Spiritual Growth Marker #3: Allegiance

We’ve probably all been a situation where we reach the point where our heart’s not in it. Regardless of our technical skill or experience, the excitement isn’t there. It happens among talented young athletes and among seasoned professionals, and no amount of coaxing can re-light the fire.

This intangible is called allegiance, and while it’s probably the best direct measure of spiritual growth, it’s also the hardest to measure precisely, and the hardest to stimulate.

The Bible makes clear that our connection with God is not based on begrudging servitude, but on allegiance. It’s a heart issue:

“You shall have no other Gods before me.” – Exodus 20:3

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” – Deuteronomy 6:5

“The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” – Deuteronomy 30:6

“The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” – Isaiah 29:13

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. - Joel 2:12-13

“The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” – Matthew 12:34

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13

God demands loyalty. What’s striking is how many times the command to love God “with all your heart” appears in Deuteronomy, which is a book of the Law! The Law of Moses outlined the Israelites’ duties to God, yet at its core, the Law was meant to produce inward – not outward – transformation.

How do you make this happen? It can be hard enough to maintain our own spiritual enthusiasm. How would we stimulate that in kids? First, the difficulty of this task should prompt us to go slowly and with the appreciation that ultimately, you can’t. You cannot directly steer someone’s heart, any more than you can get someone to fall in love with you or force someone to love baseball. All you can do is try to win them.

So it begins with this: do we believe God is winsome? Do we believe God is actively in pursuit of all people? Is our conception of “following God” basically moralism, where we walk the straight-and-narrow because that’s what God wants? Or is it an adventure, keeping up with the God who’s active?

Kids will never fall in love with rules. Neither will adults. “Goodness is its own reward”? Sometimes. But the overwhelming message of life is that life’s not fair; therefore, grab every advantage you can, because you don’t want to end up with the short end of the stick. The Christian life is not “living according to biblical principles.” That reduces Christianity to just one more ethical system in which we’ve been given the rules and we strive our best to live them out, and when we fail, we try harder. I doubt anyone who lives that way can develop much allegiance to God, because that’s a relationship fueled by guilt and obligation.

No, the only God people can develop a deep allegiance for is the God of yesterday, today and forever. We need to appreciate what he’s done in history, yes, because it is the roadmap of his character. We need to look forward to his return. But we need to follow the God of now.

That’s why teaching kids Bible stories isn’t enough. It familiarizes them with the God of then, but doesn’t necessarily build loyalty for the God of now. I can admire Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln, but day in and day out, would I be loyal to them? Am I thinking about what they would have me do and who they would have me be? The closest I can come is allegiance to the ideals of those historical figures – but ideals are static.

“What did Jesus do?” is only useful insofar as it helps me answer the question, “What would Jesus do?” Still better is, “What is Jesus doing?” We need to talk about what God is up to, because apart from an acknowledgement or awareness of that, God just becomes a character in a storybook. I find that more often than not, Christian kids lack the language to do that. They know generally that God wants them to “be good”, but beyond that have a hard time identifying specifically putting their finger on how God is working or might work in their lives. We can overdo God-talk in a way that turns kids off, and it’s wrong to speak of God’s activity as if our comfort and convenience were his reason for being.

The key is to teach kids to recognize what in accordance with his character as revealed in Scripture God is still doing, today, in them. That’s something they can get excited about, as they see their own lives in a line with all of humanity as characters in a salvation story. God is doing different things in everyone, but ultimately he’s doing the same thing: accomplishing the reconciliation of the whole world to himself.

The Christian life is lived in union with Christ. There is a supernatural element to it. By definition, a spiritual life cannot be lived in the flesh or just by our own willpower. If what we’re teaching is a code of ethics that could be followed by anyone – Christian or non-Christian – then by what right do we call it Christianity? Allegiance will develop when kids are convinced that God is not far off, but is right there with them – guiding them, strengthening them, providing for them, correcting and shaping them. Leading kids to know this sort of God is hard work. But ultimately, it’s the only kind of God I can have allegiance to.

Spiritual Growth Marker #2: Network

If we in Surge host an event for 4th, 5th and 6th graders, the 4th and 5th graders will want to know, "What are we going to do there?" If it sounds fun, they'll come. But 6th graders will ask, "Who else is going to be there?"

That difference points to the importance of network. Last week I wrote about identity as one marker of spiritual growth. As kids grow in their appreciation of what it means for someone to identify as a Christian, it’s both a sign that they are growing spiritually and a good indication that their growth will continue. Likewise, the development of a network of friends at church indicates both growth and the likelihood of future growth.

In a way, network is an extension of the concept of identity, and that’s why its importance is really hard to overstate. We tend to associate ourselves not only with those who are like-minded, but with those who match the profile of how we perceive ourselves. We will become like those we hang out with.

When kids are young, their primary influences are Mom and Dad. Lots of time is readily spent among family members, and that’s why we tend almost unthinkingly to absorb the values and worldview of our parents. But as kids grow up, the peer group takes the place of the nuclear family in shaping identity. Are there exceptions? Are there families where time spent among friends doesn’t come to monopolize an older teenager’s life? Yes – but they are rare.

(A strong qualification is in order here. It’s often asserted that when it comes to influencing decisions, peers take the place of parents during the teenage years. Don’t buy it. Support for that is shaky. Years ago, Search Institute found that teenagers said they were still more likely to turn to parents for advice on serious issues, or if they were in trouble, or if they needed to make a big decision, than they were likely to turn to peers. Maybe the best that can be said is that teenagers tend to consciously turn to friends for guidance, and on matters that affect their day-to-day conduct but that are relatively minor in the vast scheme of things. Parental influence, having been in place since birth, continues to unconsciously shape us, and is considered more valuable when it comes to the big issues of life. That’s provided, of course, that parents haven’t entirely retreated and remain available and willing to be consulted. As kids grow up, they still need their parents; they just need them in a different way.)

Does this mean, then, that kids should only have Christian friends? Emphatically, no. Christians are supposed to be salt and light to the world, and kids absolutely can be this influence to their friends. Raising kids entirely away from the influence of the world is nearly impossible, and even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be a great idea, because a world that’s entirely sanitized is a world that perceives no need for Jesus. The kids I’ve known who have the most zeal for impacting their friends are neither those who’ve been ruthlessly sheltered nor those who’ve been surrendered entirely to worldly influences. Instead, these world-changers are wise, having both an appreciation of the depths of the world’s need for God and the optimism that God is more than able to solve the world’s problems.

So here is the generalization – and admittedly, it’s a generalization: As teenagers, your kids will likely adopt the values and outlook of those they spend the most time with.

There are many candidates for that role, and each resides in separate circles I call networks. We all have networks of affiliations across the many spheres of our lives. You have a work network, a family network, and a neighborhood network. Your kids have a school network (or, if they’re in a middle school that switches classes, a separate network in each class), sports team networks, after-school friend networks, club networks, etc. Sometimes, we ourselves are the only common denominator among our various networks. Imagine you threw a party, inviting everyone you knew, and everyone showed up. Some of us would have lots of overlap, so that the people we work with and play with, for instance, would already know each other and have plenty to talk about. But I suspect for most of us, that would be a very busy party, as we worked to make introductions among the disparate spheres who knew nothing about each other.

The hope, for your kid’s sake, would be 1) that they develop a network of church friends, and 2) that those friends would become some of their closest friends. How do we make this happen? Time! Not just time spent at services and events, but time spent together. I am convinced that one of the best intangibles that can come out of  a kid’s involvement in a preteen ministry is the development of a supportive friend network. We make a mistake if we think this “just happens.” It doesn’t, any more than you’ve become friends with the person who sits four rows ahead of you, whose face you recognize but whom you don't know. Friendships develop intentionally, and sometimes at this age kids don’t yet have the social skills to make friendship sticky. To them, a friend is someone who likes to do the same stuff as you; friendships built around taking a mutual interest in one another requires more maturity.

So we must make big church small, and we must teach and encourage kids to develop friendships. On the whole, I think a large church is a great advantage, because the chance that everyone can find their niche is better. But the danger does exist that we’ll remain a bunch of islands (our 4^th-6^th grade ministry is made up of kids from about 75 different public, private and home schools). Ask your son or daughter: who do they know? Who are they getting to know? And model this yourself – how strong is your own network within the church?

Even if kids have just one good friend at church, that can make all the difference as they age into junior high and high school ministry. Ideally, we all as Christians would have a core of close friends to lean on when we’re going through the tough stuff. That adolescence involves more than its share of tough stuff – at least in the perception of those going through it – is all the more reason that building and strengthening that network is vital when kids are preteens.

Spiritual Growth Marker #1: Identity

How do we measure spiritual growth? (I addressed the question of whether we should last week, and some thoughts on nurturing spiritual growth two weeks ago.) What are the outward signs of an inward change? More importantly, what are the signs that the fertile ground is in place for continued future growth?

One of these markers is identity. What does it mean to be a Christian? And what does it mean when someone calls themselves a Christian? We asked the kids to write answers to those questions last weekend. Here's a sampling of what they said:

This was not a scientific sampling, so let me report these results by category and in terms of tendencies. Overall, kids gave answers that were largely doctrinally correct. Some of them defined "Christian" in terms of belief. For example:
Someone who believes in God.
Someone who believes that God is real and the savior. When someone calls themself a Christian it means they believe the Jesus loves them and died for them.
If you are a Christian you believe God is a real person.
It means that you believe in God and Jesus.
Somebody who believes Jesus is the son of God and he died on the cross for our sins.
It means that they believe in God, and that they won't worship the devil. A Christian person means that they worship only God.
Someone who BELIEVES that he (Jesus) is the only and only God and that God died on the cross for our sins.
A believer in the great Lord.
It means that they believe in God with all their heart but if they don't they lied.

Others defined "a Christian" in terms of religious practice:
It means that they asked God to their heart.
A Christian is someone who goes to church.
They're open to God. Talks to God when having problems. Goes to church. Prays.
Somebody who believes God exists and follows God's directions. Go to church and reads the Bible and prays.
Someone who loves and praises God.
A Christian is someone God invited to church.

Still others described "Christian" behaviorally:
A Christian is a person who walks with Christ.
It means they're living by God's word.
To live for God; give your life to God, follow his word with a joyful heart.
A Christian is someone who cares about everybody and follows the word of the Bible and is a born again Christian. If someone calls themselves "Christian" it means that they're caring and giving.
It means they have devoted their lives to God.
It means that you've committed to love God? I think?
If someone calls themselves a Christian it means they are loyal to God's word.
One who follows God and does as he would have you do.

Some combined belief & action:
It means that they believe in God and they are a follower.
Someone who serves God and knows about him and prays to him every day.
If a person says that they are a Christian it means that they have faith in God and study the Bible.
A Christian is someone who believes in God and tries to follow the Lord and do the best he can not to sin. (If someone calls themselves a Christian it means) that they believe and try to follow the Ten Commandments.
Someone who calls themself a Christian means they believe in God and read the Bible and tries to forgive and do what's right.
It means that you go to church and believe in Jesus. And read the Bible.
Someone who believes Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin. And loves others undiscriminately. And is slow to anger.
A Christian is somebody who gives all they have for God and believes that Jesus died for their sin.
A Christian is a believer in God who celebrates Jesus' death on the cross.
A Christian means to pray every day and listen to Christian music, and even to listen to God. It means that they are followers of Christ and they invited Jesus into their hearts.
To believe in God is to trust him in thick and thin. It's someone who cares about each other and they will only worship God.
That means they go to church and care about each other.
Someone who devotes their life to Christ and serves him. They believe that he died on the cross and believe in the Bible.
God is their savior. They believe Jesus died on the cross. Their sins have been forgiven. They try to follow his ways.

A few astutely noted that:
When someone calls themself a Christian they might not be.
I know a friend who does not act like Christian, and says that she is a Christian.
When people call themselves Christians, they may go to church, but they haven't accepted God.

As you can see, the questions drew a range of responses, but there are some common themes. Words like "believe" and "follow" showed up frequently. There are also numerous references to loving, caring, and serving.

What’s missing, though, is a sense of the supernatural. Kids mentioned a lot of doing, but that in itself reflects an important belief about ourselves – that we are able, by force of will, to follow Christ; God said it + we do it = Christian. This isn’t surprising, as kids are conditioned to follow the instructions of authority figures. Inherent in adult directives to kids is the belief that the kid can actually do what is being asked. Only a sadistic grown up would demand something kids were actually unable to do.

A sense that we “do things” to follow God (even if the do is to simply “believe”) makes God rather pedestrian. Which is not to suggest that the Christian life ought to be passive, but it must bear the marks of a living, breathing relationship. “Relationship” isn’t a word we’d expect kids this age to use, but look at the list of responses above: how many of them reflect a oneness, me-and-Jesus dynamic?

This is all key to the identity of a Christian. As kids get older, they’ll interface with lots of people who believe in God in different ways, who pray, who love others, who are moral, and who try to do right. What will it mean for them to consider themselves a Christian when they’re 13? When they’re 15? When they’re 18? And what does it mean now, as a nine, ten, or eleven-year-old? It’s one thing to say, “I believe in God,” but it’s another to ground your identity in that – and to keep it grounded there.

Fuller Seminary professor Chap Clark says adolescents try on a number of identities during middle school and high school. He calls them “multiple candles of identity” and says kids commonly hold many at the same time. Adults are more predictable. Society has a set of expectations for husbands and wives, for mothers and fathers, for young adults vs. retirees, and so blending in (by assuming that culturally-constructed identity) is pretty easy. It’s not easy for adolescents, because they’re not one thing, but many. And of course our hope is that the anchor of all the identities they sample is that of being a Christian.

How does this happen? How do people – specifically early and middle adolescents – come to adopt a Christian identity that goes beyond merely doing things – showing up at church, praying, believing in God – and touches every part of their life? (Or, from God’s perspective: what is happening when a person stops compartmentalizing life and allows God to infuse every aspect?)

First, kids need to see Christianity in action. And by that I actually don’t mean going on missions trips, watching adults serve at soup kitchens, or learning how to sit through adult church. I mean they need to witness actual Christians living real, everyday lives. Only then will they get exposed to what happens when a Christian man or woman suffers disappointment, gets frustrated, loses a job, has a health crisis, deals with difficult people, or makes big decisions. And conversely, they will witness the “good news” stuff of life too: how does a mature Christian celebrate successes, and discover and use their gifts, and steward their money, and socialize, and enjoy life? Of course, this will first come from what they see in their parents, but who else can kids look to for this important shaping?

About a year ago, I found myself experiencing a paradigm shift when it comes to mentoring and discipleship. Usually we only realize gradually that our minds have changed, but I was in the moment when I realized, “Hey – what I’m seeing right now is something I’ve never thought of before.” A group of us – myself, a 4^th-6^th grade volunteer, three high school seniors, and one high school freshman – were out to lunch, when it dawned on me that this was a viable and hugely influential discipleship model. The freshman was observing (and absorbing) the behavior patterns of people who already were what he himself was becoming. He was getting a glimpse of his future self! Normally we reverse it – one older leader is put in charge of many younger charges to lead and mold. But here, the teachers were the many, and the student was the one. And there was nothing formal going on, just life. Do you think he was shaped by what he was immersed in that day? I sure think so.

We humans are creatures of habit and imitation. That’s one reason children’s and youth ministry is so rewarding: kids are eager for people who care enough to show them the way: the way to act, the way to talk, the way to conduct themselves – the way to be. And so modeling takes on huge importance when it comes to kids adopting and owning the identity of a Christian.

That’s why kids must know a variety of older Christians, because as they begin to “try on” identities as young teenagers – “Am I like this? Or am I like that? Do I like this, or that?” – we want them to have a frame of reference for what “a Christian” is and does. It’s not just someone who believes in God, or goes to church, or does good. It’s closer to the answers above that cited “following God” or “being devoted to God” – but what does that mean, outside of a church context? That’s the crucial question for kids in forging an identity that is grounded in Christ.

Knowledge and understanding are first steps; actually caring enough to live it out is the second step. Every youth pastor can tell you stories of kids who were unchurched or on the fringes of a youth group, and as soon as an adult volunteer began investing in them, modeling what it is to be a Christian, they came alive. Others have seen poor modeling, and rejected it. And others sit on the fence. I’ll write about nurturing allegiance – the third marker – in two weeks.

In short, then, identity – owning the fact that “I am a Christian” and being able to distinguish what that means – is a huge marker that something spiritual is going on. And defining Christianity in terms of identity is a different thing for a 14-year-old than it is for a ten-year-old. Which means this is a question that must be continually faced and an understanding that must be continually honed as kids grow up.

(See also, “Can KidsOutgrow God?” from August 2011.)

The Rx: Awareness & Precaution. Prescription Drug Take-Back Day is this Saturday

The purpose of this blog has always been to communicate in longer form about issues related to preteens and family life. So is prescription drug abuse really one of those issues?

Yes. Sort of.

While I don't expect that any fourth, fifth, or sixth graders are currently using or being offered someone else's prescription drugs, if current trends hold, one in six will sometime during high school.

We think differently about prescription drugs - kids and adults do - because if they're legally prescribed they must be safer, right? Many of these substances are no less dangerous just because they're "legal", and it is in fact their legality that causes people to ingest them in lethal amounts (because, again, if it's a legal substance it must be safe). More Americans now die each year from drug overdoses than in car crashes; experts say prescription abuse accounts for the surge. Also, there's less of a stigma attached to taking someone else's prescription pills than using illegal drugs - even though using any pill prescribed to someone else is itself against the law.

But our biggest misconception is probably the profile of the average prescription drug abuser. A generation ago, there was a certain stereotype that attached to being a "druggie" - troubled, rebellious, a slacker (think Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High or John Bender from The Breakfast Club) - that more or less held true. It may have been movies and our own naivete that reinforced that stereotype. Now the world has become wiser - at least when it comes to illicit drugs - because we know that all types of kids, unfortunately, abuse drugs. But we have yet to come to that realization when it comes to the abuse of prescription drugs. The problem is too new; memorable taglines from the 1980s like "This is your brain on drugs" haven't yet taken hold.

Some of these are kids you really wouldn't expect. Straight-A and Advanced Placement course students will buy, crush and snort the ADD medication Adderall in order to stay alert during tests following all-night study sessions. Why would some of these "good kids" do that? Because they are desperate to do well on the high-stakes tests that determine their college futures.

Here's a sign that we don't yet "get it" when it comes to the scope of the problem: 6% of parents surveyed said they had a teenager who had abused prescription drugs, while 10% of teens say they have. The awareness will come - but in the meantime, what needs to be done is to make prescription drugs very, very difficult for kids to access. Namely, the prescription drugs in your own home. Locked cabinets are the ticket for the medicine you currently take. But disposal is the Rx for drugs you no longer take. Who among us doesn't have leftover prescription medication just sitting in the medicine cabinet, waiting for...what, exactly? And those are the pills we're least likely to notice if they go missing.

This Saturday, the DEA is holding nationwide "Take-Back" events where you can drop off leftover prescription drugs. (And no, you should not necessarily just flush them down the toilet.) Let me urge you to get in the habit of getting rid of prescription medicine in this way. The most commonly abused are painkillers, sedatives like Xanax, and stimulants like Ritalin, Adderall, and other ADD medications (because they're so plentiful). And, most importantly, think twice about the message you send if you give your kid prescription drugs that were meant for someone else (like another member of the family) - 22% of teens said their parents have done that.

In Carlsbad, the drop-off site is Scripps Coastal Medical Center at 2176 Salk Avenue; in Oceanside, at Tri-City Medical Center, 4002 Vista Way; and in Encinitas, at Scripps Hospital, 354 Santa Fe Drive. For other locations, click here.

About the Homework Room at The Harbor

At our new midweek program, The Harbor, kids rotate through a large group program, activity choices, and game stations. Because The Harbor is designed for families, we didn't want an entire family to have to miss in case one child had lots of homework on a particular Wednesday night.

So we've set aside a room for homework that allows kids a quiet space to work. Help is available from the adult volunteers in the room. Kids can also choose the homework room if they just want to bring a book to read.

The 4th-6th grade program begins at 6:00 up in Room B-203. The first thing kids do when arriving is sign up for their activity rotation (which runs 6:30-7:00). Kids needing to use the homework room should just sign-in on that clipboard, and then at 6:30 (after the large group program) go with the volunteers to that area. If they don't finish by 7:00 (when activity rotations end and game stations begin), they can stay until 7:30.

How Do You Measure Spiritual Growth?

American love to measure things. Twice an hour on the radio, they tell me the level of the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, plus the price of gold and silver and oil. Every week, competing polls tell us who’s likely to win the presidential race. We look at fuel efficiency before we buy a car. We know how many games out of first place our favorite baseball team is. We can now track kids’ grades in school in near-real time, as scores are posted online. And the Census Bureau can tell you how much the average American spends each year on newspapers, video games, and lottery tickets.

And all for what? While polls and labor statistics are meant to help leaders make mid-course corrections, the truth is that much measurement doesn’t matter. As financial planners will tell you, the price of a stock doesn’t matter until the day you sell it. A good coach reminds his team that the only score that matters is the final score. And an isolated quiz or homework score hardly tells the whole picture (which is why wise teachers allow students to drop their lowest grade from the average). Too-frequent measurement leads to skewed results. Would you like to have the meter running on everything you did, capturing you on your worst day? The reason we measure is to analyze – to know “what’s going on” – but if we’re not careful, we can get bogged down and lose sight of the real goal.

All that to say, when it comes to measuring spiritual growth and progress (an awful word, as I’ll explain), we need to be very, very careful. And that’s because spiritual growth is never an individual endeavor. So if a worker’s productivity is low, we normally conclude that they need to work harder. If a student’s grades are low, we conclude they need to study more. If the unemployment rate is high, we try to create more jobs. And so on.

But “How do you measure spiritual growth?” turns out to be not the same question as “How do you promote it?” because we aren’t the Spirit! That should be obvious, but it bears repeating: we are not the Spirit. Instead, we try to be the fertile soil in which the Spirit can grow, but as Paul wrote in the first letter to the Corinthian church: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.”

So what if the “work” of spiritual growth is soil preparation? That way, any credit for the progress goes to God, and we don’t pump ourselves up on false notions that it was our hard work or effort that produced growth. As I wrote last week, just because we might engineer the appearance of the fruits of the Spirit doesn’t mean anything remotely spiritual or supernatural is going on.

So what’s helpful to measure? What might we look to as encouraging signs that spiritual growth is likely to happen? Over the next three weeks, I’ll be breaking down three markers that might be helpful: identity, network, and allegiance.

How Do You Nurture Spiritual Growth?

Does anyone know? Has anyone discovered the secret in the 2,000-year history of Christianity? There's no shortage of books or advice-givers, but are we any closer to knowing what really helps kids grow in their faith?

One of the problems is a confusion in terms. Sometimes we talk about "spiritual growth" and "growing in faith" as if they're the same thing. They're not, and the distinction matters because there's a difference between a general spirituality and a Christian spirituality, which is more directed and has a fairly specific object at its center - namely, Jesus Christ.

Let's begin with a few things spiritual nurture is not. It is not behavior modification and it is not character education. Those are similar, but one responds to behaviors and the other tries to get out ahead and shape them. But a spiritual perspective rightly sees behaviors as the overflow of what's inside. We can spend an awful lot of time trying to get kids to fall in love with good behavior. But the Bible makes it pretty clear that our hearts are inclined toward what's wrong, and that observable behavior is no indication of what's going on inside anyhow, and that God values our wholehearted devotion to him, not just outward conformity:

From Isaiah 29:13 - The LORD says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

1 Samuel 16:7, on the choice of young David over his older brothers: "The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Jesus, on the Pharisees' saying that his power was demonic: "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him." (Matt. 12:34-35)

Jesus, on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law: "You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

Jesus, warning us about false prophets: "Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." (Matt. 7:17-18)

Paul: "So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. ...The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galatians 5:16, 22-23)

Sometimes we seize on that last one: "Great! The list! If we just teach our kids to do these things, we're on the right track." But not so fast. Look at the whole of what the Bible says about outward behaviors - they come from what's inside. Look closely at the Galatians passage itself. It does not say that by "practicing the fruits of the Spirit" they will become more common. It says those things are fruits - in other words, results - that come not from ourselves, but by the Spirit.

That's an important principle of spiritual growth: it is never an individual pursuit. Maybe at this point I should clarify that this is a principle of Christian spiritual growth. It's one thing to practice openness, to believe in the transcendent, to connect with something outside myself - that's general spirituality. But Christian spirituality involves two living entities. It is always a cooperative effort between a person and God, because - obviously - you cannot have spiritual growth without the Spirit!

What does this mean, then, for spiritual nurture? To me, it defines the task as this: we are both teaching and persuading kids to be open to the movement of the Spirit of God in their lives. Everything we do with them must ultimately serve that end. To stop short at behavior management is to blunt God's influence; to settle for knowing Bible facts or the ritual of prayer without understanding their intent is to pass on a dull religion.

So what is faith, and how do we teach it? I'm not sure we can. Faith is a response to the realization that:
1. God is alive (not merely historical).
2. God is a working God (he's not stagnant).
3. God has intentions that involve me, personally, and that require my willing obedience.
4. These intentions are ultimately for my good.
5. I cannot reap the benefits apart from the work of God.

"Teaching faith" is really teaching those five things above. The response must come from inside - or it's not faith. And, faith also must have a supernatural element to it. It might be conviction, or understanding, or strong belief, but unless it's exercised in a spiritual/supernatural way, it cannot be faith. Why? Because God is spiritual and supernatural! We cannot interface with him in any other way.

It's for this reason that in the area of children's spirituality research, a relatively new emphasis on stimulating wonder and awe in kids has arisen. I was visiting with a children's pastor in Malaysia this summer, and reflecting on how kids' faith differed from that of adults. He spoke volumes of truth when he simply said, "Kids still believe that God can do anything." The trick is to help them, when they are preteens, to make that turn into adult-like thinking while not losing the trust and all-things-are-possible sense that young kids carry around with them.

It comes down to this: do we believe that God is able, and do we believe that He is willing? Thus, the exercise of nurturing spiritual growth begins as a test of our own faith, when we realize that the best thing we can do is prepare the soil of a kid's heart, trusting God to make things grow.

Your Invitation - 8 Reasons We Think You'll Like The Harbor

Something new is coming to Wednesday nights at NCCC. It's called The Harbor, and I think it's going to be a hit. More than that, though, I think it's good ministry.

The two aren't the same. In church ministry, we can get hooked on the new, the trending, or the popular - but that doesn't mean it's great ministry. To me, good ministry satisfies two conditions: it maximizes its impact during the event itself (small group, large group, off-site event, or whatever), and, that impact spills over beyond the event. It's great to hear when people say they were touched or changed by something that happened at an event. But when they continue to be changed - that's how you know you've hit on something with power.

To me, events or classes that we can do with parents and kids together - actually interacting in a purposeful way, and then reflecting on it - are #1. This is what we try to do in the "What's the Story?" class (which returns in early 2013) and in PG-13, the class for early adolescents and parents. The second most powerful is giving parents the tools to disciple and lead their kids, or simply to become healthier themselves.

The Harbor fits that second class. When we decided to try a family-focused midweek program, we discovered that there is no shortage of classes and studies out there to help parents. And we're pretty excited to see the interest level so far. Not that the kid program takes a back seat, either. This has been a season of dreaming and envisioning the possible...and now it's time to roll it out.

Here are some features of The Harbor that we think will be especially attractive to you:

1. The Family Meal. We recognized that on many Wednesday nights, kids were coming to the midweek program without having eaten dinner - no time! So we'll be serving a family-style meal at 5:30 pm, which will give parents one less thing they have to take care of that night.

2. The Family Meal. Yes, I repeat myself! The second benefit to the family meal is that families get a chance to connect with each other. Our church draws from a vast area; many cities, many schools. And we know it's hard to know others and be known...unless you are able to slow down. When we're able to slow down (which we always do during a meal), we tend to get beyond the surface questions and to a place of meaningful conversation.

3. The Homework/Quiet Room. We also recognized that having homework kept kids away some nights from the midweek program. So, we're setting aside one room just for that, and it'll be staffed by volunteers who can help out. Or, if kids want to bring a book and just read for part or all of the night, that's ok too.

4. The flexibility of the kids' program. In the past, we had kids sign up for six-week electives. This made it hard to bring a friend, because electives could fill and it wasn't easy to begin midway through the six weeks. We've changed this so it'll be possible to jump in at any time.

5. Kids get to make choices. Let me explain why this is a benefit. If we want kids to make good choices when faced with big important decisions, we need to give them practice at making decisions, period. Learning to make up your mind is part of growing up, and not until kids have skill in doing this will they really take over their own spiritual lives and grow. "You mean, even choosing something like the game they want to play makes a difference?" That's exactly what I mean. When kids are trusted to make choices of all shapes and sizes, they come to understand that the choices they make matter - that life doesn't "just happen" to them. We need to reinforce this wherever possible. So the kids' program is full of choice. 4th-6th graders will start all together, but then have a 30 minute block of hands-on learning activities and a 30 minute block of games.

6. Kids get to make choices - part two. When kids try many different things, they discover what they like and don't like. They discover what they're good at. They develop hobbies, which causes them to meet others with similar interests. Trying new things is part of healthy development. Our hope is that kids will want to try all of the activities. We suspect, of course, that they'll latch on to the couple they really like, which is ok too.

7. Parents will meet and share with other parents. We chose the classes we did because each has a different focus and is intended for different groups of parents. "Hope and Help for the Single Mom" is of course for single moms, while "Raising a Modern-Day Knight" is meant for dads who have sons. Jeff Reinke's "Parenting from the Heart" will feature his insights on shaping the heart of your child and connecting with them at a deeper level (and look for special sessions with Archibald Hart and Sharon May as part of that class, too), while "Raising Kids With a Faith that Lasts" is specifically about guiding your kids' spiritual development. Of course, the content of the presentations is helpful - but the added benefit (this is the part that "spills over" outside of class) is that parents develop a support network of other parents.

8. Big church becomes small. We're a big church. Sitting in weekend services in the midst of a large crowd can be very cool. But everyone needs to be known. Christians need a network of other Christians. There are many ministries in the church that try to make this happen. The Harbor will be one of them.

Will we see you on September 19? I hope so. Visit this page for registration.

Because Girlfriends Care, so do kids

One of the most common questions I get from parents regards how to get their kids to serve. The benefits of serving others are undeniable. At the very least, you walk away feeling fortunate to have what you have. But how do we build that into kids, whose worlds are so small?

I'm not a big fan of schools compelling volunteer service hours as a condition of graduation, for a number of reasons. Chief among them is the obvious: if they have to do it, it's not volunteer. And when we do anything because we have to do it, it changes the way we approach the work. I also don’t like the negative assumption buried in the requirement, which is that given a choice, students won’t help out. To the contrary, helping others has become somewhat en vogue. Kids and teenagers have done great things on behalf of others, like this and this and this. Maybe we just needed to ask.

But another reason kids and teenagers don’t serve is that they don’t know what opportunities are out there. I’m an adult, and I’m still sometimes shocked about the level of need and the kinds of need that are here, right on our doorstep in North County.

A number of years ago, a group of moms who’d formed a Bible study decided they didn’t want to just sit around and talk each week – they wanted to take action. This was the start of what is now a 501(c)3 organization called “Girlfriends Care”. Naturally, they brought their kids along on these service projects, and Girlfriends Care quickly spawned Kidz Care, too. Ellen Clark has been quietly organizing service opportunities for the last several years, and will e-mail me from time to time about their latest project.

There’s so much I admire, not just about what this group is doing, but in the way they’re going about it. First of all, the opportunities to help are many, and varied. People have different giftings, and some enjoy helping in one way but not others. Secondly, they steer away from guilt in motivating people. As Ellen says in her latest e-mail: “GFC was founded on the principles of no-guilt and supporting busy people like you in balancing their lives as they find ways to give unto others.  Always an opportunity, never an obligation.”

The third reason I like what they’re doing is that they’re flexible. As the kids involved have grown older, they’ve recognized that the kids (now teenagers) need different opportunities. I think too often in the church we insist that youth continue to conform to the structures we’ve built, rather than recognizing that the face fo their institutions will be different – and that’s ok. To this end, Girlfriends Care has invited 13 other community service organizations to come out to an event this Saturday and set up booths, in hopes of finding willing volunteers to meet their needs.

This effort is genuinely unselfish, and as I said, there’s no guilt involved. You could bring your kids to one event, or many. But the fourth reason I like Girlfriends Care’s efforts is that it’s the heart of the organizers to be serving alongside kids in whatever they do. So they don’t ask kids to get their hands dirty or to give their time without being willing to do the same themselves. This is probably the most effective way to encourage hearts of compassion: to be the change we want to see.

Feelings aren’t contagious; guilt and compulsion only appear to work. If we really want our kids to care, it starts with them being aware that there are needs at all. Do your kids know there are homeless children and teens in San Diego County? Are they aware of what Bread of Life does? Have they heard the words, “Human Trafficking,” and know that slavery isn’t just a Civil War-era relic?

It’s not that kids don’t care. Kids care about all kinds of things. But we don’t tend to care about things we don’t think about. It’s too easy to bury things that are troubling or inconvenient. To draw them past the line of apathy means that we, ourselves, need to be where those needs are.

Website for GirlfriendsCare (site is being rebuilt as of 9/1/12)

Website for Kidz Care &Teens Care They keep a calendar of events as well as descriptions of ongoing projects here: book drives, food drives, clothing drives, etc.

Girlfriends Care Luncheon: This Saturday, September 7, 11-1:30 in downtown Carlsbad. See details here. Includes booths from 15 exhibitors. The event is designed to help potential volunteers find places where they might want to serve. Kids, men, teenagers are welcome – it’s not just an event for women.

They Bought a Zoo

I’m not often bored. When I am, it’s because circumstances have usually conspired against me, keeping me from doing what I really want to be doing. Such is the case when I travel, which I have during the last three weeks, and the amusements of book and laptop reach their limit.

My arduous, 46-hour journey back from the Far East by trains, planes, and automobiles landed me for a time in Singapore – which is not at all a bad place to be stuck. This is the Mall-of-America of airports, a vast expanse that includes kids’ indoor play structure, reclining seats for napping, and yes, even its own movie theater, which constantly screens recent releases, free-of-charge.

After exhausting my computer’s battery nearly to zero, I wandered into the theater and the beginning of the movie, We Bought a Zoo. This is not a film I would have otherwise made a point to see, having pretty much outgrown movies about kids and animals.

Let me recommend it highly. It’s not so much a “family movie” (although it might be, depending on your own tolerance level for profanity in the movies you let your kids see) as it is a realistic movie about families. And those are hard to come by. Most films with families in them use at least one character as a comic foil, or they grossly distort the characterization to make the point that these are really clueless parents or really disrespectful teenagers or really hapless elders. The family members’ characters move the story along or just allow us to laugh.

But in We Bought a Zoo, the characters are the story. Benjamin Mee’s (Matt Damon) wife has died, and it’s time for a new start for him, his seven-year-old daughter and his 14-year-old son. I almost wrote precocious daughter and his mopey son, but I caught myself – the characters are more than one-dimensional, and that’s what makes this film work. You see the dad’s impulsive, reckless side (he bought a zoo, after all) played off against the wise caution of his accountant older brother. But then you also see his tenderness, as when he “catches Mom’s spirit” with daughter Rosie; his emotional transparency, as when he confesses to Kelly (Scarlett Johansson) that he “cannot let go” of his wife; and his desperation, as he tries in vain to get inside his son Dylan’s head in order to help him.

This is a family that is grieving, and grief doesn’t play well in movies – it’s too gloomy. It would have been too easy for Benjamin and Kelly to strike up a relationship early on and had the whole movie been about the power of focusing on the positive (like raising tigers!). But we don’t just “get over” grief; the experience becomes a part of who we are. And we get to watch that integration process unfold over two hours.

It plays out most vividly in the relationship between father and son. Here it would have been easy for the movie to cut corners and portray Dylan as a young adolescent pain-in-the-butt who just needs to stop feeling sorry for himself. Damon’s character does say that (shout that, in fact) to his son at one point, but unlike most movies, where an eloquent tell-you-off is all it takes to set things straight, it’s more complicated here – just as in real life. We see the steps Benjamin has to take – not just the words, but the actions – in order to pry open the door to his son’s world so that he can meaningfully help him grieve. And Dylan is grieving. Where Rosie will talk about it openly – “I miss Mommy” – the son’s pain is expressed more obliquely – “I hate it here! I miss my friends!” Bravo to the film for getting that contrast right, but also for letting us see enough of Dylan that we didn’t resent his attitude, as when we see him fall asleep at night clutching a framed photograph of his mom, or eavesdropping on the bedtime conversation between his dad and sister. We understand that he shares the sentiment, but the form won’t work for him.

Damon’s character is believable because he isn’t perfect. Although he’s frustrated, he keeps himself from assuming that Dylan’s behavior is all about him. He keeps his head – save the one time he blows his top: “You just sit here and feel sorry for yourself, man! Help me with your sister. Help me!” to which his son replies, “Help me, dammit! Help me!” I hope his character can be an encouragement to parents who struggle to stay connected with a son or daughter, and they can’t pinpoint why. Sadness runs deep, and doesn’t always show up in tears. It can be masked by anger, perfectionism, narcissism, impulsivity and busyness – because all of these are distractions from the loneliness and the emptiness that lies beneath the surface. Dylan’s sadness is one clue as to why moving to new surroundings so soon after the death of his mom was unwelcome: without the familiar distractions of city life, there was little else to do but reflect on what was lost.

Parents, see We Bought a Zoo – not because taking over a wild animal park is a good way to solve your problems, but because the movie illustrates just the opposite: the zoo helps in the short term, but ultimately preoccupation is not the healer. Time and process are. Watch it with your kids, if you think they can handle it. Plugged In Online criticized it for too much foul language and gratuitous alcohol use. Personally, I think Plugged In, while authoritative and detailed, atomizes movies too much without regard for the context or message. (I mean, is it realistic that a hodge-podge group of oddball zookeepers and assistant zookeepers might drink beer with each other at the end of the day? I think so.) The movie could open up a rich discussion about how your family has dealt with grief and loss, and about communication between parents and kids (Why is it easier for Benjamin to talk to his seven-year-old daughter than to his teenage son?).

Zoo is a winner in my book. It succeeds in not flattening family members into caricatures, nor in letting cute, funny animals distract us from the human drama – which is really what this movie is about. In the closing scene, one of the zoo employees is gazing admiringly at both the menagerie of creatures at the newly-reopened park and at Mee’s healing-but-not-yet-healed family. She asks Kelly, “If you had to choose between people and animals, really quick, how would you choose?”

Before Kelly can answer, the girl reads her expression: “Me too. People.” Exactly.