A Blog Talk Radio Interview With Amy Pierson On Mentoring Girls

Amy Pierson has become a great friend in ministry. We actually connected through the mygirlsministry.com social network first, and then we officially met at Lifeway’s Girls Ministry Forum in 2010 where we taught conferences next to one another. Amy is a talented author but more than that, she is a friend to me in girls ministry and I love that we share that passion to disciple girls. Here is a radio show interview I did with Amy that was originally aired on the girls ministry network. I hope you enjoy.

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Pastor Mike Glenn Shares About Gifts and Boundaries

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to be a conference leader for Lifeway’s Girls Ministry Forum. The conference I was given was to talk about “working with guys on a church staff”. At first I was supposed to lead this with one of the guys from our staff, but the forum fell on the same weekend as our guys retreat so I knew that would not be happening. So I sat down to prepare for this conference, and realized that video would be a great tool in documenting some clips from these awesome guys I have served almost 9 years with. However, as I sat down in these interviews, I became aware of how important some of these truths were for me to hear personally and then for my girls ministry friends and youth workers. So I have received permission from them to repost those videos here on girlsminister.com. Thanks so much guys! Today is video that comes from my Senior Pastor. It’s his debut here on girlsminister.com and I’m excited that you get to meet him. He has some great things to say about roles, gifting, and boundaries that need to be in place where both genders are involved. Thanks Mike!

GUY TALK: former student ministers share about working with a girls minister


At the end of February, I had the opportunity to lead a conference at The Lifeway Girls Ministry Forum on the topic of working with guys on a church staff. I have to say that in my almost 9 years of working at Brentwood Baptist, that I have been extremely blessed with the guys I get to work with. I count it a blessing to be able to look at these guys that I’ve worked with as my brothers. They have walked with me and helped me mature as a minister to girls. They have encouraged me, laughed with me and at me, and have been a blessing to work with.  With that said, it was not easy and there were intentional things that were done to foster a healthy environment and structure to work together as a team. For my conference, I felt that other girls ministers would benefit from hearing from these guys that I work with. Some of the guys talked about what they’ve learned working with a girls minister and how that differs from their time working without a girls minister. Others talked about difficult moments we had in working together and how we moved through that to be a stronger team. My pastor shared his wisdom on boundaries that need to be in place with teams that have women and men working together. I am not posting all the videos I shared at my conference, but have received permission from Jay and Aaron to share this video with you.  Jay and Aaron were the first guys to work with me as a girls minister and I think that God truly helped us understand some things that could make a difference for other student ministries looking to hire a girls minister or trying to figure out how to work with a girls minister.  I love these guys and I’m thankful that we got to work together for the little over 3 years we did. I now work with a different team of guys, but I still get to cheer these two guys on from a distance as Jay pastors our Station Hill church campus and as Aaron leads our Young Adult Ministry. Take a chance to listen to Jay and Aaron on this 7 minute interview video and pass it along to your student ministers and girls ministers.

Former Motley Crue Body Guard Now Offers a Message Of Truth To Parents and Daughters

fathertalk

Ephesians 6 1-4

1.Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; 3.That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. 4.And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I have had the opportunity to see several fathers help their daughters understand their true identity in Christ.

One such father has had a unique background as a bodyguard that has provided him with too many first hand stories that have given him a perspective that not many people have had. I have a great deal of respect for his two daughters and thought it would be interesting to have his input as a father of daughters on this site. Here are some of the snippets he provided me. I have broken it down into two sections. The first section works best for parents and the final section is addressed to daughters. Thanks Ron for sharing with us your story and mostly thanks for modeling for your daughters true love from a father. I recently heard from a father that works with my husband that the job of the daddy is to fill the love tank of the daughter so much that she doesn’t go looking for someone to fill her love tank. You are definitely doing that with your daughters!

And without further ado…here’s Ron:

TO PARENTS:

I have, in the past, had the rare honor of working with some of the top recording acts in the history of music; first as a tour manager and then as bodyguard. In both jobs I was charged with the safety and welfare of the acts to which I was entrusted. It was a passion. It was not a hobby and it was one I was forced to put my life on the line for more than once.

When I started I was not saved by Grace and aware of the boundless attributes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I lacked instruction in all areas of life. I lived to be a part of the events that shaped music and I thrived on the vast expression and uniqueness of our time.

When my daughter, Angelique, was born I was Vince Neil, the lead singer of Motley Crue’s, (Voice of the Decade of Decadence) body guard,. and we were on tour with Van Halen (Run’in with the Devil). Every night, in every town their where large crowds of rabid fans willing to do anything to see, touch, talk to, or party with the band. They would go to great lengths to show their admiration like climb through heating and air ducts at the arena s, break into hotel rooms, rush the tour buses and limos–you name it and they would try it. Then there were the more sinister and seedy characters associated with the events. People that were jealous, addicted, thieves and scoundrels of every type; people dangerous to themselves and everyone around them. These same people confront our daughters, in our home communities and will be surrounding them when they leave our homes for college and at the work place.

I used and still use the same three principles of protection, providing understanding and staying strong for my artists as I do for my teenage girls –Vigilance, Instruction, Endurance.

Being a writer I spend a great deal of time researching new words. I even look up words I feel comfortable using but want a clearer understanding of their usage. It is the case with the two words that make up the commands for child rearing in Ephesians 6 both words are important and both set the tone and pattern for raising my teenage daughters

Nurture 1. to feed and protect:. to support and encourage, as during the period of training or development; foster: 3. to bring up; train; educate.

Admonition 1. to caution, advise, or counsel against something. 2. to reprove or scold, esp. in a mild and good-willed manner: 3. to urge to a duty; remind: to admonish them about their obligations.

As a parent of daughters I will endure regardless of the struggle to keep my daughters pure. It may not be popular and you may rail against our authority but in the end you will be glad we cared enough to challenge you into making the right decisions that will allow you to grow with dignity, and respect for yourselves and others and most importantly GOD.

Deuteronomy 6:6-8 6 “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”

Ron continually talks with his daughters about God’s commandments. I asked him to share with us what he would share with his daughters. Here is a snippet he wrote to teenaged daughters everywhere:

TO DAUGHTERS:

Girls if you have seen the movie (chick flick) 27 Dresses (that’s right I have seen it 3 times) there is an amazing GOD moment in it. The heroin is an extraordinary wedding planner who meets the hunky newspaper writer, that is forced to write gooey romanticized articles about marriage for his magazine when in reality he hates the very thought of marriage. When he falls in love with the wedding planner he writes a satirical piece about her 27 theme weddings, that embarrasses her. In the make up scene the writer admits to the wedding planner that there is one part of the wedding ceremony he has always loved, “the moment when the groom looks back at the bride coming down the isle and realizes that is his wife forever.”

GOD paints a similar picture in Isaiah 62:5 As a young man marries a maiden… as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” One of the most beautiful pictures painted for us as believers is the triumphant return of GOD to take to himself his faithful believers in Christ. He looks at us not only as his prize but as HIS for eternity.

The question for us all is obedience. Are we willing to live holy lives set apart from the fallen world? Including how we talk, act, and here’s a big one girls – how we dress. Again the bible set the standard 1 Peter 3:3 beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes (or few cloths at all). 4.Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5.For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.

In the movie “The Producers” Uma Thurman sings a song “If You Got it Flaunt it.” The gist of this comedic ditty is to “put your assets on display.” Listen this lack of discretion bears consequence. First in how you see yourself, how others see you, and finally and most importantly how GOD sees you. According to an intense Kinsey Institute study, the average man forms a thought about sex approximately every two minutes, and that he generally ponders the thought for about a minute, 50 seconds before letting go of it. When my girls were in middle school being taught about appropriate touching their was a song about the “No-No Zones.” Ladies if your No-No Zones have less that 3-5 inches of fabric between them and the great outdoors, factoring in the data of the Kinsey report, than at school, or on the streets, or at the beach you have been visually violated thousands of time a day.

Now imagine GOD is in your High School this afternoon and comes upon you and sees your lack of discretion. Would you be embarrassed? It is not the way GOD intended you to be.

I go through this discussion every month and I will continue to go through it and not be swayed. I know what bad girls look like. As I said they came into my back stage areas every night Not all of them were intending to be bad. But they dressed revealing as much as possible without being arrested, hung out with girlfriends, who themselves may not have been bad people, but in the areas of appropriate behavior felt going for it was– OK. They almost always ended up in compromising, harmful, and even dangerous situations. We are living in the age of STD’s and AIDS and the consequences of turning from GODS intended plan for you young ladies, our daughters, is devastating. As a parent of daughters I will endure regardless of the struggle to keep my daughters pure. It may not be popular and you may rail against our authority but in the end you will be glad we cared enough to challenge you into making the right decisions that will allow you to grow with dignity, and respect for yourselves and others and most importantly GOD.

Thanks Ron for sharing a little of your heart with us.  Ron Camacho has authored and co-authored several books (Chicken soup for the country soul, From the heart of racing, and The Last Dragon: Tear Falle).  He is a great dad and husband and his daughters are a joy to have in our girls ministry.  I hope you have enjoyed hearing from his heart.  We look forward to bringing some more dads into the girlsminister.com conversation.  And if you are a daddy, may you continue to fill up your daughter’s love tank to overflowing so that she learns first from you what a Godly man is and sets her up to look for that in her own marriage relationship.