3/12/23 - Pizza, throwback worship, and Singleness and Intimacy!

Good morning parents!

Last night the high schoolers ate some pizza, worshiped, prayed, and spent some time talking about intimacy and singleness!

After snacking and catching up, we gathered for worship and Eli led us through a few throwback songs, we took prayer requests and prayed for one another! If you would like to pray with us, you can find a running list of our prayer requests here!

After prayer, I spent some time setting up our video about singleness and intimacy. I grew up in a small (like 60 people small) reformed church in Hudsonville, and one of the things that was culturally assumed was marriage. People would make jokes and play matchmaker with perfectly neutral intentions, but that actually began to shape what I thought a Christian’s life should look like. I began thinking that the “peak” of Christian life was owning a home, having a Christian wife and (at least) 2 Christian kids, and a good Christian dog. Singleness seemed to be a negative statement about a person's worth or desirability, and it was clear that the highest levels of intimacy (specifically physical intimacy) were only available to me in the covenant of marriage.

Paul's words to the Corinthians about singleness seemed like a nice suggestion, but never a true replacement for what I felt marriage would bring. The video did a great job of making it clear that our worth and our capacity for intimacy is not based on another person's desire - even in a marriage relationship. Our culture tends to uphold marriage as a kind of uber-good, where we perceive that things will be better or easier, or we will be more fulfilled if we get married. This is certainly true for some people, but it is not the only path towards those things.

After that we spent some time trying to define intimacy, and show that marriage is not the only avenue towards it. Our modern concept of friendship and sharing in one another's lives is kind of stunted, and the hyper-individualism of our society makes it hard to imagine finding meaningful intimacy outside of marriage. Instead of thinking that marriage is option 1 and singleness is option 2, I simply encouraged students to pursue Jesus first.

Next week we are tackling a heavy topic in the form of porn and masturbation. I am especially passionate about making sure that our students understand the way that pornography affects the brain and the damage it causes to relationships. Beyond that, it is the primary driver behind sex trafficking and I hope to talk about all of these things as bluntly as possible without making it terribly awkward.

I would strongly encourage you to check out the mentor video if you have access to the curriculum, and the parent page for next week can be found HERE!

Praying for all of you as we continue to engage this topic!

Have a wonderful week!!