Community Forums

Parenting Children, Youth & Adolescents, and Children with Disabilities

About This Event

Healthy families are important to God and important to Saddleback! Saddleback Church is offering FREE Community Forums geared toward parenting young children, parenting adolescents, and parenting children with disabilities. Each track will offer a main session where you will hear from experts in the Field. The Parenting Children Forum and Children with Disabilities Forum will also offer multiple breakout sessions to choose from.

  • Olivia is a former sixth grade teacher and mother of children ages ten to twenty. She now serves on the speaking faculty of the Heritage Builders Association and Center for Strong Families. A frequent guest on Focus on the Family, Family Life and other popular programs, Olivia is author of The Minivan Years: Celebrating the Hectic Joys of Motherhood and the Just Add Family activity recipe kit.

  • Kurt serves as Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Lake Pointe Church and on the adjunct faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary. A graduate of Talbot Seminary and former Vice President with Focus on the Family, Kurt led the teams creating films, magazines, books and the popular Adventures in Odyssey program. As President of HomePointe Inc., Kurt helps local church leaders create an ongoing culture of intentional families. He is the author of more than a dozen books including It Starts At Home, The Purpose of Passion, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings and the bestselling Family Night Tool Chest series.

  • Wayne is the founder and director of Understanding Your Teenager seminars. He began working with teenagers in 1963 and has authored numerous books for youth workers, parents, and teens including Junior High Ministry, Cleared for Takeoff, Enjoy Your Middle Schooler and Read This Book or You’re Grounded. He is also the co-founder of Youth Specialties and is a pretty good banjo player. He and his wife, Marci, live in Lakeside, California and have three grown children.

    The Understanding Your Teenager Forum is for parents and grandparents of teens and pre-teens.

    Attendees will learn what to expect from their children during the teen years and how to parent them with greater confidence, love and understanding. Our six "principles for effective parenting" will give parents the road map they need to successfully guide their teens through the rough waters of adolescence.

  • Wife of former quarterback of the Buffalo Bills and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Jim Kelly. Jim and Jill had a son, Hunter, who was diagnosed with Krabbe Leukodystrophy, an inherited fatal nervous system disease that later took his life at a young age. Hunter’s Hope

  • Rex and Jennifer Hudler began a non-profit organization called Team Up For Down Syndrome after their first son, Cade, was born with Down syndrome. This article, reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, tells the beginning of their story. Philadelphia Inquirer