Stuck? Throw an “Inch Pebble” Party
Doesn’t fb really stand for “family bragging?” Posts like: “Look at the clever Halloween costumes we made” (with help from a professional makeup artist and the costumer from Lion King?) 
“My quarterback son just cured cancer during halftime of his Homecoming football game,” or “We— I mean–my daughter won the science fair blue ribbon.”
Am I the only one overwhelmed by parenting my kids, let alone comparing myself to other, overachiever families? (Just because I can’t get my act together to post fb pictures doesn’t mean we’re not having jaw-dropping, creative, family fun–it means you don’t have a good enough imagination.)
We all set basic goals for our kids’ growth (i.e .learning how to use a fork and knife). We help them practice skills and hone talents (not including how to armpit fart–boys teach that to each other.) We help them make mid-course corrections in order to become responsible citizens of the world. (“When you earn a D on your report card, no one but you think that means ‘I have a crappy history teacher.’ The rest of the world thinks, ‘He didn’t do the work.'”) And as families, we get stuck sometimes.
For ministry training this week, I’ve been reading an excellent book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. 
Not a church-y book, a business book. It covers how to build hope and create forward momentum, even how to make big changes through asking people to take incremental, easily do-able steps. Applicable to get your teen to clean a room, to pay off your enormous college debt, or change that most stubborn behavior.
Good points of the book are: 1) motivate rather than impose change by following the bright spots, 2) build on what’s going well, 3) make it easy to change right now by setting a clear path.
Aiming for your child to be successful in milestones (straight As on the report card or making the A team) is too overwhelming. Heath says to break it down even further. He writes,
Aim for family “inch pebbles.”
Especially for our kids, we might take the time to shrink the problem to what is doable NOW, one inch at a time. OR we can grow our kids by motivating and helping them really want to move the next pebble (celebrations, vision casting, bribes all help build new pebble-moving habits). Create a path out of “stuck” by providing positive, actionable clarity. Heath says it works better every time than loud, parental “no’s” or even our best, can-do speeches.
It’s as if we flipped the switch on our kids–we suddenly move the pebble forward the next inch in the next five minutes. Worth throwing a party? Yes.
we talked for miles about change and fear— (and what exactly is Moonshine anyway? Didja know it’s also “foolish talk or ideas?” The McCoy version of talkin’ smack? Didja know they’re called the Smoky Mountains because fog in the hills looks smoky,
not because Smokey the Bear lives there? Revelation. We clueless Yankees crossed into southern territory, dumbfounded by places where every word is drawled, like the town proudly proclaimed on its water tower as “Florence, KY Ya’ll.” And then Rockytop, TN. We trolled my siblings, singing “Rockytop” over and over. Sorry. Not Sorry. But I digress.)
in Argentina this summer. Jumped off a mountain with a parachute for Pete’s sake.) Anyhoo, during freshman orientation, Carlina tweeted:
Friends have epic war stories from the Jersey DMV. Waiting for hours only to have the line cut off just before you enter. Penna DMV was a stuffy 30×30 room with 75 customers packed in and 5 grim robots working too hard. “Papers?” Stamp. “Test?” Stamp. “Check?” Stamp. Indiana BMV was the best organized, with wait times posted online for each location.
I felt good when I walked out, better than when I walked in. Now that’s unexpected.
On a good Sunday morning, 44 students walked through the doors of the youth room. They ate over 1,000 doughnuts in a year, played 150+ games of ping pong and foosball, and talked together with the youth team about how to follow Jesus. Twenty to twenty-five returned for high school youth group or middle school fun night, playing crazy games together and digging into Bible study.
rgiven, and family who belong here, serving in God’s world alongside us. We can support youth with our money and with our time in volunteering and in prayer. With each baptism, we as a Church make a pledge to nurture that doesn’t expire and is never limited to Sunday. Thankfully, neither is God’s love, which is always ready for our Mondays.
questions, especially about how faith and science fit together, and he was willing to meet with me.
“Okay, so rather than guess, why don’t you tell me what your questions are?”
Did you know they are discovering new finds about the stories in the Bible like the Exodus? It turns out maybe they were looking in the wrong place and the wrong time period and that’s why they didn’t find much evidence before now.”
Family Launch 