For me, what would you say are the primary roles in your life right now? Any volunteers? Yes. Child of God. Okay, Child of God, number one, for all of us. Why? Okay. Mother, administrative assistant, student, friend. Okay, good. That's perfect. How many is that? Six? Alright, six. That's good. How about somebody else? Yes. Child of God, husband, student, youth leader, friend, and counselor. Okay, good. Take some of those, like, take youth leader, for instance. Under your youth leader, aren't there going to be a number of other roles that you play? Counselor's one, friend's one, but I assume when you say friend, you're meaning, you know, friend of people who are your peers, from your past, and your presence as well. Alright, somebody else? List. Steve, you got a list? Alright, go ahead. Talk loud. Do you have a good term if that's such a thing? I mean, his work or friend's son, uncle and brother, because my weird, family situation. Okay, so yeah, so each of those is a different role. Now, the professionals tell us, the professionals tell us that you shouldn't have more than, how many roles? Five, seven is the number. David's probably read something I asked him to read. The seven is kind of the number. Now, I don't think they can prove that. Like, if you have eight, you know, you're doing too much, or five, you know, you really are kind of a slacker. Because you can define roles in a lot of different ways. In fact, when I listed my roles, I realized I've got way too many, and so I need to cut back. So instead of really saying, I need to eliminate things, I basically just got more creative with my titles. So instead of saying, child of God, husband, father, husband and father blended into family, which is fine. And then I went on down another list. I began to realize, though, once I get over seven, because I really didn't try to keep it about seven, that there are some things that I'm not putting a priority on. And the reason I'm not is because, I don't know, time. This is a dangerous place. When I was in college, there was an article written about me in a young life journal. A friend of mine that I worked with in young life was writing an article for their National Magazine, and decided to do one on me. I'm embarrassed that that article was ever written. And the reason I'm embarrassed was because of the way I was living my life. It wasn't in great sin, but it was completely unbalanced. The title of the article was, he wears three hats. The word it was doing was lifting up someone who's addicted to activity. The first hat I wore was that I was a student, full-time college student at the University of Central Oklahoma. I'd say go, but I'm not sure what our mascot was. Is it Broncos? Okay, he's from that town, but he didn't go there. Second role was I was a paid intern for a church. Third role was I worked for a company called St. John's Ladies Apparel, which I had probably enough time on tape to explain what that means. Basically, it was a chain of women's stores, and I, along with the owner, were the only two men in the whole organization, but I was the grunt. I was the one who went and did all the errands, and put up the light bulbs and cleaned the restrooms, and did all that kind of fun stuff. And so I had these three major things in my life, which occupied a lot of time. I worked 20 hours a week for the St. John's Place, worked about 15 to 20 for the church, and then I was a full-time student. And so they're like, this guy, this is great, look at him go. Instead, somebody should have been writing articles about addicted to activity. That should have been the title, and they should have talked about the way it was really destroying many key parts of my life. My relationship with God, my relationship with my family, and I wasn't married or anything like that yet. But I had a terrible relationship with my mom and dad and brothers and sisters because I was never there. I couldn't be there. I was too busy doing ministry. I have found that that is a beautiful metaphor, really, for what the rest of my life has been like. The temptation of so many good things coming at me, just as they do to you, that it'll be really easy to go. Yeah, I'm excited about all the different activities. I'm excited about all these roles in my life. When you realize that every one of them are going to be at some level in conflict with the primary role of your life. Even your family, compared to the greatness of a relationship with God, isn't as high. But they're all going to occupy and try to compete for that number one position. Does that make sense? And so as that takes place, we have to back up and really consider one of the most significant roles. And as I said earlier, I realize as I look at my roles that there's some that are very precious to me that I don't put any time into because I'm too busy. And one of them is friend. I realize not long ago that's a significant role, but I don't talk to friends in the past very much. I don't talk to, you know, friends that I've nurtured relationships since I was little. Why? Well, there's just not enough time. And I understand the stage of life when you've got little kids and all those things, but it wasn't that. It was that I was letting other things become a higher priority so that I wouldn't make those phone calls. And it's not like they were expecting me to, but it's something I wanted. Does that make sense? And so the time management that I want to show you just briefly is centered on the roles of our life. And taking time each week, I think in the presence of God as we're praying to Him, Lord, help me balance. Help me have boundaries with what I'm supposed to do. And it starts with your roles. Now, I'm going to use mine just as an example because I know them the best. First of all, I'm a child of God. And I know then on a given week that there are certain things that I want to do in my relationship with God. I want to spend time with Him in the morning. It's my best time. I really want to be with Him in the morning. Some of you would be at night afternoon at lunch. It doesn't matter. But I know that it's a priority. Second priority is I am a family. Man, I've got three little ones. 16 months, little over three, little over five. They take time. And I've got a dear wife that I love to spend time with. Then I get into other specific roles. Now, these are some of the roles that I have. I use the word shepherd to indicate what I do as a pastor. This means I'm going to go spend time with people, shepherding them in the relationship with Christ. Another word that I use is teacher. This includes anything I do whether it's teaching a class like this occasionally or Sunday school or preaching, whatever it is. Another role I have is I use the word developer. That is developing new ideas, new programs, new events for our ministry. Another role is administrator. Now, you already know, you know, strengthen weaknesses there. But I recognize that if I'm in the position as a director of something, that's going to have with it inherently some administrative role. I've got to do that. Another role that I use is now what I call friend. Now, there are lots of other ones that I love to put up there. This is there will be for you too. Like I would love to be a guitar player. I'm not. I'm stink. I would love to get better. But right now my life there's not time for that. I could scratch out friend and probably do that. I could scratch out administrator and probably do that. But there's just not time. I have to accept that. I would love to be. I would love to make a model road. I mean, I do that with my dad. I wouldn't do it with my kids someday. But I'd love to just build. And it'd be a hobby that I would love to just take a huge table. Because I used to want to be an architect. And just architect a little world. It'd be so cool and fun. There's just no time for that right now in my life. I would love to be, you know, a lot of different things. But you realize that there's limitations on the time God has given us. We can't do everything we want. We've got to choose based on boundaries. So, the way I do time management isn't on task. I don't start my week with a massive list of tasks. I start my week by looking at the priorities of who I want to be and who God's called me to be. So, under each of these, instead of identifying just, oh, I got these neat roles, I specifically think about each of them and how I want to utilize them. Now, roles also rotate, for instance. I may scratch out the role of developer one week in order to focus on role of leader. And that means I'm going to spend more time that week focusing on developing leaders within my leadership team. Does that make sense? Or it might be writer. There might be a week where I really want to focus on writing something, a letter or an article. And so, I focus on that. But that's not, I'm not called to be a writer. That's not a role I have every day of my life. Does that make sense? And so, these are rotating. Some of them. Now, these don't rotate. You know, they just, they don't. They're primary. But as I look at them on a given week, I'll take time, and I'll step back and say, okay, what are two or three things within each of these roles that I could accomplish this week? So, child of God, I want to go into the, you know, state park. I go to a place called Castlewood. And I want to spend significant time on Monday afternoon, on Monday morning, being alone with the Lord. I know I need it. I'm going to carve that out. And so, in my schedule, I'm going to say Monday. No appointments. Maybe the whole day, maybe part of a day, doesn't matter. But my family, I know that I, this week, want to take my kids to the park. Or, I want to read them a new book. My wife and I are going to go out on Thursday night. You know, I don't want this to be a special date this week. I want this to be more creative. So, I'm going to do this. And so, I step back and I think about my week and what that's going to look like. I then move to the role of shepherd. And so, instead of just going, who can I contact with this week? I have a strategy. I look at the list of students in our group. I pray over them. And I think, who should I spend time with? What parent? What student? And what leader? And I typically go through that kind of a framework. Because I really want to have good relationships with parents, with students, and with our leaders. And so, I'll make it less. And typically, it looks like, who am I going to write a note to? Which group of people will I? That's in the way now. Make a phone call too. And who will I try to have a one-on-one with? And I'll go through that. Teacher, when am I going to prepare? Because one of the values of my life is I want to be prepared. And I want to just show up. Even though it's just high school students, and just pull out a passage and begin to just make stuff up as I go. I think that's wrong, and I think it's sinful. And so, I want to be prepared as a teacher. As a developer or leader this week, what's one or two things I want to do as a developer? You know, I want to work on missions for our church. Okay. I'm going to spend one hour at some point in the week and focus on missions. Administrator. One of the big projects coming up that I need to pay attention to. And then a friend. If I can call one friend a week, when take that long, it'd be a pretty incredible thing. And so, I start there based on values, the things I value in my life, and the roles I have in my life. And that begins to push towards the way I manage my week. Does that make sense? So it doesn't start, which is the massive task less. Instead, it starts with the roles in my life. Then it moves towards task. In other words, you know what the major task are. You probably have a record of them somewhere. How do they flood in to each given role? And then I manage that way. How do I do it? By evaluation. Each week, what I'll do, or each day, I step back at the end of the day as I reflect on the day and I look at each thing. And I grade myself just as I would if I was in an academic setting. A, B, C, D, and F. If on a given day, I was supposed to write a note as a shepherd, I'll make a little note by that, which means fail. I'm failing that right now. I said I was going to do it today. I didn't. And then I'll put an arrow, which means tomorrow. And I'll go and record that on the next day. With a circle, I'll put next to it, meaning that I failed the day before. I don't want another F to go there. I need to get that done. Does that make sense? Because it's a value. Do I have to do it? Will the person be mad if I don't? Not in that case. They don't even know a little notes coming. But I know it's something I need to do to fulfill the value that I have in that role. And so I'll go through each one. Then at the end of a given week, I'll look at the whole thing. I've never had a week where I accomplished it perfectly. Never. But I feel far more effective at what I've accomplished as opposed to what I just had this massive task list that I was scratching things off with. Because there's a lot of things on a task list that might not really be that important compared to these things of your life. And that's where you get advanced and time management. It's trying to distinguish between what is urgent and important versus what is not urgent but is very important. And then there's obviously the other paradigm, which is focusing on not urgent and not important things. That be things like getting on the internet and just looking up all kinds of stuff or watching TV and just kind of wasting time. So we've got to really think about how do we use our time most effectively. And this is one of the ways that I've done that. Now this is not my invention. It's in a lot of different time management books. But it would benefit you greatly to take time to learn and study how do you work. Now somebody might be going, yeah, I've seen that before. I've read it. I don't know how to do it. I've tried it. It didn't work for me. I'm not that kind of person. Well, if you're not, then you need to ask why. And be honest, is it because you're too lazy to do it? Is it because it takes too much time? Or is it because you just aren't disciplined enough to stay focused on task? I am a perfect case study. I have something like this for somebody who naturally doesn't, isn't drawn to that, can make it happen. In fact, once I started doing it, I might have been an informer showing these things. Once I started doing it and seeing the results, I realized this is powerful. And it really works. And different people use different things. For instance, my planner is huge. I've got one of those that holds eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper in it. I started with a little bitty dinky one. Then I went to one of these size, and I gradually went up. And now I keep a huge one, not because I like to walk around going, look at me, I'm administrative giant because it's not true. But I realized I have a lot of papers and reports that I get on different things. And so, I like it where I don't have to fold papers up and put it in it. I just have a nice three ring binder. It pops in there, and I keep my planner right there. And I keep it on. I don't carry it everywhere. It's not with me right now. But it's on my desk. And there's everything I need to keep track of what's taking place. Does it make sense? Some people love the PDAs. You know, the personal data system. How many of you have one? I'm just going to curious. You've got one. Is that it? Just one. Lots of people have one. I had one. The best thing that ever happened was when I left on an airplane. And it got stolen. I mean, I walked off the plane. It was a Delta flight. And didn't recolorado. I walked off the plane. Got to the end of the gate. Turned the corner. Walked towards the luggage care cell. And realized, I mean, three minutes. Oh, I left my planner. Walked back. We don't have it. I know exactly. I said, oh, it's in the seat right in front of me. I left it right there. I remember putting it in there. And they're like, I'm sorry, it's not there. Well, somebody swiped it. It was a nice one, you know, how it goes. And so it was stolen. Well, that was the best thing that I read them because I did not find it helpful. Most people love them. They think they're great. But I need to be able to see the big picture. So this is something about my personality. And so as I have to look at the big picture, I was, I don't need that thing. I can't see enough right there. And so I don't use it. You like yours? Okay, so this isn't a class that's promoting the palm pilot. However, lots of people love them. I'm not saying don't use them. I have many friends who love it. You know, there's app in each other with all their phone numbers and stuff. They're really cool. But I just, I didn't find it to be very helpful. So I went back to the old school. The point is, find what works for you. Keep it. Some of you want to have a nice binder. Great. Some of you, you know, you want to keep it. And it'll just a little dollar binder that's fine too. But use them. Use what works because it's incredible when you can keep track of stuff and begin to realize I'm making progress in the areas that I'm doing. Any questions about time management and stuff that are comments? Anybody like, hey, I'm a master at it. Mark, I think you're an idiot. This is what you should do. Any at all? All right. Good. I'm glad. I hope you do well on that. I know it's going to be challenging. If you fail, this is a great line. If you fail, you're using it. You fail. One day you just didn't get anything done. Your date has got away from you. Will you have days like that? Absolutely. God will make sure you do so you're depending on him. Start again immediately. Anything you do, if you fail, start again immediately. Just, okay, yeah, I choked on that. I know I'm committed to it. I need to start again and start again immediately. Well, we're going to make kind of a abrupt transition. There's a video that I want to show in the remainder of this section. And then on video you'll, for the access students, you'll see more of the video later. But I really want you to see a video that came out. We're getting ready to talk about youth ministry and an electronic age as we finished at the semester. And then we're going to talk about some models, just introductory of family-based youth ministry. But there's a video before we get there that I wanted to show you guys in the semester at some point. And based on the events of September 11th, when we had to cancel class, this had to be pushed back. The video we're going to see was put out by PBS and their news magazine called Frontline, which, if you have a chance to watch it periodically, at least check the news papers to see what they're showing because they often will do documentaries on youth. And they do them very well. Some people would say they're a bit sensationalist at times. But I really do believe that they try to do it with integrity. And there's an interesting perspective that they bring. The video that we're going to watch is called The Lost Children of Rockdale County, which is a video. How many of you have seen it? Just kind of curious. Rockdale. Okay, so a great video. Rockdale County is a community outside of Atlanta. And they'll kind of give you this context as the video starts. But it's a powerful, very, very powerful video about a group of students, mostly at that time middle-aged, or mid-high-age students, who go into high school, who get into this conflict of a sexual identity crisis and sexual activity that's going to horrify you. I want you to know ahead of time if you're easily offended by gross activity that's just heinous. You need to know that. And you have permission to step up and walk out of the class. It's not promoting it at all, of course. Instead, it's saying this is a reality of what has happened in the community, and you need to be aware. There are powerful implications for us as a church. And the reason is because the church is clearly described in this footage in how they respond to a crisis like this. And I want you to watch it to be paying attention to what's going on, and what should the church's response be? How did the church respond? Was it effective? Or was it uneffective? And the reason is because as it gets towards the end of the video, when you get there in this section, you began to really see some things that the church, the churches in the area did really well, and some things that the church didn't do that well. And it's certainly a relationship to what we've been talking about in terms of relationships with students. We've been seeing particularly of Lloyd Kratos book, Connecting, which you guys read, and how that could play a role in these types of students' lives. So enjoy. 25 miles east of Atlanta. Georgia's Interstate 20 reaches Rockdale County. And it's only town, Connors. Just off the exit is a mile long strip of fast food restaurants and chain stores, which serves as Connors' downtown. Most people here live in newly built subdivisions, with names like Ivy Bluff, Ansbrook, and Martha's Vineyard. Carved out of what not long ago was pastoral farmland. Rockdale County is the outer edge of what has been called the fastest growing settlement in human history. The rings of suburbs surrounding Greater Atlanta. Most children here go to one of three high schools, Heritage, Salem, or Rockdale. Fattened with tax dollars, they are among the best in the state. It was a surprise, then, when something happened among a number of the teenagers here that revealed a life unknown to their parents. It was the spring of 1996. Most people in Connors were focused on the upcoming Atlanta Summer Olympics. The younger children's letters had been chosen to host the equestrian events and had built a new horse park for the occasion. Few people therefore noticed a small article appearing in a local paper. It reported an outbreak of syphilis among some 20 people, most of them teenagers, and it hinted at the possibility that many more had been infected. I actually called my colleagues, and at the time I said, hey, you're not going to believe this, we have an outbreak of syphilis in a middle-class white, largely white community, a suburb of Atlanta, worse, it's right near one of the venues of the Olympics. Kathleen Toomey is the director of Georgia's division of public health. What was unusual about this particular outbreak is that it focused around a group of young girls. They were described to me as almost terrific in some of their characteristics. And again, very young, some of them 13 years of age. This was so totally out of line with everything that we had ever seen, teenagers, especially young white females, do not get syphilis, but in our case they did. Who asked my chart? Cynthia Noel, a nurse at the county's public health department, was one of the first to discover the outbreak when an adolescent boy appeared, complaining of symptoms of syphilis. Noel questioned the boy about his sexual contacts. One of the girls that he had been with was actually our key to the entire epidemic. She had had numerous sexual partners, and when we brought her in had a positive blood, and we started really with her finding the other partners and as it broadened into bigger and bigger circles. Noel and her colleagues constructed a chart tracing the sexual histories of each infected teenager. As the investigation progressed, the number of contacts named by the kids multiplied and multiplied again. What we were told by a lot of the kids was that there was a lot of sexual activity with multiple partners, a lot of risky sexual activity. These girls were not just having regular intercourse, they were having every kind of possible sexual act that you could do. State health officials fearing a widening epidemic called in Claire Sturk, a Dutch-born professor at Emory University's School of Public Health. It was to Sturk that some of the children began to reveal the details of their sexual activity. It was not uncommon when all the young people would get together to engage in group sex. There was group sex going on in terms of one guy having sex with one of the girls, and then the next guy having sex with the same girl. There was group sex going on in terms of one girl having sex with multiple male partners at the same time. Multiple females having sex with each other at the same time. I would say the only type of group sex that I did not hear about in his overall context was group sex between just guys. In the end, 17 young people tested positive for syphilis, more than 200 others were exposed and treated. Approximately 50 of them reported being involved in extreme sexual behavior. You don't expect to see a 14-year-old with 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 sex partners. You expect that of someone who is more into the line of being a prostitute or something, and these girls were not homeless. They were not abused in any way. These were just normal everyday regular kids. Cindy owns an antique store in Connors. At the height of the epidemic, her daughter Nicole was among the 200 young people called into the health department to be tested. Cindy went with her. How did you feel when you heard that she had to go into the health department for the... She should never have to tell you. But I wanted to be there with her. I felt like it would be a traumatic experience. It wasn't. We walked in there, and I've never... I mean, it was like hitting a brick wall here are these kids that are high-fiving each other, laughing. I do not believe a single one of them realized what they're dealing with. We thought it was funny. I thought it was... You guys syphilis, you know? I mean, we knew. It's like the cuties gained little kids playing, you know? Nicole is Cindy's daughter. She was 15 at the time of the outbreak. They gave everybody the shot. If you had it or not, before you got tested, so you never knew who had it or not. Now if I look back at pamphlets and syphilis, I'm like, oh my god. You know, but then it went into something else. We got over. It all began investigators were determined with a loosely knit group of friends. In many ways, they were indistinguishable from other teenagers and conures. Most drove nice cars, lived in new homes. And on weekend nights gathered on the strip looking for something to do. It was a great cross-section. Just every imaginable profile of a child was in this group of students. It was not aimed at a child who had a car, it didn't have a car. It's not aimed at a child who was a good student versus a bad student. It was a football player versus a band participant. It was a cross-section of children. Not all of them knew each other well. Not all would be exposed to syphilis. And not all would take part in group sex. But they were all caught up in the strange events of the spring and summer of 1996. There's always a group of us. We never did anything except what we wanted to do, which was hang out. We wanted them to think that we would look at them, then kids or whatever. We liked the stairs. We started dressing, bay baggy clothes, big, and like wild T-shirts and stuff. And the girls would wear dark, dark lipsticks. And I want her to get stairs or tension or something. Not to be normal, maybe. For a while, some of them made themselves conspicuous in town, shoplifting, glaring music, and defying the midnight curfew for teenagers under 16. We'd brought around in Congress three o'clock in the morning and somebody's parents car and never think about getting caught. We never thought about consequences back then. I think one of the reasons that they liked me was because I had a car. And a lot of them didn't have a car. And so they called me up a lot and said, come pick me up. And that was a big mistake because I ended up driving everybody around everywhere. Amy grew up in Rockdale County. By the time she reached high school, she had fallen out with her old friends. Gradually she began to make new ones. I guess they just gave me the friendship that I was looking for. If we went somewhere like out to eat or something just to get something to eat, I would always try to get out to see other people and just say, look who I'm with. One kid many of them wanted to be seen with was DJ, a 14 year old known for his charm at a streak of recklessness. I didn't really want to be notorious. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be famous. I wanted people to like me. I didn't want people to hate me. I always tried to be the likable one. And I could be. DJ had money and little supervision at home. His parents were divorced and he had moved in with a family friend, whom he called his godfather. My father is a good businessman, my godfather. He would buy me really anything. And just give me all the money I wanted. Anytime I needed it, whatever I wanted and bought for him. Kevin was a good friend of DJ's at the time. You'd have a party with like 200 people. Everybody would get drunk, spend the night, swim in the pool, his dad didn't care what he did. There were lots of parties back then. Anywhere that adults weren't around. The kids would meet at empty homes all over Conjures, sometimes in rented motel rooms. Kevin did not take part in their activities, but he knew about them. There was a lot of sex going on there. Like one girl would come in the group and see if you passed around. Or one guy would go in the girls group and get passed around. Passed around? Yeah, they just, one guy would do it with a one night. Next night somebody else has her. Next night somebody else has her. Was this a game? Pretty much. There was a lot of sex then. About 16 years old. A lot of sex. We would fight. There was about four of the guys that drove BMWs and had everything. And those who are all the girls wanted to be with those guys. So we'd all fight over them or do whatever. So I think that's, and then you'd have sex with them. So I'd be like, yeah, I had sex with your man last night. And that's, I think that's how the syphilis came about. Is everybody just having sex with everybody? Actually, I mean it was a social thing, but it was more of an underground railroad thing. It was just everybody was secretively having sex with everybody. And everybody knew it. Teenagers knew it. But parents never knew. A lot of the adolescent had parents who worked were at home alone. Had parents who put in 40, 60, 80 hour work weeks. And we're doing that to ensure that all the resources that they wanted to give to their children were available. The activities they were involved in, whether it was the sexual otherwise. The majority of the behavior was taking place between right after school and right before parents came home from work, like between three and seven. And some of it late at night then, after midnight, after parents would go to sleep. Most of my friends' parents were not the kind of parents that really cared. They cared what went on. And if they interfered with their lives, then it really wouldn't. They don't want to bother with it. Peggy Cooper, now retired, was a middle school guidance counselor. She reported to the health department that she was hearing stories of late night sexual games involving kids as young as 12 years old. My students were talking to me about the parties that they were having on weekends. And there was one place in particular that they had lots of privacy. The parents were often gone. And they said that they were watching the Playboy channel. And in the girls' bedroom. And there would be, like, kind of 12 of them up there. And so I said, well, is everybody watching it? Oh, yeah, they're all watching it. And so one little guy asked us, and we're getting pretty good at it too. And I said, good, what? So he said, well, wait, you have to do. The game is you have to imitate what the Playboy people are doing. And one I'm saying, and sometimes it's all mixed up too. You know, it's just like, I mean, they might be three or four of us at one time. And it doesn't matter if you're two guys or two girls or girl only guy. It doesn't matter. You just have to do what they're doing. And there's this one time when we are all at a party. There's about 30, 40 people there. And this one girl, they've been drinking. They're pretty strong. And she like, she told everybody. She was going to have sex with almost every guy that was there. And then her and her friend went back in the bedroom. Her friend had sex with her boyfriend and came out. And then the girl stayed in there. And it was like, all the guys lined up. And it was like, they were from the door to the front door. I mean, it was a line of people. We brought out the bag of condoms. We got from the health department and passed them out. And like, two guys were getting there, you know, and they were having sex with her. And they were like having oil, sex, and you know, sex. And all the guys that most of the guys that were there went in the room and had sex with her. And then she came out. And I thought it was the coolest thing that she had just had sex with all of them or maybe they thought she was cool or whatever. Then she was like bleeding and her hair had come all in it and it was all over close. Did any of the girls describe the sex as pleasurable? Initially they described the sex as pleasurable. And pleasurable in terms of being physically pleasurable, but also psychologically. It was an initiation into the next step of the life. It was part of their development that was taking place. Over time, however, very few of the girls talked about the sex and terms of it being pleasurable at all. It became something that was painful that in some cases they couldn't even remember they did anymore. So it became very negative. Do you ever think they might have done it because they wanted to be accepted by the boys? I don't think it was a real pressure issue. I mean, it might have been for them. Subliminally, it might have been. Subconsciously, it might have been. But it really, I mean, there really wasn't any pressure to more of them. They just gave in really. How did the guys in general treat the girls? They were mean to them a lot. They treated them like they were just not trash, but not very respectable. And the girls seemed not to care. I don't know why. I guess they just... I think most of it was the alcohol that they were buying. Because the guys always bought alcohol. They knew that we would like it. If they didn't treat us like we were anything good, real important. You didn't ever get angry at them? I did. A few times, but I can't really do anything about it. Because they just... They wouldn't care. They just tell me to go home or something. Why didn't you? I don't know. I don't know. I just... I would be alone then. They miss it bad. Now, so let's watch her. Watch her. Watch her. See you going to hit this thing? You're going to hit it. Amy lives with her parents in a spacious home in Princeton way. One of Rockdale's wealthier subdivisions. Her father supervises security at a state university. Her mother, a school teacher, did not want to be interviewed. When he was very close family when they was younger, still are. I think we spent a lot of time together. Gosh. Vacations. One of the vacations until she was 16. We was very involved in saltball. She and I, and I coached her from time she was seven, eight years old until she was 18. We spent a lot of time together that way on the saltball field. During those years, it was just... It was great. I couldn't ask for a better kid. You were close? Yes. Yes, we was. Probably not as close as we should be, but we was close. Amy, smile. Enjoying? I was good at it. I was really good. Stay on their way, but do something. Jump up and down. Thank you. Anything I did wrong, I would get scared and I would have to tell my mom. Oh, no. I was like, oh, no, I'm bad. But I don't know why everything just changed. It was changed. Amy's life began to change in middle school when she was about 13. Then seventh grade, I had this one best friend and she was like my best friend since I was little. And then she just, she got new friends and she didn't like me anymore. She kind of told me she didn't want me to sit next to her at lunch and all this stuff. And I felt kind of rejected. So then I didn't have very many friends throughout my school after that. Amy spent ninth grade on the cheerleading squad. In the tenth grade, she was cut from the team. After that, it just sort of felt depressed a lot. I was just really happy. And I was okay outside of school, but I just, I didn't have any kind of friends at school. And I guess I kind of picked the wrong friends outside of school too. When you came home from being out with all these kids and you saw your parents, what did you think? I felt ashamed because I was just, I was like, oh, you know, I've been around some bad people and I'm coming home. And I was just, lots of times I would try to just go down to my room and not have to talk to them. Lots of times I would be high when I came home. So I really try not to talk to them or look at them or anything. I knew it was possible that it was happening, you know, that she was safely acted. But we didn't say I only talk about the diseases and the dangers of that out there either. And I know it's there. I guess we could have talked more about what she was doing then. You know, we didn't talk that much about what was happening when she was not with us. I'm not a George Bush fan, but when he talked about the family unit and the breakdown of the family unit, that's where it is. And I do as much to destroy this anybody else. We got TVs and never room at a house. I watched my programs, my wife watches her program, another room in the house. You know, the kids watch it or play on the Atari's, the video games. You mentioned while ago about the time we spent together. Yeah, we spent time together, but much of the time we had in the house together was not together. Amy's life had begun to revolve around her new group of friends. They would buy me alcohol. I was happy for a little while. You like to drink? I used to, yeah. Why? Because I always just got really happy, and I was always a different person when I was drunk. What were you like? I was real outgoing, and I would just talk to everybody and love everybody. Oh, I love you. When I was... We're just totally different from when I'm a server. When you're that young, you do to be cool. You know, you do something that you don't want to do, but sometimes you have to. It's not like you have to, but it's there. You know children, when they come into this world, want attention. And they'll get good attention as long as they can get it. If they can't get good attention, they'll get bad attention. Because the worst thing in the world to them is to have no attention. No attention is to lead a solitary life, finally. I never felt like I'd never had anybody. Never had a family that would be there for you. The friends that would be there for you always felt like I was out of the cold. DJ's parents were still together when they moved the family to Congress. When they started, they were both... My father was a policeman, and they were... You know, the ideal couple, my mother was Miss Arkansas, and they were both very happy. And as things turned, my father... It's everything started going for the worst. DJ's father left when he was nine. His mother, he says, fell apart. My father was the only thing she ever had, and her kids. And then after he left, and she didn't know how to deal with herself. I didn't even feel she was around. I couldn't deal with people my age, but I didn't feel they could understand. And so I sort of... I attached to people that were older to me. DJ came to rely on his new friends, and says he was anxious to impress them. To us, it was just, you know, we were like brothers. We would stick up for each other. We wouldn't let anything come between us. It was the closest thing I ever had to... to a friendship. Me, I was always... Since I was so young, I always had to prove myself. So I did most of the time. I probably did the most drastic things. Not to actually do anything, but a lot of it came down to violence. One day, when he was 14, DJ and his friend Joe made a plan. We didn't plan. We wanted to kill everybody. Everybody in the world. We wanted to try to set the record of the most murders you could ever imagine. So I got really drunk. I got really, really drunk. I drank like... Together, we drank like a gallon of vodka. Got really smashed. We're hanging around all our friends, and there was just one guy that really couldn't stand. I couldn't stand him at all. He was just the biggest... And he said something to me that pissed me off. I said something horrible. I was grabbed him, grabbed him by the back of his hand. He just stabbed him in the spine, and he threw him on the ground. And he was just sitting there, and he was bleeding, and he gets up. And I went to grab his neck, just like I wanted to cut his foot. Just to make sure it was over with the killing. How did he feel to stab him? At the time, it was... At the time, I felt great. The boy survived, and DJ and his friend were never prosecuted. What kind of person was DJ? The bad ass. He was younger than everybody, but nobody would do anything to him. So everybody was afraid of his friends. When DJ was around me, he told me different from when they were around with a lot of friends. He felt like he can do anything to anybody and talk to them any kind of way. And they were scared to say anything to him because they were afraid that if we say something to DJ, that we're going to... I want to send somebody to beat him up with them. DJ's friend McGill has been a focus of the Rockdale police for years in and out of jail for petty crimes. The more time he spent behind bars, the greater has appealed to both boys and girls around conures. Tell me about McGill. McGill. He was like the worst guy I ever met. He was like sort of the leader of this little gang thing. And everybody just looked up to him for some reason. I think that everybody was just scared of him. McGill was... He was like my big brother. He was like my older brother. At the time, he was the most... I don't know. Everyone was terrified of him. So for him to be my big brother, for everybody to be then terrified of me. He was a younger kid. He was about 13 and I was 17, 18. And usually, you know, the older kid wouldn't hang around nobody of that young. But DJ started just giving everybody the money to be a friend. And McGill didn't have no job and he was giving us money. Money was a lot of money was good. He was my best friend. McGill and some of his friends who came from a poorer section of the county blended into the group. We tried to terrify conures. We wanted to show everybody in conures that you couldn't hurt us. There's nothing you could do. It doesn't matter what you do if you wanted to try. We would better, you know, we would completely overcome you. We would try to defeat you in any way. We all felt invincible. Nobody could do anything to us. We could do whatever we wanted to do. And we pretty much did everything we wanted to do. This is one part I went to. It was like a whole bunch of girls, a whole bunch of guys. And then they'd just try to get drunk and have a good time in the park. And smoking weed, then around about 12 o'clock when everybody's going to go to sleep. Everybody's just getting the room. The girls started having sick with other girls and guys started having sick with other girls. And everybody's just getting one room and just having sick. All together. Yeah. We said, guys, guys don't have sick with each other. And cool. Most of the girls were white, but the boys were racially mixed. This was yet another boundary that kids chose to cross. There was a taboo that has not disappeared. We're guarding sexual activity between African-American, man, and white women. Here we're talking about white adolescents. So in many ways what was happening here was that the girls not only were challenging community norms by being sexually active, but we're challenging those even further by engaging at least part of the time in sexual activity with African-American males.
You liked breaking walls? Yeah. It was like when really a white break of rules, it was just, I think, okay, your rules meant nothing to me. If they didn't benefit me, I think I'm nothing to do with it. That's really all I felt then.
We just finished watching the first part of the lost children of Rockdale County. And we're just going to kind of discuss for a few minutes some of the things that just kind of struck you about the events that took place there. So Steve, the picture they do a good job. You know, it's a suburb, and they call it middle class, and it's definitely more than that. You know, at least I would say so, maybe not in that area, but here they are in these big homes and you just think, oh, it's all safe, it's perfect. But it's certainly an indication of a lot more than just the sexual activity. It says a lot about our society and the way in which we mask a lot of real deep issues by the material blessings that we have now. All right, good comment. Other things. Statements somebody made. Yeah. Do you? It does. Do you remember in this course we've talked about, you know, the number one influence on a student's life. Do you remember what it was? Number one was peers. It was friends. And let's talk about Amy for a minute because she's the one in this first section that just grips my heart. Partly because I've got two little girls. And they go to the softball scene and you see her plants up on. Dad's got his lips against her cheek. There's just a lot of love. And obviously, I mean, her parents still love her. But boy, you wonder what happened. You know, what are your thoughts? You know, as you saw Amy. Yeah. Because that's the situation that happens a lot in high school ministry. As room minister to students, you'll see those kind of fallouts and relationships where kids were, you know, really close and then for whatever. In fact, if you even think about your own life, for many of us, there's probably people that we were really good friends with the elementary school. And then something happened. You know, we change. They change and all of a sudden relationships aren't the same. And here, it's devastating. You know, seventh grade. Basically, she's rejected. So she spends the rest of middle school trying to identify who she is. She just says cheerleading. That will be the thing. So she makes it as a cheerleader. As she goes on as a cheerleader, then she gets cut. Again, that's massive rejection. And so it's a heart that's broken. How do you help her as parents? You know, what do you do? How do you invest in her life? And you can imagine. I think the comments she made was great. Well, we just wanted to be happy. So what does it take? And I would imagine often it's by her gifts. Get her whatever she wants. Helper. And they think they're doing the right thing. That's a lot of the kinds of communities you'll be serving. Parents and kids like that. It just breaks your heart. And it should, it should break our hearts. Because it really happened. Let's talk about the young man, the charming one. Very, very charming guy, isn't he? You know, situation, family's broken. He's living with somebody. Describe what you saw there with DJ. Just a lot of anger built up. This is storm inside. And there should be. I mean, his parents are, you know, they split up. There's all kinds of issues there. He's not living with them. He's living with a sugar daddy. Somebody's paying for everything. How do you feel about that? The party's 200 people. They don't care. Then it isn't hard to believe that. It's just, that doesn't happen. But it really, it really does happen. You know, shakes you out. Yeah. Whatever it takes. Think about DJ for a minute. Think about his normal every day. What must it have been like for him to get up in the morning, go through school, make it through the day, and then begin to go. I mean, his foundation is my money. To be able to purchase friendship in a sense. And people are doing it. You know, imagine that. I mean, that's your typical day. Just think through what he's feeling and thinking as he, as he wanders through life. Very, very painful. Very, very painful. What other things in this first section you're just going to jump out at you? That you just, you know, stirs you. You just, why do you think that was that way? What is the challenge then for the church, after watching something like that? Yeah. So I think a church looks at a video like this and has two responses. One is, how can we keep our kids from being like that? Initially, you know, the covenant model. How can we keep that from happening? And what will be the guarantee that that won't happen? Which is a painful reality because we know the corruption of the world, no way this. The second one is if it's a church that has a heart for lost people and broken people is what can we do to engage those people? Now, can you imagine a message it's going to get if in your youth ministry DJ shows up? Yeah. See, it's complicated. And it's going to be a moment of tension because the church has a responsibility to shepherd and reach out and to hopefully shepherd the one we're reaching out to. One of the reasons I showed the video, though, is because it creates, is what we've talked about in this class all semester, the five purposes of the church. It really presents that dilemma for us now. And someone said, well, you're not going to have kids like that everywhere. Well, you're not. But the problems might not be the exact same. But the root issue of sin, the core of sin, is going to be present. And it's often, not often. There'll be times when it's actually the students who've grown up in the church who will be struggling with those issues as well, perhaps even more than those who are outside the church. And so it presents the reality of, it's going to be difficult as we minister to these. And we need to not be naive to how complicated it is going to get. The sin really is messy. We shouldn't be surprised, honestly. It shouldn't be shocking. When you think about what this generation of kids has seen on TV, the kind of stuff that's funneled in freely, like the children watching the Playboy Channel, without any supervision at all, it's just no wonder that there isn't more of this. And it's not, you know, present. Because, I'm not saying I wish it was, of course, it's just the reality is why wouldn't it? I mean, I was watching last night. And I told my wife, I said, remind me never to buy a Casio watch. And she was like, why? It's because they're advertising now is very provocative. They're, you know, marketing a new watch that basically doesn't need batteries. And one of the first things that shows a woman undoing her top and goes to show her cleavage, irritates me. I'm like, okay, I don't need it hardies or gold, whatever, hardies are the star restaurant, whatever it's called Carl Juniors anymore, because of their commercials. I don't need rallies because of their commercials, very sexually explicit in their commercials. And I don't like it. And so, my way of protesting is to say, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do it. The point is not that you should or shouldn't participate and eat at hardies or whatever, but that these kids don't look at that as provocative or even shocking. It's just normal for them. It's more of that, that's present. The more of a reality it is for them to find themselves involved in activities like this. And one of the reasons that I really enjoy this documentary is because in the next section, we are going to see DJ particularly getting involved in a church. You're going to see DJ worshipping and singing the songs that youth group sing. Lord, I left your name on high. You're going to hear him sing those songs. And I want to wet your appetite a little bit, because the church does something very well there and very good. I think the intentions and purposes right, but then something happens, which is very evident in many churches that are reaching out to these kinds of kids now in his life. And then the second question will have to come, how does the church continue? See, so often youth ministries have been centered on, we've got kids for six years or four years, depending on how you break it up, and then they're on their way. And I'm convinced that it's got to look a lot different than that. We must begin to think about long-term relationships. For instance, what is it going to look like when the girl Amy and whoever she ends up marrying come for some level of pre-marital counseling or counseling in the midst of the marriage? What's it going to be like if she became a believer and the person she's married as a believer, those issues are going to be very significant about the kind of activity she's on. Do you think? I mean, just the activity that she was involved in? What's it going to look like? Is the church going to be equipped prepared to nurture them on through that? Not just giving them the pad answer if we know in Christ now you're pure, you're forgiven? That's certainly true. But all of the horrible stuff, I mean, every night coming in, shame and embarrassed, humiliated. Frustrated. Scared. She's going to get caught. That's a lot to deal with and cope with. And as a church, are we going to be aggressive at reaching out and showing love to those kinds of kids now? But, you know, Amy's probably 21 or 22 now? Somewhere in there? Well, let's conclude. Let me pray. And then come next week and we'll begin to talk more. This will see another part of the video. Lord, right now I just want to pray. I want to pray for DJ. I want to pray for Amy. I want to pray for the other high school students, Lord, who, I guess, perhaps now in college, whose lives were just showed to us, God, and they were heinous. And we know, Lord, that students like them exist everywhere. And whether it's that kind of gross, massive numbers of sexual activity or if it's just Lord brokenness and social isolation and completely depressed, Lord. We see the needs and it reminds us again of why you have called people into youth ministry to shepherd these young people, to show them the gospel of hope. And so we pray for them now because they're real individuals, Lord. They're not just images on a TV screen. They're on a videotape that we can see. They're real people who right now are breathing and walking. Lord, may that burn in our hearts and call us, oh, God, to a deeper love for you and pleading with you, Lord, to save these souls. God, stir in us a passion for them. We thank you for this. In the name of Jesus, amen.