Secret Keeper Girl

Posted By Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl. Hey, girls! Wonder if you ever have those things you have to do that you don’t want to do, but when you do them they turn out to be something you are glad you did? Well, today I am doing one of them. I’m at my denominations annual district business meeting. (From a girl who has an extreme aversion to her own annual board meeting this is akin to a root canal on your worst day of pms! I’m not a meeting girl!) But I just attended a break-out session by my own pastor, Jonathan Weibel. While it is fresh in my mind, I need to download it to you. I think it  has a little something do with you. I think. Let me get it out.Jonathan talked about “simplicity” in ministry, and I realized I need some. I need some simplicity in the way I minister to my family, for example. Otherwise, I run around like crazy doing, doing, doing and never getting done what I most want to get done: teaching my kids to love God and others! (Somehow the dog’s barf, that obstinate nail that keeps popping up in my wooden staircase, and the empty milk carton get my FIRST FRUIT attention.) You see, I don’t have a VISION driving my daily agenda, and so even at home…my ministry gets complex! Do you see this? I need to remind myself each day: Dannah your mission is to teach Rob, Lexi and Autumn to love God and others. See it? Oh, I have a fire in my belly.I also have a renewed passion to be simple in my ministry (Pure Freedom, which includes Secret Keeper Girl). I have the distinct honor of having a very clear mission statement that God breathed into me when I was walking down a street in Chicago on the eve of my first book publishing meeting about twelve years ago. God put these words into my heart and I couldn’t help but rush into a Kinkos to write them down before I forgot them:”Your mission is to encourage men and women of all ages to live lives of purity, to equip them to heal from moments of impurity if it exists in their lives, and to help them experience a marriage that is a vibrant and passionate picture of Christ and the Church.”ENCOURAGE purity! EQUIP for healing! EXPERIENCE passion! That’s why I host Secret Keeper Girl events all over the nation. (I want them to have a running start at practicing purity by learning about modesty!) It’s why I wrote And the Bride Wore White. (I want my precious readers to know HOW to live a life of purity in a sexual world!) It’s why I keep my foot in Zambia, teaching abstinence in a school system that pushes condoms. (Because I know too much to let “safe sex” be the default message in a nation ravaged by AIDS.) I know my mission. But revisiting it today, is giving me permission to say “no” to a lot of great new opportunities a growing platform is offering me. Just like I need to say, “No!” to some of the pressing things at home so I can fulfill my true mission as a mom. I need to say, “No!” to some seemingly good ministry opportunities because they are a distraction from my call to help you and your daughter live a pure life! Hold me to that, OK? And, on occasion, sit down and revisit the mission of your life!And remember, it’s ok to say, “NO!” (The laundry can even wait sometimes!)

Posted By Dannah Gresh, Creator Secret Keeper Girl. Each year we pause in the spring to evaluate how our ministry work is progressing at Pure Freedom/Secret Keeper Girl. Here are a few exciting facts that I, Dannah, wanted to share with you.

• Over 500,000 have attended a purity event for teens facilitated by myself or one of my team members since we started just over ten years ago.

• Over 20,000 churches have led their own retreats using our Bible-based purity curriculum.

• 75,000 students in Zambia have completed our abstinence training and heard the gospel.

• Last year over 600 little girls received Christ as their Savior at our Secret Keeper Girl events.

Our work is both exciting and challenging for me. You see, the work has been growing but our staff has been shrinking due to financial shortfalls. All this work is being done with a staff made up of:

One full time paid writer and teacher. (That’s me!)

• One part time CEO! (That’s Bob!)
• One part time paid assistant. (That’s Eileen!)
• One quarter-time designer. (That’s Andy!)

We think that God is using us pretty well, and that we’re being rather faithful to do as much as we can to rescue hearts and bring them close to Christ, with as little as is possible. As we move into 2010, our Secret Keeper Girl events are growing in size, requiring us to have the capital for more inventory of books, t-shirts and other items for moms and daughters to further their mentoring experience. Larger audiences require use to invest in a larger stage-set, higher quality graphics and sound equipment and it’s time to update our bible-based teaching script. We are looking at about a $20,000 need just to update our stage program by August of 2010.

Each year, we host an annual Living Letters event where we ask prayer warriors and kingdom funders to step up to walk beside us as we equip children and teens to live lives of purity, and help those who have fallen to heal from their sexual pain. Our event is next Tuesday and we’re calling it our Pure Freedom/Grace Prep Living Letters Fund Racer! Our setting is intentionally a relational and fun one—an outdoor fun zone complete with go-karts and batting cages—, because that is the character of our ministry. <

Here is where I can use your help.

We’ve had a few people step up to help us cover the cost of our event, but we aren’t quite there yet. If we could raise just $1650 more before next Tuesday, we can use the entire amount of $5000 from an anonymous donor as a matching incentive to raise funds that evening.Could you please consider sending a one-time gift of $50, $100, $500 or $1000 this week? As a way of saying thanks, I’ll send a signed book of your choice for a gift in any of these amounts. Click here to make your gift on-line, and be sure to include the title of any single book product on my website for me to sign in the comments section of your transaction. All gifts are tax-deductible.

Posted by Melanie Cherland, SKG Intern

Despite the promise of some severe weather the show went on in Hendersonville this weekend.  I was so excited to see nearly 1500 girls and moms show up for our morning show put on by WAY FM at Long Hollow Baptist Church! It was an incredible way to start the day talking about true beauty and modesty. We talked about getting lost in the clothing racks, being glad we don’t look like Barbie and some practical ways we can change our wardrobe to make it more modest. It was so refreshing to hear that we don’t have to try to look and act like everyone around us, that among all of the beauty queens the one God chose as His perfect dove was UNIQUE, just like we all are!  We even had the privalege of having our friend Melody join us and sing for us as well! It was a wonderful way to begin not only our day but also a great way to start opening up communication between moms and their daughters about the insecurities to come.

Posted by Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl   Recently, Oprah featured a couple of fourteen-year-olds who were publicly comfortable stating that they felt ready to have sex. Courtney and Pierce had been dating for three months and had done “pretty much everything besides sex.” Courtney said, “We probably would be having sex if we had the opportunity to and we wouldn’t get involved in the middle of it.” Pierce’s mom had purchased condoms for them, though reluctantly. Coutney’s mom had begun to keep closer tabs on her daughter, in part because her grades were dropping as a result of the relationship. However, after connecting with Pierce’s mom, a sex “expert” provided by Oprah’s show, and Oprah she had “started once again giving her a lot more freedom to make choices.”

It can be difficult to navigate through the media’s messages about how we parent our children. I wish I could have been included in the dialogue with Oprah, her sex “expert,” and these moms. I would have told them that research indicates that the younger a girl is when she has her first sexual encounter, the more likely she is to have multiple sexual partners. And if she has multiple sexual partners, she is more likely to experience sexual repression and dysfunction as an adult. I would point to some of the recent brain research that gives evidence that a unique bond is created in the deep limbic system of the brain when two people have sex, and that when this bond is broken because a couple doesn’t stay together, it leads to emotional depression. Sexually active teens are up to 12x more likely to attempt suicide. I would want to ask just one more time, “If, as a society we are open-minded enough to give kids condoms, why can’t you be open-minded enough to let someone encourage them not to reach for condoms!”

It can really be hard to be a mom who wants her children to wait until they are married to have sex. I often speak to moms who feel very alone in their values and family guidelines. Don’t lose heart. You’re not alone, and the research supports the fact that encouraging your daughter to wait is effective. Remember this: the goal of the large majority of sex “experts” is to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. They are seeking to protect only the body of the students they service. But have they protected the emotions and spirit of the children and teens who reach for their condoms? No. And, they’ve never promised to do that. It is not their goal.

God’ word says, “God’s grace teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” (Titus 2:12-12) We should feel different. Our message and beliefs and lives should be radically seen as a contrast to the world around us. Be confident, that you’re on a good path, mom!

Posted by Melanie Cherland, SKG Intern The Church of the Savior was PACKED Friday night with women and girls, and an awful lot of pink! Let me tell you it was one LOUD night, it began with a mother/daughter scream contest that showed me just how incredible Ohio women can be. We talked about a whole lot of gloriously girly stuff like the history of fashion, what Barbie would look like if she were a real person, and how to wear cute clothes that are also modest. We also talked about some of the lies the world tells us about where our worth comes from. We laughed when Suzy told us we could make up our own clothing tags, all the while realizing that we’ve all been spending too much time trying to (as Suzy puts it) “impress the backs of our necks.” Former SKG intern and Ohio native Cali Ledger joined us again this season to help us sing praises to our Lord and Savior. At the end of our show Cali got the chance to help pray alongside some ladies and daughters (see the picture below) when OVER FORTY girls decided to make God the King of their life and become REAL princesses!

Posted by Melanie Cherland, SKG Intern  Tonight’s show at North Greenwood Baptist Church was incredible, so much so that I couldn’t wait to blog about it! All in all it was a pretty crazy show. We found out that our coordinator Lesia, Janet and I can all make the same funny face and at one point we had confetti streamers hanging from chandeliers!! But after that Janet told these girls something interesting, she told them that tonight, this show, isn’t magic. Having girls and moms come together to talk about what God thinks of beauty is amazing, and it can be absolutely life changing! But what Janet wanted these girls to know was that the lessons they learned tonight don’t have to stay at North Greenwood Baptist Church. The truth they learned that what makes them beautiful is spending time with God, the truth they learned about how He has carefully crafted each one of them and how He continues to do so, the truth they learned about God’s character and His love for them, those truths go beyond one night. These truths they can take with them out in to the world and share with others knowing that God’s word is true, that He doesn’t lie and He doesn’t change, what He says about their beauty today will be true their whole lives.
Thanks so much for bringing us to M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-hump back-hump back-I!!