Models of Goodness

Before we begin, it's time to offer up a shout of praise and a prayer for guidance: my brother will be the interim youth director at JKPC over the summer! Must run in the family or something :) He has a while (just over a month) until he starts so prayers for God to prepare him and begin guiding him would be good things. And maybe that a certain Doug Fields book winds up in his lap too :)

I read: Titus

Currently one of the biggest challenges of my job is finding servants (we don't employ volunteers at QHPC; volunteers are folks with too much time on their hands, a servant is something who is purposefully serving a ministry [it's semantics, yet, but words do have meanings (and unfortunately some word habbits are hard to break)]). For instance, we have an overnighter coming up at the end of the week and I have yet to find a female leader. But under this new direction for youth ministry that is unfolding before our eyes and that we are apart of, it's not just our job to lead youth but to find leaders for us to lead who will in turn begin leading youth. This kind of hits home in the second chapter of Titus when Paul tells his protege, "Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and their children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives."

Not to contradict Paul, but I think that there's a lot more we can be teaching the young women in our lives than how to be good wives (although the qualities of a Christian woman will very easily translate into that). I think this is an especially relevant message for me today as I'm directing a group that is about 85% female and, well, I'm not. So, obviously, where I am giving Paul a hearty second is in the idea of finding virtuous women to help me lead the young women in my group. It's not easy, but it is necessary.

Our girls are facing challenges that we, as men, can't even begin to fathom. As guys I know we tend to focus on the guys in our group but, in some ways, we can be doing the girls a much greater service by providing the example of what a Christian guy looks like. Perhaps just as important is modeling what a romantic relationship should look like, whether or not we're in one at the time. In many ways, creating a higher expectation of how they should be treated by a guy can perhaps prevent many of the mistakes we see girls that age (and unfortunately much older) make by giving them hope that there are guys out there that will treat them for who they are: sisters in Christ and daughters of God.

So often it's our humor, wackiness, athletics, video game skillz, etc. that allow us to hit it off with the guys. But maybe it's the respect and tenderness with which we treat the women in our life that will most impact the girls who we are leading in a way that the games and the fun never will.