Turkey Olympics Information
October 28, 2009
Turkey Olympics ’09 Registration – You can register by getting the Student Information to Justin ASAP! Or by creating your own team and registering online yourself.
Justin Talley – justin.talley@shoalcreek.org or 816-510-3859
Register on your own at: www.lifestudents.net
Event Info: 300 students, 30 frozen turkeys, a glorious day of competition! There’ll be Turkey Bowling, Turkey Shuffleboard, Turkey Shot Put, Turkey Pillow Toss, Cranberry Chucking, and that’s just half the action!
Date: November 29th
Time: registration begins at 5:30, closing ceremony at 8
Where: Pleasant Valley Baptist Church youth area
Cost: See below in guidelines for teams
Who: Any student currently in one of the 5 sponsoring youth groups
Time: registration begins at 5:30, closing ceremony at 8
Where: Pleasant Valley Baptist Church youth area
Cost: See below in guidelines for teams
Who: Any student currently in one of the 5 sponsoring youth groups
Student Information – Fill Out and Send Back
Student Name –
Grade –
School –
Parent/Guardian Name –
Phone Number –
Email (used for announcements) –
List any names of teammates if you have a preference (no promises):
Each student team needs one adult sponsor to participate, are you/your parent willing to be an adult sponsor? Yes or No____
Adult sponsors are responsible for assisting the students and other volunteers throughout the event.
The guidelines for teams:
- Must have at least 8 people on the team but no more than 10 PLUS one adult sponsor to complete registration form.
- Your registration “fee” is to provide your own turkey-8-12 pounds FROZEN plus 3 of the following items per team to be donated to Freedom House (any combination-3 of the same or 3 different)
-
- Children’s DVD-G rated
- One new unwrapped toy
- Towels-must be NEW
- You can mix teams with students from different churches. Your team does not have to be all from the same church.
Registration will be limited to the first 30 teams so don’t wait too long!
Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 teams (MAY include movie passes, restaurant gift cards, trips to Paris…)
The Buzz – Elevate Info
October 21, 2009
1. Halloween Bash this Sunday – 5:00-7:00pm, games, prizes, family fun! Maybe the biggest event Shoal Creek does all year! (Click for more more info)
2. The Red Stuff Book Orders - I will be ordering copies of book that accompany our next 10-week series in our Buya Small Groups called “The Red Stuff”. the book has enough devotionals in it for a student to have 2-3 different quiet times a week, and it could be really cool if parents could do one together a week with their student. If you want a copy, please let me know. They are $6 a piece. You must email justin.talley@shoalcreek.org to RSVP a copy. (Click to see before you buy)
3. Calendar Change/New Event – The Turkey Olympics – We are changing our November event from a Buya Hayride, to a bigger, 5-church-wide event call the Turkey Olympics to take place Sun Nov 29th, 5:30-8:30 at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church. Fist 30 teams to register get in. You must have a 8-10 person team. We’re expecting a 300-student crowd, so be sure to register NOW if you want to participate, because Pleasant Valley, Liberty Christian Fellowship, Liberty United Methodist, and Desparation Church are all registering now too!
So, no Hayride on the the 14th of November, instead, we’re having Turkey Olympics on Nov 29th. Go to the official website (Click here for official website) and have your student find 8-9 friends and get signed up soon. Each team is required to have one adult sponsor be there the entire time. Entree fee is the cost of your 8-12 lbs. turkey (yes, there’s an official weigh-in!), and also some items to donate to local charities (list on official website). Students DON’T have to be on a team with students in their own church’s youth group.
What Then Do Teens Need?
October 14, 2009
Here are some definitive assessments and concluding statements on what exactly teens need, from Chap Clark in Hurt. The last chapter, after this one, will focus on five strategies for “turning the tide of systematic abandonment”.
1. Youth need re-focused, nurturing organizations and programs. “Nurturing” is the key word there. Most organizations and programs that exist for our teens are designed to make our teens successful, and not on nuturing our teens. There is a difference. Because we base “success” on measurable achievement (i.e. playing time, grades, amount of involvement in extracurricular activity), our teens are under too much pressure, over-taxed, and relationally starved. And when our teens, by the fore-mentioned definition, fail to be “successful” our organizations and programs fail our teens altogether.
Our programs (church included!) need to redefine what goals we have set for our youth, and seek to understand whether our goals for them are in our best interest, or theirs.
2. Youth need a stable and secure loving presence. This is referring to the family environment. When a teen does not live in a safe, stable family environment, their survival instincts will kick in, forcing them to build protective walls against the pain that their family members could potentially inflict. It’s extremely important to realize that our families and homes do not have to be obviously dangerous to still not be safe. Physical danger, aggressiveness, abuse–these are all the real, yet stereotypical signs of an unsafe home. Other factors that make a home unsafe in just as dangerous ways include: over-scheduling and busyness, lack of curious parents/parent figures that ask questions and get to know their sons/daughters, in-authenticity, lack of boundaries, to name a few.
A safe home environment is built by a committed parent/parent figure that genuinely desire to understand the full depth of their son/daughter. With that understand can come an empathy that makes the relationship more meaningful and fulfilling.
3. Youth need to experience authentic, intimate relationships with adults. Raising youth and helping teens enter healthily into adulthood takes more than just the nuclear parents. It takes deep, meaningful, consistent interactions with adults in the community.
From Clark: The only way we can stem the tide of the consequences of abandonment is to encourage a wide variety of adults to take part in the lives of the young. Nothing else will make a difference–not more baseball fields, more programs and events, or more job opportunities…the answer is relationships with adults who sincerely care. That is the sole need of this abandoned generation.
Why “Party” is Important in the Lives of Our Adolescents
October 13, 2009
The answer to this is surprisingly obvious, and it brings with it a disappointment in my heart as an adult because I think we could definitely do something about it.
Some quotes from Chap Clark, in Hurt:
Parties are not about the party but about the longing for community.
…everyone needs to belong to a story larger than their own.
Adolescents are hungry for a transcendent experience that provides meaning, hope, adventure and carefree celebration.
We have taught our young that they need a mind-numbing substance to find the courage to relate to one another, and we have created a structure in which we advertise their need for it and provide access to it. (mainly meaning that a teen cannot escape desiring alcohol because of an alcohol-drenched society, expressed through TV, Movies, Music, Media, and the adults they see abusing alcohol on a regular basis)
Our teens are over-extended in their desire to party because of how deeply they long for true community. Their deep desire to relate in meaningful ways to the people and world around them makes them excited to just plain get together with the people they enjoy. Teens have a natural desire to celebrate life and enjoy their experiences.
I’m trying to think about what this means to me in an applicable way when relating with teens. I think it means that the teens I know, and my adult community knows, would be less likely to put themselves in potentially harmful situations if I/my adult community could feed their need for celebration. And celebration ought to be easy for me to provide for a teen since I am a Christ-follower.
Teens gravitate to the Party Scene because it promises to give them a chance to express themselves freely, without condemnation, in the presence of the people they care about. Teens will never be able to overcome their desire to “party” because it’s a natural, God-given desire. All of us desire to freely express ourselves in meaningful community. That’s the definition of party right there.
When’s the last time you, me, whatever family you’re in, has celebrated together in a meaningful way?
Examples: going to your favorite sports game together, gone out to the movies on a family night, had a game night at home, gone to a concert together? Celebration is about letting down walls and freely relating and enjoying each others’ presence.
Creating celebration opportunities as a family and community healthily feeds the party animal that rightly exists in our teens.
Teen Ethics and Morality
October 5, 2009
There is one thing to be understood about teen morals, teen ethics, and the internal right vs. wrong struggle that teens navigate through. The cornerstone in a teen’s ethical foundation is this: Self-protection. Avoidance of negative outcomes, in friendships and in family.
A quote from Chap Clark in his book Hurt: All students…when they find themselves in a position in which a lie would be the easiest route to self-protection, will lie just as easily as the next kid.
Another: [...teens] believe they must be in a constant mode of self-protection. A strong survivalist mentality exists just under the surface for many students, affecting their ability to move toward more advanced stages of development, especially moral development.
Our teens are growing up in a world where Trust is a luxury. The constantly shifting landscape of “who is going to love them”, the lack of stable, long lasting and healthy relationships in their lives, has given our teens an uncanny, Darwinistic ability to interact with choices in a survival of the fittest mode. “Protect self at all cost.” Just like a starving man steals a loaf of bread, the choice to lie, or cheat, or whatever does not seem wrong, but justified, to a teen.
In other words, to a teen, a lie might be a lie, but if they are lying to keep from getting hurt, then it’s ok to do. A lie, in and of itself, is not seen as inherently wrong. If you’re lying to hurt someone, that’s different; that’s wrong. But if you lie to keep from getting grounded, or if you lie so that your teacher doesn’t find out that you cheated, then that doesn’t really hurt anybody and that’s ok.
I just want to bridge that trust gap. That’s what I feel driven to. Students lie, and have an increasingly eroding moral foundation because they don’t feel they have trustworthy relationships to lean on. They believe their worth depends on themselves, the image they can create for themself. So many students are afraid to really be themselves that they have to lie to keep up their image, to friends and adults.
If only we could create a community where students didn’t feel like they have to lie to be loved. If only our students were so confident in our relationships with them that they felt the freedom to tell us when they’ve failed and not make excuses for where they’ve fallen short.