Good morning friends! 

This past week really came rushing up on me. It only struck me a week ago that our last "official" IMPACT was going to be the 25th! It feels like this schoolyear has absolutely flown past. No worries, though, we will keep going right after spring break with some of our unofficial goodness :)

Sunday school was a great end to a hard question. We made sure that there weren't any lingering questions and finished up reading the last two little fictional opinions. I received really positive feedback about all the things that we tried this year! The question box was a fantastic addition, and the students have asked for even more opportunities to ask anonymous questions about anything! 

Speaking of suggesting new things, we spent some of the teaching time slot during IMPACT talking about social media, and the rest was spent debriefing the year while eating some quality Vitales pizza. We talked about all the things that we loved, and the things that weren't our favorite. We talked to the seniors and the freshmen, and everyone in between to make sure that people felt like they were being heard and that the program was working as intended. 

This is a picture of what our brainstorm board looked like at the end of the night, and I'm happy to say that most of the "bad" things are on me and can be easily changed!

Sunday school is going to keep going strong after Easter and Spring break with our can I ask that series. When we finish up that book, we are hoping to grab some of the questions that the students have and break them down in a similar format. A question/discussion based Sunday school format was something the students seemed to really enjoy. 

IF YOU HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR, THANKS! I'm going to leverage your dedication :)

As we move away from "official" IMPACT, we are going to keep meeting on Sunday nights. When we did this last year, we had incredible luck with going to other peoples houses. We would love to have the youth come to your house! If you click the button below, you can read more about what that would look like, and sign up to have us come! This sort of thing fosters intergenerational relationships and it shows the students that our congregation cares. Either way, thanks for looking! 

​I hope you all have wonderful weeks! 

Good morning parents! 

Sunday school continues to go well and the conversation that the students are willing to have is awesome. We talked about God's design for sex within marriage, the old testament practice of polygamy, and the covenant nature of marriage. Marriage is a beautiful union of two people in the sight of God, where they become ONE flesh. This requires a promise to one another, or a choice to love one another no matter what. This isn't often the way we think about love because of the casual way we see culture defining it. 

Impact continued In God's Image this week, and it went very well. Last week we introduced a "question box" and I was skeptical of how well it would work. We allowed to students to ask any questions they might have relating to love, sex, or dating. We promised to answer them as truthfully as we could, without cherry picking questions. To my shock, by the time we were done playing nine square there were 38 questions in the box. We got five more via text through the week, and we did our best to get them all typed out and answered! 

We started by talking about what dating has become, and why its necessary to answer some of the questions that we are talking about. We talked about healthy boundaries, "fuse shorten-ers" and other things that Christians have come to accept as normal that we shouldn't. After that we tried our best to go through the questions quickly but thoroughly, and only managed to get halfway. If you would like to see a list of those questions, you can follow THIS link. We have yet to type out all of the answers, but I will try to get those done this week.

Next week we plan to continue to answer some of the questions from the question box, but we are also going to have Bill and Liz Boerman join Dynelle and I in an effort to talk about marriage as the logical end to dating. I'm very pleased with student response, and I would encourage you as parents to talk openly and boldly to your students about sexual issues. They respond very well, even in what I would consider awkward situations. 

Thanks for checking in! 

Good morning! 

This week was the beginning of our In God's Image curriculum, and it was an incredible success in my eyes. Both Sunday school and IMPACT resulted in mature conversations surrounding men, women, and God's design for us in relationships. 

Sunday school was filled with discussion about how sex is just like any other sin, and how it can be redeemed. We talked about the "pros and cons" of sex outside marriage from the perspective of the church and the perspective of culture. The conversation was incredibly mature, and we talked about how intimacy and commitment are supposed to grow together, eventually culminating in marriage on the commitment side, and sex on the intimacy side. Our culture likes to rush the intimacy side, with the false promise of dragging commitment along with it. That is obviously not how it works, and is one of the main reasons people have sex outside of marriage! They are trying to force commitment using intimacy. 

IMPACT was equally wonderful. We had great conversation, lots of laughs, and some fantastic questions were asked. The lesson plan will be attached so you can take a look at that if you'd like! We talked about men and women, how they think, how we're different, and how we compliment one another.  We reaffirmed that sexual sin can be redeemed and that sex itself is a good thing designed by God. We talked about how sex is a whole body thing, it incorporates the emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical aspects of ourselves. Any attempt to move toward sex without all four of those things accounted for is a cheap, watered down knock off. We had time at the end to put questions in a question box, and it went far better than I expected. We have so many great questions to answer next week. You can follow my lesson planning in real time by clicking the button below!

I will do my best to keep all of you in the loop as to how our conversations are going and the material that we will be teaching! Thanks for stopping by!