By Kara Powell and Brad Griffin
Can I have your attention please?
Depending on the context, that question gets a variety of responses. When it comes from the flight attendant during the standard pre-flight safety announcement, we listen a lot less attentively than when we seem to be lurching through mid-flight turbulence.
This theme of getting attention pervades young people’s attitudes about prayer. From our Sticky Faith research at the Fuller Youth Institute, we’ve gathered that for the majority of young people, prayer tends to be something they see as a special occasion or last-resort measure when they need to get God’s attention.
But the thing is, we don’t need to get God’s attention. God is paying attention. It’s us who tend to have trouble noticing. So while only about half of high school seniors in our ministries pray once a day, God is inviting them—and all of us—to notice what he’s doing throughout our day, every day.
This disconnect between how God notices us and how teenagers tend to notice God is what led us to follow up our Sticky Faith research with a special exploration of what helps teenagers connect with God through spiritual disciplines. Out of that we developed a new free 8-week Sticky Faith Every Day Curriculum you can download to use in our ministry. You might find it particularly helpful for the upcoming season of Lent.
As it turns out, much of the purpose of Christian spiritual disciplines and practices is about learning to pay attention, or learning to notice God. With that in mind we also created this video as a discussion starter you can use with your students, complete with ready-to-use discussion questions:
Notice from Fuller Youth Institute on Vimeo
This week we invite you to join us for two opportunities to explore how to help young people—as well as ourselves—notice God in a way that sticks. We’re hosting two free webcasts:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Recorded Tuesday 1/22 with author Margaret Feinberg
Recorded Wednesday 1/23 with author Mark Yaconelli
You’re welcome to join us for one or both webcasts to hear more about noticing God every day. No need to register; just log in and join the party. And we’d love to hear your ideas for helping students shift from trying to get God’s attention to learning to pay attention to what God’s already doing.
GET THE CURRICULUM NOW & Check out More Sticky Faith Products
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.