About a year ago, I found myself wishing we had about ten times as many small group leaders as we did. We had just begun using what are called "experiential games" to teach, and in an experiential game, the follow-up questions are key. You put a child through a game or exercise meant to simulate, say, trust or hopelessness or temptation, and then, while that experience is fresh in their minds, try to make it translate into a Biblical principle that kids will learn from. The right questions, asked in the right way, determine whether the game remains just a game or becomes a teachable moment.
Ah, the right questions, asked the right way. How many of us have learned important life lessons even in moments of defeat and despair, because we fortunately had someone wise alongside us to lead us to the pearls of wisdom that lay in the mess we'd made? That's when it occurred to me - we had all the leaders we needed. They were called parents.
This is when the HomePage, with its accompanying discussion questions, was born. I have long realized that regardless of how flashy or memorable or even dead-on accurate a lesson is, if it isn't rehearsed, it decays. The HomePage was intended to give kids one more chance to "get it", to recall and re-process information they'd been confronted with on a Sunday morning and to make it their own. Part of the purpose of the discussion questions we send home, both on paper and later by way of e-mail, is to make Sunday's lesson "stick". But the larger purpose is to get parents and kids into the habit of talking about God and life, because it is in so doing, I believe, that parents most effectively influence their child's spiritual development. Classroom lessons are a good thing, but they are always an imperfect fit. Only parents are in the unique position of drawing the teachable moments from their children's lives, and modeling the solutions through their own lives.
If home is where the real child comes out, then home is ultimately the best laboratory for life and learning. The parents of kids who thrive spiritually have decidedly not outsourced their child's spiritual development to a church, Christian school, or other religious club. That's not to say they don't use those things, but they employ them in partnership.
And what is partnership? Partnership doesn't mean we do each other's jobs, or that we rotate a week on, a week off. Rather, partnership means that parents and churches recognize that each is uniquely qualified to do what they do best. Church can bring families together, it can design creative teaching lessons, it can organize large events; parents, on the other hand, have presence during the more mundane activities of life, they have more ready access to a child's inner life, they are naturally in tune with their child's learning style and preferences. "Working together" means each entity acts on its strength. When partnership is in full force, there is no danger that one will take over the other's job - because that isn't possible.
So first and foremost, a spiritually nourishing home environment exists as the center of a child's spiritual development. But what actually happens there to foster spiritual growth? I would suggest four things:
1. God is talked about. Last June we survey 115 of our 5th and 6th graders and asked them, "If your parents talked with you about God, would it be strange and unusual, weird but not unusual, unusual but not weird, or normal and not weird at all?" 89 kids said it wouldn't be weird at all, that their families often talked about God. 19 said their parents don't talk with them about God, but they wouldn't mind if they did. Only 6 said either talking about God was uncomfortable in their family or it didn't happen. This is encouraging. It suggests that, at least among the group we surveyed, talking about spiritual things is as natural as talking about school, sports, hobbies, or television. My family almost never talked about God. We went to church all the time, but outside of some early experiences with sickness and death that prompted questions, we just never talked about God. Homes like this lend themselves to an unbalanced view of God: he's a troubleshooter or comforter in mourning, but not intimately involved in day-to-day life.
2. Kids are allowed to ask questions, even express doubt. This really is a matter of the quality of the dialogue you have about God. If you hope to gain insight on what a child thinks so that you can in turn shape that thinking, spiritual conversations must be a dialogue, not a monologue. God isn't threatened by our questions. He remains God. So parents shouldn't be threatened by questions they can't answer, or doubts that surface. "Wasn't it mean for God to let all those people drown in the flood? What about people before Jesus - did they miss out on heaven? Why did the Bible leave out all of those other gospels?" These are serious questions, and the fact that a kid would ask them means they are grappling with how to make God real and personal. Ask yourself: would I rather have my kid be honest about where they're at spiritually, or to just give me the answer I want to hear? Dignify your child by entertaining their honest thoughts in a non-judgmental way. Almost every kid will at some time doubt their own salvation. Nearly all will question whether Jesus is the exclusive road to salvation. When they do, will you respond by squelching the topic, or by empathizing with their struggle?
3. Christ is modeled. You are 24/7 Jesus with skin. Ouch - how's that for pressure?! Fortunately, we are called to be imitators of Christ's character in every way, and that includes humility. Or, as another pastor once said to me, Christians are called to be Christlike, but they are not expected to be "just like Christ", that is, perfect. So, spiritually nourishing parents get that they won't always be perfectly loving, perfectly patient, perfectly forgiving, and they allow for those weaknesses and own up to them to their kids. These parents apologize when necessary. In doing so, they demonstrate that the Christian life isn't a series of impossible rules or the pious pursuit of sainthood. It is the embodiment of Colossians 3:13: "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."
4. Godliness is modeled. Godliness - what a great and misunderstood concept. Paul uses the word at least 10 times in his first letter to Timothy. It refers to a deep reverence for God, a respect that runs so deep that the life begins to be necessarily altered. Godliness is not "the rules", and parents who try to make an end-run around it - expecting godly conduct from their kids without going to the work of establishing a spiritual root - sometimes struggle to understand why insisting on proper behavior and good manners isn't enough. Spiritual transformation and behavior modification are not the same thing. Godly conduct is the fruit of an inner work. In your home, is anything "sacred"? Do you observe a Sabbath? Is your own life a picture of the pursuit of God? If your kids were asked to rank the value of God in your life, where would it fall? This is the much tougher work, and it can't be faked. In a spiritually nourishing home, God is special and central and honored.
Factor #7: A Spiritually Nourishing Home Environment
Key Question: Is my child's spiritually development centered around my home, and is my home a spiritually healthy one?
Info, articles, and thoughts for parents of kids at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
