troth

This post is quite overdue. But don't worry--I've got another that's even more overdue than this one coming up in the next week or so!

My first weekend of each new year has been blocked out (for the past several years) for this:

This year was quite good. The music was familiar (and not overdone--my biggest pet peeve), the main speaker was funny (as well as able to connect with teens) and the mini seminars were enlightening.

I went to two for leaders and they both seemed to have the same theme: let your teens learn to grow apart from you (meaning parents, but could apply to any adult role model). This means both spiritually and socially, so that when they do leave the home, they're well on their way to being responsible adults. Then they won't go to college, their job or tech school and freak out because they've never had to act like an adult.

Then Jen Hatmaker did a wonderful post on a similar idea. Here's an excerpt:

We are on a spectrum as parents, aren't we? At the beginning, it is full control, total adult responsibility. At the end of the main session, when they crush our hearts and leave for college, we they need to be weaned off. Somewhere in the middle, the needle has to move toward launch. What better place to practice growing up than under our roofs, still protected from total self-destruction by the safety net of childhood? 

I’ve seen older kids babied within an inch of their lives, headed off to higher learning with no clue on how to be resourceful, how to figure it out, how to handle life’s knocks and bruises. Over-protection has its place for, say, kindergarteners, but at some point we need to put down the bumpers on the bowling lane.

A lot of this actually gets started when the kids are young: teach them to start making small decisions for themselves so they understand that they can't live in a vacuum. But this is a side note here.  :grin:

Bottom line? We need to be training. We have to be disciple makers, so that they in turn will become disciple makers. And the phenomenon will continue, making generations of mature, responsible adults, ready to live for Jesus!