FAMILY PLUS High School - November 18

Hello HS Parents!

Great time with your students this past Wednesday night! By now you're well aware that we asked students a week or two ago to respond to God through art. Well, in keeping with that mindset - this week I asked students to read a few selected verses of Scripture and create a mathematical representation of the text. For example, "life + worry ≠ longer life" is a representation of the Luke 12 teaching about not worrying about everyday life and necessities.

Now on the surface, this might seem silly to you. But trust me, there's a method behind my madness: I want your students to open their minds to God's Word in their lives without being captive to an old understanding of what they "know" about the Bible from their younger years. I believe that students (and adults) can be trapped by experiences with and more elementary understandings of God's Word from earlier times in their lives. Doing so will prevent us from seeing how God's unchanging and transcendent Word can take on deeper and new meaning in our lives as our experiences and worldviews broaden.

For example, the teaching listed above about not worrying will always be true, but will have different meaning for a 5 year old than it does for a 30 year old with a wife and 2 children. Students who comment that they "know all the Bible stories" are subject to being "stuck" in what they know rather than stepping into what they have yet to learn from the same passage as an older believer with more life experiences under their belts.

My exercises over the past couple of weeks or so are designed to help your students step into a broadening of their minds by thinking of Scripture in a fashion that might appear obtuse on the surface. My goal, however, is to just get them off-guard long enough to allow their minds to go new places in Scripture rather than staying captive to an elementary teaching they absorbed as a preschooler.

Hear me, I believe those understandings are critical foundations for a student's faith journey - but they are exactly that - foundations. That means they are laid in order to build upon. I'm hoping these different ways of responding to God will allow your students to begin that new addition or remodel of their faith that will bring them closer to God. I'm praying for a deeper spiritual maturity for them that will allow them to experience His love letter in a way that matches their physical, emotional, and academic development.

Whew! That's a lot....I hope it makes sense! Let me know if I can pray about something for you or your family.

-Michael