Consequences for Bad Behaviour - Dealing With Bad Behaviour in Youth

According to the report, there are teenagers involved in killings and they just shoot the other young man without any reason.  It is as if, they are playing God and they have no fear to kill any other person. How awful it is in these last days.

Are there still any reasons to be safe in today’s society where even our young people are capable of these heinous crimes?

Are there any reasons to deal with bad behaviour of our teens in today’s present society?

Who is the culprit of these bad behaviours?

The Apostle Paul warns us that in the last days, people will be lovers of themselves. Indeed this is very true. Recent local television reported again another shooting where the involved persons are young people.  

All the problems of the society are interconnected. We cannot alone blame the government although they should give proper sanctions for these incidents involving teen related crimes. Moreover, we should examine the existing family relationships in our society.

To deal with the bad behaviours of teens today, we should take a look at the background of the family. 

Why?

The family is the basic unit of our society! To solve this problem the immediate family member should act and do the following:

Challenges of Youth - How You Find Who Your True Friends Are

Finding true finds in these days are not hard but not also easy to find. Sounds confusing right?

True friends are those who can really help you even if you don’t have anything to offer to them. In short they are the ones you can count on without expecting in return. This is what the Bible says, according to the gospel of John that the great sacrifice you can give to a person is your life. And this is what means a true friend.

I want you to consider your friends right now and evaluate if they have done this to you. Are they the kind of friend who are just there when they need something from you?

Or are they the person who will give you something which asked something in return? The theory says that life here on earth is an exchange. Do you believe that? Somehow this is true. During Christmas, some people do exchanging gifts, at least once in a year. But exchange in life doesn’t mean that if someone will give you a car, you will also give him a car?

That is not what it means by exchange theory, but rather, anything that is given away from a person to another in any form is already an exchange. If your friend gives you a new cell phone, what could you possibly give him in return? Some true friends just give without expecting for you to give also to them. And again this is one of the characteristic of a true friend.

I have one friend whom I owe a lot to him, but all I could do is serve him. My friend is none other than Jesus.

Imagine this. You are busy with your school projects, or work and family. And you have been blessed by every material need you have.

You have your car, house and lot, a family and you can buy anything as you like. That sounds wonderful isn’t it?

But have you think about God who gave you all the things that you have now? Remember, without Him, you are nothing.

5 TIPS TO OVERCOME CHALLENGES AND BE SUCCESSFUL WITH GOING TO COLLEGE

Success in going to college starts from your goal. If you have your goal to achieve like getting a degree and later on get a job which you desire.  All the struggles in your college life will be easy like you never think.

For me, success in college is doing what you really like. So it is important to think first what you want to do after you graduate. In this perspective you can try to enrol or take a college degree which you are passionate about. Not just taking up a course which is suggested by your parents or somebody else because you will end up drudgery. And most likely you will need to get another degree for your own successful career life after you have satisfied the wants of your parents.  So my first advice is…

FOCUS

Try to find out your passions and explore and make sure that your passions will be closer to the degree you are taking. Don’t be misled by the in-demand course at present because someday it will be saturated. So focus on your passions and learn and educate yourself.

In this way, college life will not be boring to you because it is your desire.

Support groups

Join some group of youth where you have the same passions and aspirations and keep away from the bad influences. It is not also good for you while studying and disregarding your social life. For me, college life is not just scientific exploration but building social networks which later on can help you in your career.

Four ways to overcome the Giant Obstacles – The road to Success

A lot of people have different perspective and mindset about getting the success they want in their lives. But despite to this, many people have yearned to be successful and yet failed to achieve their goals.

Why?

What hinders success?

There is what we call GIANTS in our lives. A giant simply means trials and problems in our lives. If we learn how to manipulate and win these giants we can then be successful. But how can we face the giant obstacles in our lives.  

There are many techniques and methods to win our giants. This is not the same how David won his battle against Goliath.

To win our Giants we simply apply the habits that was suggested by Stephen Covey in his book the seven habits of effective people.

Personally I practiced this habit in my life and slowly I have perfected this one and if you can learn this one, you can say to yourself that there is no one to blame for the misfortune of your life but you alone.

 This is the first step or habit that each one of us should apply. This habit is called the proactive habit.

One very proactive person in the Bible is Caleb and if you have read his story, you will be amazed at how he won the battle against the giants. Literally those were giants and they were small. But he bravely conquer his fear by taking proactive steps like saying this words, we can do it. And he did it. What a brave man.

Unfortunately, not many of them followed the proactive personality of Caleb, it was written that his friends shrink and were afraid to face the giants in the place that they were spying.

His friends were thinking they are small and like grasshoppers, could you imagine that?  Those were the personality of his friends, fearful and reactive.

But to this one man, who shouted we can do it. Everything seems possible to him. This man holds another personality that we can draw from.

2. He was optimistic. He always thinks in a positive way and so he was successful. In the book of Proverbs, it is written that you should be careful of your thoughts because what you think is who you become. So be careful of what you wish for, so to say. The important is to think positively.

3. Not every one of us believes that something will happen in our lives by just wishful thinking. Though, it is important that we should think in a positive way, and it is by believing that you can do it. If this is our belief, then it is good to accompany one trait of a successful person which is a DOER. Yes, the third thing to overcome giants is to do something, don’t just wait that something will happen because you are thinking positively, DO something to get it. Don’t waste your time thinking and planning, although this is necessary, but the most important is to implement what you have in your mind.

Another author said, what your mind can conceive you can achieve it’, and how to achieve that? DO something.

According to a social scientist, there are three types of person, one is those who watch things happen, second is those who wait things happen and third is those who make things happened. Now decide which one describes you most, your future lies in there.

 Lastly, above all, to overcome your GIANTS, you must pray. I have read from another source that the greatest man in the world is the one who kneels before God. If you confess and asked God to help you in your problems, Luther said, it is not your problem anymore, but it is God’s problem.

To summarize the things how to overcome you giants in life, you should have a habit of proactive, positive thinker, a doer and prayerful person. I believe there are lots more ways to overcome your problems in life, but there is no greater than submitting your life to God for you to be successful.

Challenges Facing Youth in Urban Area

Someone once said that the youth is the future of our generation. However, in today’s society many reports in television are about youth who were involved in crimes.

What do you think is the reason for this?

As I have quoted in the Bible and also posted in another blog, this generation is characterized by individualistic passions. People are now lovers of themselves, disregarding the moral law.

The things and crimes done by youth are always and will be happening again and again because of recidivism; it is where a person always does things because they are no proper sanction to his/her actions.

According to a famous author E.G. White, living in the city is considered to be hotbeds of iniquity and troubles. As you can see in the television, some youth are involved in robbery, theft and killings.

These are one of the many challenges a youth faces in urban area which are not fitted to them.

Only three major reason or challenges a youth faced. These are coming from the media influences, peer groups and family.

Social issues concerning a youth like early teen pregnancy and pre marital sex and crimes are also rife in the city. I cannot point out what caused this things but I think this is the effect of some media technology, like internet, televisions, and printed papers.

What the youth see in television has a subliminal effect in their minds and because they saw it on television, the youth watching these medium without parental guidance will try and do what is being viewed in televisions.

Some people tend to go to pub houses to enjoy for awhile thinking that they can find solutions to the problems, but this will give them more problems. If the youth are engrossed with this, this can be harmful only to their physical life but also to the spiritual life.

This is a challenge not just in urban youth but also in rural. The effect of media in our society has a very great impact to the lives of a person.

Another thing is the life in the cities are artificial and characterized only by money getting, luxurious life, and pleasure seeking which are temporary and in vain. If a certain individual cannot meet his desired needs, chances are they will resort to illegal money getting.

Well, this is all due to the fact that they cannot cope with the life of the city which is a fast paced and everything requires money. And if anyone who is downtrodden and circumstances hits their lives, they would resort to illegal works.

Not only that, the family also plays a big factor that a youth has to face while they are in urban area.

If the parents are busy with their own business, and have no time to communicate to their children. This will cause ideally that their children are to look after a peer group that will listen to them. Chances are if that peer group has bad habits, ultimately this will be imitated by the youth.

For parents, your young child should be taught earlier not to get entangled with easy getting and luxurious life instead to meditate and give glory to God and not to enjoy their free time on wasting money in the malls or pub houses. The youth should be taught to commune with nature and to God.

When a youth are with their peer groups, there is a big chance that he will not anymore listen to the advice of the parents. And all his activities are inclined to vanity like going to pub houses. Because the youth wants to be accepted in his peer group, anything that his friends wanted to offer to him will be accepted if the youth cannot handle the so called peer pressure.

I firmly believe that a peer group has the greater influence over the parents. Why? because they are the ones that listens to the problems of their friends, they are the ones who comfort them and the youth can find relief in them basically, so, why listen to their parents who cares only to their business?

Living in the city should not be considered a hindrance in finding your success in your career. But instead give it a challenge, and if you cannot handle those things mentioned above, I suggest go back to square one. Live a simple life before you will end up a miserable life.

3 Tips for Encouraging Youth in Difficult Times

One of the difficult times of a person is during adolescent period because it involves a certain change in a person’s role in society.

It is in this stage that an adolescent is going to face many challenges as they went from adolescent to young adulthood. The young adult time started to think independently for his own life without worrying what is life ahead. And if in this stage a youth are engaged in many things, difficult times are never unwelcome.

If you will encounter a youth in his difficult time, you have to encourage the person in a way that the person never loses an opportunity to continue his life. This is a bit hard because first and foremost, the youth should consult first their immediate family members who can help him in his problem.

Apparently, family members especially parents are not available when the youth is having a problem. In this case, the youth will consult his close friends and asked for some advice and if that happens to you. You can do three things to encourage your friend who has a problem.

First thing you should do is to find out what is it that bothers to him/her. Is it a family problem, peer pressure, or educational matters like failing grades.  These are just examples of what bothers to a youth, but I know that there are more.

How to find what bothers to a youth?

Talk to him/her and diagnose or find out the real cause of the problem. Get into his mind by sympathizing on his needs. And the best thing to do this is to listen attentively and do not comment on his words. Just listen!

This technique is giving a psychological air to the person and letting him open up all his worries thereby you can now find what bothers to him.

Avoid judging him, just listen and you can find his needs. This technique is told by Stephen Covey and I personally have applied this in my life and it gives me an advantage to encourage other people.

After giving him a psychological air, this is the time to encourage him with your own words. Tell the person that he/ she is not alone having the problem. And that problem is small compare to the blessings he received each day. 

Should we not be thankful enough for the air we breathe, or the food we eat. These are little blessings but should be counted as big, and you should make him realize that one. Because in life, difficult times always accompany the good times. How then can we recognize the bad things if there are no good things that happen to us. And remember that everything happens with a purpose.

Now that he is relieved let us say only a little, then do another encouraging technique that will help him to keep going with his life. Tell him that you were once you were like him before. Exactly, tell him that what he experience has happened to you before. In this way, he knows that he really is not alone having the problem and anything and everything in life can happen to anybody. The secret there is only to accept the circumstances that come to our lives. And the most important is to be resilient enough to combat our daily problems.

Lastly, acknowledge the person that sometimes we all do commit mistakes. And if that mistake is the reason that discouraged him, all you can do is to really frankly tell him that it is part of our life that we should sometimes fall down and stumble.

But this does not mean to stumble and not get up, our downfall can be our strength in time. Tell him the next time, that the mistake is a lesson for him not to do it again.

A youth, it might be your friend, son or daughter has different difficult times and to solve their problem you have to do the things above.

Challenging Theme Night Ideas for Church Youth Groups

If you are a youth leader and wish to organize night out for your church youth group, you can have different ideas to choose from depending on your theme.

For me, as a hobbyist of stargazing I usually involved and teach youth to star gazing. I teach them where to find different constellations using a star map. I have found this relaxing especially if the weather is fine and the sky is clear at night where you can only see the stars twinkling.

Why do this? You may found it tedious at first if you have no idea what stargazing is all about. But once you get to know more about the stars and especially the constellation where our Creator will come back. You will also enjoy watching and counting the shooting stars.  Not only that, you will get to know more of your youth members if you involved yourself in the activity and teach them one by one to point where is the constellation like Scorpio and other stars.

In order for this idea to be challenging, asked your youth group to list the constellations and stars they have found. The group that has the most listing of the constellations wins, and also asks them to locate for themselves if they really have found it.

Second best option for nightly group activities is a social night. What you can do here is gather some ideas for games where everyone can participate. As a youth leader, you need to have separate games for teen agers and the young adult or a mixture of parlor games.  

You can have a series of parlor games in the lawn premises or if there is not enough space for you to play. Try indoor games. The indoor games may vary if you want to be physically active or just a mind game.

If you would just play mind game, then do some group dynamics. You can have a group debate. To do this, simply divide the youth into groups depending on the topic that will be discussed. And as a youth leader, you will act as the moderator.

Just be careful with the words that you will use as a moderator, because you are the neutralizer.

If these activities sounds boring to you, try a nightly serenade, visiting your long lost friends or even your enemies and try to reunite with them. Again you involved your youth groups, and try to assign one person who will contact the home that you will visit.

After you made the protocol, get ready with your favorite songs and your gifts for the person you will visit. Please take note that gifts and snacks are not necessary but it will be helpful if you have one.

That is not all, for your night theme ideas, try to have a small group discussion which focuses on the Bible topics. You can do this by choosing a chapter from the books of the Bible and in that chapter, every time you have a gathering, choose only ten verses to be read silently by each member and give five to ten minutes for reflection.

Then, share to everybody what lessons have you learned. There are lots of nightly theme ideas depending on your activity, again the simple. Those are just suggestions and for me while doing missionary work, those methods are pretty well tested and proven to help hone the skills of the youth mentally, physically, socially and spiritually.

Three Challenges of gospel youth workers

A gospel youth worker is someone who submits and dedicates their lives in serving the Lord and helped spreading the good news to other people.

Many have been called to be a gospel worker but only few have answered the call for some several reasons.

The reasons of the youth that denied the calling is because of family problems like financial matters which is common to everyone, second is their professional career life which they could not give up in order to serve the Lord.  

It is really hard to give up something when you already are having enough money with what you are doing. And this hindered a person’s decisions to serve God or not. As some people know, a gospel worker is not rich, but not poor. Hence, the money thing is also a triggering decision whether to God or not to God.

I remember the story of a rich man ruler who wanted to have the eternal life but because of his riches, he denied following the footsteps of Jesus.

The same in today’s generation, many of us have been in this ordeal, we are given the opportunity to serve God but only few answered.  

To be a gospel youth worker, you must face different challenges in different situations. And these things I will wrote here is just a few of them.

The biggest challenge of the gospel youth worker is the peer pressure. Some people or friends might deride them, but we are being encouraged by the apostle Paul in his letter to Timothy that you should not be looked down instead be a model in speech faith and purity which is seldom we can find now at this present society.

Apostle Paul already warned us that in the last days, there will be perilous times and people will be terrible in lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to parent their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self control, brutal not lovers of the good, treacherous rash conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Thus the greatest challenge of the new millennium is to kindle the fire to bring back and restore the society to its original state as before. It is advised that the youth must bear all the positive virtues, having no fault that can be seen by the old.

Another challenge of a gospel youth worker is found in his mission field. There will come a time that people will laugh at you because you are bringing a Bible in your hand.

But this is not to discourage us, instead present to them the good news that we are transformed by His power and our purpose is to let the person know that God loved him too.

The third challenge that a gospel worker must endure is no other than self. There are many factors that contribute why the self is the hardest one to overcome. After all, it is your decision as a youth whether to follow or not? To serve God or Satan it is up to you. Also as an estranged person in the life of a gospel worker, you must strive to eliminate the loneliness from your family. It is likewise saying that, forget everything but not God.

There are some good role youth model that have worked to be transform the society to a loving, peaceful society, but only few succeed because they lacked the motivation to pursue their dream and were led to follow the those who are ahead of them and what the society dictates.

Being a gospel worker especially at a young age is quiet challenging, but after all the hardships God will bring a reward to his faithful little children who is co laborer with him.

How to Reclaim Youth from the World

Reclaiming youth is an activity targeted to bring back the youth to the church.

Why reclaim them?

There has been a research that most of the churches today have no more youth inside it. And the reason is that most of them are enjoying their life outside church activities. But there are also reasons that involved within the church members. Some of these are

1. Adult members live phony lives
2. Church places emphasis on non essentials, older members are critical and uncaring
3. Church leaders are preoccupied with organization not with people
4. Worships are dull and meaningless
5. church too restrictive
6. Attracted to different lifestyle
7. Do not have real friends inside the church
8. Church does not allow me to think for myself

In order to bring back the youth to the church and other church members a reclaiming seminar is one activity to strategize the elements of successfully bringing them back to church.

To do this, as a youth leader, your challenge is to facilitate a seminar about reclaiming. And this requires a little skill especially facilitating a group of young and adult people. You must have a little background on the tools that are in needed in the seminar.

The tool involved is a problem tree analysis, this may be new to your or not. But it will help to facilitate your reclaiming process to a successful one. It may take you whole day or week to plan, depending on the number of people attending the seminar.

In this seminar, it is important the segregate the participants by group (does not matter if the group is a combination of male and female).

The first activity in reclaiming seminar is to analyze what are the problems in the church.

Problem identification

At this stage you just ask the group to list all the problems in the church. All of the problems that they encounter and then try to rank them from their point of view which is worse or not.

To give you an example I will just use my experience with the youth in reclaiming which they have pointed out one problem which is Low Youth Church attendance.

Program identification

After identifying the problems, you can ask the groups what programs that can be applied to solve the problem. Any program must be at least attainable from their standpoint.

Then, asked the group to rank the best identified programs by group and present their reasons why. As a whole group, you can have a voting on which program should be carried on and implemented first.

In this example I will use again the result of our reclaiming seminar. We have identified a program which is to visit and serenade the long lost church youth members.

If the group has already identified the best programs for them, it is time now to list all the possible problems concerning the program.

Problem identification of the program

One of the problems that our youth group had listed is refusal from the targeted household, boredom, conflict of both parties (the one serenading and the person to be visited), food preparation (some church members don’t have food to offer, that is why they refused). These are some of the problems.

Cause and Effect identification

Before we go down to the bottom, let us have a recap, first you have identified the problem which is Low Church attendance of youth. And you have already a solution to the problem that is to visit and do serenading.

Then you have already the problems concerning serenading. Now is the time to reorganize those problems which are cause and effects.

You can rearrange the list in your meta cards in the board to follow the sequence. See the picture below. Rearrange it to the closest possible cause and effect category.  

Means to an End

If you have done the steps above, you are almost done with the process and the next method is very simple. You just re categorize the cause and effect as a means to an end.

To simplify, if you have identified food preparation as an the effect or cause why your prospect do not want to be visited, you try to be proactive now by telling the prospect that you will visit them or you can prepare your own food if this is allowable in their culture.

It is just listing the negative results and turning them to a positive one. 

By this time you already identified the persons that will go with you on to serenade, the things to bring during serenade and the outcome.

The important here is to focus on what is the easiest thing to do. And that could be elicit through the process you are reading now which is called the problem tree analysis.

I have used it in reclaiming the youth and it is not very difficult, though it requires a little bit of knowledge to facilitate but if you can just do the things above like, problem identification, program identification, cause and effect relationship and means to an end relationship.

Having been successfully done these things you are not far to your success in reclaiming the youth back to church.  

How to Get Into the Youth Ministry

How to Get Into the Youth Ministry- the Greatest Challenge

It is a word of the mouth that many are called but few are chosen.

It is fairly true, since to get into the ministry is sometimes not by our will and it just happened that one day we are in the youth ministry.

Whether you like it or not each one of us are commissioned to join in spreading the good news to other people.

And the premise is found in Matthew 28: 19-20, which says, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of age.

Literally, we are called to serve, but some of us are playing deaf. That is why some would say that being into the ministry is by chance. But to those who answered to the calling, it is a WILL.  

Well, there are different ways that we are called by God and if we only listen to his whispering voice. We can really know what the purpose of our lives here is on earth.

If anyone wants to join and get into ministry specifically youth ministry, don’t ask yourself if you want this kind of work rather asked God to give you courage to pursue his mission commissioned to you.

If you have done this, you are ready to give yourself to God and follow him. Following him requires only one thing and that is to deny yourself.

There are a lot of ways you can serve the Lord in your own way with his guidance. Jesus said, that you take care of the poor and the oppressed, the widow, the thirsty, the prisoners and the hungry. If you have done all this you are serving the Lord because for whatever you do to the least you do it unto him.

Another option would be to join support groups or NGO’s that caters to the needs of the disadvantage sectors of the society. By becoming a volunteer in your organization, you widen your knowledge and networks and you gained new experience as a youth minister.

If you cannot find any group in your place, consider visiting your neighbor who has been sick or suffered a disease and give him basic needs such as food or clothes or offer some prayer as this will help to comfort the sick.

Now that you have done this visitation, you can start organize a group of young people with a common interest like you.

It is not hard to find them, you just have to be friendly and then if you have a meeting you can now propose to name your group.

If you want a sponsor for your activities, you try to involve your village officials for the said program. I am sure if you have program initiative, those officials are willing to accept the plan especially if they can benefit from your publicity.

It is always important in joining a youth ministry, you must bear in mind that you are doing it for the Lord and not to human beings, this is what Paul says to the Colossians. And I hope and wish you the best in your ministry.