendship chances as well.” Here are ten ways parents can rain on their kids’ social parade. (That’s a hint: so watch out, Mom and Dad! Just a few things to think about!)

1. Set a Terrible Example. Do you tell your kids to have good manners, but then verbally abuse your waiter? Do you tell your kids not to talk about people behind their back, and then pick up the phone to gossip? Don’t expect your kids to be a good friend unless you are.

2. Be a Pushy Stage Mom. Do you insist that your shy son have a huge birthday party even though he’d rather invite his one close friend? Have you tried to make play dates for your kid from names on the social page? Don’t think you can muscle your kid into friendships that only you care about.

3. Act Like a Micro-Managing Drill Sergeant. Do you orchestrate every minute of your child’s time with his friends? Do you hover at every play date constantly darting back and forth with some concern? Don’t hyper-parent or prevent your child from gaining his own friendship experiences.

4. Make Your Home as Sterile as an Operating Room. Do your child’s friends feel like they ought to wear white gloves when they come over? Do you insist they take off their shoes and never touch anything? Don’t be so up tight about being orderly that your kid and his friends can’t feel relaxed.

5. Act Like a Brontosaurus. Do you embarrass your kids in front of their friends, by not understanding their language or culture? Do you insist that your kid dress like he’s starring in Grease? Don’t refuse to change when it comes to customs that are really important to your kids and their friends.

6. Put on the Robe and Pick Up the Gavel. Are you constantly criticizing the way your child tries to make friends? Do you eavesdrop on his conversations, and tell him what he should have said? Don’t be critical that you discourage your kid from taking each step towards learning new friendship skills.

7. Stick that Nose in the Air. Are your kids’ friends never good enough for your standards? Do you disrespect, ignore, never take the time to sit down and find out who they really are? Don’t dismiss your child’s friends without appreciating what it is about them that your child values.

8. Be Your Kid’s “Bestest” Buddy. Are you more concerned about your kid’s liking you rather than setting limits? Do you want your kid to be popular that you make your home the most permissive spot on the block? Don’t forget you’re the parent and need to keep up the standards.

9. Chucking in that Towel. Do you feel that no one had to help you with friendship issues, so why should you bother? Don’t assume there’s anyone better than you for supporting your kids’ efforts to learn friendship skills or that he can do it without you.

10. Living in a Little House of Horrors. Do you treat everyone in your family with respect? Do your children want to bring friends home? Are they proud of you and look up to you as their role model? Don’t expect your children to make friends and bring them home if your house is an unhappy place.

The link to the article is http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/are-you-ruining-your-kids-social-lives-567778/

I have the privilege of visiting Amy’s family this Christmas.  Which means I am in beautiful southern Florida, where the over night low was 45 degrees, and now it is 60 degrees out, going to get close to 70 today.  I am sitting at Starbucks working on my sermon for Sunday.  When a women walked into the store with her 5 year old son, wearing a jacket and a winter hat.  I got a picture of him wearing the hat, he had already removed the jacket. Thought you folks up north shoveling snow this week would enjoy the pic!

Calling all high school students.  New Year’s Eve at Suncrest is going to be Epic!!!  You need to sign up soon.  I had a sponsor step forward and told me that if anyone didn’t have the money to attend he would pay for the first 10 students that needed help paying for it!  So if that was your excuse, it is gone.

We are going to have a whole lot of options for you entertainment.

• Inflatables
• Xbox on 100 inch projector screens
• Basketball
• Dodgeball
• Texas Holdem
• Free Coffee
• Free food
• The girls lounge…with stuff girls like to do (I don’t know what that is)
• Oh yeah we are going to start the night off with some awesome worship

The event starts at 10 PM and goes until 7 AM.  The cost is $5 ahead of time and $10 at the door.

One of the parts of Suncrest that I love is our heart and passion for reaching lost people. It is what drives almost all of the decisions that are made. In the last couple of years, Suncrest has become a multi site church as a way to reach out further into our community. The multi site church is an extension of church planting where we will continue to plant campuses in the area to reach people far from God. Over the last year God has placed a passion and desire in my heart to lead the next campus that Suncrest plants. With this, I am announcing that I will be transitioning out of the Student Ministry and into the role as Campus Pastor for our Highland Campus. I will still be on staff at Suncrest, it will just be in a different capacity. We are in the process of finding someone to replace me in the Student Ministry, and we are doing everything possible to make it a smooth transition for all parties involved.

Welcome Mitch!!!

As of December 1st Mitch Wright will be joining the Suncrest staff as the Student Life Worship Intern. Mitch is a Junior at Chesterton High School and is heavily involved in the music department. Mitch has been playing in the Student Life Worship Band since he was in 6th grade. He started out playing bass guitar, then because of his passion for music, he started playing electric guitar when we were in a pinch. As if that wasn’t enough, he started playing acoustic guitar and in the spring of his 8th grade year he lead worship in Student Life Worship for the very first time! Ever since then he has been on our rotation of worship leaders. Mitch and I have had a number of conversations over the years about his desire to be a worship minister…or go into some form of ministry as a career. So, in an attempt to maximize his giftedness and to help Mitch see what a career in ministry really looks like, he has joined our staff. I believe this is going to be a tremendous experience for Mitch to grown and learn and bless Suncrest. When you get a chance, please encourage Mitch and welcome him to the staff.

If you haven’t been in a while, you need to stop by and check it out.  There was some great energy during worship; Robert introduced a new way to start “Song of Hope.”   Students really seemed to be engaged during the message…which is always encouraging.  Community groups  have made such progress recently. They have gotten to the point where the students are really going deeper and doing life together.  We had to break one group up at 8:50 to tell them to go home.

The Christmas Coffee House is December 15th at 7:00 PM.

This Sunday is a pretty big day for Student Life Ministries.  It’s Teen Sunday, and I know for a fact that Jared is a little stressed about it seeing as he has to preach.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure he leaves in a few minutes for St. Louis, for a Cardinals game with his boy Gibson then some family time Saturday morning with his parents followed by a mad dash back to St. John for Chris Hall’s bachelor party only to land back home late and exhausted before catching a few hours sleep to wake up before the sunrise Sunday morning.  Not exactly the calm relaxing prep time one would dream of before the responsibility of engaging hundreds of people for a message on Christ.  Sometimes things are less than ideal.

I use that statement a lot.  The wording is always just a little bit different, but in the end the message is still the same.  For me it’s often an excuse to be less than perfect.  Let me indulge you with some past examples.  My lesson for Team56 didn’t go as well as I hoped… well that’s because the age and demographic of the students is not within my ideal skill set.  The mailer I sent out didn’t quite have that wow effect I desired… well that’s because I had to create it in Publisher which is not the ideal program.  “John Doe” asked me a question about something important… but I was tired and had other things on my mind and some of my relationships weren’t where I wanted them to be, and well… it just wasn’t the ideal time to talk about it.  So I didn’t.

I thought about this, maybe you have too.  It has led me to only one logical conclusion thus far.  The issue isn’t that things are less than ideal.  The issue is I am less than ideal.  It kinda has a distinct feeling of less than adequate doesn’t it?

We are all  creatures of habit and we get thrown for a loop when we change things up.  It is one of the reasons people have such an adverse reaction to change.  Even though it is hard on me, I absolutely love change.  There is an excitement in the air when new patterns are being developed. If the change is the right change, I know that something great will come out of it even if it is weird for me to change my Thursday morning sermon writing time at Starbucks to Monday, I know it is totally worth it!

Questions for thought…

How do you respond to change?

Do you lead with an open mind?

If you are a person that fears change and has a hard time with it, take an hour or two and read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251132483&sr=8-1