Gordon Fee on Why Christians Read their Bibles Poorly

This week, I want to point out an article on a subject of great importance: the use of the Bible and how Christians have become such poor Bible readers. Gordon Fee is a renowned scholar of the New Testament, helped translate the New International Version and Today's New International Version, and authored (along with Douglas Stuart) the handy and readable, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and How to Read the Bible, Book by Book.

This address by Fee was first given at the Undergraduate Bible/Theology Conference in 2005, and I wholeheartedly agree:

"Why Christians Read Their Bibles Poorly" by Gordon Fee

The Good News at El Camino Creek

While I'm away this month, I've asked some others to write in this space. This week's entry is by Karen Madeira, a mom of two boys who took on the job of leading an after-school club at her boys' public elementary school. At the start of the year I wrote about a HUGE opportunity to reach kids right in their own schools. These clubs are slowly being established in schools across North County. All I can say is, if we're going to stand around and bemoan the fact that "They took God out of the public schools" yet not act on this opportunity - shame on us!



If the Good News Club parent volunteers had a nickel for every time we heard “You can’t teach Jesus at a public school!”… Oh, but we can! Thanks to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s Good News Clubs are allowed to meet at public schools after hours just as any other community group can. Many parents are unaware of this law or the opportunity to reach un-churched children through this program.

Child Evangelism Fellowship is a Bible-centered organization started in 1937 whose mission is to reach children around the world with the love and truth of Jesus Christ. C.E.F.’s Good News Club is a worldwide, after-school program recently started at El Camino Creek Elementary School. In early 2008 several E.C.C. moms had heard a GNC was in full swing at nearby Mission Estancia Elementary. It soon became apparent our campus of over 900+ kids needed a GNC of our own. Under the leadership of Lynda Wennerstrom (a NCCC mom) and with the help of many parent volunteers, the GNC was launched for one six-week session
in May 2008.

The program offers games, music, snacks, and Bible stories one hour each week for six-week sessions throughout the school year. E.C.C. is blessed to have many parents willing to help, as well as area church leaders willing to lead the prayer and Bible story time. NCCC’s 4th-6th grade pastor Mark Friestad, as well as D.J. Bosler and Zach Beck of Coastline Community Church are a few who have presented relevant and entertaining Bible lessons. This brief but powerful exposure to scripture may be the only times many of these children will hear the Word of God!

Because the program is free to all participating students, many un-churched kids show up simply because a classmate has invited them, or their parents view it as convenient, no-cost childcare. They may have no idea of the eternal impact the GNC may have on their child! In fact, on the last day of GNC at E.C.C. about six children raised their hands proclaiming they were asking Jesus into their hearts! Isn’t that what we as believers are here for? To share the Good News of our Lord and Savior, and who better to start with than children?

If your child’s elementary school doesn’t yet have a GNC, begin now praying for one. Ask God how you can help reach kids through this dynamic opportunity. For more information on Child Evangelism Fellowship or the Good News Club, visit www.cefonline.com, or www.goodnewsclub.us . If you have any questions about the GNC at E.C.C., contact Karen Madeira at kkmade@mac.com.

Helping kids who get left behind

While I'm away, I've invited some others to contribute to this blog. This week, an article by Christine Kollar about her family's involvement in ChildHelp USA. Since moving to California in 2005 and working in the foster care system, I've developed an awareness and a heart for any kid who is in crisis or at-risk because of a unstable home environment. The church has a role to play, reaching out and reaching in. Some of these kids are in our classrooms every weekend. Some are in our communities, but they are invisible: the private nature of our lives and "don't ask-don't tell" ethic keeps us an arm's length from other people's family details.

I write frequently about the importance of a church's ministry to pre-teens; obviously, as a pastor to that age group I believe in it. But I want to challenge the church to raise its own awareness about kids in crisis who may never come through our doors and who are not necessarily living in Third World countries, but right here in California.


“We don’t know how good we have it. We forget to record our favorite TV shows on Tivo and it’s a crisis. These children are abused, neglected, and forsaken, until they are even on the verge of death. I don’t think anyone ever died over Tivo. I feel I’ve made a difference in a child’s life who has absolutely no one."

- A quote from my 15 year old daughter.

“All Who Enter Will Find Love” is the sign posted above the ChildHelp rescue village. ChildHelp is a village for severely abused children located in Banning, CA. There are multiple locations throughout the U.S. and the world as well. A few months ago I made my first visit to the ChildHelp rescue village. I had some idea of what it might be like but I had no idea that I would be so overwhelmed with love for a 13-year-old boy who stole the heart of my family and myself.

My family and I (husband, 15-year-old daughter, 12-year-old son, and 8-year-old son) visited on a Sunday in April during their spring festival. The room was like a warehouse/gymnasium. There was food, games and dollar store prizes. We had been assigned a 13-year-old boy, “John”, as our “special friend” for the day. As John came to meet us he had such excitement on his face. He was one of the lucky ones; there were about 40 other children that day who wouldn’t have a special friend for the day. John came up and greeted us with a grateful hug. We sat down with him for about 20 minutes, getting to know each other, and then he lead the way to show us around. We played games, laughed, talked, ate and just enjoyed each other's company. As the day progressed John didn’t leave our side. It was then that I realized that this was divine intervention.

As my family continued to hang out with John, I decided to take a tour of the village and find out more about the surroundings. I was filled with joy to find out that the first and most important place in the village was a tiny beautiful chapel. I spoke with the pastor who has such a passion for these children. He told me that aside from safety from their parents, the very purpose of the village is to put each child on a spiritual journey of healing, hope, and above all, love. These children have only seen beatings, fear, threats, sexual abuse, and many have come in on death's bed and this village is the first time that they have seen the face of love. I was overwhelmed with sadness to know that this was the life that John had lived, and in the next moment I was filled with humility to know that God can actually use me to make a huge impact on John’s life forever.

We now talk to him on the phone and encourage him weekly. As I said, he is 13 years old, but he is only in the 3rd grade (due to abuse and neglect). He thrives on encouragement and being reminded that God loves him. The blessings that my husband and I have received from that day are indescribable and yet pale in comparison to the blessings that my children received. It opened their eyes to the true blessings that they have.

There are still many children at the village hoping for a “special friend”. The commitment is $50 per year, 3 or 4 visits per year, and a weekly or monthly phone call of encouragement, and above all else the commitment to pray for the child.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

There are over 3 million reports of abuse in the U.S. each year. To find out more about ChildHelp log on to www.childhelp.org.

Mind the Wind

We have a lot more at our new building. More space. More families. More time on Sunday morning. And more wind, which got me thinking the other day about the problems kids face and how we measure "ok".

Because we're at a higher elevation now, on a plateau and without the windbreak of I-5 at our back, we suddenly feel a lot more wind than we did before. And so it was that on a Saturday morning, as our facilities crew was setting out tables in advance of Saturday evening's all-church BBQ, the wind started playing games. The guys would cover each round table with a red tablecloth, and minutes later a gust of wind would blow it off. The tablecloth was replaced, and straightened, and left just so - and then the wind kicked up just enough to throw it off again. A heavy centerpiece? Nope, the edges of the tablecloth still blew up and settled on the tabletop. Finally the crew settled it the only way possible - they recognized the wind's persistence, folded up the coverings, set them in the middle of the table, and dealt with it later.

There are many ways you could read this as a metaphor - like your kids' ability to push your button at just the right time, again and again. Or it could be used to illustrate the idea, "Don't sweat the small stuff" - don't feel you have react to every issue, let kids handle the small ones and step in when kids are stuck or about to get hurt or ask for your help. But what I saw in the tables was kids, as they develop and grow, and our well-meaning but often misguided penchant for treating symptoms rather than causes, over and over, and reacting far later than we should.

I once arranged a parenting class for a particular age group. I'll never forget the woman who called asking if we were planning anything for parents of older kids - their family really needed it. When I reminded her she had a son in the target age group for the upcoming class, she said, "Yes, but he's doing ok."

When we react, we rarely catch up. How many times have I heard from people I'm trying to recruit to work with kids in our ministry that they'd rather work with junior high or senior high aged kids "because that's when they're really faced with tough decisions"? Trust me, I respect the importance of junior high and high school ministry. I've worked in both, and yes, that age kid needs guidance too. But it's because of my experience with older kids that I know the seeds of wisdom are sown in a child long before the teen years are hit. In the same way, we know that the spiritual maturity and dedication of parents is a good predictor of the eventual spiritual maturity of the child: we reproduce what we are, not necessarily what we want.

The human will is incredibly strong, and teenage kids don't suddenly decide the type of person they want to be, and they don't make that decision in a vacuum. A strong Christian leader can guide, encourage, and even strongly suggest, but ultimately if a kid has no spiritual reservoir from which to draw, their decisions and lives are going to end up looking pretty much like the rest of the world's.

I first experienced this several years ago with a kid I knew and worked with whom I'll call Allen. Allen was being raised by his mom and had a winsome personality. But he was also grieving the loss of his dad, had some behavioral issues, didn't choose the best friends, and didn't have any particular passion. He, like many kids, was "good" and "ok", but all that was holding that together, it seems, was lack of opportunity. In high school he began experimenting, first with alcohol, then with drugs, and eventually was sent away for rehab.

But I remember the first time Allen was caught and the pep talk I gave him, which was lame in retrospect, about how surprised I was that he'd done that and how I hoped he'd make better choices and that I believed in him. Looking back, the problem wasn't that Allen didn't want to do better but that he couldn't do better - he was a broken kid and didn't have the resources to change. Which is not to excuse him from responsibility - not at all. To the contrary, Allen reaped what was sown - but the answer wasn't offering him pep talks or incentives or guilt trips to "turn him good". It was Allen's need to be rescued from his circumstances. (This, incidentally, is why the world's message that kids just need to "try harder" or be rewarded into making good decisions runs counter to the Bible's message that we are lost to sin.)

Sometimes our view of sin is just too small. The havoc of sin on the world is more than the sum total of every cross word, broken promise, mean thought, or hurtful act. The world itself is broken and under curse. Even people with hearts of gold - even children - are tainted by this environmentally. They are born into a fallen world, and the effects of sin are all around. Others disappoint us. We have to put up with rude people. We don't get our way. Joy fades.

Which brings us back to the tablecloths. The problem wasn't the tablecloths themselves - that is, it was a problem that they were blowing around and wouldn't stay in place, yes, but the root of the problem was that the wind was just strong and persistent enough to make the job of keeping them down pretty impossible. Now consider the problems that manifest themselves in kids' lives in adolescence and beyond - eating disorders, pornography addiction, sexual abuse, alcohol abuse, marrying too young, indebtedness, materialism, self-centeredness, spiritual backsliding and/or abandonment of their faith, isolation and depression, vanity, hopelessness - and recognize that there is a wind blowing behind each one of them.

So, boys who view pornography become men who suffer for it. Girls who have impossible thinness presented to them as the very definition of "beauty" come to believe it. Kids who are fed a steady diet of conflict and drama among adults internalize that as the way to resolve problems. Children who have no boundaries grow up disrespectful and always expecting their way; and, conversely, those who are babied and overly managed never learn to make responsible decisions for themselves. These are the prevailing conditions we call "culture" and they handicap the healthy development of kids.

So what is a parent to do? Remaining mindful of the fact that the wind won't stop blowing completely, when your child is in the pre-teen years, you should be fighting like mad to build up and strengthen your child's store of spiritual assets. Last year I wrote and spoke about Nine Things Your Child Needs to Thrive Spiritually - that series begins here. But the wrong thing to do is to throw up your hands and say, "That's just the world we live in." Wrong. You can't always change culture. But as a parent, you can choose culture.

Try to get a handle on how your child is influenced (and a better word might be shaped). Each source has its own culture - a set of assumptions and values and norms. Your home and family have a culture. Friendship groups have cultures. Schools have cultures. Ideally they're nurturing. Sometimes they're coercive and stifling. Movies and TV create a culture (who can't remember wishing that some TV mom or dad was their parent?). Getting a handle of what your child believes - about themselves, about God, about the way the world works - can be huge in understanding emerging behaviors or stemming problem ones. (Take, for instance: "Why is my daughter so upset?" The fact that her boyfriend recently broke up with her might help explain why; but knowing that she holds the belief that to be someone in middle school, you have to have a boyfriend helps explain the intensity of her feelings.)

We continue to believe that parents hold the far greater potential to influence kids than church programs do. Parents remain the most willing, consistent, and persistent factors in a child's development. There are four programs planned in September specifically for you, and specifically designed to help you nurture kids' spiritual reserves. Beginning September 10, when our midweek program resumes (moving to Wednesday nights this fall), we plan to once again offer parent programs and classes in partnership with the church's Marriage and Family Ministry. Come and learn from Jeff Reinke on 7 Ways to Love Your Child the first Wednesday. Bill & Pam Farrell and Archibald Hart will speak in the weeks to follow. And, on September 19 (a Friday night), we're bringing Tim Smith back down to the church to teach you how to lead a family time of devotions. It's a nice sounding concept, but how many people know at all how to proceed? Tim will walk you through it, with your kids and a meal right there that night. All of these are a bargain - the Wednesday seminars are free, and the Tim Smith program is a flat fee for your whole family (with dinner included).

It's easy to recognize when things are "not OK" with a kid. "OK" is not necessarily the absence of troubling signs or bad behavior. True "OK" is an internal state, difficult to measure. Recognizing where the wind is coming from and how hard it's blowing is a skill, and it is key to restoring kids' spiritual and emotional wellness.

Parents: The Engine of Invitation

The premier outreach event for our church, Kids Games, is coming in a week. Let me assure you, we do have room for your child still and it is not too late to register (but, the sooner the better). We are limited only theoretically by space and practically by the number of leaders; with Aviara Middle School as our venue and 163 people enlisted to help, we are in good shape.

So - we have a job for you: invite.

First, of course, register your own child. You can still do this by phone at 760-579-4161 or in person at the church between 9:30-1:30. While there are some electives full, many more remain available and we do place a priority on getting kids with their friends. That's part of the beauty of Kids Games - it gives kids common activities to share, the axis of kid friendship, and weaves spiritual lessons into those experiences, all while kids are under the wing of a caring adult leader.

Second, have your child bring a friend. Kids Games is about as non-threatening as it gets. And parents are the engine of invitation. I do believe kids are capable of deep, meaningful spiritual experiences, but most lack the maturity to view the world through a spiritual lens. As a result, kids don't always get why they should invite friends to church.

But we do. Parents grasp spiritual needs and spiritual health, and I've met some parents at this church who are very, very good about having their kids be intentional inviters. Some of them shrug off this acumen, and just lay credit on their own son or daughter, but I know better. And I can see the effect that these parents' hearts has on their kids: after a while, the kids start to "get it", that we don't just invite others to church because church is fun and cool and neat, but because people are spiritual and they need God. Constantly asking your child, "Who else can we bring with you?" is a great way to make them other-minded. After a while, bringing a friend along becomes second nature. And, as kids grow older, they're less likely to feel embarrassed about their own church affiliation and identity as a "churched kid" because everyone they know is aware of it. AND - the best thing - it keeps churches from becoming closed clubs.

How's your kid at inviting? Very likely the answer is related to how strongly you encourage it. I'm often asked whether some upcoming event or another is ok to bring friends to. The answer is nearly always yes. We do almost nothing that an unchurched child would feel uncomfortable attending, and that's by design.

See you - and your kid's friend - at Kids Games.

Why We Are Saved

This week I relayed to the kids a story from high school that was meant to illustrate forgiveness. Instead, to me it ended up illustrating the limits of an example.

The story is that when I was in ninth grade, I forgot to do a packet of English worksheets. I was normally a conscientious student, but this packet had been assigned several days before it was due and I simply, honestly forgot. As I result, I had none of them done, and receive a grade to match. This Zero followed me through the grading period, sandbagging what would have otherwise been a healthy A and weighing it down to a C+ or B-. By the end of the quarter, despite otherwise strong test and homework scores, I still was hovering around low B.

That's when the teacher, Mrs. Langemo, called me forward and at the end of class shared with me what she'd decided to do. (This was before computer grading, which has made omitting a missed assignment an easy thing.) Knowing how badly that set of worksheets had hurt my grade, and knowing how much I wanted an A in her class, she reasoned that if I had done them, I probably would have scored around a 94%, which would have allowed my quarter grade to rise to an A, and so that was exactly the grade she was giving me. Case closed.

I used that story with the kids because it was a story of forgiveness and also of a sweet motivation. I knew at the time, because she said it often, that Mrs. Langemo had a heartfelt affinity for all of her students. She told us so. Every year, to all of her classes, she would express that she loved them. And you believed it; not that she merely had enthusiasm for her job or a fondness for young people in general, but that she cared individually and wanted every student who came through her door to succeed, in English and in life. Mrs. Langemo loved us.

And since God forgives us because of his great love for us, I thought it made a great example. Except that when I asked the kids "Why do you think my teacher did that for me?" most of them answered with something sensible like, "Because she knew you were a good student," or "Because she knew you deserved an A," or "Because she knew you'd try hard after that to remember to do all your homework." Stated simply, they reasonably believed that Mrs. Langemo's "forgiveness" of the unfinished work was conditioned on her belief that I wasn't willfully ignoring my assignments, and that in other ways I'd shown my good intentions. Put another way: yes, I would have deserved the grade I had coming (a B), but I also had proved myself deserving of an A.

As I reflected on this later, I came to realize how imperfect our metaphors for the forgiveness of God really are. Not that we as humans don't legitimately forgive one another, or love one another unconditionally. But the kids' analysis was right: whether or not my teacher loved me, her offer to raise my grade was based on an expectation about the quality of the work I would have done. I may not have earned an A, but my history as a student in her class earned her consideration.

But this is not the way God forgives us. How could God rescue Paul, "the worst of sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15-17) if grace was offered because our own merit? How could Jesus have pardoned the woman caught in adultery, whose sin was obvious and shameful, or associated with the cheater Zacchaeus? How could the people of the church at Ephesus have been redeemed by God, when they were as Paul wrote, "dead in your transgressions and sins…gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath"? Paul gives the answer as he continues in Ephesians 2: "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved."

There is a noxious version of the gospel out there that goes like this: God expects you to measure up. God knows you haven't. Jesus died for you, and that should motivate you to live for him. Receive God's forgiveness and then get over your struggles. Resolve to strive to measure up like God expects you to do. I have seen many Christians - kids, teenagers, and adults - interpret the gospel in this way: Christ died, so I'll try. The problem is that it gets forgiveness wrong. The death of Jesus is not just a motivator, but an actuator (yes, that's really a word) - in other words, it produces a definite (not just a suggested) result. The result of Jesus' sacrifice is that by faith we can be free from condemnation, free from shame, and free from the Law, which never brings life.

So when Paul writes (Galatians 2), "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me," he is not writing of possibilities or probabilities, but certainties. How do we know? Because he continues, "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" But Christ didn't die for nothing! And he didn't die in the hope that we - and let's be specific, that includes children - will choose to be good boys and girls. Christ died so that we could be saved.

When I was growing up, there was a banner that hung in my church that said, "Christ served to save; we are saved to serve." But that's not quite right. It makes salvation seem less like freedom from sin and more like parole: yeah, you're out, but watch yourself this time or the real punishment's coming.

Which brings us around to the question, why are we saved?

Many people can relay when they were saved. Every Christian should at least be able to tell how we are saved. But what about why we are saved? The answer must surely entail a certain amount of wonder. God saves us because of his love for us. OK, but what is the nature of this love? Are there really no strings attached? How can he love like that? It's these seeds of doubt, I'm convinced, that keep some people holding onto a version of love and forgiveness that imposes some performance obligation on the part of the forgiven. This is "I love you" with a comma, rather than "I love you", period.

I'm not saying we should all walk around dumbfounded and clueless as to why God saves anyone. But neither, just because "the Bible says so" should we reduce God's love to some cold, propositional truth, as ordinary as saying, "the sky is blue" or "2+2=4". Words, in any context, that are repeated over and over run the risk of becoming cliches, and we've done it in the church when we pronounce God's love without any accompanying awe or humility or wonder.

God loves us? Yes he does. God loves even us. Even you. Even me. And it fuels his mercy, which is the engine of his grace. And by grace, through faith - not resolve, not best of intentions, not daily quiet times, not camp rededications - we are saved.

A generation of strivers is first cousin to a generation of keepers of the law. Believing that God's forgiveness is possible shoots too low. Let's do our best, in word and deed, to communicate to kids a vision of God's forgiveness that will make them not strivers, but celebrators. How would culture change if we could plant 50 or more kids in every North County middle school who, rather than believing in the prospect of God's forgiveness, were convinced of its reality in their own lives, and were motivated and humbled by that?

One New Building, Thousands of Possibilities

"This is great."
"Wow."
"Look at all the space."
"How exciting."

The past four days have been a blur of excitement and a real sense that I am part of a historic time in the life of this church. Things are now out of control. And I like it.

At long last, we have moved into our new space just up the hill, and the campus is gorgeous. I grin every time I climb the stairs from the parking lot and up to the second floor. We have been given more than we deserve.

I landed home from our summer camp (a week during which some amazing and unexpected things happened) on Saturday at 1:00, went into the office to prepare for Saturday night, dashed home to change clothes, and rolled up Poinsettia Lane just as the cross was approaching the new property. It was really emotional to see all of the people on the sidewalk and up on the lot, looking out into the street and waiting with ecstatic anticipation: the day had finally arrived! Saturday was simply electric, and from our perspective in 4th-6th grade, the flow of people from the open house never ended all evening; we simply started at 6:00 with the room as full as it had been all day. We didn't even know what had hit us.

Tonight again, at the "Without Walls" concert, I felt a sense of ownership and accomplishment and pride - good pride, not the evil variety - among the people who call this church their own, and not an ounce of possessiveness. Everyone seems eager to share this place with friends and neighbors, to invite them to a spot that's clean and new and has plenty of parking and breathing room and space to grow.

Saturday night, with the biggest crowd we've ever seen, did underscore the need to stay small even as the total church grows - by which I mean we must redouble our efforts to personally identify and reach out to kids in our ministry. It bothers me, and it always will, when a child spends an hour at a church event, anywhere, without being talked to or acknowledged by an adult leader.

What I saw Saturday, and again tonight, was a coming together of people and families whose paths never otherwise crossed in the shopping center, because the Saturday nights and the 8:00's and the 11:15's distinctly belonged to their respective services. And no doubt, people will again settle into their new attendance patterns. But for now, we're together, and that's great fun.

I want to thank the people at the beginning and the end of this process: at the beginning, those who conceived of the idea for a new property, and at the end, those who built, finished, and physically moved items from the old church to the new. I was blown away to learn that a "new" NCCC had its genesis in 1994, a time when I was still in college and when California and Christian ministry were nowhere near my radar screen. When I moved west in 2005, grading on the new site had not yet begun. Over the past couple of years I've come to realize that "fullness", inside and in parking lots, really does keep people away. So even if our new home seems "too big" at the start, it was needed and the planning proved fortuitous. There are too many volunteers to thank by name for lending a hand in getting our 4th-6th grade room packed and then resettled in the new children & youth building. But thank you all for investing in the future of that space and taking ownership over a piece of the new room.

This post isn't terribly deep or thought provoking, but it represents my mindset this week: I am preoccupied with gratitude - for the visionaries, the planners, the builders, the believers, the givers, and the many, many helpers. And that's a pretty good place to be.

Some Goals for Your 4th, 5th, or 6th grader

Last week I wrote about the Big Goal, helping kids draw near to God to love him now and for the rest of their lives. This closeness is especially important during times of important life decision making, which the next 10-15 years surely will be for them. And, I laid out some minor goals that we are striving for "in-room". But the fact remains that our "in-room" reach is so limited. We might have 20-30 hours of contact with the average kid in a year. What can be done in that kind of time?

The answer, fortunately, is not "nothing", but the extent of what a ministry program can do is often limited by the foundation a child brings to us. I can understand what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3, where he speaks of someone else building on the foundation that he laid. Churches are finish carpenters, not framers, and if the foundation is off or nonexistent, it's tough to do much finishing that will last, or matter.

So, I offer these things you can work to build in your child, that the "finishing" work of a church ministry might be maximized.

If your son or daughter is in 4th grade, you need to train them in how to make decisions. Lives are the products of millions of decisions. We reap what we sow. Everything from major life decisions - marriage, career, education, raising kids, buying a house - to mundane, everyday decisions end up shaping who we are and where we're going. Why is this spiritually significant? A teenage boy once told me, "I think becoming a Christian is one decision for Jesus, but living the Christian life is like a million decisions for Jesus." Good stuff. We are wanting kids to make a huge decision that will affect the course of their whole lives - a decision to follow Christ. How can they if they otherwise control nothing about their own lives because they never make a decision for themselves?

Here are some things I think a 4th grader can be reasonably trained and expected to do. A 4th grader should be able to keep their room clean and perform a regular set of home chores. A 4th grader should be able to order for themselves at a restaurant, including speaking to the waiter or waitress. They should be able, unless there are special circumstances, to complete their own homework (unless the work is genuinely too difficult, in which case the school should be asked to justify the assignment). They should be able to make basic spending decisions (with prudent guidelines that teach them to save for the future and give; a simple formula like save 10%, give 10%, and spend 80% is a good habit to ingrain). They should participate in the planning of their birthday party (not just selecting the theme and leaving all the work to you!). They should be able to engage with an adult in a conversation, something some kids don't learn to do because their parents have a habit of answering for them. And please, please, please - your child (well before 4th grade) should know their full address and phone number. I understand that no one writes letters anymore, but for safety's sake if nothing else, your child needs to know where they come from and where home is.

They should, at this age, be learning to work in groups. Group work, in which same-age peers plan a project, divide the work, and see it through to completion without adult management, is so valuable in teaching them how to communicate, how to manage their own feelings, and how to get along. If your child's school is not giving kids opportunities to do group projects, ask why not. The bottom line: kids learn to make good decisions by being trusted to make decisions.

If your son or daughter is in 5th grade, this is the year you need to open up a dialogue about sex, puberty, and dating. Swallow hard if you must. Notice that I didn't tell you to have "The Talk". I think that as pervasive as pre-marital and extra-marital sex is in our culture today, one talk will never be enough if you want to ensure that your child has both correct information and develops healthy values here. Some parents fret about the "right" time to address it, but if you're committed to opening a dialogue, having impeccable timing about "The Talk" isn't so important. What's more important to know is that kids up to a certain age are vaguely aware of sex, and after a certain age - and for some reason this seems to be during 5th grade - most are curious about it and ready to have those conversations.

Fortunately, I can suggest some resources. I've heard good things about the "God's Design for Sex" series, which is four books intended to be used starting when your child is a preschooler. Book 2 is recommended for ages 5-8 while Book 3, "What's the Big Deal, Why God Cares About Sex" is targeted at pre-teens. Then the 4th book, "Facing the Facts: The Truth About Sex and You" is designed for young teenagers. You might blush when you look at some of the chapter headings in Book 4, but the whole point is that if you've used the series up until then, you will have created a climate where there is no shame and embarrassment for either you or your child when it comes to the most intense subjects.

Another friend in preteen ministry recommends "The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls", part of the "American Girl" series, for use with girls. And for boys, you can pick up the "Every Man" contribution, which is "Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle." The thing I like about that book is that it is written as a series of simulated conversations, so the person who "doesn't know what to say" can see exactly what they might say. All of these titles can be ordered from our church bookstore.

And if your son or daughter is in 6th grade, this is the year you need to help them build a network of Christian friends. Sixth graders are already socially conscious and this will intensify through 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, until they've found their niche in high school and some of the identity crisis subsides, when "Who Am I?" can be answered "I am just like all of my friends, and they're..." A preteen, when invited to one of our events, will want to know "What are we going to do there?" A junior high kid wants to know, "Who else is going to be there?" You want your child to leave 6th grade and move into the junior high ministry with a solid group of friends and acquaintences at church so that their continued participation in Junior High and High School ministry is a given.

How do you do this? By exposing them to as many church peers as often as possible. When we get large turnout for an event, I rejoice. Why? Because it made the effort worth it? OK, yes, I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it. But I also know that when large numbers of kids are brought together, the chances are good that everyone who came was able to find at least one "buddy" to share the night with. There's a lot of mileage in laughter and shared experience that can be re-lived the next Sunday at church, and that makes kids look forward to the next event. Paintball welts hurt, but when boys are eager to come to church to show them off to each other, that's worth it. Girls may be grumpy the day after an all-nighter, but that trip to the karaoke machine or game of Apples to Apples may be just enough to break the ice between her and a new best friend. I don't believe kids should only have Christian friends. Not at all! But there are too many kids who have no Christian friends. That's a problem, and if not addressed, three to four years later you're going to face resistance on the issue of going to church. Trust me, even if your child now goes willingly, the day is coming when Who Else Is There will be consideration #1. So the best thing you can do is involve them now, deeply, when that's easy to do.

And one more thing: let me clarify what I mean by "Christian friends". By "friend" I mean someone your child would actually call and associate with outside of church - sleepovers, birthday parties, days at the beach, etc. Friendships at this age, especially for boys, center around shared experiences, so while you (an adult) may have friends from church that you share a meaningful connection with even though your only encounters are church-related, kid friendships don't work that way. That is something we hope they will grow towards with each other, but first there needs to be lots of time together. Secondly, by "Christian" I mean really that they have parents who are working toward the same goal you are. Normally I wouldn't use the word in that way, but the truth is, the label a child chooses for him or herself is less important than the orientation being assumed for them by their parents. All of this points to the need to bring parents of same-age kids in the church together, and we're working at that, but a simple measure might be whether you can name four other families from our church whose kids attend the same school your kids do. If you can, great - connect with those families. If not, time to start inviting, and time to focus on helping your kid get to know those who are here. Ask them who they know and who they like being with at church. And bring them, bring them, bring them, because being known is important in a large church.

I have lots of ideas about how we can build what I call, "the Greater Christian Community" in North County among kids and families, some of which involve networking with other churches. But all the organization in the world won't matter until parents are committed to the idea that their child needs Christian friends.

The Measure of Our Success

A new school year begins in August. The new fiscal year starts January 1. But the new ministry year, with the promotion of 6th graders to junior high and the welcoming of a new 4th grade class this weekend, has just begun.

If you're new to this site or the newsletter that links to it, what you're reading is an important part of our effort to bridge the common, and frankly inexcusable, gap that exists between parents and the church. Parents and churches have a relationship based on trust, but it's curious because often neither one knows what it is being trusted to do. For instance, take the common refrain, "Parents are the primary disciplers of their children." That's ok as a philosophy, but it doesn't tell me anything about how you feel about it. Do you relish it? Feel under-equipped? Overwhelmed and under-motivated? Find it interesting? Rewarding? Dull? Maybe you feel as if you don't have enough of a foundation yourself to pass on to your kids, especially if you weren't raised in a Christian home. Maybe you just don't think about it at all.

And from our side, too, the assumptions don't always match the reality. You may wonder: what exactly do they do in there? Are my kids learning? Are they behaving? Who is working with them? If we invest our time in this, will it be worth it?

This blog started in January 2007 along with its companion, the half-sheet HomePage which gets handed to kids on their way out the door each week, in order to establish a line of communication between our ministry and the parents of the kids we minister to. For my part, I wanted parents to know what kids were learning, and see if couldn't provide a little fodder for discussion in the hopes that each kid could have another go at thinking and verbalizing about the subject of that weekend. I was also tired of hearing, "We would have come to that - if we had known" - which confirmed my suspicion that most of the paper handed out in class never gets into the hands of the people who really need to see it. And, finally, I wanted to communicate to you as parents that we think seriously about issues regarding spiritual development of children and teenagers.

But the measure of our success does not lie in establishing mechanisms like these. Blogs and e-mails are only a tool, and even if they were read and heeded fully and regularly, we still could not claim "success" because ministry is about more than turning kids out for events or bringing them back Sunday after Sunday.

So what is success, and how do I try to orient the 4th-5th-6th grade ministry towards it? For starters, I am driven by the compelling statistic that 70% of kids raised in the church walk away from their faith as young adults. That is simply not good enough. And so, obviously, the ultimate measure of our success has to be how many kids are in love with God and remain in love with him all of their lives. I have never been comfortable with a conception of children's ministry as a place where "foundation" is laid, where knowledge is merely "banked" for later access. I believe the argument that "hopefully someday it will make sense to them" is a cop-out. I believe kids and pre-teens and teenagers can have a vibrant, life-giving relationship with the Lord right now, and that in fact, if they don't have that there will be a real price to pay.

What this means, of course, is that "success" with a kid is a slippery thing to measure. You may succeed over one school year, but five years later, that kid has drifted away. A kid may be super-cooperative and participatory on a given week, and be a pill the next six weeks. A young girl may be sweet and pleasant, but there are circumstances in her life that are hardening her heart - look out, because the crash is coming.

What I am saying is that we - as churches and parents of pre-teens - must assume a very long-term perspective because these are, after all, human beings who will live long lives and be influenced in countless ways and hopefully also be influencers for good. They are not just the project of the moment. We should capitalize on the period of direct impact we have on them but also realize our responsibility is life-long. So, I'm not only interested in the answers they give today but also the answers they'll give when they're 16. Who they say Jesus is today matters some, but who they say he is when they're 20 matters much more. If I ask them to articulate what they value and God makes the top five, that's great, but I'm also concerned about where he ranks over the next ten years.

Much of this, I know, depends on these kids staying "in the process", and so, the more 6th graders who move up to Junior High and stay involved, the better. And then in two more years, I'll have my eye on the number who successfully transition into high school. Beyond graduation, they'll need to find their own fellowship and growth environment, something we in churches have done a poor job preparing them to do. Of course, a huge factor in their future spiritual vitality hinges on who they choose to date and ultimately marry. 4th-6th grade is too young for them to get that, so I have to hope that it gets taught and internalized when the time is right.

Whether a kid walks with Christ and continues that walk is ultimately the only thing that matters. Badges and star charts do not. Screams and shrieks of excitement fade. Laughter is good, but humor doesn't transform. Everything we do must point kids in the direction of a relationship with Christ, or we are spinning our wheels.

In service of that long-term goal, here are some short-term ones:

• Can kids work with others, cooperate toward a common goal, persevere together, resolve conflicts among themselves, and share credit while refraining from blaming or alibis?
• Do the kids exhibit a progressively deeper curiosity and sense of awe about spiritual things? Kids are naturally curious - what are we doing to help answer the questions they're already asking, and to stimulate new ones?
• Do the kids display genuine respect and affection towards their leaders? I know when a leader is making an impact when kids ask where they are on weeks that they're gone.
• Are the kids excited about being together? Do they have a group of peers at church who are becoming friends?
• Do kids' answers to questions evidence a growing sophistication of thought (something we definitely notice in the spring of the year, when everybody in our room is the "oldest" they'll be before promotion)? Can they go beyond one-word or pat responses to express spiritual truths or their personal beliefs?

Finally, here are some things we as a pre-teen ministry believe:

• That ministry approaches must be age-appropriate and relevant to be effective.
• That learning is an active, constructive process. I cannot transplant my own understanding into their brain, but I can walk alongside as they gain understanding, to help shape it.
• That pre-teens are understudied, under-resourced, little understood and as a result, often inappropriately ministered to.
• That parents are eager for practical help in parenting kids in this age group.
• That the spiritual life is nurtured primarily through the home, and that church ministry can be a supplement, but not a substitute.

Long-term perspective in so very important in ministry to kids. Rome wasn't built in a day, and your kid won't reach spiritual maturity just by knowing a bunch of right answers. So, settle in for the long haul. Get your kid to church every week, enroll him or her in as many outside activities as you can, help them build a network of Christian friends (now), and let's do ministry together.

Kids Say the Right-est Things

A young child declares to you that "Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins." Now the ball is in your court: what do you say in response?

I'm convinced the key to great discipleship lies in the answer. This weekend and every weekend millions of questions were thrown out in Sunday school classrooms around the globe. I wonder how many of them created exchanges that led to real spiritual understanding?

I don't normally get the chance to dialogue with preschoolers (on anything, much less religion) as they're about six years younger than my age group. But on my recent vacation, I had ample time with this age set, including a little "exploring" session with my nephew, who is five. The occasion was my parents' 40th wedding anniversary and family reunion, and the setting was a restored farmstead redeveloped to accommodate groups like ours. On the grounds was a relocated one-room schoolhouse and a country church - which of course made for irresistible exploring territory.

Inside the church we spotted a banner with a giant heart shape covering the front of a cross. Wanting to gauge his perceptiveness after a year of Christian pre-school, I innocently asked, "Why is there a cross on it?" To which he responded, in a nearly exasperated tone, "Because Jesus died on da cross…to pay da price for our sins." He didn't say it, but his tone said, "dummy." Which I deserved, for underestimating him.

His response left me with a number of options. I could have left it alone - he had, after all, answered the question. I could have slathered him with praise: "R-i-g-h-t! You're such a good listener in school!" I could have asked him to tell me where he learned that, to see if I could ply any more details about the setting and context from him. I could have asked him if he knew any songs or stories about the cross. Or, I could have played dumb and asked more follow-up questions.

I opted for a last approach, which was to ask, "What are 'sins'?" in a way as if I'd never heard the word before - one of my favorite techniques because it makes kids feel important when they believe they're telling a grown-up something they don't know. As it turns out, my question only elicited, "Umm…they're bad things," before his five-year-old brain shifted to other things. But the point isn't that I chose the perfect follow-up. The point is that we ought to follow up more often when kids deliver right responses, and we ought to give real attention and deliberate effort to the way in which we follow up, rather than meeting those answers with either silence or praise.

The trouble with letting an answer be (ignoring the response or moving on and changing the subject) is that it communicates to the kid that what they've said really wasn't terribly interesting or worth further comment. Adults sometimes accept "right answers" as affirmation that teaching is "getting through" (as in, whew, they're getting it). But a correctly-phrased response doesn't necessarily indicate that at all. Kids are often asked to say words that mean a great deal to adults but little to them. The only way to know for sure that there is understanding behind the words they've spoken is to probe deeper. You want to get kids to flesh out their own understanding by attaching words to the ideas they hold. Just as writing a book or an essay (or this blog) forces an author to organize and hone their thinking, so can conversation do that, in a less formal way.

The second common, but perhaps even more flawed, response by adults when kids give "right answers" is to pour on the praise: Good job! Wow! Right on! Yes! You're so smart! and on and on. Now what on earth could be wrong with praising a child, you ask? Well, bear with me. The instinct to want to praise kids when they've performed well is well-founded. We want kids to feel good about their accomplishments, and we want them to be positively reinforced so they'll be likely to run/jump/write/answer/act/try/or whatever in an exemplary way the next time. The problem comes when praise acts like a straightjacket. Authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish identified this in their book, How to Talk So Kids Can Learn at Home and at School, where they point out that labels, both negative and positive, force kids into playing roles. One becomes "the funny one", another is "lazy", another is "shy", another is "really responsible". Faber and Mazlish advise against hanging labels on kids, even positive ones, because there is an implied "always" quality about them that shapes kids' behavior long after we pronounced it to be so. Thus, it's ok to point out particular instances of responsibility or kindness or maturity, as long as it's not generalized: "When you set the table without being asked, that really helped me," instead of, "You're so responsible and grown up. I can always count on you." The distinction may seem slight. But one identifies and casts value on particular actions; the other makes kids out to be the product of their actions, and in so doing, pronounces value on the child.

I would suggest that the kind of praise we commonly dish out in Sunday schools has the same effect as a label in that it creates a category of responses that are acceptable and that will either a. earn a reward or b. get me out of having to answer any more questions. Savvy Sunday school goers figure this out: say "God" or "Jesus" in answer to a question and you're bound to be right 80% of the time, while "We should obey God" and "We should be nice to others" are reliable standbys for answering any personal application question. Of course, we should obey God and we should be nice to others, but even a preschooler is not to young to be asked how they might do that. And it may take them considerable time to formulate a real-life example, and they may answer wrongly, and sometimes they genuinely may not know how it is that a five-year-old (much less a ten-year-old) is supposed to obey God, in which case we'll need to map it out with them. But isn't that what we want - for them to connect some abstract, nice-sounding idea to the way they live? Isn't that why they're there? Or is it to earn some star or point or prize or make a grown-up gush?

The alternative to praising answers is not criticism or dismissal ("You're just a kid, you don't even know what you're talking about"), but engagement. Coming back to a child and asking them to clarify ("What did you mean when you said…"), substantiate ("Can you give me an example of where you think that's true?"), elaborate ("Say more about that…"), or defend something they've just said is very validating to them. When you answer their answer with a question, you've dignified their statement. You've opened a dialogue. Discipleship happens here.

When kids express themselves, we should never regard those expressions as final - for good or for bad. Consider two kids: one declaring that Jesus was the Son of God, and another saying Jesus might not be the only way to heaven. Both are giving us insights into their present understanding. We would surely use the second kid's assertion as a teachable moment, to dialogue about the means of salvation, rather than shutting him down with "you're wrong". So why are we so quick to shut down the first child with "Right!"?

The more kids are willing to talk, the more malleable they remain. I have a better chance of influencing a teenager who is willing to tell me he's tempted to have sex with his girlfriend than one who feels he cannot admit being tempted because he's taken a high-profile pledge for purity. A similar factor was at work in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18). The tax collector, with little to lose, confessed all and cried to God for mercy and was justified; the Pharisee, with a public face to save, could only boast of his own righteousness and pray deceptively. May we never box kids into that corner because we've praised them onto a pedestal.

The bottom line is that we need to learn to dialogue with kids. And that's hard because kids and adults are locked into well-defined roles that govern our communication. Most of the time when an adult asks a child a question, it is to judge them: Did you clean your room? Have you finished your homework? What is the capital of Oregon? A more collaborative style of communication, where adults are alongside kids helping them figure out problems, mysteries, and projects rather than quizzing them, lends itself to the sorts of questions that will help grow our kids' faith, in a way that stickers and trinkets never will.

What do we do when kids are saying all the right things? How do we respond in a way that encourages their curiosity, that they will continue to question and wonder and speculate? In short, how do we get them to think? Then they might regard God as intriguing and fascinating and worthy of their attention, a bigness not easily fathomed or readily reduced to easy formulations. They might just want to know him.