College Stress

College Stress: What College Ministers Should Know About Student Depression

By Derek Melleby

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Lesson Loop 11.17.10

This week in our Student Ministry:

THIRD PLACE: "Esther: The Hidden Hand of God"
We started a several week study on the book of Esther, and my goal is to challenge the students to look at this amazing book of the Bible in a different way than they ever have before. My main thrust is that the main hero of the story is not Esther or Mordecai but God Himself. We will be focusing on different aspects of God's sovereignty which show themselves very clearly in the book.

Last night we looked at:

1. God's Majestic Sovereignty (from chapter 1)

• Human nature never changes (WE ALWAYS DESIRE GREATNESS)


• GOD’S nature never changes (HE IS ALWAYS SOVEREIGN)

1. 2. God's Gracious Sovereignty (from chapter 2)

• God graciously chooses his people
  (redemption has always been based on his grace, and not our works)


• God graciously chooses to use his people
  (the success of god’s plan has always been based on his grace and not our works)

LUCID: "Our Lord"


We began a new series on Authority, and we look this week at:

1) God wants us to Depend on Him as LORD (Exodus 16:1-21 & Deuteronomy 8:3)

*We need to beware of the enemy of comfort and remember that we don't really need most of the things we think we need. In fact, God says we live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God's mouth.

2) God wants us to remember that He owns everything! (Romans 10:9)

*We must relinquish control and lay everything down at His feet since He is Lord! The students will consider which areas they need to give over to God (since He owns everything already)

College students and "the call"

Article about how college freshman are finding it more difficult than ever to adjust to college life and deal with the distance from mom and dad:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10298/1097855-298.stm#ixzz149COZb00

Fascinating study on the relationship between technology and permissive behavior

This is an interesting study - the relationship between students who are hyper-texters and hyper-networkers (social networks) and permissive behavior.

Make sure you check out the video which goes through everything. It is interesting that they are not necessarily saying that this is cause and effect; but it is alarming that those students who tend to be obsessive about these things seem to also have tendencies toward peer pressure and at-risk behavior.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/10/hyper.texting.teens/

Rise in profanity on TV over the last 5 years

Just came across a study that was done to see if television is getting more profane, and here it is if you as a parent care to take a look at it. Just a warning - There is a table at the end that lists the offensive words, so don't be shocked when you come across them.

http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/2010ProfanityStudy/study.pdf

Community Service

Parents -

I wanted you to know that over the last couple years I have been trying to figure out exactly how to handle community service when it comes to our youth activities. After thinking through this for a while, I have come up with a guideline, and I wanted to make it official so you didn't have to always guess what counts towards community service or not.

There really are only 2 basic things here:

1. The Activity must be service-oriented (hence the community service) :)


2. Missions Trips are not counted towards community service. I really believe there needs to be something that is done strictly for the kingdom of God and not for the requirements. Also, missions trips are not in our community but in other communities around the country and the world.

This leaves Missions Week as one of the optimum times to gain the community service needed for high school, and so that would be a good thing to encourage your students to participate in. Plus, it is required that you help with Missions Week (for an entire week) before you are eligible for a high school missions trip. This year Missions Week will be the same week as VBS just like last year.

Please contact me if you have any questions!

Thank you as always for your partnership in ministry!