So yesterday was an exciting day. It was our last day of exams which meant half day and the day before a 4 day weekend!
It also meant something that I need to hold off on telling here just yet... (I'm not pregnant for any who thought it.)
and I went to a Josh McDowell seminar on building relationships with teens to try to build in them convictions. It was very very awesomely good. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who wants to work with teens, is working with teens, who is a parent, or who wants to be a parent.
The meat of the seminar was in two parts--1 part was knowing why you believe in the truth of Jesus and the Bible--for reasons other than faith, or feeling, belief, and such. It was a presentation of the evidence that convinced him of the Bible's truth way back when--the historiography, otography (i think that's the word for studying manuscripts), and from the eyewitness accounts and how many of the eyewitnesses were tortured and killed because they would not deny the Truth. Who dies for something they would know was a lie? therefore, they knew it was not a lie.
The second part of the seminar was about the 7A's of building relationships with your children. This really struck me as something I need to write down and have with me at school--because his premise was that "rules without relationships only leads to rebellion". I hope the inspiration sticks with me--but I really wanted to ask him what to do as a teacher with 70-100 students and how to build relationships with them in order to not have the rebellion in a classroom. Some kids it's easy. Others.....not so much. I can use the principles he gave to parents, but some of them I can't use to the same extent...or in the same way really.
But really. Do try to get to one of these seminars if you can. I think it was called "face 2 face" but I'm not sure. The seminar was in response to recent polls showing that teens who claim to be evangelical Christians aren't much different form their non Christian peers in cheating, lying, stealing, and violence. Also, in response to the fact that only 4% of Christian teens say there is absolute truth apart from themselves. There were some other scary data numbers too. Again, try and get to one. I also have some book titles written down that would give the same information and more than he presented. I'll let you know how those are when I get a chance to get them and read them.
Posted by Anna at January 19, 2008 12:14 PM | TrackBack