Holiday Bible Guide 2008

Once again this Christmas season, some reviews of Bibles for kids, and some info you should consider before purchasing a Bible for a kid.

As always, the Bible I most highly recommend for your son or daughter is the one they are willing to read. Put aside cosmetic considerations, whatever "extras" are included between the covers, or the particular translation and discover first whether this Bible will be read by them. Whatever factors are important to them - size, readability, extra features - should be your main criteria.

For that reason, don't give a Bible as a surprise, but enlist your child in picking one out. You'll know immediately, for instance, if the Bi

ble "zines" have topics of interest to them by how much time they spend browsing one. You'll get a sense for their tolerance of small type - for many kids, that's an immediate turn-off.

Since last year's writing, our Calvary Chapel Books and Gift store has relocated to the new building - and a makeshift presence in the main hallway. As a result, the number and variety of Bibles they keep stocked is limited. But, they are able to order anything in print (allow about a week for delivery). And, they appreciate feedback from customers on what kids are reading, as that helps them know what to order and stock. Here are some of the Bibles for kids that are now on the shelves there:

This is a classic devotional Bible for kids, by Zondervan. This appears to be a new cover design, but it's the same content. The Adventure Bible has lots of charts and sidebars and other helps for kids as they read.

Another NIV choice is the Discoverer's Bible:

Not as many textual notes as the above, but what it does have going for it is that it is in large print (12 point type). Don't underestimate this for the effect it has on readability for kids. Large type can increase the speed and fluency at which kids read. It also makes the text more accessible - if a kid opens a Bible and sees small print, reading through it may seem like a daunting challenge.

The only real features are a dictionary & concordance at the end, book introductions, and some full-page, full-color pictures. (But why didn't they place the pictures adjacent to the story it depicts in the Bible?? You'll see a picture here of David and Goliath, a story decidedly not in the book of Nehemiah.)

If type size is not an issue, and easy portability is, then the pocket-sized Bibles are a good choice. The key words are "thinline" and "slimline" and each refers to the thickness of the Bible (and, consequently, the size of the type). Not many extras here - portability and cover design are the main selling points.

The "Princess Bible" is similarly sized, but it is an ICB translation (International Children's Bible), simpler vocabulary and sentence structure than the NIV (which has an 11th grade reading level).

Another Bible targeted to girls, and with more features inside, is the FaithGirlz Bible. (Personally, I cringe when marketers intentionall

y use colloquial spellings for words in order to appear edgy to kids, but I digress.) FaithGirlz is all about helping girls discover an "Inner Beauty/Outward Faith."

At the front you'll find "The Faithgirlz Promise", which is to "Focus on my inner beauty/Remember that God loves me always/Love myself the way God made me/Look at others' gifts without jealousy/Treat other people the way I want to be treated/Love my neighbor/Forgive others when they sin against me/Love my

enemies/Seek God's will in all that I do/Focus on the inner beauty of others." Good stuff.

Here's a more boy-friendly pocket Bible - although there's nothing specific in it that's directed at either boys or girls. You're getting the cool "treasure chest" motif and the ICB translation. Includes a dictionary and some maps.








The FaithGirlz Bible and its devotional intent reminds me of the Bible "zines" that came out a few years ago, and are still available. These are targeted at various age groups - a link is here: BibleZines

"Magnify" is one example - aimed at older elementary kids, while Blossom hits preteen and young teenage girls.















The Bible we use in our classroom, and one of my favorites, is "The Illustrated Bible - New Testament", available from www.biblesplus.com. I like it for the wealth of diagrams and cartoons, and because it's NIrV (New International Reader's Version), a simplified version of the NIV.

And I'm still a fan of these, especially for kids who need pictures to aid comprehension. The Picture Bible does not contain the full text of the Bible, but it does depict key stories from the Old and New Testaments.

The Illustrated New Testament is the full Bible text, presented in panel form (think comic strip, but the pictures are very realistic). So far, they have only done the complete New Testament and selected books of the Old Testament (some individual NT books are also sold). A full list of available titles is here.

The Whys of Pre-Teen Ministry: Theology

When kids know all the Bible stories, is there reason to keep coming back to church? Over the last three weeks I've argued that there are three critical things that should happen for a kid at church, apart from the acquisition of knowledge, and particularly during the preteen years. First, kids need to develop a sense of belonging - finding their group. Second, they need to claim their identity as a Christian, and they won't do that if they perceive there's any baggage that accompanies that. The third thing that needs to happen as kids reach the end of elementary school is the connecting of the dots into a coherent whole, the cobbling together of a workable theology.

By "theology" I mean a version of the world in light of what you believe about God. Everyone has a theology, whether they know it or not. Pressed to articulate, nearly everybody could explain their understanding of who God is, how we works, what he wants, and what he's done. Even an atheist - who would answer those questions in the negative - has their worldview informed by the fact of God.

A young child's theology is very simplistic - and necessarily so. It's enough for young children to know that God created everything, that he loves them, that he cares for them, that he sent Jesus to the world, and that God wants us to be in heaven with him someday. We don't weigh three-year-olds down with matters of election or transubstantiation or the problem of evil or the nature of the Trinity.

But as kids grow, and their capacity for thinking and reasoning changes, their theology grows too - sometimes in wildly inaccurate directions. A healthy theology acknowledges their own status as created beings, subservient to the will and direction of the master, and we would hope that as kids grow in faith, they would embrace the realization that God's love for them doesn't necessarily mean he'll give them everything they want, but he will always provide for their good". In short, you want kids to develop a "theology" that's not a "me-ology".

It's not automatic. If it was, adults living in a world full of evil would reason their way toward God. In fact just the opposite happens. Grown-ups see evil and injustice, perhaps even in their own lives, and they conclude that a loving God is improbable, if not impossible. It doesn't help when health-and-wealth preachers teach people to equate "blessedness" with the value of their accumulated possessions. People who grow up with an entitlement mindset don't tend to shed that easily. It figures that when things go sour, the God who supposedly pulls the strings gets the blame.

We can fight this by diligently forming a theology that is true in kids. One way is to constantly ask them what they believe. This not only dignifies them (because what kid doesn't enjoy being asked their opinion by a grown-up?) but it brings the theologizing into the open, where it can be shaped and challenged.

Psychologists speak of "Aha!" moments, when sudden insight comes to the mind of someone who is deep in problem-solving. I more often experience "Duh" moments in my learning, when I have all the information in front of me but can't see how it fits together or makes sense (usually when I'm doing my taxes) - and then all of a sudden the realization hits: "Duh".

I think thinking theologically is more a case of "Duh" learning than "Aha!" learning. Kids don't need a novel understanding of God and his ways, but a sensible one, based on things they know to be true. So they know the Old Testament stories, of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses, of Saul and David and Jonathan, perhaps of Queen Esther, but what does it mean to them? Can they pull out any themes? Can they spot any patterns in how God works among his people? Can they piece some of Jesus' warnings and NT promises about what awaits those who follow him, and verbally paint a picture of what a Christian can expect life to be like? Can they begin to grasp how God's forgiveness works and what it means to have God's Spirit living inside you?

Kids can do this. It's work, but it's worthwhile. And - whether we're intentional about it or not - it will happen anyhow. That's an arresting thought. Somewhere along the line in your child's development, at least once, they will draw the conclusion that either God cares about them, or that he doesn't give a rip. They will cast into the future and see themselves either following him, or not. They will decide to preserve their uniqueness and acquiesce to God's call on their life, or they will give in and slouch toward the culture's low expectations. All of this will depend on what they honestly think about God.

Church researcher George Barna opines that every decision we make is, at heart, a spiritual decision. It reflects a choice for God, or against him. (See more in Barna's book, Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions.) I think he might take that a bit far - some decisions are morally neutral, and others reflect a choice between good and better. But his point is well taken, especially as applied to the bigger decisions of life. And, as Barna recognizes, those decisions are informed by what we think about God. If we hate him, or even merely respect him, or grudgingly serve him, but we don't love him, we will not orient our lives in such a way as to glorify him.

And who wants to glorify God anyhow? No one. Left to our own devices, we are base, callous, and self-seeking. We fight for our own survival, and let every man fend for himself. It takes the invasion of God into our lives to turn that aircraft carrier, and gradually our eyes are opened ("Duh!") to the fact that we can live without ourselves in the center…and all will be ok. So the other way we can help kids fight the me-ology and embrace a theology is to give them tastes of what it is to "live beyond themselves." Living beyond yourself is having the experience of deliberately putting your own needs and comfort second so that others may be first, and in the process discovering…that it is really all ok. Of course, sometimes living beyond ourselves is not what we want to do, but we lean on God in faith and rather than strive, allow him to fuel our actions.

A warped theology is a tragic thing. Like the wrong prescription for eyeglasses, it causes a person to see God's hand in evil or misfortune. It can cause us to condemn all of the physical world, falsely believing that evil resides there. It withholds credit where credit is due, and fails to attach responsibility to its rightful source. Kids who think rightly about God enjoy the ancillary benefits of right thinking about themselves, their relationships, and their futures.

Not that any of this is easy. We are teaching kids to believe, and not just to know. That involves dialogue, lots of time and attention, and consistency. And ultimately, we will let them go. The first 18 years of a child's life is their time in harbor, when the ship is readied, fueled, inspected, systems tested, and is set on course. Eventually they depart to sail. When we help kids develop a strong theology we are showing them how to hold the map right side up and how to read it. And when kids possess strong navigational sense, we have every reason to be confident in their journeys.

The Whys of Preteen Ministry: Identity

Is there any good reason for kids raised in the church to stay involved with church as they get older? Specifically, is there any reason why church involvement in the late elementary school years is important?

Two weeks ago I alluded to an alarming statistic regarding middle school students and the Bible. This is it: about 75% of them believe they know pretty much everything the Bible teaches - that there is basically nothing new to learn because they've heard all the stories. The Barna Institute discovered this in surveying churched kids.

If these kids attend churches where the programs are modeled after school classrooms and if we have emphasized above all else the accumulation of knowledge, that means the relevance of continuing to attend church is a question they are seriously beginning to wonder about themselves: Why should I continue to go when I already know all the stories?

In my last entry, I offered that during the late elementary years especially, kids need to develop a sense of belonging at church. They need to feel like they belong to the whole, as well as that they have a place within the whole - some sort of smaller group - to which they belong. Without this sense that I am needed there, kids will get over church in a hurry.

The second aspect of value that I see developed through continued church involvement is identity. Identity is related to belonging, in that if kids don't feel they belong, they are unlikely to take on the identifying characteristics of the members of the group.

Quite plainly, by the time your kid enters junior high, you want them to be able to state unabashedly "I am a Christian", and by that to mean not only that they assent to basic Christian doctrine and teachings, but that they see themselves as a Christian, distinct from being merely religious or spiritual or none of the above. Identity formation is crucial as kids head into the teenage years. As I wrote a few weeks ago in an essay on keeping kids drug-free, "good kid" is not an identity anyone embraces. No one wants to be defined in the negative, by the things they don't do. But if a kid can say in all honesty that their reason for living as they do is that they are in pursuit of a relationship with Christ, that has some traction, and that's where we want to bring kids to.

I am not advocating that our churches adopt a Christian nurture model, which rests on the idea that if we surround our kids with Christian culture and practices from birth, they will "grow up Christian" and never regard themselves as otherwise. I think there is great danger in having kids believe that Christianity is just a set of practices, or nothing more than a lifestyle, or that to be a Christian means primarily that you are present more often than not when the church body comes together. This is weak sauce and does not aspire to the great adventure of true Christian spirituality, which has a thriving personal dimension, not just a corporate one.

What I am talking about is paying attention to whether, by age 12, a kid has started to own their faith, which is not necessarily a product of how involved they are in the life of the church. Parents of regular churchgoing kids and occasional attending kids need to honestly assess within their own child whether that kid has any shame in being called "Christian". If there is resistance to that label, a clue could lie in studying what's going on with those outside the church.

It has been observed that the generation now coming of age wants to "belong before they'll believe." In other words, they are asking the questions, "Do I belong here?" and "Can I see myself being one of these people?" and "If I have to change to belong to this group, is it a change I can live with?" If the answer to any of those questions is "no", it's not likely that person will continue on the journey, but look for something that is more "them" and offers what they're looking for. Consumerist? Maybe. But much of this is a reaction to the perceived hypocrisy of churches that say one thing and do another, a suspicion of organized religion, and a protection against getting burned.

The Church would do well to sit up and take notice: it has a terrible image problem. And that has led people to "say yes to Jesus and no to the Church". Well, these are just discontented people who can't accept that the Bible teaches moral absolutes, you say. The Church is better off without them. Think again. In their landmark 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that "spiritual but not religious" - the supposed phenomenon where young people are trying out all kinds of new religions and fashioning together whatever makes sense and works for them - is largely a myth. By and large, the group studied (which is now entering young adulthood) refuses to cast judgment on spiritual seekers but they themselves are not embracing hybrid spirituality. Make no mistake - there is a large segment of society who desire God but have rejected church, rejected "Christian community", and resist wearing the Christian label.

This may be one of the biggest differences between moderns and postmoderns when it comes to ministry. For people my age and older, identification was assumed; what mattered in church was that you learned the Bible stories, the creeds, the verse of the week, and perhaps that your behavior conformed to what was expected of a Christian. Postmoderns need a different approach. There will be a time to teach them content, but they have an eye on the bigger picture: what's at the end of this road, who will I become, and who is with me? If they're not satisfied that the overall direction is genuine and worthwhile, they will not buy into the process of disciplemaking.

That's why it's imperative that we invest time in these kids as they grow and why they value hanging out and being together over formal instruction. Helping kids develop a Christian identity takes very little skill and there is practically no method, other than to be as authentic as possible and spend generous amounts of time. Our church model is built around that - the presence of numerous adult leaders in our class is not some divide-and-conquer crowd control strategy! The leaders in 4th-6th grade (and we are always looking to add to the team) are eager to share themselves with your kids, to model what it is to be a Christian. Regular, consistent contact is the best way to achieve that. Camps, where kids share the experience with an older counselor, are invaluable for it as well.

We want kids to wear the "Christian" descriptor proudly, not as a front, but in a way that penetrates their own consciousness. How can they develop that if they genuinely don't know any other Christians?