Buya and Mission Adelante Wizards Game
August 31, 2009
What: Buya Students (and parents) are invited to go to a Wizards soccer game with the children and families from Mission Adelante for a night of service, fun, and building friendship.
When: Saturday evening, Sept. 19, 5:00pm-10pm
Where: Meet in the Attic at Shoal Creek by 5:00pm for an Intro to the night’s events. Then we will travel as a group down to Mission Adelante’s HQ to meet up with the Mission Adelante families that are going. We will caravan to the Wizards game, then reverse our course when the night’s over.
Cost: Each ticket is $15, which will also get you a drink and a hotdog at the game.
How you and your student can be involved:
- Participate – we need about 20 students to go and 10 parents to chaperone/drive. Families whose parents are willing to drive their students and others will get the first spots because the need for transportation is HUGE for this night to work.
- Sponsor a Ticket – the only way that the Mission Adelante children and parents can go is if we can pay for their tickets because many families do not have the financial means to take their family to an event like this. One ticket = $15
The Buzz – Elevate Info
August 31, 2009
Hey Fams, here’s what you need to know:
Parent Info Meeting MOVED – I didn’t realize it was Labor Day weekend and many parents have already let me know they can’t be there, so we’ll push it to Sun Sept 13th. We’ll still have it in the Attic. Passing out Fall Calendars, Plus talking about costs for the next years activities.
Buya Servant Team Needs – The Buya Servant Team exists to get students more involved in our Buya Activities beyond Sunday mornings. The purpose is to help students understand that doing things for Jesus is just as important as talking about him. The BST needs:
- 10-15 Students to walk for the Eyes on AIDS Run in the Liberty Fall Festival Parade on Sat Sept 25th. Parents needed for this too.
- 10-15 Students to help with the Eyes on AIDS Water Stations, and 3 Parent supervisors. (October 3rd)
- Next BST Meeting at 10:45am Sun Sept 13th – We need to put together gift bags for the Mission Adelante children and families.
Please contact Justin Talley if you or your student is free to help out with any of the activities listed above. (justin.talley@shoalcreek.org)
The Buzz – Elevate Info
August 24, 2009
Hey Families, here’s what you need to know:
1. Lake Day has been resheduled for this coming Friday night the 28th. Details in the post below.
2. Student/Parent Meeting on Sun Sept 6 – Directly following second service, if you are a student or parent of a 6th-12th grader, please plan on attending a 20 minute meeting up in the Attic. We will be covering:
- Fall Calender – all the planned events for Sept-Dec
- Student Serving Day Sept 19th – Buya and Crash each have their own
- Planning for next summer’s camps and trips – even though we just got out of last summer, we have to begin to plan for next. Spots fill up quickly and we need to begin collecting deposits soon.
3. Buya Servant Team Meeting Sun Aug 31st, 10:45am in the Wonka Hall – Focus: Eyes on AIDS run and how your Buya student can be involed. We need students to volunteer to walk in the Liberty Fall Festival Parade, run two water stations at the race, and pick up trash.
Please send and email to justin.talley@shoalcreek.org for any questions you may have, thanks!
Lake Seba Day RESCHEDULED for Friday the 28th
August 17, 2009
Buya (6th-9th) Students and Families, THINGS HAVE CHANGED, read new details below:
Buya students and families can meet at the Church, in the back, at 5:45pm. Buya Leaders will be there to lead you out if your whole family is going, or if you’re driving. If your student wants to go and needs a ride, we can provide one if you let us know ahead of time. We’ll meet back at the church, in the back, at 9:30-10ishpm for pickup. Cost is $5/participant. Bring your own swim stuff.
Crash (10th-12th) Students:
Cost is $5 for you too.
Meet at the church (in the back) at 5:45pm. Bring sleeping bag, pillow, any camping stuff and swim stuff. We’ll be back at the church in the morning around 11:00am or so. You’ll get to have the lake all to yourselves that morning.
Email justin.talley@shoalcreek.org if you have any questions.
“The Hurried Child and a Culture of Abandonment”
August 14, 2009
Some quotes that stuck out to me this week while reading the third chapter in Chap Clarks’s Hurt.
Parents are under more pressure than ever to overschedule their children and have them engage in organized sports and other activities that may be age-inappropriate.
We have evolved to the point where we believe driving is support, being active is love, and providing any and every opportunity is selfless nurture.
We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together.
We have lost the ability to spend unstructured down time.
I started competitive “try-out” football when I was eight. I remember driving 45 minutes to practice (each way) three nights a week. We’d leave at 5:00pm and get home at 9:00pm my 3rd-8th grade years. I can remember being small enough to fall asleep completely suited up in my football gear on my dad’s faux-leather truck-bench seat each night as we drove home, my cleats touching the door and my head in my dad’s lap. My parents spent as many hours taking me to practice and games and award ceremonies as any parent could. Not just for football either. I started wrestling when I entered kindergarten at five. A lot of time spent there, too.
It paid off, though. By the time I was a senior I was a 3-time all-state wrestler, 2-time all-state football player, 4.0 student, with pretty much a full-ride to Northwest MO State and an invitation to walk-on and play football for the 2-time national champion Bearcats. I remember my dad putting a Bearcat paw sticker on his work lunchbox, a red and white igloo that he took to construction sites with him. I had a matching paw on my truck.
Then, about nine months later, after I told my dad I wasn’t playing football anymore, I remember him not talking to me for a month. I remember being home for summer vacation after my freshmen year in college and how he’d walk up the stairs, through the living room, and stay back in his bedroom for the night until it was time to go to bed without saying “hi” to me or asking me how my day was. I confronted him about it halfway through the summer. He told me it wasn’t anything personal, he just felt like we didn’t have anything in common anymore since I was done playing football, and that he just really couldn’t think of anything that was the same anymore in our relationship.
I think that experience sums up a lot of what my generation, and the generation of current teens, feels. Loss. Aloneness. Abandonment. My parents spent hours and hours and hours on me (not to mention cash), trying to help me develop into a successful young man, and at the proverbial end of the day, my dad felt like we didn’t have anything in common anymore.
We spent tons and tons of time together, but the time was so shallow because the time we spent pursuing my sports career wasn’t really about me–it was about what I was doing; it was about making me into a more “successful” person. My life revolved around football. My identity was being a football player. We talked about how to tackle and block correctly, who we thought had the best chance of making the team, but not about how my heart was doing. So when the centralizing principle in my life finally was over, he didn’t know how to ask me how my day had been.
Being involved in sports, drama, music, and academics is important for our teens, but only if we can balance that with unstructured relational time with no agenda. A thirty minute, unstructured walk in the park with ice cream to follow is probably worth about ten times more to an adolescent than 3 hours worth of practice.
There is no formula, there is no ratio, but if you’re a parent reading this, do me a favor. Make two vertical columns in your head or on a piece of paper. In one, add up all the time you spend with your teen doing anything that’s considered structured or organized (sports, dance, cheer, arts, even studying together or driving them places, AND TV time as a family–that’s all structured with an already existing agenda that needs to be accomplished or achieved). And you know what to add up in the other–unstructured, relaxed, free, unplanned relational time.
Is there a difference between the two numbers? If so, are you happy about that? I do hope that when I’m a parent that I can at least come close to making them the equal. If I had to guess right now, I think equal would be a good thing to shoot for, though I could be wrong about that too.