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Leading Saints Podcast

The Struggles of Youth | A Presentation by Smith Alley

Leading Saints Podcast

Leading Saints

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Register for FREE to watch the Young Saints Virtual Conference Smith Alley is an 18-year-old high school senior who struggled with the harmful effects of pornography and social media for five years. Deciding to change the course of his life at 14, he went through an addiction recovery program and fell in love with helping other people. He now speaks to groups on how to establish internal filters and use technology in a balanced and intentional way to avoid negative mental health effects and achieve their goals. Smith has started a nonprofit organization called Live Life Bigger Foundation. His mission is to help kids live life bigger and rise up to their true potential. At age 16, he also started a company for parents called ProtechtStrong that helps families set up parental restrictions on devices and create healthy social media habits. Highlights 3:30 Story about papercuts to the heart. 5:25 Smith’s story being exposed to pornography at a very young age, dealing with social media, and with depression. 8:00 Smith shares his recovery story. 15:00 There is no such thing as a normal life or being a normal human being. We put such high expectations on what is ok or what is normal behavior. Part of human behavior is making mistakes and we aren’t normalizing that. 18:15 Let your heart break. Be vulnerable. We are taught to suck it up and not cry. We can’t grow or heal without being vulnerable and talking about our feelings. 19:00 A huge part of Smith’s healing was service. He replaced his bad habit with a good habit. 20:15 Smith tells stories of other youth that are struggling and how he has been able to help them by being open about his own struggle. His vulnerability has lead him to help so many other youth and help them open up too. 24:45 Smith leads through acceptance, vulnerability, and love. 25:20 Be a church leader not a church controller. 32:00 Teaching youth about their true identity is what is going to save them not trying to control their behavior. Do they know who they are? Do they identify themselves as sons and daughters of God? 34:00 How can youth leaders communicate better acceptance? God and Christ see us for who we are and not for what you are doing. Show them who they can be by using the atonement of Jesus Christ. 38:15 How can we help youth feel loved? 44:45 As leaders we want to talk about commandments and righteousness but maybe what we should really be talking about is brokenness and wounds. Sharing our brokenness leads us to Christ, the healer of brokenness. 47:30 Smith’s advice to youth leaders. Links livelifebigger.org protechtstrong.com Instagram: @live.life.bigger LinkedIn: Smith Alley Read the TRANSCRIPT of this presentation

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone want to jump on here and just give a brief intro to set you up for this

0:06.7

episode that you're about to hear because we have the Young Saints virtual conference coming

0:11.1

up. It starts on February 22nd and registration. virtual conference

0:13.7

and registration actually open today. So go to leading Saints

0:17.7

dot org slash youth and be sure to register for this free virtual conference where we talk with 20 plus individuals or a lot of

0:26.8

them actually are presenters that present information to help us be better prepared to lead

0:32.2

the rising generation youth and Smith Alley is one of those

0:36.4

presenters that participated in this virtual conference. He did a remarkable job.

0:40.4

He's actually 18 and he's already accomplished so much and helped so many youth.

0:45.6

And that was sort of the fun thing about this virtual conference is including more youth as

0:50.1

presenters because obviously, you know, we want to learn how to lead youth

0:54.5

we should probably hear from some youth as well so Smith was so awesome to step

1:00.4

forward and put together a phenomenal presentation.

1:03.0

And so, like I said, this is his presentation from the Young Saints virtual conference.

1:07.2

And so there is a video that goes along with it.

1:09.6

He shows visuals.

1:11.0

And so it doesn't completely translate to audio but you'll get the gist

1:15.2

and appreciate it and this will hopefully give you a taste of what to expect in the

1:19.7

young Saints virtual conference so be sure to go to leading Saints

1:22.8

that org slash youth and register for free here we go Smith alley

1:27.4

you're gonna love them Hello, welcome back to another session of the Young Saints Virtual Summit, virtual conference, as I'm trying to call it this time.

1:44.8

My name is Kurt Frankham and today I am with Smith Alley.

...

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