Bat-Mitzvah-esque Celebration for Kynzi's 13th

I have a teenager! Kynzi turned 13 on August 9th. For the last year my friend Brian and I have been talking about what we are going to do when our kids turn 13. It's not exactly a Bat-Mitzvah, but we did take a few principles from it. In Jewish tradition the girl is celebrated at 12, but we wanted the teenage year to be our marker. Bat-mitzvah literally means daughter of the commandment. She is a daughter of God. All that to say we decided to try and make a day for her that would be super memorable and let her know how much she is loved.

We started on Thursday night and had a bunch of our West Coast family over for dessert and games. With a delicious ice cream cake we started it off and then we played some Quelf. 

Team Halloween Masks did well at Quelf

During the party we told Kynzi this was the beginning of her 24 hour 13th birthday celebration. When she woke up and got ready on Friday morning she headed out to spend time with some of the significant women in her life. Each of them took her to a different place and shared life insights with her and loved on her like crazy.

Michelle took her to Starbucks

Chele took her to Create A Memory

Kara took her to the Wild Pear for lunch

Jill took her to Froyo

Cassie took her horseback riding

Kynzi's loving her time on a horse!

She ended her girly dates with a skype call with Bex, who I think both were sad that they weren't physically together. Brenda (one of her small group leaders) got sick that morning and couldn't take her out. She also got time to talk to both her Granny and Bestemor. There are also a few other friends who are taking her out at a later date.

Jeanne-Ann and I took her out to dinner at Kyotos Japanese restaurant (her request). She was super excited about this place because they prepare the food in a fun way in front of you.

They sang Happy Birthday to her too.

We enjoyed a great meal and heard all about her day. We asked what the different girls talked about. Loving yourself; body image; importance of God being number one; etc. She was elated. Then we talked to her about our dreams for her and our desire that she remain pure and how she can find the love that she needs from us, for the time being. We gave her a purity ring (she has been wanting one) and talked about God's design for us to remain pure and how He has a greater design for life than what the world is trying to sell her. She does not need to give anything to a boy that she intends to save for her husband.

One of the things that is typical in a Bat-mitzvah is that the girl raises money for a charity. Our West Coast family has typically shared in many family plannings and celebrations. Our kids raised money for a well to be built in Burkina Faso, West Africa several years ago, then they joined in on the fundraising to bring our babies home. We want to continue to "give them a better story" by helping them look beyond themselves. It's so easy to think about ourselves and get wrapped up in google, video games, netflix, our stuff, etc. We want our kids to know there is more to life than those things. Not that those things are sinful in themselves, but that we need to continue to focus outward toward others.

So, we are going to be working with heartwork.tv and Kynzi is choosing a project that will ultimately help orphans. It's a pretty cool concept. I got to meet Jeremiah Parks, founder of Heartwork, 2 years ago and was really impressed with his heart and vision. They work with several different organizations, including Envision Culture, which was started by our good friends Matt Peace and Jason Ostrander!!

You pick a type of project, you pick a part of the world and you pick a monetary goal. Kynzi has chosen to raise money for food in Burkina Faso, West Africa. They are being hit hard with a famine right now and she hopes to raise $550 that will feed 24 orphans for 6 weeks! This is huge! Imagine helping 24 kids get through a famine where food is so difficult to come by. It could literally save lives. Want to join in on her project? You can give by clicking here.

After this conversation we pulled out a large scrapbook that was filled with letters written to her. We had asked people (adults) to write things they see in her, things that they could encourage her with and prophetic words they wanted to speak into her life. (not prophecy like you might think when you hear that word, but words of truth that they see potential in her) We decided I would read my letter to her first. I got four words in and out of no where I couldn't read anymore. We payed the bill and headed out to the van for round two. I got five words in and was completely unable to speak anymore.

Jeanne-Ann took over and proceeded to bawl through the entire two-page hand-written letter. The same would be said of Kynzi and me. Part of me wants to share the letter with you, part of me wants it to be hers alone. I guess that can be her choice. The part of me that wants to share it with you is the part that wishes I found something like this before we did it. We talked a lot about what this day would look like, but we didn't have real guidelines. After Jeanne-Ann finished the letter we drove her to a friends house and read a few of the other letters on the way. There are still a few pages if you want to add yours to it. ;)

DAY 2 (Saturday) NYMC

Got up early to workout in keeping with my new commitment. 7AM is 4AM my time. Ouch!

Great morning session. Rick Lawrence talked about how we need to "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Really focused on taste. We all got a ziplock bag with little packets of salt, pepper, malt vinegar, honey and dijon mayonnaise and were told to choose 3 to taste, then take one and ask God to give us some insight as to what that taste tells us about God.
Then we wrote down a declaration to God as to what we heard.

Station 2 lead us in worship. I like their style and ability to infuse God’s Word in the midst of their music.

Duffy Robbins then came and continued to talk about Tasting and Seeing that God is good.

I then headed off to Walt Mueller’s Trend’s in Youth Ministry Culture.
Basically he walked us through the idea that we need to look into the “soup” and stir it. The soup is our students culture. Paul looked at the soup of his time and used it as he talked to the people.

I loved the quote he used from Francis Schaeffer. If Francis had 60 minutes with a person he would spend 55 minutes asking good questions and listening and then 5 minutes leaving that person with something valuable. Good to think about. Too often we talk and we don’t listen. I need to listen more. This fits very well with the things I am learning in my coaching class and books I am reading on coaching.

I walked to Chipotle for lunch and they were closed!!! Ugh. So I went to an afternoon seminar. I caught Tim Schmoyer’s “Media workshop: Effectively communicating with Teens and Parents throughout the Week.” He gave his 10 ways he communicates using technology. The top 3 were his youth ministry website, video announcements and texting. Most of this stuff I know, but it was encouraging to hear and grab some good insights. You can check out what Tim does on www.timschmoyer.com Side note he also has a cool website called www.ministryquestions.com and is a great place to ask and answer questions about ministry.

I popped back into my weekend long seminar with Walt Mueller and then headed to dinner with Jason Ostrander, Dave Irwin and Kris Jones. We talked about a future ministry for middle schoolers. That’s all I can tell you for now, but it’s exciting!

Back to the evening general session. Kay Warren was the speaker. She gave some great challenges to us as youth ministers. Unfortunately I missed most of it. Dinner didn't quite work the way I had planned.


We then headed over to the 100th episode of the Simply Youth Ministry Podcast. It was the 2nd live one they had done with an audience. The first was at last year’s Group conference. The first 100 people got a free t-shirt and they had pizza. These guys are fun and funny. It was great to be part of it.

Rafting the Deschutes

Monday we began our adventure to Maupin, Oregon to raft down the Deschutes River. We traveled through rain (that is illegal in August) and lightning (that is almost unheard of in Oregon) on our way there. The rain began to dissipate as we started to set up our tents and the lightning and thunder left soon after that. We actually had a pleasant evening after that.

Caleb likes to cook for others so he made us burgers and we had lots of other fun snacks to complete a great meal. We chatted and got to know each other a bit and then Jason Ostrander, our national youth director, took us through some great stuff. Orientation, disorientation and reorientation to God. We walked through several Psalms (33, 137, 103) and saw how David interacted with God and we took time to interact with God as well. This opened some amazing discussion on how we deal with students and the cultural issues of today and how we point them to Jesus and His word.

Pics will go up when I figure out what happened to that option! grrr

After sitting up late and chatting we headed for bed in the tents. You know how you can tell a great comic? One way is if he/she references something near the end of his/her routine that they talked about earlier in the routine. Well, we were in our sleeping bags and Caleb responded to a question by referencing something we talked about earlier. The combination of lateness, tiredness, sleeping in tents, and perfect timing caused raucous laughter. Man, we couldn’t stop. You know how you laugh when someone else laughs and they laugh when you laugh? I would hear Jason’s low (trying to get my engine started) laughter, which would make me laugh and that made Erica laugh and that made me laugh, which caused Caleb and Jessica to laugh, which caused Jason to laugh incurring and endless cycle. This went on for over 5 minutes and my stomach has paid for the amazing ab workout.

Finally sleep came and then would leave every hour on the hour, it seemed, as some guy driving a diesel truck with a loud engine (no muffler) through the tent (it seemed) all night long. We also heard, what sounded like someone dragging a body or something around us. Who knows what that was?

We got up and Jason and I took a 2-3 mile run and came back to see the others playing Scrabble while Caleb cooked us pancakes and eggs. Jason walked us through some more cool stuff and we headed to the river to raft finally.

We got on the river and took off for a day of fun and adventure. Throughout the ride I was guiding, but gave up the guide spot to everyone else at different points through the trip. At lunch time we talked through some leadership stuff and how our rafting experience to that point taught us some things about leadership and how it translates to youth ministry. That was a pretty cool conversation. Jessica brought us lunch at the dock and had been taking pictures and video all along the way. (I will post the video later when I have time to edit it). I did a flip over the railing into the water and Ronnie did a back flip and Joe jumped, but caught his foot a he went in and lost one of his aqua socks. Ronnie and I jumped in after it and “saved” it.

We headed back into the water and picked Jessica up for the White water hike part of the trip. White water has much warmer water, and you feel the drastic difference when you have your feet in the water and that water mixes in with the Deschutes River. We then hiked up to an area that has some natural water slides and played on those for a bit. When we were done the boys floated all the way back to the bottom and we all got the scrapes and bruises to prove it.

Then it was back in the raft to finish the trip. We drove back “into town” and got some ice cream and looked at pics and headed home. This was an awesome trip! I hope you can make it next summer. If you ever want to take your students or leadership team I would be more than happy to guide a boat for you. We can take up to 11 total on a boat. Having me guide makes the trip pretty cheap.

Pics will go up as soon as I figure out what happened to that option! grrr