Too Much Church?

This article brings up some interesting (and likely accurate) struggles in children's ministry. I have been wrestling a lot lately with the best approach to children/youth ministry as I am burdened with the problems discussed in the article, fearful that 80% of our youth aren't actually regenerate and will walk away after high school, and dedicated to learning the most godly way to raise my own children to fear God.

What is the best way to solve this?

I am becoming more convinced that the church has bought too much into the American cultural standards of education. We simply take the K-12 model of education, add Bible topics, and cram it all in on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Throughout Scripture and much of history, children were trained to be responsible adults and committed Christians through hands-on mentor relationships; the primary being the parent-child relationships. Children learned responsibility through working hard. They picked up language, math, and science through interaction with people and the world around them; not from a sterile classroom environment.

As I am learning much lately, the church isn't simply about a building and doctrines; it is a community of redeemed sinners who God placed in relationships for our benefit to grow in godliness. Many of the adults seem to understand that, but for some reason we don't include the children in the group. We send them back to the classrooms and nurseries to figure out mature relationships in a pig sty of immaturity.

The linked article continues to spur my thinking to find the most biblical, godly way to point children to a relationship with Christ that results in fruitful lives, not a program of songs and stories that builds knowledge with little action.

Takin' It To the Home

Jeremy started this monthly “Taking It to the Streets” column (as printed in EBC monthly newsletter) as sort of a journal to share his successes and failures in taking the gospel outside the four walls of the church as to be an encouragement to each one of us to do the same. And I am sure many people who have read through it have felt discouraged because they don’t feel they have the right gift or enough opportunities to evangelize. So we are going to look at evangelism, this month, from a different perspective; perhaps helping you realize an opportunity right in front of you.

One day as I was relating an evangelism opportunity at work to Molly (my wife), our conversation led to how I am exposed to more unbelievers so I have more evangelism opportunities. It seemed somewhat discouraging at first, but as the discussion developed, we quickly learned that she has been given a much greater evangelism opportunity; the awesome privilege to be a full-time evangelist to our children. And I have a full-time secular job that supports the mission field right in our home.

Before we address an application for you, let’s go back in time a few-thousand years to the creation of the world and to the beginning of God’s revelation of Himself. In the book of Genesis we are told that God created Adam and Eve to rule over the earth and then He tells them to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” We know that this is a more poetic way of saying, “make lots of babies.” But for what reason?

The reasoning becomes clearer as God’s revelation of His plan unfolds. The psalmist in Psalm 73:24-26 desired a good thing in finding his satisfaction in unity with God. Jesus prayed in John 17:22 that His people may be one with Him. The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-18) tells us that our mission as Christians is to make disciples (Evangelism!); bring people into a relationship with the Savior. So as history progresses, we begin to see that God creating people and commanding them to “be fruitful and multiply” wasn’t simply to fill the earth with warm bodies, but it parallels the New Testament command to “make disciples of all nations.” The reason we have children is to make Christians!

For many of us, this will be our mission field. Some people are called to be foreign missionaries; some street evangelists; some full-time pastors; and most of us are called to be evangelists right in our own homes by bringing children up in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). The call to be fruitful and multiply didn’t go away in the New Testament, it was magnified; even clarified.

What a great responsibility and opportunity we have been given. We often get discouraged when we think we can’t be as bold sharing the gospel, but we are missing such a great opportunity. God has provided many of us with the fantastic privilege of being full-time evangelists right in our own homes. What other evangelist has eighteen years to teach and to model the gospel to his hearers? What greater responsibility do we have than to teach the gospel to those whose lives are completely dependent on us?

We Christians have far too easily followed the cultural norms in pursuit of the “American Dream” instead of living like foreigners in this world (1 Peter 1:1). We pursue worldly entertainment, wealth, and comfort while neglecting our call to be a peculiar people (1 Corinthians 1:18-28), sold out to making worshippers of God. The world sees children as a burden on their personal pursuits, a commodity to be set aside when convenient, a symbol of pride, or simply the next thing to do. The world doesn’t want to have too many children because it might cost too much money or interrupt career pursuits. Some will say, “A boy for me and a girl for you, then praise the Lord, we’re finally through!” We joke with people who have many children by asking, “Haven’t you figured out how that works yet?” But we don’t celebrate the honor we have to bring life into this world and to be lifelong evangelists in our home. Keeping up with the culture too easily distracts us from such a wonderful calling.

We should recognize the great blessing that children are from God and seize the opportunity God has given us to be witnesses in our own home. It was God’s created order for a man and a woman to marry and spend their marriage modeling Christ’s love for the church and making children who will come to know Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should have ten kids, but you should be asking, “How can I make it a priority for my marriage to fulfill the Great Commission in the lives of children?”

Here are a few ideas to spark your creativity:
If you are starting a family, consider what sacrifices may be required to make it a priority for creating worshippers of Christ in your home.
If you have children already, ask what efforts are needed to make the gospel the focus of your parenting.
If your children are gone, seek ways to support your children’s efforts in gospel-centered parenting and also encourage those in the church who still have children.
Everyone can be involved in children’s ministry. We are kidding ourselves if we believe all of the children in the church are believers. Become a gospel mentor to them. Children’s ministry is a mission field.
Seek ways to relieve the suffering caused by children being brought into this world outside of God’s design. Can you bring a child into your home through adoption? Can you provide support to a young mom who can’t afford a child?

When we hear of evangelism, we think of “Go, and make disciples of all nations” but for many of us it starts at home with “Be fruitful and multiply.”

"these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Book Review: Do Hard Things

Alex and Brett Harris say there is nothing extraordinary about themselves. They don’t think that there exists such a thing as an “average teenager.” But, as the title of their book suggests, they want to challenge youth to Do Hard Things. “At age sixteen, we interned at the Alabama Supreme Court. At seventeen, we served as grass-roots directors for four statewide political campaigns. At eighteen we authored the most popular Christian teen blog on the web. We’ve been able to speak to thousands of teens and their parents at conferences in the United States and internationally and to reach millions online. But if our teen years have been different than most, it’s not because we’re somehow better than other teens, but because we’ve been motivated by a simple but very big idea.” (pg. 4,5)

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations is written by teenagers primarily for teenagers, but everything said in it is applicable to adults as well. In a time and culture where youth are expected to ignore responsibility and simply have fun, this book is a challenge to use the teenage years to prepare for adulthood. “The teen years are not a vacation from responsibility,…they are the training ground of future leaders who dare to be responsible now.” (pg. 13)

The book is separated into three sections with the first considering the modern expectations of young people and what the Scriptures expect of young people. “People today view the teen years through the modern lens of adolescence – a social category of age and behavior that would have been completely foreign to men and women not too long ago…The term adolescence literally means ‘to grow up.’…The problem we have is with the modern understanding of adolescence that allows, encourages, and even trains young people to remain childish for much longer than necessary.” (pg. 33) “You won’t find the words teenager or adolescence anywhere in Scripture. And you won’t find any reference to a period of time between childhood and adulthood either. Instead you’ll find the apostle Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 13:11, ‘When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.’” (pg. 42) The Harris’ describe the “Myth of Adolescence” as being influenced by evolutionary thought and changing our mindset of youth being important producers in society to being largely only consumers who are expected to only have fun.

Transitioning from this challenge to the current thought of adolescence is the dare for Christian youth to be different from the world. Do Hard Things presents five challenges to youth to take on tasks that God is calling them to do and that nobody expects them to do. The “Five Kinds of Hard” that are explained in the second section of the book are:
1. Things that are outside your comfort zone.
2. Things that go beyond what is expected or required.
3. Things that are too big to accomplish alone.
4. Things that don’t earn an immediate payoff.
5. Things that challenge the cultural norm.
This is the meat of this book and a great message that not only should teens take to heart, but many Christian adults too.

The final section of Do Hard Things is basically a collection of inspiring stories of “ordinary teens” doing extraordinary things. It is hard not to be motivated by the stories of faithfulness of kids who desire to be obedient to Christ and not fall back on excuses that are supported by their humanistic culture. From kids who have raised thousands of dollars to feed starving children across the globe to other youth who decided to give up video games to be more committed to learning Scripture, these stories represent a future of Christianity that is ready to outshine the current generation of leaders in the church.

Do Hard Things contains a message that all teenagers and their parents need to understand. God gifted young people with much more ability to serve Him than we expect from them. Too often we don’t expect our children to be able to handle our adult ministry challenges, so we create separate youth ministries for them that are simpler. Instead of taking them along side us in big tasks, we send the youth to the mall or put a video game in front of them to keep them busy until they are old enough to step into adult ministries. This book dares youth to prove that God gave them potential to Do Hard Things and challenges adults not to expect anything less.