For those of you who work with high school students, we know that it can be a challenge to find a way to connect with their parents. So we’re giving you an easy solution. This is the first of a three part series about stuff for college freshman. Feel free to send this on to the parents of your recent grads as a way to keep the communication open (or send this to the small group leaders of these students, and have them forward it on to the parents). And you’re welcome to take the credit for coming up with the list too….no worries about that.

Be on the look out for Part 2 (STUFF TO BE AWARE OF) and Part 3 (STUFF THAT MAKES A GREAT CARE PACKAGE).

So, for the first installment, here is a short list of necessities for the college-bound freshman with our personal suggestions about each one (you can download the full list by clicking here):

STUFF TO PACK FOR COLLEGE

• FLIP-FLOPS

Community bathrooms mean lots of people use the same shower stalls. We probably don’t need to elaborate on why flip-flops come in handy in that situation. But they’re also great for running down the hall to your neighbor’s room or a late night outing to the sundry store for Diet Coke and a Butterfinger.

• EXTRA-LONG TWIN SHEETS

We’re not sure why this isn’t printed in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the information sheets for freshmen. It should be. And you should get a recorded voicemail message and lots of email reminders too. Most college dorm rooms are outfitted with extra-long twin mattresses so that they work for as many students as possible – especially those college athletes with big appetites. And don’t forget that extra-long twin sheets also means you’ll need an extra-long mattress pad and comforter.
** Since college students are notorious for doing their laundry on a frequent basis (wink, wink), it would be good for their personal hygiene if you provided them with multiple sets of sheets.

• EGG CRATE MATTRESS PAD

Speaking of mattresses, they’re generally not pillow top, extra thick, super duper, plush mattresses. An egg crate will easily disguise them and bring up the level of comfort by several notches.
** If you get to school and are creeped out by the look of the mattress in your room, a plastic, zip-up mattress cover will do wonders and should be available at your local Wal-Mart or Target.

There is a lot more where this came from….download the full list here.

Another hot topic this summer is TRANSITIONS– like a Dr. Seuss book,  how do we get the people in our ministries from here to there?  In the fall, many churches promote– moving kids and students to new rooms or areas, similar to what happens in school.

Watching my son’s elementary camp hosted by the high school basketball team, I had the thought that churches should do something like this too!  He’s been so excited to meet the high school coach (he’s gone to a few games with his dad) and some of his best players helping out. And they are meeting everyday at the middle school he will also attend in a few years. He’s amazingly aware of all this, proudly wearing his t-shirt with the high school emblem, already looking forward to this time in his life.  And when those teenage players show him things to practice at home to get as fast and skilled as they are, you can bet he’s paying attention and trying it at home. Genius!

I wonder what would happen to the slow fade if more student ministries in our churches tried something intentional and fun like this? What if they created some sort of summer program, with specific goals of meeting kids that will some day be students and giving them a sneak peek of what’s to come, even a look at the space where middle school and youth meet?  I bet the excitement would be easy to see.

Dan Scott, a creative children’s minister at Ada Bible church, posted a video created as a teaser for their Student Ministries along these lines.  Check it out on his blog.  What other ideas have you seen or things have you tried to help with transitions between age groups in your church?

John Saddington is a web developer by trade, gifting, opportunity, and choice, has been “doing” online for more than 14 years, first for numerous Fortune 50 businesses and now as the Creative Web Director for North Point Ministries. A social computing strategist and technologist, he enjoys challenging and encouraging others to see how web technology is changing how we do ministry. He blogs frequently at ChurchCrunch.com and Human3rror.com and finds Twitter (@human3rror) both a fun little nuisance and vehicle for connection.

Hear from Kelly Dolan, after attending one of John’s breakouts at Orange ‘10!

Just attended John Saddington’s second workshop today, this one about developing a social media strategy. I love that John is moving people beyond the “here’s how to set up a Facebook page” conversation, and asking them why they want to have a social media presence.

That’s not to say it’s not important at all, and it’s certainly not to say that we shouldn’t be working tirelessly to understand our students, but to what end? Is it enough just to do and say things that feel relevant to our students?

What do you think? What is relevance? How important do you think it is? What areas of our ministries might be most susceptible to an overvaluing of relevance?

The power of story can literally transform people’s lives.

Here a few thoughts from Kelly Dolan, on the power of story…

I’ve said it before, but I never seem to get tired of hearing about the power of story. This morning I attended Mark Matlock’s Real World Parents workshop. Although I know Mark and was already familiar with the content, hearing him talk about the role story plays in the lives of children and students was fascinating. The story students tell themselves, the story they’re told by others, how they discover and find themselves in God’s story … Mark explored how all of it plays a direct role in the development of a student’s life.

Donald Miller also talked about the role story plays in leadership. He kept referring to leaders as “story directors”, emphasizing the importance of story directors giving a clear, compelling goal to those they lead, so that a great story will be told through their efforts.
I loved this idea of leadership as storytelling, and it made me think of how it often goes both ways.

Great leaders give their followers compelling stories, and those who tell compelling stories usually find themselves with a group of followers, intended or not.

What’s your story? Share your story at www.everybodyhasastory.org.

by Michael Bayne

I know you have asked yourself that question! There you are serving in kids, preschool, or student ministry and you look around at the families you lead, the kids you lead, and your volunteer team and you find yourself asking…DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER?

When I invest in this generation does it do any good. We get bogged down with the hurt and brokenness around us and we get frustrated because all the problems seem too large. This morning at The Orange Conference, Chap Clark helped us work through the adolescent maze we face. In Chap’s research he looked at the most influential voices in the lives of teens. You might think that friends landed at the top, or media, or school environment, or socioeconomic status…you would be wrong…look at this list and it is in order of influence!

–Parents
–Non-parental committed adults
–Non-parental non-committed adults AND peers
–Media, Ecology

We always jump ahead and say…MEDIA is influencing our kids, MOVIES are shaping our kids, and FRIENDS are running the show.

The research shows that family and caring adult mentors (that is you church leader / school teacher, athletic coach, mentor!) are the most influential voices that shape the life of a kid or teen!

Wow, that is so encouraging! If you are investing in the life of a family, child, or teen; you are making a difference. You are needed. You are wanted in the lives of teenagers even if it looks hopeless! Please don’t give up. What you do matters!

Believing in parents, is essential for churches and parents to partner together…do we believe this? And if we do, how do we demonstrate this within the walls of our own ministry?

Hear from Kelly Dolan, blogger and Orange attender…

This morning I attended a breakout called Orange-ology, the Teen Years, which was an introduction to the Orange philosophy within student ministries.

As a first-time Orange Conference attender, and someone who has served parents of students over the past few years, I was most interested to hear presenters Stuart Hall and Jarod Herd talk about the role of parents.

One major emphasis was the deep need for youth workers to believe in parents, and how a lack of trust often causes youth workers to take on way too much responsibility for the spiritual development of students. The danger is that we effectively place ourselves in a position reserved only for a parent.

One thing I’m interested in learning more about (perhaps this afternoon?): Given the fact that almost 40% of children will grow up without one or both biological parents in the home, how does the role of the church leader need to change? And, is there an ever-increasing need for a different kind of influence/authority in students lives altogether?

Essentially, is there a role that only parents can play, and will those roles change as the picture of the traditional family changes?

Today’s guest post is by Kimberly Scales. You can read more about her organization FLOOD at www.floodstudentmissions.org. She is leading a breakout at the Orange Conference on transforming a student’s heart through serving.

When I asked some of my students to come with me to the Orange Conference to share with adults their experiences in serving, they were all over it. I love that about students- they love to share their hearts about serving others. They literally light up! Don’t get me wrong, there are obviously those students who don’t have that bent at all and it feels like pulling teeth just to convince them that it will change them. But once we get them there they quickly realize that we kinda knew “what we were talking about.”

We really try our best to prepare their hearts for what they will experience but sometimes we are off the mark. BUT and that is a big BUT, it really isn’t up to us as an organization. We can do our darndest but ultimately it is God who is doing the work and we LOVE that! Just over the last month we have seen some AMAZING things happen in the hearts of our students and with those we serve in the community. We can’t wait to share what God is up to when it comes to students serving and how Orange can be a catalyst to continue that in other ministries.

There is a lot of buzz about the latest book by Reggie Joiner with Abbie Smith and Chuck Bomar, who wrote: The Slow Fade: Why You Matter in the Story of Twentysomethings. You can buy them online at the reThink store or at the Orange Conference in less than 2 weeks! Available from David C. Cook. All 3 of the authors are leading breakouts. Look for them here.

Q: In your book, The Slow Fade, you relay that statistics show somewhere between 65 and 80% of people who grow up in church will drop out of church when they become college-aged. How long has this been going on?
A: The trend of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds disengaging from church and faith has been a growing problem for more than twenty years. While those who are college-aged are increasingly fading out of the picture, mainstream denominations and independent churches are slowly graying and declining in attendance. The sad news is that churches’ strategies to reach these twentysomethings have not significantly adjusted to respond to this issue. When you ask the average church what their plan is for college-aged people, you usually get confused looks. Frankly, twentysomethings are perceived by most leaders in churches as a transient demographic, people who don’t tithe and who need to solidify their faith on their own.

Q: What is happening in the lives of these young people as they begin the “slow fade?”
A: The one thing they have in common is they all are becoming disconnected from their communities of faith. At a time in their lives when their faith should be accelerating, it has begun to dim. At a stage when they’re developing a new network of friends, there is a relational gap. At the moment they are beginning to wrestle with what they thought was certain, they are missing voices they know they can trust. They are fading off the radar of those who were their Christian leaders during the very season when they are trying to solidify what they really believe. It is not intentional on anyone’s part. No one is deliberately orchestrating the fade. It is just out of sight, out of mind. And some of the most influential and promising leaders of faith for the next generation are being ignored and gradually fading from view.

Q: So what is the answer? Is it to simply to create more effective college ministry programs? Or a new breed of college ministries in churches across the country?
A: Not really. The issue is not to reinvent college ministry in the local church, or this book would have simply been written to church staffs or student pastors. Although there are some principles here that translate for the local church, our desire in writing this is to appeal to a different audience. If you are an adult who is interested in influencing the slow fade, we hope this book will mobilize you to build a relationship with someone who is college-aged. The real question is, who has the greatest potential to influence the faith of those who are in their late teens and twenties? Yes, we think it is the church, but more specifically Christian adults who are in the church who have a passion to invest in this age group.
The strategy is simple: Recruit a new breed of mentors to invest time in those who are college-aged.

Q: You write about the value of belonging. What is the importance of helping college-aged people feel connected, feel that they belong?
A: Honestly, most college-aged people don’t know where they belong—especially in the church. If I don’t know why I belong to something, or how I bring unity to some degree, there’s little reason to stick around. To know that we belong—ultimately to God—is arguably the end we were made for and the beginning of being made whole. Though acceptance is often an external (or felt) craving, belonging is the layer that lies beneath. Acceptance is fleeting and arbitrary, whereas belonging is grounded in something more permanent. Belonging stems from the knowledge that I am intrinsically connected to a place, or people, beyond myself. I can dress stylishly, speak eloquently, or excel at something enough to find acceptance. But my acceptance will always be based on something about me—and thus up for grabs when that something changes or falls short. What I need is to be loved based on simply being me.

Q: You make this concept of mentoring sound extremely important, but I’m sure some readers will feel intrigued by the idea but not qualified.
A: Most people we’ve talked to about investing their lives in college-aged adults don’t feel comfortable with the idea. When pressed for a reason, they generally feel the task of mentoring someone is too daunting, that they are underequipped for such an overwhelming responsibility. We believe that is because Christians haven’t defined the role of a mentor very well, or possibly because we never defined it, and someone drew his or her own unrealistic conclusions.

As mentors, we have to be careful that we don’t develop a messiah complex. We can’t start with the self-imposed duty to carry people to a point of completion, a point where we know they will be invincible because they were under our care. If we are honest, that isn’t true of us, so why would it be true of them? We know that we ourselves need the grace of God to become who we need to be, and the same is true of every college-aged person. Ultimately, they need God, not you. And fortunately, God is the one who bears the responsibility to carry someone to completion, not us. So let’s breathe a sigh of relief.

If you’re a student ministry leader, you’ll want to check out a special networking night at the Orange Conference this year.

As we continue to work at partnering with parents in student ministry, we’ve made them 3 promises:

1) We won’t ask you to listen unless we have something to say
We recognize our parents are busy people. If it’s straight information, we try to keep it to paper and email, and we keep it short. We only send an update when we feel we have something that would be important for parents to know. If it’s strategy, or vision casting, we ask our parents to get in a room only for as long as it takes to communicate—even 20 minutes after a service. We’re learning that if parents see we won’t waste their time, they’re more likely to listen.

2) We will be organized
Stereotypically student ministry leaders are not organized. There are lots of different reasons why our ministries tend to struggle to be organized, but we need to overcome them. If parents are willing to trust us with their son or daughter’s heart in a small group setting, or let us transport their “precious cargo” on retreats and trips, we need to prove that we are “on the ball”. The #1 way to do this is to have a track record of being organized. To a certain degree, organization builds trust.

3) We will do our best to provide your student with:

- An adult leader invested in the life of your child saying the same thing a good parent would say
- A group of spiritually challenging peers running in the same direction

Small groups are at the heart of our church from ages 0-99, so we do our best to provide a safe, consistent small group experience for every student who wants one.

What are some of the promises you’ve made to the parents of your students? How have those promises helped your ministry?

I truly believe that prioritizing small groups for elementary-aged children and students is the smartest move you can make in your ministry for short-term stability AND to maximize future growth.

One of the pictures my financial advisor drew when talking about money markets was a rectangle to represent a pool. Living in Texas, I can fully appreciate this analogy and I watched as he filled the box with a lot of little swimming X’s. Then he drew just one lifeguard big O off to the side watching them. He asked if it would be hard for that one adult to keep all those children in the pool safe? We agreed it could be- depending on the age of the kids and their swimming ability.

So then he asked if I would feel comfortable leaving my 2 young children in there with all those other kids while I went away to work on my tan? Well there was no way I’d feel OK about that. He reassured us that when he looked for places to invest our hard-earned money, one of the main criteria was a lot of lifeguards looking after it. He drew more O’s all around the pool and then bigger circles grouping a lifeguard with just a few nearby kids to show who these lifeguards would be watching specifically (like a zone defense in sports). But I can’t get that picture out of my head for our church context as well.

Each week, moms and dads trust us with their most priceless treasures- their children. Keeping them safe is just the beginning. We want to create relational change by asking questions, listening to their thoughts and making regular contributions to their overall sense of worth, belonging and purpose.

In unstable times, it’s wiser than ever to focus on what we can do that doesn’t cost a lot of money but still adds great value to our ministry. There’s nothing to lose by casting vision and training more small group leaders to invest in a mission with such potential. Plus there’s an incredible return on investment- paid in hugs, high fives and hand-drawn pictures! With more leaders strategically placed around our ministries, more personalized attention can be given to each child. And in these safer, smaller settings- spiritual growth can increase at an unbelievable rate.

A creative way to communicate this vision to your leadership and to your entire church community might be to come up with a common everyday coin that can represent the children in your church. Start by figuring out how many adults participate on Sundays compared with the number of children you serve. What’s the percentage? At our church, we discovered that a quarter of the people that attend on Sundays were children. So we passed out quarters one week in the main worship service and asked the congregation to pray for us whenever they held a quarter and to consider investing their time and gifts with us each week. How have you cast vision on the importance of community and small groups? Share your ideas with us.