The big idea behind this activity is to shock and surprise your children by ruining Christmas. Okay, that’s not the final goal. What we want to do is to help our kids break out of the glut of artificial emotion tied to the Christmas season and get a better understanding of how the gift of Jesus was a gift of grace—something none of us deserved.

Part of what we’re up to with students, especially, is to subvert their expectations to get them to look at truth from new angles. By the time they reach the teens, students can begin to lose interest in the trappings of the Christmas season. The music, decorations, and family traditions begin to feel like “little kid” activities they’re still forced to participate in.

That’s a normal developmental stage. The downside is that students may also begin to think themselves too sophisticated for the gift of Jesus, as well. This activity might help them to think of Him as more than just the baby in the manger.

Try This

Announce to your family that you’re going to set aside one evening (or morning or afternoon) to celebrate Mean Christmas. Decorate the room in black baloons and grey crepe paper. Put up a skull-and-cross bones poster. Put on some angry (or just annoying) background music. Get creative. Note: The idea isn’t to make the decor spooky or Haloweeny—just kind of “mean” or maybe a little piratey.

After the decorations are up, explain that your first activity will be to make Mean Christmas cards for each other. Be sure to emphasize that this is for fun. Ask everyone not to be seriously hurtful. Cards can be made out of whatever paper you have and might say things like, “Have a lousy holiday!” or “You can’t join my reindeer games!” The uglier they are, the better

Next, it’s time for the gift exchange. Explain that Mean Christmas is all about taking, not giving. Ask every member of the family to make a list of one thing they’d like to take from each of the other members of the family for their own. Talk about family and friends who have nice things you could take on Mean Christmas eve.

Finally, ask everyone to pause for a moment of quiet reflection and think about some of the meanest things they’ve done this last year. Turn up the annoying music as you all ponder this. Maybe you could hold hands.

When the time is right, ask your family to gather around and listen as you read a passage from the Bible about Mean Christmas. Tell them the Apostle Paul is writing about how humans live without God. It’s the ultimate “naughty list.”

Romans 1:28-32:

“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

Every day without God is Mean Christmas. Every one is a sinner. We’re all born with meanness in our hearts. It’s normal for human to take and hurt and be mean. We even treat God meanly. That’s just who we are. God has every right to be mean right back and squash us.

Here’s what God did instead:

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. . . . Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:8-11, 14)

He didn’t squash us to stop us from being mean. He gave us a gift. It doesn’t make any sense, but He gave us a huge good gift. The gift of His only Son to live here on earth for a while and one day be squashed by God to punish all the mean sin we’ve ever done. God gave us chance to trust in Jesus and be with Him forever in His home where there will never be any meanness.

Christmas—not the Mean kind—is when we tell Him, “Thanks for giving us a good gift instead of squashing us for being mean. You must really love us. We love you, too!”

End your Mean Christmas together by undecorating your mean room and putting on some real Christmas music

I’d love to hear how it goes!!

With all the hype & spin of Tiger Woods and his “transgressions” C. Mahaney does a great job putting this story into perspective…

Tiger Woods wants his privacy back.

He wants the media entourage to disappear from his life.

And this should leave us more amazed by grace because there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Writes C.J. Mahaney:

In this exciting new book, Dr. Townsend gives important keys for establishing healthy boundaries—the bedrock of good relationships, maturity, safety, and growth for teens and the adults in their lives. The book offers help in raising your teens to take responsibility for their actions, attitudes, and emotions.

http://www.realworldparents.com/store/item/boundaries_with_teens/

2. Learn Their Lingo

Automagically = something that happens automatically, but that also has some mysterious, “magical” element to it. “Smart” appliances, features, etc. that do intelligent things with less help than you might expect

Mantrum = when a grown man throws a tantrum when he can’t have his way

3. Links to Learn From

Fort Hood Shooting: Five tips to help parents talk to their kids about violence in the news
http://www.examiner.com/x-14708-Toddlers-to-Teens-Examiner~y2009m11d6-Fort-Hood-Shooting-Five-tips-to-help-parents-talk-to-their-kids-about-violence-in-the-news

Teenage pregnancy does not discriminate
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=861929&category=OPINION

Hunger in America: Half of Our Kids on Food Stamps
http://chattahbox.com/us/2009/11/03/hunger-in-america-half-of-our-kids-on-food-stamps/

4. A Little Encouragement…And Humor

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I am getting a bit of a reputation at work….:(

I am now known as the “social media guy”…still trying to figure out if I should take it as an insult?

Far beyond the title is the fact that social media continues to explode, evolve, morph and push the boundaries of possibilities.  What appears to be mind blowing today will likely be extinct in a few years.

Some are excited (I am right now …after receiving my Google Wave invite – what’s a Google wave?  click here) others are skeptical…and there continues to remain a camp that appear to have their heads in the sand.

To the latter group I give you this…(take this as a “wake up & smell the coffee” people…our world is changing every second.)

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Infusion Conference here in Calgary.  For me conferences like this are no longer about acquiring more information that is never implemented – but conferences like this bring clarity and inspiration that I desperately need during this new vocational transition.

Reggie Joiner (@reggiejoiner)is the CEO of The reThink Group, “a team of innovative writers, thinkers, planners, creators, and do-ers who are devoted to influencing those who influence the next generation.” He is the author of Think Orange: Imagine the Impact When Church and Family Collide. He is also one of the founders of North Point Community Church, where Andy Stanley is the pastor.

Here are a few highlights of some of his takeaways:

Most of us have been influenced by the church, but all of us have been influenced by the family.

As a leader, if you want to influence the church—or any institution—you must start with the family.

Somewhere along the way, we developed a picture of the perfect family and what it should be like. (He held up a picture of a stock photo of the perfect family and noted that it doesn’t really exist.)

If we hold on too tightly to an ideal picture, we set up families to become disillusioned.

God never really gives us an example of an ideal picture of the family in Scripture. They are all broken.

Your calling as a leader should not be to get families to conform to some ideal picture.

There are two different approaches to influencing the family:

• The ideal picture approach.
• The better story approach.

Parents don’t need a better picture, they need to be invited into a bigger story. This is the story of restoration and redemption that God is telling through their particular family.

God doesn’t use perfect pictures, he uses broken people.

He then went onto share some thoughts (SHEMA) from Deuteronomy 6:4–9. It says:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

This passage is an exhortation to parents/ leaders/ community. It basically says that if you take the “bigger story approach,” you will:

1. Imagine the end. It starts with God and ends with God.
2. Fight for the heart. This is everything. If you don’t have your children’s hearts, you don’t have anything.
3. Make it personal. This is not merely a “Sunday faith.” This is an everyday faith. You must teach your children every day in every way.
4. Create a rhythm. If you are counting on the church to influence your children, they only have about 40 hours a year to do so. However, parents have about 3,000 hours a year to influence their children. Clearly, the church can never do the job parents can do.
5. Widen the circle. Hebrew parents didn’t try to raise their children alone. They had the help of the entire community. It does take a village. Children who have mentors and coaches outside their family are more likely to be lead healthy and successful lives.

Perhaps this video will provide even more clarity – I’d love to hear your thoughts!  Agree?  Disagree?  Is this a new paradigm shift?  Or did we simply buy into a more programmed approach a few years back?

In this exciting new book, Dr. Townsend gives important keys for establishing healthy boundaries—the bedrock of good relationships, maturity, safety, and growth for teens and the adults in their lives. The book offers help in raising your teens to take responsibility for their actions, attitudes, and emotions.

http://www.realworldparents.com/store/item/boundaries_with_teens/

2. Learn Their Lingo

Automagically = something that happens automatically, but that also has some mysterious, “magical” element to it. “Smart” appliances, features, etc. that do intelligent things with less help than you might expect

Mantrum = when a grown man throws a tantrum when he can’t have his way

3. Links to Learn From

Fort Hood Shooting: Five tips to help parents talk to their kids about violence in the news
http://www.examiner.com/x-14708-Toddlers-to-Teens-Examiner~y2009m11d6-Fort-Hood-Shooting-Five-tips-to-help-parents-talk-to-their-kids-about-violence-in-the-news

Teenage pregnancy does not discriminate
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=861929&category=OPINION

Hunger in America: Half of Our Kids on Food Stamps
http://chattahbox.com/us/2009/11/03/hunger-in-america-half-of-our-kids-on-food-stamps/

4. A Little Encouragement…And Humor

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

As our Nation stops for a few minutes today to honour those who have died and those who continue to fight for our freedom…that word “FREEDOM”  is resonating in my spirit.

The majority of us take our freedom for granted.  Freedom to choose our own path…freedom to vote…freedom to make choices that can bring blessing or dire consequences.

But are we truly FREE?

Freedom!!… is no doubt the cry of every teenage heart.

I want to be free to do my own thing.

I want to be free of the crazy rules my parents have for me.

I want to be free from the teachers and coaches and everyone who put a burden on me.

Freedom. Songs are written about it. Movies plots are thick with it. People have died for it.

But do we really know what freedom is? Most people wrongly assume that real freedom means doing whatever you want, no rules, no restrictions.

Jesus made it very clear –  that isn’t freedom at all. That’s actually slavery. You see…Jesus came to this earth to offer two things. Truth and freedom… and the two are always linked.

He said that anyone who sins is a slave. Sadly we now live in a culture that sees sin as FREEDOM of choice…but sin is a cruel slave master, demanding all of you, giving you nothing in return.

Ask the alcoholic who finds his home on a park bench.

Ask the drug addict who sees his entire future stripped away.

Ask the gambler who loses his reputation &  family.

Ask the inmate whose “freedom” hurt others and got him a life sentence.

WE call that FREEDOM?. Looks more like bondage to me? But what Jesus offers is something beautiful. Real, true, spiritual freedom.

In John 10:10 Jesus says that he has come to give us life – life to the full. Jesus says this is the life that opens your eyes up to the truth. What is the truth? The truth is Jesus Himself, the way the truth and the life.

What does the truth do? It sets you free.

The challenge is that we live in a society that says,” living for Jesus is so restrictive, old school, it is too narrow and confining.”

But a life lived for God is only freedom.

Do you really want to be free?

Talking to many students in regards to social networking – they all make the comment that there is “comfort” within this form of relationship.

Even though you’re publishing content for all the world to see, you really don’t have to face the public who might (you hope) stumbles across your words.

In the privacy of your home or office, its just you and a computer screen. So we tend to let loose and speak in a way we may not if we actually had to let those words lose from our mouths.

This creative flow is one of the strengths of the connected generation. It allows for unedited expression and perceived connection with people miles away.

But this lack of digital inhibition can be a major weakness. Because as we sit with manufactured courage in the privacy of our office space, we’re publishing words to the world that may come back to haunt us in a variety of ways. Not to mention we are also in the process of we’re creating a digital paper trail that could easily affect our God-given calling in the future.

I heard it many times growing up, “If everything we thought or said was made public, we’d be ashamed.” Now, it seems everything everyone hears or says is being made public, but we’re not ashamed.

Now, I’m a huge fan of the digital age. I’m on Facebook & Twitter. But I’m worried about a culture that is slowly lacking the ability to think before it speaks. The journey from mind to mouth to keyboard to web happens so fast, it lacks the necessary self-editing skills we had before the computer age was born.

Communication is clearly not going back to a previous age and I don’t think it should. 21^st century tools have made the world smaller, creating new channels for the transmission of truth and hope and light.

We all need to self-edit before we press send or share or publish. Are the words we are blasting to cyberspace words we’d be proud to claim in a roomful of dignified people?

Are they words peppered with affirmations of God’s grace? Do they show strains of self-absorption by revealing too much about ourselves? Private things that nobody but our loved ones needs to know?

Definitely something to think about…what are your thoughts?

The big talk around youth ministry circles these days has to do with two perspectives:

Yes!  believe it or not there is still youth pastors meeting as I write this blog ( in Cincinnati  at the National Youth Convention) who are asking the old age question…”So dude, how big is your youth ministry?”

To that question I politely say, “WHO GIVES A FLYING RIP!”…the real issue that we need to be talking about and questioning is …”WHY ARE STUDENTS CHECKING OUT OF CHURCH?”

• Is it no longer relevant?
• Are they tired of spectating?
• Are they done with the institution?

A good friend of mine (Brett Ullman) recently posed a blog entry talking about this whole subject…he also gives the viewer some great insights into a resource…take a look for yourself

I can’t stop thinking about the impact that parents have on their kids!

There is that old addage that says something about “nurture over nature” …in some ways I might agree with that statement.  But I must admit I get a little ticked when I hear people say …“todays youth can’t be all God wants them to be until they confess all of the sins of their parents.”

That statement keeps running through my head…I wonder..”how many of these kids I work with really even know there parents?”  The fact is there are many teens who have no clue who there parents really are!  So how does a student confess the sins of their parents when they don’t even think there parents have ever sinned?

I can’t even begin to tell you how many students over the past 20 years have said to me; “I can’t relate to my parents…and they do not relate to me – I have issues and my parents have never had issues.”   What kind of influence are we having on our kids when we appear to be the “Cleaver” family?  I’m not saying we need to download all of our messyness onto our kids – but what I am saying is that we need to be authentic and vulnerable and at least be willing to admit when we have messed up.

We can never lose sight of the fact that we all have inherited a “sin nature” from our parents and if that nature is kept unchecked sin can be repeated from generation to generation. The problem with that mindset is that many have used it as an excuse to remain in disobedience.  I can’t help myself…it’s not my fault…it was my sinful forefathers!! Time for a reality check!!

Those sinful patterns don’t have to be repeated… we all have a choice how we choose to live our lives.  I came from a fairly messed up home…and my ancestry is littered with trainwreck after trainwreck.  Sure I could pull out the “generational  excuse card”…but it’s merely an excuse.  I have drawn the line in the sand…and through the power of  God working through me I must surrender daily to my sinful desires.

Parents, students..or whoever else may read this blog – don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re shackled with the same unavoidable choices.

We all have a choice. I don’t care where you are from or what people around you have done or are doing.  Remember that although faith is personal…it’s also not private – and therefore we must keep in mind that it doesn’t mysteriously trickle down from generation to generation.  We must choose!! .

Her are some questions you may want to discuss as a family;

Think:

• Can God use me (my family) in spite of my (our) family background?
• How can my life beam God’s love into my family/friends?
• Have I made family excuses (generational sin) for my lack of faith and obediance to Gods call in my life?

Pastor G <><<