in an email dialogue with the parent of a teenager several weeks ago, we were talking about how amazing her kid is. and she wrote this:
My prayers for him before he was born were too small.
something really struck me about that. something about my own children, and all the kids i work with in youth ministry. something wonderful, and something challenging. i think i need to re-evaluate how i pray for liesl and max, in particular. as well as how i pray for lex, zach, matt, aaron, bryan, brandon and shane, the guys in my 7th grade guys small group.
I once had a talk with an empty nester parent and he told me, “I pray more now for my kids because it’s all I can do for them and I wish I had prayed like this for them when they were younger.”
makes me think about how i pray for caedmon
[men don’t cry, men don’t cry, men don’t cry!]
Marko, that wraps up all of my hopes and fears I have over my son and feeds it back to me as a bitter pill. How can I ever pray for my son (or all my kids) nearly enough.
Dude, you continually amaze me in how you lead your small group. THank you so much for being intensely faithful. Thank you so much for leading well. THank you so much for caring for the parents AS WELL as the students. I want to be a small group leader like you! Thank you for being an outstanding leader in our Middle School Ministry!
Marko,
I don’t know if you caught any of Willow’s Shift student ministries conference a few weeks ago. [I was lucky to be invited to be a virtual guest blogger…] Donald Miller the author gave a talk and one of the points he has made that has stuck with me since then is that we need to call our students into a much larger epic story. he told this great story of a guy he knew figuratively moving his family from mere existence to rescuing a piece of humanity. Kind of the same very cool idea as your conversation.
Hey Mark,
Came to your site through Pauls.
So glad that he had a link here. Our family is on the field here in the UK from the US doing church planting among South Asians. We made the move a year ago with our three kids (ages 7, 8 and 13). I have enjoyed reading through some of your posts and will be back. What a gift to be working with middle schoolers. I definitely miss resources like this for my daughter and for myself as a parent…you can’t find them here like you could in the States.
Thanks for sharing your gifts!
Take care….