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The Landing

August 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Steven is gone this week, he’s a cabin leader at Saddleback Church’s Junior High Summer Camp, keep him in your prayers. I’m sure next week you will be reading on this blog about his week. In the mean time you will be hearing a lot of my voice this week.

 This week at Saddleback Church we are hosting a yearly conference for our Celebrate Recovery ministry. Celebrate Recovery is a program developed here at Saddleback by Pastor John Baker. Celebrate Recovery is a biblically based program for overcoming addictions, hurts and hang ups. It has a huge success rate. There are thousands of churches all over the world who use this program and we generally have about 3,500 people attend this conference. It gives me a chance to talk to people from all over the country who have come to Saddleback for this conference.

About two years ago Celebrate Recovery launched a recovery program that is designed for teenagers called, “The Landing”. If your church is not using this program I would encourage you to look into bringing it to your church. I’ve talked with students here at Saddleback who attend our program and most if not all of them have had success with this recovery program when they have failed with others. I think the reason for success in this program is simple; it’s biblically based and brings God into the healing equation.

Programs like The Landing are great for students because they see they are not alone, that there are caring people who have been through struggles of their own and they are there to help them. It also shows them that they are not the only one who struggles with an addiction, a hurt or a hang up of some kind. I think often times teens think no one else is going through or has gone through what they are dealing with.

This is also a great serve opportunity for adults looking to volunteer at their church. It’s your opportunity to use a hurt in your life and help a student avoid the same pit falls.

 

 

Filed Under: Counseling, Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Reaching out – How do we get students to see the spiritual consequences of sin?

June 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As a precursor, my post today isn’t so much informative as it is inquisitive.

In my group this year, my co-leader and seem to have come to an impasse. I feel that we have talked week after week to our students about what sin is, how to recognize the sin and struggles they have in their lives, and how important God is in helping heal those hurts and overcome the sins. Sometimes when things get rough they see that they need to ask for prayer about their particular hurts, but it usually takes an extreme circumstance to get them to that point.

We’ve been wrestling with the following struggle: how do we get the boys to make the connection between knowing what sin is, and actually caring that sin isn’t a good thing in their lives? That might come across sounding strange, but that’s where we’re at. The guys know and recognize sin, but they haven’t quite gotten to the point that they care about what God wants.

When we take a step back and look at the big picture, I think they’re more concerned with “real world” consequences rather than “spiritual” consequences. They’re worried about what would happen if their parents, their teachers, etc., got involved in the consequences of their sin, not their God.

My question to you is this: How do we bridge that gap? How do we get past this point where they miss the fact that their sin isn’t pleasing to God, and that they need to do something about it?

If you’ve run into this in the past, or if you have any practical advice, I’d love it if you would leave your response in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Youth Ministry Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,