You probably want to read the whole article but here’s how the end of up comes together. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE.

“What forms a child’s view of God? Usually their relationship with their parents, Merryman writes:

When parents are more supportive of a child’s autonomy – giving her a sense that she is control of her own life – a child is more likely to see God as a more forgiving God. God is an authority figure to be respected, but he is less fearsome.

On the other hand, if parents are extremely strict and punishing – dictating every moment of a child’s life – their children are more likely to believe that God is punishing, angry, and powerful. Girls are more affected by this dynamic than boys, and the way Mom disciplines has more of an affect in this direction than the way Dad does.

And for children who have extremely strained relationships with parents – or when a parent is absent from their lives – scholars have found that children in those relationships increasingly think of God as a surrogate parent. God as the ultimate father figure. They endow God with the traits of an idealized version of the missing parent – someone who is caring, attentive, and highly involved in their day-to-day lives. He’s an understanding, patient confidant, always there to offer encouragement and support.

And, it would follow, at the age that a child’s relationship with his parents becomes most turbulent, so does his relationship with God:

In a recent study by Clark University professor Lene Arnett Jensen, conservative Protestant adolescents had some very mixed things to say about God.

The God of adolescents is judgmental, disapproving, and unforgiving. He isn’t very loving. His supernatural gifts are akin to those of the devil. On the whole, adolescents seem more negative – almost hostile– to God than at any other time in their lives. (Sounds to me like their God is a cross between a parent, a popular mean girl, and a college admissions officer.)”

Is this sobering for any?  It’s pretty sobering to me and I’m thankful I’m just getting started in the parenting game!

BUT at the same time wonder if any students that’s ministered to over the years shape their view of God on me.  Scary and CRAZY to think about!

“Do you expect friends to get angry at people you’re fighting with? That kind of loyalty isn’t part of a healthy friendship. Conflict is scary & lonely, but it’s yours, not your friends’. Get sympathy, not support. Asking friends to have your back ups the drama & puts them in an unfair position. Stay classy & keep it one-on-one.”

This is from RACHEL SIMMONS, she has a great blog with great insights, Check her out HERE.

Teen plastic surgery may or may not be on the rise — this piece doesn’t exactly say. But the fact that roughly 3,000 girls under 18 had breast augmentations last year is pretty interesting:

Are parents really saying yes so teens won’t go behind their backs? Or is it just becoming more normalized in our culture? (ABC News)

Here’s an excerpt from the ABC article:

Most teens love the mirror, spending hours in front of it experimenting with hairstyles, makeup and fashion. But thousands of them are so deeply dissatisfied by what they see each year that they try to permanently change the image reflected in the glass; through plastic surgery.

“I have really low self-esteem,” Caitlin Clemons, 18, said in the days before her breast augmentation surgery.

Watching her mother and sister gain confidence after undergoing their own breast enlargements convinced the Galveston, Texas, woman that the surgery could do the same for her.

“Once I saw how happy she was, I knew I could be that happy,” Clemons said of her sister. “I’ll have confidence. It definitely made me want the surgery more. Once my mother got hers and I saw it can be done, it really clicked in my mind that I can do this.”

See the full article HERE.

I was catching on reading and saw this article that wasn’t new news to me but was a helpful reminder. Part of the findings in this study are some of the reasons i love working with students and part of the reason a TON of people aren’t wired up to work with them.

This is curious to me sometimes because some people say middle schoolers drive them nuts but they have kids who are in, or will be in middle school, not sure how that plays itself out in the home but it’s interesting for me to think about. If somebody can shed light in this it would be helpful to me.

Here’s part of the article from :

“GUMC researchers have indicated that aging changes how people view themselves and others through ‘mind wandering’.

Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have shown why children and young adolescents veer toward the egocentric rather than the introspective.

In findings the researchers say that the five scattered regions in the brain that make up the default-mode network (DMN) have not started working in concert in youngsters aged six to nine. These areas light up in an fMRI scan, but not simultaneously.

The DMN is only active when the mind is at rest and allowed to wander or daydream. This network is believed to be key in how a person introspectively understands themselves and others, and forms beliefs, intentions, and desires through autobiographical memory.

By ages 10 to 12, the researchers found that these diffuse regions start functioning together as a unit, and at ages 13 to19, they acted in concert, just like they do in adults.

“These results suggest that children develop introspection over time as their brains develop,” said the study’s first author, neuroscientist Stuart Washington, who will be presenting the results.

“Before then they are somewhat egocentric, which is not to mean that they are negatively self-centered, but they think that everyone views the world in the same way they do. They lack perspective in that way.”

The rest of the article lists a case study and can be found HERE:

USA Today published this earlier this year but I wanted to bring it back to our attention after finishing the #AND10 Conference.  This is the culture we live in and we’re called to contextualize the Gospel to a more superficial, more informed, more stressed out youth culture.  I say BRING ON THE CHALLENGE!

Neilson wire brought some awesome stats to the table that confirms what we all most likely already know.  Still fun to have proof!

“If it seems like American teens are texting all the time, it’s probably because on average they’re sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month. That’s more than six per every hour they’re awake – an 8 percent jump from last year. Using recent data from monthly cell phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers as well as survey data from over 3,000 teens, The Nielsen Company analyzed mobile usage data among teens in the United States for the second quarter of 2010 (April 2010 – June 2010). No one texts more than teens (age 13-17), especially teen females, who send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per month. Teen males also outpace other male age groups, sending and receiving an average of 2,539 texts. Young adults (age 18-24) come in a distant second, exchanging 1,630 texts per month (a comparatively meager three texts per hour).”

“Texting is Easier and Faster than Voice Calls
All of this texting activity has come at the expense of voice. Last year, teens texted instead of calling because it was fun. Now, 78 percent of teens recognize the functionality and convenience of SMS, considering it easier (22 percent) and faster (20 percent) than voice calls (though still fun). Voice activity has decreased 14 percent among teens, who average 646 minutes talking on the phone per month. While voice consumption rises and peaks at age 24, only adults over 55 talk less than teens. Teen females, who are more social with their phones, average about 753 minutes per month, while males use around 525 minutes.”

I was browsing my blogs and found my buddy Adam’s post on Katy Perry’s Fireworks video and LITERALLY he said what I’ve hesistated saying/posting for a few days now!  Thanks for having the guts and wisdom to post this and present it the way you did bro!  If you don’t know yet, Adam’s a GENIUS in the youth min and youth culture world.

ABOVE is the video and here is a sample of what Adam said,

I want to encourage youth workers to watch this video twice. Watch it the first time with your adult glasses on. Get annoyed that there are fireworks shooting out of her chest or two boys kissing or even that a girl strips down and jumps in a pool.

Those are the things you are trained to see as an adult.

The second time, put on the glasses of a high school student. Remember what it was like to be one of the people portrayed in the video. Feeling out of sorts. Feeling unpopular. Feeling isolated from the world you wanted to be a part of.

Perhaps now you can see why this message is so powerful? (More than 500,000 views in 24 hours!) Perhaps, just perhaps, Katy Perry is preaching a message you’d also like to get across?

Maybe she’s a prophetess to a generation? (And doing it outside of being a part of the church? Gasp.)…

PLEASE GO HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE BRILLIANT POST!!!

It might be time for us “church-folk” to re-open our eyes to culture and see what nuggets of truth we can learn from all over the place.  God can teach us through anyway…sometime we forget that don’t we?

NOTE: I believe this post will be beneficial for parents as well as youth workers.

After THIS POST I got some emails on Facebook about if we should even consider pop culture as something worth concerning ourselves with.  One guy saying, “who cares what they do, WE’RE the Church”.

Here’s my public response (I’d love to get your thoughts on this topic too)

I completely agree that we’re The Church and there is some level of Pop Culture is stupid inside of me too but I default to this question “who is God calling us to reach?”  If we are The Church then we must understand that our nature as The Church is to be “sent” by God into the world to transform and change the world (the Great Commission).  If that’s the case, we can’t completely dismiss it and it’s likely that we should know something about it!!!

If you’re going to become a missionary into any land, you should understand a significant amount about that land before you just go there start say I’m here to tell you about Jesus or start reciting the 4 spiritual laws.  The Gospel needs to be contexualized (NOT CHANGED) for every environment we walk into.  This is proven in that IF, the ‘one size fits all’ approached worked…most of Americans would be ‘fully devoted followers of Christ’ but since that’s not the case, it’s highly likely that us Western Churches better figure out how to bring the Gospel into every environment even Pop Culture circles.  So as a Western missionary to the youth of America, I am learning all I can about what our students are seeing, hearing, being sold, and buying so that I have a better understanding about how to reach them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not to mention, It’s a battle we HAVE to fight and if we choose not too, seems we’ll end up being yesterdays news.  The church who says, “It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world…” is the church that is completely irrelevant to the younger generation.  I’m not saying we need to BE the world because that’s utterly ridiculous but what I am saying is that we need to know “the world” that we’re ministering too.

Jesus knew exactly who he was talking to and what stories (Parables) they needed to hear to understand heavenly truths about God the Father…I don’t know about you but I want to do ministry/church the way Jesus did!  He was always On-Mission, fought with His Sword (The Bible) , shared His life, spoke in a language people could understand and died for The Cause.

That’s inspiring.

What are your thoughts on this topic as a whole?

13 year old Haley Reardon writes music about what she sees around her and made an album about it.  One of her songs she wrote about bullying and this fall, “the Pacer National Center will distribute the song and lyrics to more than 500 schools as part of their bullying curriculum.”

CHECK OUT THE REST OF HER STORY HERE.