Each year about this time TREK takes a Sunday to celebrate Christmas as a group. It is always a fun morning and part of the tradition the last couple of years has been that we make gallons of Kim McCart’s homemade hot chocolate. I buy plenty of marshmallows and whipped cream to top off the drinks and for just the right touch, we sprinkle on the top some crushed Candy Cane to make the perfect Christmas drink. I look forward to it every year. This year the unthinkable happened. On Saturday evening, I dragged out the boxes of Candy Canes and my wife’s rolling pin to create the Candy Cane sprinkles (a messy process and slightly time consuming). I filled a Tupperware bowl full of crush Candy Cane and in order to make sure that I would not leave it sitting on the counter when I left for TREK the next morning,  I loaded the bowl full of delicious Candy Cane sprinkles and the surplus Candy Cane’s into my car.

Imagine my surprise when I awoke in the morning, drove to church and realized that sometime during the night someone had broken into my car and taken all of my extra Candy Canes and the Tupperware Bowl full of magical Candy Cane dust. Who does that? Who steals Candy Canes and sprinkles? Everything else in my car seemed to be in order,  but the case of the Candy Cane thief remains unsolved.

In contrast to the Grinch who stole my Candy Canes, on Sunday evening I saw a group of high school students do something incredible that completely reflected a spirit of generosity. TREK took on the task of raising money for a homeless shelter and church in the inner city neighborhood of Roseland. We have been partnering with them for years during summer mission trips and in this difficult economic time we wanted to help them complete a project that would consolidate some of their ministries, draw stronger bonds between the homeless shelter and the church and allow  them to rent or sell one their other buildings as an additional source of income.   The Ministry Team (a group of student leaders in TREK) took on this challenge and planned a dodgeball event/ Christmas party as a means to raise awareness and money for this ministry.

Last night I saw students giving above and beyond to be a part of something larger than themselves. The entire evening was run by students leaders, they invited their friends and together they have raised over $2,250 all for Roseland Christian Ministries. I can hardly overstate how proud I am of these students.   All we have heard about teenagers is that they are selfish or that their world revolves only around themselves. I saw something different, something greater. I saw boldness, generosity and compassion.   I saw them lead and inspire. It really was impressive, you should be proud of them as well.

If you would like to be a part of this effort to raise funds for Roseland Christian Ministries, we have established an online option for people to donate. Simply click on the DONATE NOW link and you will be connected to our online giving site (all donations that are processed though FBCG for this initiative are tax deductible).

On January 16 FBCG will embrace what our Student have been doing for years. We will ALL be partnering — SERVING at Feed My Starving Children on Saturday January 16th for two hour shifts. Go to

http://www.fbcg.com/mo_serve_project

and sign up even now as we expect these slots to fill quickly. Each second Wednesday we fill a bus for FMSC and our Women’s Ministry went just this past week. No need to call FMSC and reserve spots of 10+ you can do this with your church family and fill the warehouse.

Feel free to pass along to your friends too.

Refugee Assistance Fellowship Team

One of the best kept secrets of FBCG is the ministry to Refugees.  However, I’m now pretty connected and wanting to celebrate all that God is doing through this robust ministry.  Please consider sharing the Christmas joy and generosity by filling a Christmas Box as outlined below.

1. Suggestions for food items to choose from:
• Meat–ham, chicken or stew beef
(fresh if you deliver it, frozen if someone else delivers it)
• Eggs-one dozen hard boiled
• Veggies- fresh- potatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers and a large can of canned sweet potatoes
• Fruit-bags of apples, oranges clementines, grapes, bananas
• Loaf of cinnamon bread
• Rice- large bag, not instant
• Cookies-2-3 kinds
Other items are always appreciated-Cooking oil, sugar, fruit juice, Christmas candy, pumpkin or fruit pies

2. Suggestions for practical non food items to choose from:
• Laundry detergent and roll of quarters for the coin operated machines at the apartments, very important
• Toiletries-bar soap for bathing, deodorant, shampoo, shaving cream, nail clippers, hand lotion, chapped stick, toothpaste
• Light bulbs
• Kleenex, toilet paper, sanitary supplies,
• All-purpose spray cleaner, dish washing detergent (not for automatic dishwashers)

Families, friends, Sunday School classes or Small Groups can go together to create a Christmas Box to be delivered the week of December 20th.

Please contact Pam Morphis to be matched with a family. You might like to have a volunteer deliver it or you can deliver it yourself and meet the family….it’s fun!
The boxes will be delivered right before Christmas.

Questions? Please Call Pam Morphis 630-232-7068 ext. 152 or email to pmorphis@fbcg.com

by Mark Gregston (http://www.heartlightministries.org/blogs/markgregston/)

Do you want to become your child’s best friend? Of course you do! But does friendship with your child ever get in the way of your parenting? Do you cover your eyes and ears, or overlook problems with your teenager’s behavior because you fear that confrontation will hurt your relationship?

Some parents place so much value on having a great relationship with their child that they fail to take the appropriate position of parental authority in their life. It becomes more of an issue when there is a split in a family and each parent tries to impress a child in order to gain that child’s love. Or, it can happen if a parent is insecure and their child’s life has become their life too. It can even happen if a teen becomes rebellious and the parent caves in to their anger or bad behavior.

Parents who give up their authority in an effort to build a stronger relationship become more like a peer than a parent, so I call them “peer-ents.” Peer-enting doesn’t strengthen a parent-child relationship, it weakens it. Peer-ents tend to refrain from correcting or disciplining a child. They avoid conflict and act like a peer, wrongly defending a child’s bad behavior to others, including teachers and law enforcement.

Proverbs 4:1 provides a pattern for proper parenting and parental authority. It says, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding.” (NIV) This scripture tells us that the role of a good parent is to provide a child with instruction that leads to their understanding.

Unlike peer-enting, the goal of godly parenting is to build maturity and self-reliance in your child for when they eventually leave home. The process may be more difficult than you first imagined. Getting a child to a place where understanding something well enough to lead to maturity takes refinement and discipline. It is something only a parent, not a peer-ent can offer, because it requires the enforcement of parental authority. Your teen may not welcome such “instruction” or training and may not feel all warm and fuzzy about your relationship when they are grounded or lose some of their privileges for stepping over the lines, but they will someday thank you for the “understanding” they received from your training and discipline.

Good discipline may mean your child is temporarily unhappy, and he may not like you in the process.

Just as exercise is good for building physical strength, a parent may need to willingly allow their child to experience some discomfort for a time in order to help them build their maturity muscles. The result of good discipline may mean your child is temporarily unhappy, and he may not like you in the process.

For teenagers, I firmly believe that discipline should never involve spanking or inflicting physical pain. Unlike younger children, teenagers have the ability to reason well, and reasonable consequences should be applied. Consequences for a teen can include losing the car for a time, an earlier curfew, loss of their cell phone, or anything that they would not like losing. Consequences can also include added work projects around the home or helping a neighbor with chores.

Your child needs you to be their parent, and not their peer. They have plenty of peers, but only you as a parent. If you don’t help them move toward maturity and responsibility, no one else will. They are counting on you to discipline and train them to meet the demands of adulthood.

Pie and Cake Auction

November 15
West Campus
6-8 pm
All Monies used to Support Students attending June 2010 trips to:
Roseland Christian Ministries (Chicago)
Mexico (new in 2010)
Quito Ecuador

Last Sunday afternoon, TREK too 168 students (scary I know) and 30+ adults into Chicago for our annual Amazing Race Event. Despite some less than ideal weather, we had a great time and the event was effective in terms of creating a entry point for our students to bring their friends to. Over 1/3 of the students that attended the event were guests of our TREK students. Thanks for helping make it a great event.

Despite a great day on Sunday, the work is not done. These events are meant to be an entry point into the TREK community so we want to highlight some opportunities for those of you that brought friends, here are a couple venues to continue getting friends connected:

TREK Sunday Morning (September 27th):
Slideshow and video’s from the events
raffle with prizes for students and teams that attended
Prizes for the teams finishing in 1sy, 2nd and 3rd place.

Annual TREK Fall Retreat:
October 24th and 25th at Lake Geneva Youth Camp
Informational Fliers Available Online

Importance of the Tween years:

The tween years set the stage for adolescence and adulthood. How a child traverses the tweens often predicts how he handles himself academically and emotionally in the future. The relationship you encourage now will lend you to a more open and trusted relationship in the future, as well. Tween parenting is very important!  You are NOT at the finish line of parenting…really you are still in the first lap of the race.

Parenting Your Tween:

Although knowing what traits are common during this stage of development can be helpful, it shouldn’t be passed off as an excuse to let unhealthy behaviors continue. The parents of tweens have a few goals:

• Teach your tween to work through their moods in a healthy and appropriate way.
• Ask open ended questions that can’t be answered with a “yes” or a “no” to keep dialogue flowing.
• Don’t assume that your child is ready for teenaged responsibilities just because she often acts like one. Tweens are not teenagers and are often not ready for responsibilities such as staying home alone, surfing the internet without monitoring, going to the mall with friends unsupervised, dating, etc. Your tween will most certainly disagree!
• Allow your tween to stretch his new-found voice by allowing him to negotiation and debate important issues and considering his point of view. You may be surprised that he is right and makes good points far more often than you might consider.
• In the end, you are the adult and it is important for tweens to remember that you have final say-so.
• Offer your tween opportunities to stretch and grow and earn trust by giving small responsibilities and increasing them as they are successfully met. This is a great time for your tween to take on a routine household job or job opportunity with a neighbor. Let your tween experience the results if she messes up in order to encourage accountability that will be desperately required to traverse the upcoming teen years.
• Continue to offer “childish” opportunities as your tween is open to them – wrestle with each other, watch G-rated movies together, indulge the desire for “transitional toys” such a building toys, video games and sports equipment for boys or arts and crafts and beauty kits for girls as these help tweens straddle the fence without losing too much balance.
• Enjoy these last few years of early childhood closeness because it will change dramatically when the tween years are over.

Club56 for 5th and 6th graders is OFFICIALLY underway! We had a great kickoff last Wednesday night at East Campus talking about our theme for this year, “God Gives Us”. 

Our theme is really important. It drives the entire program each night and focuses our attention on one thing or person that we believe God gives to us. My hope is through engaging God’s word and each other, we’ll be able to see that all of life is God’s gift to us. This next year we’ll talk about how God gives us family, God gives us friends, God gives us school, and so on. Tonight we will talk about how God gives us community, and drive home the point about the importance of building community through small groups.

One thing that I’m very excited about is the potential to get into hard conversations about life through this theme. In a way, we can see that God gives us school (to use that example), but why is it that not EVERYONE around the world gets the same access to the sort of schools that God gives us? I think that these questions about the REAL world is just the sort of questions that need to be asked if we want our students to challenge students to follow Jesus.

Join us at Club56 on Wednesdays at 6:30pm – 8pm at East Campus!

What are the tween years?

The tween years are those years between approximately 8 and 13 when a child is not yet a teen but no longer just a little kid. They are often overlooked by parents and experts, alike because they happen to fall between two very busy and exciting stages of life – early childhood and the teen years. But this is a tumultuous time for kids as they transition from childhood to the teen years. It is a time of extremes – emotions, fluctuations, expectations and responsibilities.

Characteristics of a Tween:

• Tweens will often act like teenagers or even adults one minute while reverting to childish behaviors the next.
• Tweens still like to play with toys, but are more reserved about sharing this information with peers or parents.
• Tweens usually buck physical affection from parents unless it is on their terms.
• Tweens are more likely to question your ideas and values and compare them to the ideas and values of their peer group.
• Tweens who were never particularly argumentative will start trying to negotiate and stand on their own.
• Tweens are concrete, black-and-white thinkers. Honestly abstract thinking is not even on the horizon.
• Tweens are notoriously superstitious, although often times their superstitions are privately held. This is the natural transition from the magical (i.e. the Tooth Fairy) thinking of childhood.
• Tweens are quieter, sleep more and spend more time by themselves.
• Tweens can possess more violent mood swings than their teenaged counterparts!

Granted this is not all the time or for EVERY student…but be aware.  Be in the KNOW.  Tomorrow Part Two.

The Old Testament begins when God created Adam and Eve in a perfect paradise.  They later sinned and were driven out of the Garden of Eden, forced to live “by the sweat of their brow” in an imperfect world.  As their offspring multiplied, sin also multiplied.  Eventually, humanity became so sinful that, as judgment, God destroyed the earth with a universal flood, preserving only Noah and his immediate family on the ark to repopulate the earth. 

Sin kept its hold over humanity, however, and once again people forgot God.  As the years passed, God revealed Himself to Abraham (2,000 years before Christ), promising him a nation, many descendants, and a blessing that would ultimately extend to everyone on the earth.  Abraham believed God and became the father the Hebrew people.  Abraham had a son, Isaac, and Isaac had a son, Jacob.  The promises God made to Abraham were passed down through Isaac and Jacob.  Jacob had twelve sons, and the promises were passed to all twelve sons, who became the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. 

Jacob and his family of about 70 people were living in the land of Canaan (1) when a famine hit.  They were forced to migrate to Egypt (2) to get food. In time, they became so numerous that they were perceived as a threat by the Egyptian people, and the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrew people for nearly 400 years.  Finally (approximately 1,500 years before Christ), God raised up Moses to lead them out of Egypt.  With many astounding miracles, including the crossing of the Red Sea, they escaped Egypt and went to Mt. Sinai (3), where they received the Ten Commandments.  Then they rebelled against God again and, as a judgment, wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.  When their time of judgment was up, they were allowed to enter the Promised Land (4).  Moses died, and Joshua led in the conquest of the land. 

Israel lived in the Promised Land in a loose governmental system, ruled by judges, for the next 400 years.  Samson and Samuel were the most famous judges.  Then Israel insisted on establishing a monarchy (approximately 1,000 years before Christ), and the Hebrews were ruled by kings for the next 400 years.  Saul, David and Solomon were the first 3 kings, who ruled over a united monarchy for 120 years (40 years each).  When Solomon died, the nation divided over the issue of taxation.  Thee was now a northern kingdom, which kept the name Israel, because a majority (10) of the tribes were loyal to the north, and a southern kingdom, which was called Judah, because Judah was by far the larger of the 2 southern tribes. 

Because of the accumulating sin of Israel, Assyria, a nation of the northeast, came and conquered Israel (5) and scattered many of the people throughout that part of the world (6).  About 150 years later, because of the accumulating sin of Judah, Babylonia came and conquered Judah (7), destroyed Jerusalem, and took many of the people into captivity in Babylonia (8). 

About 70 years later, Persia defeated Babylonia, who had previously defeated Assyria.  Thus, Persia now ruled the entire part of the world from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the borders of India.  The king of Persia allowed the Israelites living in captivity in Babylonia to return to Jerusalem (9) to rebuild it.  Fifty thousand people returned (approximately 5 hundred years before Christ), rebuilt the city, rebuilt the temple, and restored ceremonial worship of God.  They continued to live that way for the next 400 years.  During that time, Persia fell to Greece, and Greece in turn fell to Rome.  Rome was ruling that part of the world when Jesus was born. 

The ministry of Jesus was preceded by the ministry of his cousin, John the Baptist, who warned the Jews to get ready for the coming of the Messiah.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  Then Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph, moved back to their hometown in Nazareth, in the northern part of the country, just west of the Sea of Galilee.  There Jesus lived an apparently normal childhood until the age of 30, when all teachers, by Jewish custom, began their ministry.  Jesus began his ministry in Jerusalem and in the surrounding area of Judea.  His ministry was highlighted by authoritative teaching and remarkable miracles.