There is a movie coming out soon about 4 college girls and their wild spring break. Have you heard of the movie called Spring Breakers?

I was going to post the trailer but felt it was too raunchy. Sounds like a great movie, right?

There are a whole lot of problems with this movie but the one I want to rant about now is the marketing behind the actresses. 3 of the 4 girls in this movie are disney/abc family actresses. Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and Ashley Benson are 3 young actresses that a lot of young teenage girls watch and admire. (Oh man, this rant could get crazy…if I just stopped on why these girls were admired by so many young ladies!) Despite this movie being rated R and having super inappropriate themes…and on and on. A movie which promotes violence, sexual promiscuity…and that’s just from the trailer. And even if we hope that the movie in the end tries to redeem those things it is probably unlikely that will happen. Our  young teenagers are going to be eager to see it because of their love for these young stars.

So, what can we do? (both on a basic level and a complex one)

(basic)

1. Talk about it. We can’t ignore it and assume that our students are not being impacted by it. Open the dialogue. Allow students to voice their opinions while encouraging them towards a better way.

2. Educate parents. It’s our jobs to know what’s happening in the world of a teenager…and if your like me, you find it impossible to know all that happens. It’s hard to keep in the loop on everything. So, when you learn about something new out in the teen world..share it with parents. They’ll appreciate it.

(complex)

3. Challenge them. Most of the girls in our lives are obsessed with celebrities because they are BORED with life. They probably wouldn’t admit it but I think sometimes we’ve made faith boring. Following Jesus should be a WILD ride…one that uses up your imagination and passion for all things good leaving one unable to be consumed with things that are not fulfilling. I am not saying they shouldn’t watch a show but the show shouldn’t be the highlight of their week. Challenge the girls in your life to be the generation of girls to change this world for Jesus…empower them to lead and speak.

What do you think? Will your girls be watching this movie?

this last weekend at church…our main service started a series called “Living the Dream.”

outside in the hallway was a huge dream wall. people could write in their dreams. found one that got my attention.

What do your students dream of?

This weekend we started a new series called Scarred.

Scarred is a shorter, condensed series based off Life Hurts, God Heals.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be doing this series. Already after the first week you could sense that the message was hitting home with a lot students. In the midst of the message, we had a senior girl share her story and it was really powerful for students to hear from one of their peers. (We’ll have a student share each weekend as part of this series.)

The reason I am fan of this series so much is because students are hurting so much and in so many different ways. And I have found that it is super easy to forget to talk about the realities of pain in the lives of our students. We think a lot about traditional discipleship and evangelism…forgetting that for a student stuck in pain and hurt…those next steps are near impossible to take on in midst of life’s hurts. We need to rethink how pain impacts discipleship and evangelism.

Think about your students…how many are struggling with pain in their homes? How many are feeling like outsiders at their schools? Think about the statistics of abuse, about addiction…think about how many students in your community have attempted suicide in the last year. Pain and despair.

We can’t glaze over pain. We can’t offer simple cliche statements. We must be willing to walk into the mess and stay their as we help students find healing in Jesus and in community.

Scarred isn’t the answer…but it’s a good place to start.

I realize the Holy Spirit may be a “different” topic of conversation for this blog…so you may have to bare with me on this one.

The Holy Spirit is a mystery to me. A good mystery but still one.

Even as I try to write…I struggle with where to start or how to start.

But here’s what overwhelms me and moves me to gratitude…the Holy Spirit moves in all who are available. Girl, boy, old, young, outcast, sick, healthy, man, woman, confused, lonely, abandoned, orphan, sinner, saint…pick one, two…The Holy Spirit doesn’t hold back from any who are willing.

This a promise. This is a gift. This is one of the reasons I give my life fully to following Jesus. Because God, the Holy Spirit, uses everyone.

Want proof?

Check out Acts 2-

¹⁷ “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.

What does that mean for our youth ministry?

1. The Holy Spirit is central to our faith and ministry. We invite God’s Spirit into EVERY element of ministry. Administrative task, counseling, speaking and even playing.

2. We watch the Holy Spirit work in everyone. No one is off limits from the work of God’s Spirit.

3. We work to not set up man made limitations on how the Holy Spirit can move. This may be the hardest one, at times it is easy to decide what is appropriate and what is inappropriate…we try to control things and make them work and fit in our nice clean boxes. The Holy Spirit is a mighty wind…and can’t be contained in a clean box. That makes people like me (I have control issues) uncomfortable…and I am learning to welcome it…most of the time.

4. We build community. What? You might be wondering what community has to do with the Holy Spirit moving. When I examine Acts 2, I see community. The Holy Spirit moves and pours out on a diverse community of believers. Togetherness is essential to our journey and being a part of the work of God’s Spirit. The Spirit moves…lives are changed…and lives are joined together into a unified body. We build Holy Spirit community.

I guess that’s what I am learning. Like I said, not the usual post but hopefully it’s okay as we learn more about who the Holy Spirit is together.
What are you learning?

What does the first woman ever created, 2 sisters married to the same man, a woman who gives her servant to have her husband’s child and an older woman desiring to have a child in common with teenage girls today?  More than I realized.

A few years ago some of my high school girls wanted to go deeper in studying the Bible, so we landed on studying some of the Women of the Bible.  I figured let’s start from the beginning – Eve.  God worked through my heart as I studied and prepared material for these girls to learn from the Women of the Bible.

So far I have written 9 weeks of studying the Women of the Bible in 3 different volumes available at Download Youth Mnistry (www.downlloadyouthministry.com/product-category/publishers/kim-bowers/).  Right now DYM is having a sale on all three Volumes here. (http://downloadyouthministry.com/shop/women-of-the-bible-vol-1-3-bundle/)

In Volume 1 God shows us how valuable it is to understand why He created females.  Then we journey with Rebekah, going on an adventure not knowing what lies ahead but trusting God.  Then we see how desires cannot only get us in trouble but effect so many around us.

Volume 2 begins with a Rachel and Jacob’s love story that is full of passion and we begin to see how God is passionately in love with each of us.  And like Rachel we are selfish and want more than just love and that begins to cause our relationships to crumble.  We see Leah being unnoticed and full of heartache.  Living in our world most girls feel unnoticed, but the truth for Leah is the same for us – that God notices us and wants to heal our broken hearts, we just have to let Him in.

In Volume 3 we meet Sarah, who did not believe that God’s promise was for her and thought God needed her help to fulfill that promise for her husband by giving him her servant.  Waiting on God is not easy for even the most patient of us women, but God is faithful when we wait for His timing.  Together Sarah and Hagar become the original mean girls.  There is a lot to learn from their story about how to keep ourselves from becoming mean girls.   Hannah was bullied and her heart was broken, but she chose a different path than most and poured her broken heart out to God.  The same God who took her broken heart takes our and heals our hearts.

My prayer is that God will speak to the hearts of those who walk through these studies as He worked in mine.  Soaking in His love, grace, forgiveness and then learning to love as He loves me.

Kim Bowers is an amazing youth worker who is married to a youth pastor in Southern California. She recently wrote some amazing curriculum about the women in the Bible….be sure to check it out!

Oh, sometimes you just have to blog about the random stuff. You know the stuff that isn’t worth an entire blog but you just have to share it!

Read on…

1. One of the cardinal mistakes made when showing a video in your service is not fully previewing it and…later while showing it in your JUNIOR HIGH service you hear the mother of all cuss words over the loud sound system. Seriously…big mistake! It was a big week in Seattle for sports…you know the Seahawks. So, we decided to change things up and show a countdown video of Russell Wilson highlights featuring music by a local artist, Macklemore. Uh-oh! 30 seconds into the countdown video…every eye on the screen and the big F word loud and clear for all to hear. Every eye turned to me…Uh-oh! Has that ever happened to you? Both funny and horrible all wrapped in one!

2. Snapchat? Have you heard of it? A few of my girls showed it to me a few months back and I’ve been meaning to blog about it. Snapchat is a app for smartphones that allows you to send pictures to your friends that aren’t saved on your phone or on the phone you send them to. Sounds like a major disaster waiting to happen, right? My students are doing it…are yours?

3. Simply Youth Ministry Conference.

Are you going? I am super excited to be a part! I love hanging out with youth workers! I’ll be doing a couple of workshops there. A half-track with Brooklyn Lindsey and a workshop for guys on working with girls! You should definitely join us! Will I see you there?? Let’s have coffee!

I’ll never forget the words of some well-intentioned adults in my life when I was a teenager. What they intended as a compliment always felt like an insult. They would tell me over and over what a great SINGLE missionary I would be…what they really were saying is you definitely are gifted and called but we’re not sure how someone like you can fit in the traditional role of a wife/woman.

Lucky for me…there were people throughout my life that didn’t fit into the traditional role. I was fortunate to see these women embrace who they were in ministry and in marriage throughout my college years and in several of my first ministry jobs.

Wait….what does this have to do with A Year of Biblical Womanhood?

Well, Rachel Held Evans takes a good hard look at the traditional ways we have defined womanhood. She challenges readers to truly explore and evaluate our use of the word Biblical as an adjective.

Evans spends the year exploring the Bible and what it says about woman. She attempts to live out a majority of the instructions directed at women. She does this in order to better understand what exactly biblical womanhood is in action. She is funny and insightful. I enjoyed reading the book…it made me laugh at her and with her…especially when she carried a stadium cushion during her period to keep things from becoming unclean. She made me cry as she wrote about the suffering of women from the Bible and those suffering today.

The book and Evans have gotten lots of criticism from people who believe that she doesn’t value the Bible or that she minimizes it’s power. I didn’t pick up on any of that as I read…in fact, I felt the opposite. She seems to really love the Bible.

Why should you read it?

You might not agree with everything Evans write…I am not sure I do at this point. But each year, I sit down with numerous girls who feel like they don’t FIT in church. They can’t find their place in the church based simply on what they have heard in the church.  They struggle as they read some troubling passages about women in the OT and NT and wonder- is this the gospel I am suppose to follow? And if it is, can they do it?

Evans voices all those questions and walks away a lover of Jesus and his word. She’ll help you into the mind and thought behind these questions and you just might find some solid ways to answer these questions.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

2012 was a great year. Filled with lot of great highlights in ministry…and here at MoreThanGossip.com.

Before we move on to the new year, I thought I would reflect on the last year.

LOOKING BEHIND

My personal favorites from last year:

Modest is Hottest

Well…

Away She Goes (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

No Purple Ministry

Beyond Their Years

There is a lot of other good stuff out there- here are a few of my favorite blog posts from the interweb:

Sarah Bessey- In Which I Commission You

Rachel Held Evans- God Can’t Be Kept Out-

Rachel Held Evans- Enough

Amanda King- I am Beautiful, Girls

Josh Griffin-  Student Leadership

Brooklyn Lindsey- Holiness

Doug Fields- I am NOT a morning person

The list could go on and on. There is so much good stuff out there. What are you reading online? What’s your favorite blog?

LOOKING AHEAD 

I am excited about the year ahead. Lots of great stuff happening in ministry…on the blog and just in life. I am feeling excited about the blog and the potential for this new year. I am pledging to blog more and share more of what I am learning throughout the year. I hope you join me as we explore working with girls and I hope you will join in on the conversation!

Thanks for a great year!!

I am super thrilled to tell you about this new resource for your students!

The Simple Truth Bible features 366 daily devotionals—each one a tasty, bite-size morsel that powerfully reveals what it means to deeply love and trust God, to lead a Jesus-centered life, and to lean on Scripture for guidance and wisdom.

Teenagers will discover how to experience hope in the middle of tough times, how God deeply and passionately loves them, how to build an authentic friendship with Jesus, and how they were created to lead a life of impact in this world and for eternity.

Each devotion includes:

• Thoughts on a specific passage of Scripture and how it relates to students’ lives
• Insights to help teenagers turn their thoughts into prayers as they spend time with God
• Ideas to follow if students want to spend more than a few minutes each day with God
• Perspective on how that day’s passage fits into the big picture of the Bible

For more information- check it out here!