Sexual Purity Rings

So here is the thought. It’s been toooooo loooooong since being on here. But life has been a bit busy…..ok, it’s been veeeeeeeerrrryyyyy busy. So much so that I can’t find the time to be on here much. However, I will keep this going. This is a long term deal that I am working on. So thanks to friends for their patience.

The thought is just to share with you all that teen ministry rocks. I got to speak this week to our teens and I had just finished the book (audio version, unabridged) Purpose Driven Youth Ministry. I will certainly be rereading that many times over. But toward the end, in a disciplining section, Doug talked about something he did when he first started at Saddleback to begin with a tone of respect.

He got up and told the kids that after the songs they were free to go if they didn’t want to be there. No one would be angry with them or take their names down. They wouldn’t be forced to listen to him. But he believed in the Bible with all his heart and in what he has to say about it. So if they chose to stay, he is taking that as a commitment from them to hear him out and participate by listening.

Now he said that very few ever left. And there was an air of respect and level of respect that was raised as a result of that. Now we have had issues with lots of chatter during our lesson times. And lot’s of cues by staff to teens to basically shush or leave. A lot of distraction basically. So I thought I would give this a try.

I am ashamed to admit that I had lower expectations of a few teens in particular, and apparently higher than applicable for a few others. I gave them the same deal. I had talked with the rest of the staff before hand to get their opinion on it and to make sure that they would be able to help supervise those that left. Out of about 25 kids, only 2 or 3 actually left. 1 I was sure would, and 1 I was actually surprised at (but didn’t show it).

On with the lesson. All this year I had been doing a sex and porn series. My own material, nothing new as it says in Ecc. “nothing new under the sun”, just gathered and assembled stuff. But I ended the series with the same lesson and slides that I began it with back in the winter. And this time around, we focused on different aspects of the same lesson. Really cool how God does that. We ended with a 2 commitment decision time. 1-salvation. 2 teens claimed it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The other commitment decision was to sexual purity til marriage. Not just saying it, but showing it by he wearing of a “True Love Waits” ring.
14 teens stayed upstairs to make this commitment. They were told that as of that moment, no matter what their past was, if they accepted Christ then or ever before, they were starting with a clean record. The last slide of the lesson was Clips from The Passion of the Christ, set to “East to West” by Casting Crowns.
We have 2 teen couples with a baby each. Another couple that can’t seem to keep their hands off eachother. So a very appropriate lesson, challenge, and commitment.

Please pray for these teens and any others that may do this. They will be tempted heavily and more so now that they have made this commitment. We are going to challenge them often and check on them randomly. We are hoping to get parents and families involved in this as well and are praying that God will allow this to be used to draw their families and friends to Christ and into the church.

REVIVAL STARTED IN HARPURSVILLE BACK DURING VBS WEEK……AND WE ARE PUSHING HARD FOR IT TO CONTINUE AND SPREAD. PRAY WITH US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PRAISING GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!