Friday, October 17, 2008

High School Parents - Discuss!

Alright Parents...here you go... Here is a copy of the notes that I sent you in email already. Read and add your comments into the discussion thread!

Here are the basic notes from our Senior High Parent’s Meeting on Sunday, September 28th. I encourage you to read through it and reply back to the entire group with additional ideas or discussion. If you have something to suggest or discuss that you would rather not have the whole group privy to, please feel free to send it just to my email.


We started off by having 5 Categories on the marker board to give input to. We only touched on the first two before we branched off, so I will give you the opportunity through this email to respond to any of these categories that you wish! They are:

Entry Point Activities – Outreach in nature, low spiritual level.


Mid Level Activities – Still outreach in nature, but leans toward modeling one or more aspects of Jesus’ life, i.e. service.


Devotional Topics – Issues that you would like to see addressed with the youth that can hold their own as a one class/devo topic.


Bible Study Topics – Issues that you would like to see the youth study that need to be fleshed out over a longer period of time.


What Would You Like To See Change?


Ideas suggested for Entry Point Activities were:

Movies – Nighttime or Matinee

Basketball Game (boys vs. girls)

Scavenger Hunt – involving parents – ending with supper/lunch at last house

Putt Putt Golf

Create some team building events for the parents

Airsoft Contest

Grill outs

Themed Parties

Movie night at someone’s house

Playing Rockband or some sort of game competition – fun

Going to a park for outdoor games and a cook-out

Beach devo – possibly with other youth groups

Campfire – hotdogs, etc.

Water Park

Fun Parks

Something for guys – something for girls

Ideas suggested for Mid Level Activities

Beach Trip with Trash Collecting Service Project

Movie Night at Building with Building Beautification Service Project


Other suggestions were activities possibly held at Allen Doubrava’s or Ruth Gilleland’s lake houses. Including the possibility of having a New Years Eve Party at the Doubrava’s lake house.


I also presented the direction that we have been going on Sunday nights and asked for input to make needed changes. Our Sunday night model has looked like this:

First Sunday Night of the Month – Activity

Second Sunday Night of the Month – Service Project

Third Sunday Night of the Month – Devotional

Fourth Sunday Night of the Month – Super Group Sunday

Fifth (When we have one) – Devotional

- The responses that came back were largely centered around our Service nights:

o Get ourselves out in the community more

o Cut back on the frequency of Service nights – maybe getting to mundane. Maybe go to having them quarterly or every other month.

o Have more youth and parent participation in the planning of the service night.

o Have a more detailed plan available in advance for what we are going to do on a service night.

o We need to serve the PrimeTimers more!

We also had a large discussion around our particular group’s willingness/unwillingness to reach out to other friends or acquaintances in their schools or neighborhoods. There was no easy solution that came out of this discussion on how to spur this on immediately. However, I offered as the beginning to a solution to meet with each set of parents and their teen individually to talk about that teen’s gifts/talents and their propensity to shy away from inviting others to be a part of this Christ community. The hope being that between the four of us, we can find individual solutions to this challenge that fit within the framework of each teen.

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