10 Tested Ways to Promote the Spiritual Lives of Kids

Marcia Bunge takes kids' spiritual lives seriously. A decade ago, few people could make that claim. There had been no systematic study of how the Church as a whole regarded children, no critical analysis of what we were teaching kids and why, and only a handful of studies to substantiate best practices for nurturing spiritual and moral development. Now, however, the field of research into children's spirituality is growing. The question is, are churches and families listening?

Because, for so many years, there was no cohesive theology of children in the Church, it was relatively useless to hone in on any best practices because if you don't know where you're going, the route you take or the way you travel doesn't matter much. Christian thinkers certainly had written about children, but their theologies (and therefore approaches) varied. Some saw children as bundles of wild impulses that needed to be trained; others saw them as pure, innocent, and unspoiled; while others held babies to be blameless, but saw the sin nature as something that took hold of the child as they grew. Some regarded childhood romantically, while others saw it as a stage to grow out of as quickly as possible.

Christian thinking today toward children bears the marks of all of those philosophies, especially insofar as they influenced the development of educational theories, all of which begin with an idea about the learner. If I believe, for instance, that the primary purpose of schooling is to teach kids to restrain their own impulses, and that content mastery is secondary, then I'll assign lots and lots of seatwork, much of it mindless, and impose harsh discipline on those who don't complete it. If I hold a positive view of a learner's potential, I might allow kids to choose their own project to research; but if I believe kids' minds are basically lazy and need to be trained in rigor, I would probably assign the subject myself, believing that the student isn't up to that task.

Bunge directs the Child in Religion and Ethics Project at Valparaiso University and is the editor of such works as The Child in Christian Thought (2000) and the forthcoming The Child in the Bible. She acknowledges that the study of children and work with children was and is marginalized, as if it's not territory for serious researchers, who should be studying adults. Next year she'll speak at a triennial conclave that draws together children's researchers who are in pursuit of a common goal. You can read about the work of the Children's Spirituality Conference here.

The field of child spirituality research has a ways to go in hammering out a definition of "what we want". After all, some studies have examined practices that produce a "spiritual" child. But that's not necessarily the same thing as a spiritually mature Christian. "Spiritual" people believe in the supernatural and in the individual's ability to connect with unseen powers; being spiritual is a start, but it is incomplete. Others measure "faith maturity", defined as meaningful engagement in the life of one's church. Does church involvement translate into spiritual vitality? Ideally yes, but that's an assumption that needs to be acknowledged and further explored.

The second task for researchers is to gain the attention of the practitioners - the churches and parents - for whom this research is intended. It is by no means a given that because an idea is research-based that it will be embraced by Christian educators or Christian parents. We all have biases towards what we "feel" is effective. We all look at our own experience as normative: "It worked for me; it should work for them." We're all, to a degree, nostalgic for our own childhood and fearful of abandoning traditional practices because they just feel right. This inertia should not be underestimated. People who work with children - parents and professionals - are busy, wary of quick fixes, and pragmatic. It isn't greatly helpful to tell people only what doesn't work without giving them a workable alternative.

With that said, here are ten best practices highlighted by Bunge at a recent appearance at Bethel Seminary's San Diego campus:

1. Reading and discussing the Bible and interpretations of it with children.
   
2. Worshipping with a community; and carrying out family rituals and traditions of worship and prayer.
   
3. Introducing children to good examples, mentors, and stories of service and compassion. Bunge rightly pointed out that our kids know the Bible characters, but how many could tell you anything about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Wilberforce, or John Wesley?
   
4. Participating in service projects with parents or other caring adults; teaching financial responsibility. The side-by-side aspect of service is key. It's not enough for parents to send their kids away to an afternoon at a homeless shelter or park clean-up. And as to finances, Bunge says it is one thing churches never talk about with kids (if they even talk about it with adults), mainly because so many parents are embarrassed by their own credit card debt and don't feel in a position to lay down any guidance. As a result, Christian kids grow up with the same worldly desires and worldly spending habits as everybody else - and accrue the same sort of debt soon after leaving college.
   
5. Singing together and exposing children to the spiritual gifts of music and the arts. (Blogger's note: Go see Prince Caspian with your kid.)
6. Appreciating the natural world and cultivating a reverence for creation; attending a "family camp". The fact that a camp takes place outside is huge; programming delivered at a resort or conference center or over eight weeks at the church doesn't have the same effect.
7. Educating children; and helping them discern their vocations. Bunge sees a problem when parents only focus on the education of "their" child without regard for the education of all children. After all, children will grow up into a culture populated by - surprise - other people, who were either well-prepared or ill-prepared for the future by their early education.
   
8. Fostering live-giving attitudes toward the body, sexuality, and marriage. This is the other topic that Bunge says is taboo in churches, and as a result, churched folk suffer through as many relationship difficulties as non-churched people. Rectifying this means talking about sex, yes, but also relationships in general: how to date wisely, how to choose a mate, how to resolve conflict. (Considering the degree to which money and sex shape California culture, we would all do well to take heed of #4 and #8.)
9. Listening to and learning from children. This includes having the humility to admit when we don't know and when we've been wrong, genuinely valuing kids' insights and opinions.
   
10. Taking up a Christ-centered approach to discipline, authority, and obedience; recognizing that in the Christian tradition, parental authority is always limited. Jewish tradition: we do not teach kids to obey parents, but to honor parents. We only obey God. Christians, she says, tend to obscure the line between "honor" and "obey", as if they were the same thing. In the Jewish tradition, parents are to be honored, but only God is to be obeyed, a mindset that has huge ramifications for discipline and parenting.

What's striking, but not surprising, is how many of these practices are rooted in the home, with the church playing a supporting role. Bunge calls these not only "practices" that promote moral and spiritual development, but "responsibilities" too. Such a view casts parenting as a calling, with a set of obligations toward society for the growing child they will someday turn loose on it. How are we doing at these? How are you doing? This list has really set the gears in motion in my own head, and given birth to one crazy idea - a bit of an experiment - that I'll share with you next week.

Is the Church Really the Family of God?

The other night I came across a journal that I kept my senior year in high school (which is now half my life ago!), a required assignment for English class that traced the ups and downs of life in my year before college. Some of the entries are funny and immature, some are surprisingly deep, and others are just surprising. One such entry recalls that and friend and I spent a particular Wednesday night Bible study picking on another girl in the group, "then went back to my house and played Atari and ate cheesecake."

The flippant tone of that entry now staggers me. I apparently saw no contradiction between the setting - a Bible study - and the company - other believers - with what we were doing to amuse ourselves, which was mean and divisive. My friends and I were "good" kids. We prided ourselves for staying on the straight and narrow, but when it came to our own obligations toward Christian community, we remained worldly. What we needed was for the light to be shined uncomfortably inward - not inside our own selves, but in towards our own group, to be challenged to consider how we treated one another. After all, other entries from that journal recount that I had jealousy and rivalry toward that same friend who was my comrade-in-arms at youth group. Wow, what hypocrisy.

Is the Church really the "family" of God? Or is that just a hope or a lofty word picture or a recognition our common ancestry? If churches are (individually and collectively) a family, why does it not feel that way much of the time? More importantly, what are we doing to socialize new believers, and kids especially, into that reality?

There are benefits to a church calling itself a family. It evokes warmth. It reinforces traditions. It lends an air of familiarity to the relationships there. It reassures people that they belong. It allows us to carve an identity grounded in practices: "In this family, we do things this way." But if there are benefits to calling yourself a family, there are also risks, the biggest being that when you say it, no one will believe you. Some churches don't resemble the type of family anyone would want to be a part of. Another risk is that a church or ministry unintentionally erects a barrier to entry: "We are a family…and you're not in it." And that same impulse to define the family by "the way we do things" can become an unreasonable obstacle to change.

The phrase "family of God", a common modern expression, appears only once in the Bible; but, other references to God's family (believers in Christ "are Abraham's seed" (Gal. 3:29), numerous references to the early Christians as "brothers" throughout Acts, we are all "sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Gal. 3:26), etc.) substantiate the idea. We enter this family initially through the adopter, and subsequently we become related to the adopted. We don't "join" a church or group, we are joined to God, and as a result, we inherit a family, the fellow members of God's far-flung adopted brood. The job for us is to figure out that second relationship, how to become what we already are: the family of God. It's easy for a church or ministry to say it is a family, but quite another to transform itself into one.

The church is, after all, a family, but it is an adoptive one, not a natural one, and all of us bring to it the vestiges of our family of origin (our carnal, pre-salvation existence). So, long after appropriating the label, we continue to deal with one another's hurts, hang-ups, dysfunctions, and shortcomings - in a word, one another's sin. Sinful people who've been forgiven are still sinful. This is a rude shock to anyone who's been wounded in a church or by another believer - they aren't supposed to be like that! But the key to family living lies not in others' perfection but in our own God-given ability to offer superabundant grace to one another.

I thought about all of this as I heard about other pre-teen ministries at the conference I attended and how commitment-phobic we all are and how hard it is to forge deep, lasting relationships in a mobile and overscheduled and transient and individualistic culture. I don't think nostalgia is the answer, because the world has changed too much and none of us wants to wear a suit that fit ten years ago. But there is some value, I think, in intentionally cultivating the idea of family in every church and every ministry, large and small. For one thing, families are committed to one another and require commitment…looooong term commitment. Secondly, we learn to forgive one another in families because like it or not, we're stuck with each other. The easy, too-common alternative is to simply bail. Third, because we're committed to the long term and because we learn to forgive, we also learn how to overlook what really doesn't matter - in other words, we give grace. And by teaching kids commitment, forgiveness, and grace, what are we equipping them for? If you said "a successful marriage," pass GO and collect $200. On the other hand, when we fail to socialize kids into the family of God, or we propagate the myth that church family life is happy and ever conflict-free, we miss a teachable opportunity.

The world is big enough and choices abundant enough that we're really not bound to a church we're unhappy in. And that's ok. I'm not suggesting that one style of worship or church leadership structure or curriculum should be imposed across the board. But I am suggesting that the Christian world is a lot smaller than we think, that when we focus on the minutiae of what separates one church from another we're treading in territory that is hopelessly foreign to those who don't know Christ. Like it or not, those outside the Church see us as one body. We would do well to embrace that identity and be about the hard work of family life than to remain hyper-focused on what separates us from them within the Christian world.

What I Learned on the Mountain

There are oodles of ministry conferences: denominational gatherings, conferences on church growth, small groups, worship, youth ministry, children's ministry, family ministry. But there has been little for those who work with that emerging age group known as pre-teens - until now. Just this spring I've been invited to two such conferences, a recognition, I think, of the importance of this age group to the church and the wisdom of investing in kids prior to middle school.

Last week I was privileged to be part of Forest Home's first-ever conference for those who work with pre-teens. And what I learned up on the mountain, in my encounter with 21 others who are engaged in the same type of work I am, is that we don't have all the answers, but we're all asking the same questions.

It seems the decision to separate out pre-teens from children at most churches is based not only on a recognition that 9-to-12-year-olds are physically and cognitively different, but that many kids at that age are beginning to tire of traditional Sunday school. We deal with a lot of churched kids, who grew up hearing Bible stories and watching Veggie Tales and who aren't too jazzed about watching yet another puppet presentation on David & Goliath. As the conference progressed, one common theme emerged again and again: how do we go deeper with these kids, to give them something they will engage with and use? How do we get beyond the pat Sunday school answers these kids are programmed to give and teach to the things they're thinking and talking about?

Children's ministries are beginning to recognize that a bigger and better show isn't necessarily the answer for this age group. We will reach them with authenticity, not showmanship. At the same time these kids are wired for the BIG and EXCITING, there's a part of them that's able to see through hype, and in their hearts they can recognize whether they're being managed or ministered to.

Many of the folks I met are beginning to write their own curriculum. I applaud that. If great teaching is that which answers the questions kids are already asking, how close can you come to that if you're just executing something out of a box? To give kids what they need you have to know those kids, and listen to them, and take them seriously; otherwise your program becomes incentive-laden as you try to convince kids to do and say things they really aren't inclined to do or say.

To "be shepherds of God's flock", we who are in leadership over kids - staff and volunteers - must know the population we're working with. While books about development can give us general guidance, the family, school, and neighborhood a kid inhabits are what define them personally. So what's going on in each of those environments? We need to know. You don't have to watch "Hannah Montana" to work with this age group, but you do need to understand what's appealing about her. You don't have to be great at video games or even like them, but you do need to understand why they're a draw. To deny those things is to deny kids' experience at a time when their individual identity is being formed. Kids at this age have by and large moved beyond the "eager puppy dog" stage where they'll do anything to please an adult; pre-teens want to grow up and they want to know why: why are you asking me to play this game, or sing this song, or answer this question? I can bemoan that from now to eternity, but the fact is, that's the kids we're dealing with.

Better to meet them at the point of their curiosity: You want authenticity? We'll give you authenticity. And I got the sense that nearly everyone gathered at the conference was eager to do that. So there is one church that is pioneering dedicated nights of worship - with kids! Another challenging kids and parents to pursue service projects, locally, nationally, and globally. Another giving kids important work to do within the church, so they feel connected to the larger body.

And leading these varied efforts is a patchwork of big-hearted individuals who really want to get it right. Some of the leaders I met work full-time specifically with pre-teens, as I do. But many more were responsible for entire children's programs while some were dedicated volunteers, moms and dads, who'd agreed to take on the pre-teen challenge on top of the rest of life. For two days we got to visit and compare notes and share best practices. I was thankful that this wasn't the kind of conference where an expert stood up and expounded on "the way" to do pre-teen ministry. I think it's so new, there are no such experts yet. In another 10 years, there will no doubt be conferences like that, and that'll be a shame. Because the key to reaching kids during a life stage where they are forging their individuality is to remain small and agile enough to meet individual's needs.

Right now we have about 35 weekend volunteers. We could easily use 15 more immediately. When the new building opens, who knows? We try not to assign more than 8 kids to one leader at a time. Even at that ratio I fear there are weeks kids come through the room carrying substantial burdens and no one gets the chance to sincerely ask, "How are you?" As North Coast Calvary gets bigger, the challenge for us will be to get smaller!

And to this end, one of the reflections shared at the end of the conference has stuck with me, that a ministry is a family (a subject I'll write about next week), and that families, to thrive, need to engage deeply with one another. To put it another way, churches need to approach this age group as a ministry, not a classroom. Perhaps the strength of what's going on in pre-teen ministry right now lies in the fact that this isn't the first rodeo for most of its practitioners: ministry leaders either have years of experience in children's ministry or youth ministry, and that knowledge and skill set has accompanied them to where they are now. For many, it seems they didn't choose pre-teen ministry so much as pre-teen ministry chose them. And now it's gripping all of us in a mystery no one's solved yet. I'm grateful for the wrestling, because out of it I'm confident will come a model of ministry that's not glorified children's programming nor jr.-sized youth ministry. Pre-teen is a frontier, and it's rewarding to be traveling through that space.

What should we teach kids about other religions?

We're about to embark on a meaty series in our classroom called "What's So Special About Christianity?" This was born out of a desire voiced by several parents that we address in some way the subject of other religions. A few months ago I heard from two separate parents about an assignment their sixth grader was given that involved identifying a "favorite" god or goddess from another religion and profiling him or her.

Learning about world religions is a standard part of the sixth grade world history curriculum in California. Juxtapose that with the fact that our kids have significant knowledge gaps when it comes to their own religion (such as the lack of Bible understanding I wrote about last week) and the problem presents itself: we have some choices to make. It would be irresponsible not to teach kids something about other belief systems, but what, and how much?

For the record, I think the "choose your favorite god/goddess" assignment is offensive to people of any religion. Gods are sacred, a concept we've lost hold of in today's world. They are not toys or Disney characters to be merely admired or be printed on t-shirts. I don't have to be a relativist to believe that, nor to understand that disrespect for spiritual beings in general leads to disrespect in specific - literally, profanity. If I ever hope to bring someone to a belief in God, the specialness of God must be preserved.

So a good starting point with kids is to have them recognize the sacred/secular distinction, that a spiritual reality exists and that man has long reached out for it and wanted to connect with it. And that from a Christian perspective, God has reciprocated, not staying distant, but offering himself in relation to people - Emmanuel, "God with us".

I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of "teaching" another religion because I'm not an expert in other religions and I'd probably get it wrong. And, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of a non-Christian - either a schoolteacher or another religious leader - representing Christianity. I've long thought that in education, when presenting an ideology or philosophy, it's best to let kids hear from primary sources, and I would hope anyone doing a comparative religions course would incorporate that practice. A high school teacher once extended me that courtesy and it was a privilege to have an hour to speak to her students and field their questions.

No, I can't teach about other religions and do them justice. Instead, I think it's much more helpful to ground kids in the distinctives of their faith and guide them to an understanding of where Christian thought clashes with what passes for contemporary American spirituality, a kind of pop paganism that values the power of positive thinking, materialism, and self-gratification. After all, it's rare to encounter someone - even someone who professes to follow another religion - who is pure in their ideology. Among Christians alone there is great variety of belief on all sorts of minor issues, and regarding the majors, some Christians hold on more tightly than others. But what entices people away often isn't whole bodies of thought, but individual nuggets of truth that work for them - a belief in karma, for example - and at the same time lead them away from a Christian worldview.

It would be easy to teach kids that other religions are weird or strange or nonsensical, but is it helpful? All that has to happen is that they meet one person (a Buddhist, say) who shatters the stereotype they were taught and they begin to suspect that everything they were taught about other belief systems was based on suspicion and ignorance. Better to get into the "stuff" of the religion and examine those elements upon which the worldview is founded, in light of what the Bible tells us about who we are and why we're here and what is real.

These are the "distinctives" we're going to explore. I believe that each is threatened by a modernist, pop spirituality:

• The eternality of the soul (or, one life, one death, one judgment)
• A created being's purpose is tied to its creator
• God is a God of intimate involvement, not distant administration
• Humans have a sinful nature
• Only the power of God, not works or moral choices, can free us from the consequences of our sin
• The inherent imbalances in a world filled with free choices (or, why karma cannot explain the world)

Obviously, what you see above is the adult-language version of what the kids will get - "eternality" isn't a 10-year-old's word, but it is a 10-year-old's concept. Can a kid understand that we were created to worship and serve God, or that we possess an unquenchable desire to do wrong, or that their creator wants to personally shepherd them? I think they can. And come to think of it, they'd better, if we ever have hope of passing on a body of belief in a culture that increasingly brings a consumerist and pragmatic mindset to the practice of religion.

Bible-less Christianity

We Americans love to beat ourselves up when it comes to "what we don't know" about such-and-such. Maybe this is healthy, the ability to laugh at ourselves and our inability to name the vice president, or the capital city of England, or the words to the Star-Spangled Banner. More than a few social commentators have noted that although we live in an age awash in information, we're not particularly better informed because of it.

Christianity has not been untouched by this. For years, researcher George Barna has been tracking American's attitudes, beliefs, and practices when it comes to the Bible and has been sounding the alarm: our level of Bible understanding is dismal. Which leads to the question: what happens to Christianity when people can't, or won't, read their Bibles?

Let's draw two crucial distinctions. The first is the diference between reading the Bible and knowing the Bible. While 96% of evangelical Christians typically read the Bible during a week, this doesn't necessarily translate into Bible understanding or integration. Consider, according to Barna:

• The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen believers is "God helps those who help themselves" - which is not actually in the Bible, and actually conflicts with the basic message of Scripture.
  
• When given thirteen basic teachings from the Bible, only 1% of adult believers firmly embraced all 13 as being biblical perspectives.
  
• Less than one out of every ten believers possesses a biblical worldview as the basis for his/her decision-making or behavior.

Much of this, I believe, stems from the way the Bible is taught and habitually read, which is in bite-sized devotional chunks, rather than as a collection of writings which each had an occasional purpose. Our tendency to snatch verses here and there because they give us comfort or affirm a truth or are otherwise personally meaningful is penny-wise and pound-foolish: we know the words of scripture, but have no grasp of the message.

Take, for instance, the book of 1 Corinthians. There was a reason 1 Corinthians was written, and it was not to give us the verse "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow" (3:6) or so that we would have a nice passage on love (chapter 13) to read at weddings! Instead, 1 Corinthians actually has a message, a purpose for which it was written, which was to address the specific controversies and problems that were dividing the church at Corinth, a port and commercial city where sexual immorality was widespread. The "Love Chapter" falls at the end of a discourse on spiritual gifts - apparently the church was divided over which gifts were to be most highly esteemed. Paul intends to show them "the most excellent way" - that if the exercise of gifts is not accompanied by love (agape love, not marital or erotic love), they are worth nothing. Read this way, 1 Corinthians 13 takes on a whole new light: it wasn't written for weddings at all!

Does that make it wrong to employ that scripture for that purpose? Well, no, but the point not to be missed is that once we start "applying" scripture indiscriminately, there's really no check on that. This is exactly how Jesus has been appropriated by all sorts of groups that want nothing to do with Christians but everything to do with Jesus' teachings - based on a particular verse they pulled out of the gospels. Read just the Sermon on the Mount and you can make Jesus pro-peace, pro-poverty relief, pro-works righteousness, anti-public prayer, anti-national defense, and anti-Individual Retirement Accounts, if you select just the right verses.

So, we have a great need to teach people how to read the Bible, because the method matters. But a second distinction needs to be drawn, and that is the difference between being unable to read and being unwilling to read. The inability to read is what we know as illiteracy, and can be remedied through instruction. But our kids aren't illiterate. What we're up against instead is the tendency towards a-literacy. An aliterate generation can read, but chooses not to.

And why don't they read? Too many distractions, less time, busier schedules, a more demanding amount of homework (much of it of dubious value), amateur sports leagues, video games and iPods - all of these are culprits. But an added consideration when it comes to the Bible is that Bible reading may not be considered necessary. Why read the Bible when there's no truth to be had there? If my interpretation is as good as yours, then there's no need to store it or think on it; I'll just turn to it when I feel like I need it. It's the McChurch phenomenon extended to personal devotions.

It's not impossible to minister to an aliterate generation, but the modern church, which is grounded in assumptions of literacy, is ill-suited for it. Indeed, it can be argued that Protestantism itself was founded on the proposition that the Church ought to follow the Bible and that individuals had the right and obligation to read scripture for themselves in order to hold the Church in line. Aliteracy is a great challenge for the Church because it leaves the Church fairly foundationless. Who gets to decide what is true, but even more, what is important and necessary and deserving of the church's time and attention if there is no written Rule to follow? Should a church evangelize, educate, advocate, fund-raise, caretake, respite, build, progress, conserve? The answers are grounded in one's theology of the Church, which ought to be drawn from the Bible. But if the Bible is irrelevant, or doesn't make sense, or believed to contain myriad meanings, then that theology will be formed from something else.

At least in a culture that was unable to read (first-century Gentile Christians, medieval commoners, for example), there was a willingness to defer to those whose job it was to read and understand. This was not necessarily a good thing. The lack of accountability that comes when only a privileged few can read the Bible led to egregious corruption in the medieval Church. The dissenters who did try to keep the Church within scriptural bounds were silenced with punishment. But the opposite extreme, in which everyone weighs in with a subjective interpretation, is also unhealthy. How many of us have sat in a small group where the discussion proceeds this way: "Let's go around the circle and everyone tell what this verse means to them"? Eight varying interpretations later, the group moves on to the next verse, and so on, as if the purpose of the passage was to to facilitate collective navel gazing. Verses, passages, and books of the Bible do have a meaning, but it is the one meaning that the author intended. That scripture is "living and active" does not mean we can yank it out of context and claim that the meaning of a particular passage is "what it means to me".

It is that terrible habit of Bible reading, I am afraid, that has led to the sort of Biblical anarchy we have today. Nothing means anything, your truth is as good as my truth, and "experiencing" God or the Holy Spirit's presence is held to be the be-all-to-end-all of religious life. I read of one church that dispensed with its Christian Education program for children in order to bring them into the adult service so that they, too, could participate in the speaking in tongues and giving prophetic words. Huh? Meanwhile, "more than half of all adults (53%) believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven" (Barna) and "more than two out of every five adults (41%) believe that when Jesus Christ lived on earth He committed sins" (Barna again).

The answers are complex, particularly because churches haven't been effective in teaching people how to read the Bible, only in urging that they should. That's another way of saying that if tomorrow every Christian suddenly started reading the Bible, the problem wouldn't be solved. We need a conversation and a re-examination of what the Bible is and how it is to be used in our everyday lives. Is it the "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" (B.I.B.L.E.)? Is it God's rulebook for our lives? Is it the answer to all of life's problems? Is it a history book, a science book, a textbook? Until we can articulate what the Bible is for, it will fail to warrant the attention of non-readers.

Our attempt at this, such as it is, is the class "Stumped by the Bible?" which will be offered for the first time beginning this Saturday. For $20 and three weeks of your time (a parent must attend with their kid), you'll get an overview of the Old and New Testament, a handy mnemonic for remembering the major events of the Bible and their sequence, a method called the "B.I.B.L.E." method (no, not basic instructions before leaving earth) for reading it, a brief sketch of how the Bible came to be, and a handy reference guide called "Turning Your Bedroom Into a Bible College." Call or e-mail us to register. We'll make a Bible reader out of your son or daughter yet.

The Good in Good Friday

Just in case you've forgotten, the kid year revolves around holidays. Any first grader knows that each month has its own colors, sights, and sounds specific to one or more holidays, and their observance - which often mean a day off from school - not only is the way to mark the progression of the school year, but provides the reason for near-constant celebration.

September is Labor Day - not much of a holiday, but maybe a trip weekend, but it just gets better from there. October has Halloween; November, Thanksgiving; and December, the granddaddy of them all - Christmas. New Year's Day for a kid is actually December 26, the day we begin looking forward to Christmas again. February brings Valentine's Day - usually the occasion for some school party, March is St. Patrick's, and April brings Easter and Spring Break. May is relatively holiday-free, but by that time you're in the home stretch for summer, so who cares? And of course, somewhere in there falls a kid's birthday, the second holiest day behind Christmas. Summer is a holiday of its own.

The reason holidays are so attractive to kids is that they possess all of the elements that make kid life fun and memorable - bright colors, presents, special songs, hats or costumes, stories, and often, candy. Each is memorable and distinct because the observance makes it tangible.

So this Easter, my message to parents is this: Don't miss the boat on Good Friday.

Of all of my memories of church growing up, Good Friday would stand out as the most impactful day of the church year. Not Christmas - we were too pumped about what awaited us at home. And not Easter Sunday - that was really just church with a LOT of people there. But on Good Friday, the rawness and reality of the crucifixion was driven home.

For us, that meant Friday night church and a somber service where the last words of Jesus were explained. There was a giant wooden cross at the front of the church, and as each of the seven messages concluded, another set of lights was extinguished until only a spotlight remained on the cross. The last act was the raising of a giant black veil over the cross. Everyone was requested to leave the church in silence (for some reason I believed the pastors were bound by this until Sunday morning), and even though someone in our family would break this silence in the car on the way home, those 5-10 minutes of reflection left a huge impact on my 10-year-old brain. So much so, that 25 years later I can remember that the pastor concluded his final message in this way:

"Sunday we'll celebrate Jesus' resurrection, but tonight we don't look ahead. Tonight we're left where the disciples were on Good Friday - facing a dead Jesus. Not a sleeping Jesus...or a sick Jesus...but a dead Jesus." Powerful stuff.

Commercialism has no interest in Good Friday, and as a result, the symbols today still mean the same thing they meant then: the cross, the nails, the crown of thorns, the tomb. The death of Jesus is a reality that deserves to be faced, because it brings meaning to his sacrifice and also accentuates the miracle of the resurrection. The way we talk about the Easter event has become almost cliche: Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Ho hum. More accurately: Jesus was murdered, the disciples were anguished and scared and confused, and God supernaturally raised him from the dead in order to crown him as king. Good Friday brings us to the version of the story that ought to be told, because it captures the suspense and the drama and the heartache - the passion, if you will - of the death of Jesus.

Children are not too young to get this, but they won't get it if they're not exposed to it. You need not screen The Passion of the Christ in your living room; but simply constructing a wooden cross, letting kids touch and hammer nails into it, looking at depictions of the walk to Calvary, the raising of the crosses, the moment of Jesus' death - these lend a dose of reality to an old, old story. And if you think your kids are old enough, there are other movies less graphic than Passion that depict the crucifixion act.

Good Friday is good for Christians, and by that I mean not that it's meaningful, which of course it is, but that it has great utility. It recounts that at a particular, identifiable point in space-time history, the incarnate God, Jesus, was robbed of his life and that mankind, momentarily, lost its light. Easter completes the story, that Jesus didn't stay dead, and that hope was restored to the world. But on Friday, we rest in the place of sorrow that was very real. That's ok.

Maybe the reason kids love holidays so much is that they attach deep meaning to what are otherwise ordinary days. They give kids a sense of history. They cause us to sit up and take notice. Good Friday helps kids experience the reality of death in a way that causes them to fully appreciate the significance of hope.

Turn It Off! How TV makes us all dumber (ok, not all of us, and not exactly dumber, but we'd all surely be sharper with less of it)

First, a confession and disclaimer. I am not one to cast stones when it comes to TV viewing. I view plenty of it, and long have. Save for a four-month period when I deliberately stashed my TV in the closet in order to read and listen to the radio, it has been the background noise of my life. But, in the same way as I recognize the unhealthiness of soda consumption, yet drink it anyway, I do believe TV consumption has a corrosive effect on our potential to learn, to communicate, and to relate - and that's the subject of this week's post.

Last week I wrote about the connection between the act of reading and spiritual formation. My point was not to say that kids who are poor readers can't grow spiritually, only to point out that reading compliments spiritual growth, because when we read, we employ many of the same disciplines that help develop our spiritual muscles. The opposite is true of television: by its very nature and what it demands from a viewer, it's a detriment to spirituality; and as far as kids are concerned, the less of it, the better.

How does TV hurt us? Three ways, principally: it's a poor teacher, it makes us passive, and it cheapens our discourse - and all as a byproduct of being what it is. The danger that screen media (TV, movies, and some Internet sites) pose to spiritual development in children doesn't lie in the content, but in the nature of electronic media itself to discourage active engagement. With TV, we're just kind of…there.

If it's true that the best teaching answers the questions students are already asking, TV is the antithesis of that: you have to take whatever you get. For young kids especially this is not good, and in fact we know that TV viewing could impact more than just their potential to learn, but their very ability to learn as well. What science tells us about brain development in children adds urgency to the need to immerse kids in engaging, active learning environments. A baby's brain is rapidly establishing new nerve connections (trillions of them), literally building "brain highways" that will endure for all of life. But, this process doesn't continue forever. Around age ten, it slows down, and nerve endings that remain unattached begin to die off. (See - those of you who suspected kids lost their minds when they hit puberty - there's something to that!) What happens with our brains, then, during the first ten years of life is utterly crucial in determining how we will think and learn forever. And there are no "do overs"! That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media time, ever, for kids under 2, because a developing brain needs for the baby to be able to manipulate its environment in order to learn. TV gives them just the opposite of that.

But just because you're older than 10, don't go running for the remote. Television works against us because it makes us passive. Not inactive, as in, we could be exercising instead, but passive, in the sense that it requires nothing of us. What's more, we couldn't give back to it if we wanted to. A television program can't answer our questions, doesn't really care for our reactions, isn't concerned with whether we need something repeated or just need to ponder it for a while. And even if the creators of shows did care, there's nothing they could do about it - because the show must go on.

And so we, as viewers, learn not to think, but just to receive, which in turn affects our perception of the world (particularly when it comes to world events) as a place where "things just happen." This phenomena is documented brilliantly in a 1986 book by Neil Postman titled Amusing Ourselves to Death. A viewer might see or hear something that confuses or intrigues or excites or saddens them, but they have no way to engage the messenger and thus no ability to affect the next message, or the next, or the next. You cannot set aside a TV program and write about it or think about it or dialogue about it (TiVo excepted) without missing the next! exciting! development! You are left with a choice: think actively about what you're watching, and miss the rest of the show, or stop thinking and merely absorb the cavalcade of images. If you've ever been watching TV with others and wanted badly to comment on something, but didn't for fear of missing what was coming next, you've experienced this.

Television actually works against one's ability to grasp hold of an idea, to wrestle with it and truly understand it. In this way, TV is the exact opposite of a good conversation or a good teacher: it does all the talking. TV will not let you think very deeply, and it does not invite your interaction. Yet these all need to happen if we are to learn.

The third harm from TV is the cheapening effect it has on our communication with one another. I'm withholding judgment on e-mail, instant messaging, and text messaging because I think the jury is out on those: they've resuscitated written interpersonal communication and allowed us to maintain fellowship with a wider circle than ever before. But TV's negative influence on discourse stems from its interference with one's ability to read well, which in turn affects one's tendency to read at all, which in turn affects one's ability to have meaningful conversations (because there is nothing of substance to talk about). (And this is the downside to the aforementioned text messaging instant messaging: most of the messages teenagers exchange are empty and banal. As Henry David Thoreau noted about the telegraph, "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.")

All of this - the way TV dulls us, disengages us, distances us from real-world interaction, and causes us to read less - amounts to a hindrance for spiritual development. How? It robs us of the skills and knowledge required to carry on a spiritual relationship. Am I saying that TV viewers can't have spiritual lives? Not at all. What I am saying is that the richness of one's spirituality will be molded by habits of mind, heart, and hands - that is, our tendencies when it comes to thinking and processing, empathizing and valuing, interacting and serving. At a very basic level, families who spend lots of time individually watching TV and little time talking to one another grow apart. It's for this reason that families are urged to eat dinner together and have conversations, with the TV off. Similarly, kids who are conditioned to immediately turn on the TV when they walk into a room or can't stand solitude will find the prospect of spending 15 minutes of alone time with God unappealing and impossible. There are kids I've encountered in educational and church settings who are practically incapable of answering a question or having a dialogue because they are so unused to that, preferring instead to be talked to, which is what TV does best.

What's the answer? It's too simple to say "turn it off", despite the title of this article, because like any habit, it takes time to break. Moreover, we're hooked: every favorite show has become Must-See-TV, and to repeat, I'm not claiming any special exemption from TV's spell. But most kids would do better with less of it, particularly if it was replaced with a healthier alternative. It's probably not a good idea to wean your young TV junkie for the express purpose of having him sit alone in his room 20 minutes with his Bible. Some kids may be ready for that, but most would resent it. However, anything that involves fellowship and parent-child communication and engagement is a great substitute. Go to a museum. Go to the mountains. Go to a skatepark. Go clean up trash. Walk a neighbor's dog. Go learn a new sport. Go outside and play. Work up to family devotion time, then encourage individual devotions. And whatever you do, talk about it, before, during, and after. Brains were meant to learn that way. Kids were meant to grow that way. God is meant to be related to that way.

May your journey from the realm of electronic clamor to unexceptional tranquility be blessed, successful, and worth it.

Turn It Off!

Is television curbing our appetite for the Almighty?

You always suspected it was so, didn't you? Now, an article in the Christian Education Journal supports it, but not for the reasons you may think. It isn't worldly themes or immoral content on TV or in movies that does the damage, but the nature of electronic media itself. Put another way, you could be watching Leave It to Beaver or The Real World -- it wouldn't matter; being plugged in stunts spiritual growth, especially in children.

The article by Linda Callahan, a child and adolescent therapist in Chattanooga, TN, lays out the idea that reading is the great casualty of kids' constant exposure to electronic media. Spending their days bombarded by what Callahan calls, "the Noise", there's no time and little inclination to spend time with printed material. The consequences for spiritual development are fascinating, and challenging.

Why does reading matter for spirituality? It's not so much that the accumulation of knowledge through reading produces a disciple; rather, that the same disciplines employed in reading - silence, solitude, study (and when a parent is reading to a child, fellowship) - happen to be those that are integral to the process of spiritual formation. By contrast, the inability (or distaste for or unwillingness) to reflect, to contemplate, to compose one's own thoughts or to understand the composition of another's - all of this has an effect on our ability to relate.

Sunday School, by its nature, has never been very good at teaching the relational aspect of Christianity. Classes are too big to allow for the kind of individualized questioning that would be needed to be helpful. Moreover, the kinds of questions that ought to be asked don't lend themselves to black-and-white responses. Sunday schools are good at being, well, schools, which always trend towards efficiency and quantifiable measures, rather than qualitative ones. As a result, a child can be really good at Sunday school, delivering all the right responses, but really bad at being a Christian.

Relationships, on the other hand, require the development of a particular set of skills, and the uniqueness of each child guarantees that these skills will develop at uneven rates, making "normal" or "standard" or even "expected" achievement a relatively worthless concept. The task for anyone who cares about child spirituality isn't how to ensure that kids acquire more knowledge, but how to give them practice in growing the ability to relate to an unseen God.

And this brings us back to reading, which itself requires those same abilities but which itself is also threatened in an increasingly wired world. Says Callahan, "In subtle and not so subtle ways, television and film are contributing to the indifference to Christian spirituality and to the high levels of alienation and purposelessness that are common in children, youth and adults today." However, the act of reading, which involves time alone, free from distraction, decoding and understanding written messages, helps to build the sort of skills (and, I would contend, even the temperament) needed to experience a relationship with God.

First, Callahan suggests, "Noise-free reading times should be a part of each day," and that "to get started the entire family should go the library." Parents and kids should own books, lots of them, and time spent exposed to electronic media should be sharply monitored. Care to guess how much time the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends is advisable for children under age 2 to spend each day in front of "screen media" (television and videos)? Exactly none; yet even this uncle of five has given DVDs as gifts recently, because videos of favorite cartoons have become so standard a part of early childhood it's hard to imagine a home without them. Exactly what's wrong with TV viewing, apart from its robbing time from reading, is the subject of next week's blog, but Christian parents would do well to heed Callahan's warning: there's far too much of it in almost every home.

Moreover, she writes, "Christians must deliberately counter the effects of the Noise within the church." From the nursery right up to the adult service, "modern" churches are marked by the degree to which they've employed video, graphics, musical and lighting elements that emulate professional stage productions - in other words, "the Noise". Therefore, it's important to understand that the prescription for Christian Education programs is not necessarily sustained silent reading (which would be impossible anyhow with young children) but the nurturing of disciplines - habits of heart, life, and mind - that foster spiritual development. Classrooms should be places of fellowship, not passive silence. The assumption that a quiet classroom indicates more learning and is therefore the key to spiritually flourishing kids needs serious reexamination. It isn't a question of whether classrooms ought to be noisy or quiet, but the effect of either on children's engagement: does it promote activity or passivity?

"The Noise" is not going away. But Christians can go away from The Noise. Daily unplugging and avoidance may prove to be not only a choice, but a necessity for healthy spirituality.

The Incredible Influence of Dad

This weekend my dad was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame in North Dakota. In the 1960s, when the sport was just beginning in that state, he won back-to-back state titles (something he downplays) but his greatest impact was made in nearly 40 years of high school coaching.

Of course the thing about Halls of Fame or honorary banquets or tributes or toasts or awards presentations is that they are momentary, and they are one-dimensional. If you want to know who a person really is, it can only be pieced together from the firsthand knowledge of those who've spent lots of time at their side. I suspect any kid whose parent has ever done anything noteworthy knows this: awards recognize what someone has done, but only begin to scratch the surface of who they are.

I recount this because I imagine there are parents reading this right now who are wrapped up in a rat race, gunning for some promotion or leveraging their own advancement or trying to cement a big deal or hoping to impress some power broker. Let me assure you: where you go professionally, as important as it is to you, won't matter nearly as much to your kids. They already know how great you are.

Dad decided early what he wanted to do with his life, and he followed through with a steadfastness that is rare and admirable. His three kids - myself and two sisters - have already proven unable to do what he did, which is to hold down the same position at the same school and do it well for 39 years. (We have each moved in and out of (and in one case, back into) education.) Teaching is tiring - physically and mentally. Coaching at any level is emotional. It helps to have a winning team, but Dad's teams didn't always win. They were occasionally great, often average, and sometimes terrible. The most we ever felt this was some weekend grumpiness now and then, but by Sunday night he'd bounce back to his normal self and when you heard him whistling and grading papers you knew all was well again. And when, in 2006, it was time to be done, he was done. There was nothing sentimental or magic to him about reaching the 40-year plateau.

I'm not one who happens to believe that we can fairly evaluate ourselves: who we think we are and who others perceive us to be are usually quite different, and the truth is usually closer to what others see (I find that we tend to be too harsh or too charitable towards ourselves). So as to how much of my dad I carry in me, you'd have to ask someone else. I can, however, readily recognize his influence on my sisters.

All three of us siblings are pretty pragmatic. That comes straight from Dad. If it didn't work, he'd try to fix it, and if he couldn't fix it, well, you'd have to live without it. "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" was his motto, and it was rare that he couldn't get one or the other. His tastes are simple (so are each of ours) and he never displayed an appetite for wealth. He fought for the underdog. Wrestling sometimes attracted kids who were rough around the edges, and he welcomed the chance to give them something constructive to do - "Maybe this will change them," he'd say. When we played softball with the neighborhood kids, he developed a rotation system that constantly circulated players from batting to fielding and as a result there were no teams and no losers and no score - just fun, which was all anyone wanted. As the head of the teacher's union he advocated for fair pay, and in later years, when he himself was near the top of the salary scale, he pushed for pay increases to go to starting teachers rather than veterans, saying, "They need it more than we do." He felt strongly about that. My sisters have carried that seed of justice into their own lives. As the only boy in the family, I was the only one to wrestle for him (girls didn't wrestle, not in his world; he felt especially strongly about that!). While Mom ran the day-to-day operations of our house - the meals, the school shopping, the scheduling - and also much of the discipline, when Dad spoke up to discipline, you knew it was serious and that was it.

Men, especially great men, are driven by vision. They imagine what could be and set out to achieve or establish it. Sometimes the task takes precedence over the people involved, and the product is a damaging ambition. But it's also that doggedness in men that suits them to be good dads. Men - and dads - dream big. They're wired to lead and conquer. The effect of such vision on kids can be powerful. For my dad and I, this played out in the realm of academic science competitions, another passion of his that started 23 years ago and continues to this day. Spurred by what we saw at the national level, our creations got each year better and ever-more complex, and we did in fact win national awards for them. What I learned from this was to set my sights high, to seek out the best and then better it.

What would happen if every man pursued the future and the health and the reputation of his kids as doggedly as he pursued achievement in his own life? What if dads turned the power of their vision onto the direction of their sons and daughters? Some of us fear the answer, based on our experience with dads who vicariously lived through their kids, pushing them in directions and at speeds they didn't want to go. But what if, at the same time a dad was training his vision on the future of his kids, he was equipped with the qualities of empathy and compassion and tenderness - in a word, his humanity - so that he developed a keen sense of when to push and when to hold back? The answer is, you'd have a really great dad; but not only that, you'd have a really great kid.

We need more dads like that, and the church has a role in calling men to that level of responsibility. Honestly, we can imagine and build great cities, industrial plants, robotic technology, and space travel; can we not also cast a vision for kids that lifts them above despair, boredom, self-debasement, and a future as pawns in this consumerist melee? A vision that dreams for them the realization of their identity in Jesus Christ and fulfillment of each one's God-given potential? More simply, why doesn't men's natural ambition translate into the betterment of our kids? More bluntly, if men are such natural go-getters, why are so many kids becoming losers?

How do we train dads, not to replace moms, but to be great at realizing their big dreams among people? The great barrier is our natural bent as men to bring a project approach to the table, to see everything in absolutes, to dismiss nonconformity as an obstacle to solutions (when in fact nobody is normal). Nowhere is the imperative stronger to round out dads' humanness than in raising their daughters. Our culture has minimized the role of dads and has certainly not trained them. Most men, having once been boys, can figure out what boys need from them; but it's not so easy raising a girl. Girls think and process differently, they feel differently, they learn differently, and they are motivated differently. (It's all most men can do to understand their wives!) But what if men were trained to be in tune with what their daughters need from them?

We're going to try. On February 28, Jeff Moore will begin a four-session class for dads of pre-teen girls. Using the book, Dad's Everything Book for Daughters, this class will explore how to better communicate with girls, spend meaningful time with them, listen to them and be a source of strength. The book is by renowned parenting expert John Trent, and Jeff, who is the father of a 5th grade girl and a 2nd grade boy, will also share his own experience with becoming an in-touch dad. Call me if you want in, or just show up at 6:00 on the 28th.

Most dads intuitively know what they want for their daughters, and being a man they know what makes a woman respectable and even admirable in the eyes of other men. How do they take their daughters there? The more I reflect on my own upbringing, the more I am convinced that home is the crucible that forges us for the rest of our whole life and seldom do we change from the course we're set on there. I hope you, if you father a girl aged 9-12 (or thereabout) will invest four weeks with us that could make a profound influence on the woman she is to become.

An Experiment Using Film

This Friday night we're showing the film Remember the Titans, in the hopes that we've hit upon one more way to open dialogue between parents and kids.

Those familiar with our ministry will know that I am a fan of using dialogue to teach, and anything that promotes dialogue between kids and grown-ups on important topics is a great tool. I believe movies - and increasingly, television shows - provide fertile ground for such conversations, because they place parent and child side-by-side in the role of observers and critics. A kid can more easily see behavior and attitudes objectively as an outsider, and recognizing and naming qualities - admirable and undesirable - in others is a great step toward mature self-examination. Secondly, it asks kids to recognize the invisible undercurrent of values that drive people's behavior. We are more likely to see and recognize false value systems in a context removed from our own. Related to that, watching a film as a family and then talking about it provides practice in being a discerning media consumer. Finally, identifying with characters in movies is an exercise in perspective-taking, which is an ingredient in empathy.

The downside to movie and television portrayals is their unreality. But that, too, can be turned to a strength when viewing is paired with discussion. Questions like Is that character someone to admire? or Would you have made the same decision? or What in this movie wouldn't have happened in real life? are essential for helping kids develop their critical filters.

The film we've chosen for the first night is Remember the Titans. Based on a true story, Titans takes us back to 1971, where T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA, has recently been integrated. When a black teacher is hired to replace the white head football coach, the stage is set for prejudice and hard feelings on and off the field, among the team members and its fans alike. This 2000 film stars Denzel Washington, and Washington's coaching technique will be one of the topics up for discussion: is it right for him (or any coach) to scream at players or degrade them, as long as the team is successful? Is this leadership? How do we square this with Matthew 20, where Jesus says whoever wants to be great among you must be a servant?

Another theme worth exploring in this movie (there are many) is the issue of resolving conflict in a group of people. The players initially resent each other because of race, and it takes leadership by key players to begin to tear those walls down. How is Romans 12:14-16 instructive here?

You get the idea. The "gameplan" is to meet at 7, give the parents a brief rundown on the purpose of the night (although if you're reading this, you're getting it) while the kids get some recreation, start the movie, break at "halftime" for discussion questions, and play the rest of the movie, with some "car talk" questions sent with you for the way home. All should be wrapped up by 9:30.

As to content: According to Internet Movie Database (imbd.com) , the movie contains "at least" 2 instances of "damn", 1 of "hell", 1 utterance of "crap", 1 incomplete "S.O.B." and 2 uses of "swear to God" as expressions. So, if you've planned to bring younger siblings or if these words are a deal breaker, please be forewarned.

In all, this movie is very inspiring and stays true to the actual events as they happened. It can be a great launching point for talking with kids about the Civil Rights Movement and the desegregation of schools, too. And, movies bring families together.

The Internet Movie Database entry is here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210945/
with the imdb parent guide here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210945/parentalguide

The movie got a thumbs-up from Focus on the Family's "Plugged In Online" site: http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0000481.cfm

And incidentally, if you're interested in using other movies at home, Focus on the Family has put out a few books with plotlines and suggested topics for discussion: check those out here.