A Loss that's Almost Too Much to Bear

Last week in North County, we lost a champion. It’s really the world’s loss, though, because those who never knew George Trillizio missed knowing a gem of a guy.

To unpack those two descriptors, let’s begin by noting that it’s probable many people who knew George never knew him by that name. To the thousands of high school students and young Marine recruits whom he pastored during a 32-year ministry career (many of whom grew into adults who still looked to him affectionately as their pastor) he was “Bear.”

Bear was a champion in the normal sense of the word – as a powerlifter – but in another sense as well. In ancient warfare, a “champion” duel was sometimes used to determine the outcome of a battle while minimizing bloodshed. Each side would put forward their best man, and the winner secured victory for the whole army. (David and Goliath was a matchup between champions.) Bear was that best man. You wanted him on your side, in everything: praying for you, encouraging you, and – quite literally – protecting you. It was probably that Marine instinct in him that he never abandoned an ally.

How many people did Bear know? The number is uncountable. What seems certain, though, is that he knew nearly everyone who knew him. Unlike some people who develop a following but remain personally unknown, Bear seemed to have built his following one by one, on the strength of his love for people. Don’t let the gruff voice or the powerful build fool you: he had some of the best people skills – because he had the softest heart. When you talked with Bear, he had a way of making you feel like you were the most important person, like your problem was the most important one at that moment, that your joke was the funniest, your song was the greatest, your ministry effort the most amazing thing…and he wasn’t just indulging you, wasn’t blowing smoke. If he was, he was the greatest undiscovered actor in the world. No, Bear's interest was always sincere.

Yes, he had the best people skills...and then – sometimes he didn’t. He could be crass, irreverent and utterly hilarious. And we loved him for it. He could put someone in their place if that was needed. Things might come out of his mouth that you wouldn’t consider very “pastor-like." He didn’t care. While many in ministry struggle with a public persona that doesn’t reflect who they really are, Bear was 100% himself, always. Who else could he be?

And he was a gem. And by that I mean that he was simultaneously earthy and lustrous, the proverbial diamond-in-the-rough. He carried an everyman sensibility and an otherworldly awe around in him, with no apparent contradiction. Jesus was his thing. He believed in Him deeply. And his conviction combined with his personality was a reassurance to those of us who suspected and hoped that Christianity meant something different than just having good manners and being passive. You met Bear and you knew it was possible both to be a man and to love Jesus.

In my case, his reputation preceded him. When I landed in California in 2005, for no apparent reason, with no apparent plan, and at North Coast Calvary Chapel almost by chance, I was told: “Ask for Bear.” Sometime around September, wrestling with troubling uncertainty about my future, I walked up to him at a Sunday night service and said: “I need to talk to someone, and I feel like it’s you.” Bear counseled me to stay put; that was the beginning of a six-year friendship from which I now feel like I drew all the benefit.

When I visited him at the hospital, I couldn’t avoid thinking about what his death would mean, for himself and for his family and the legions of admirers he would leave behind. For him, it meant the end (though too soon) of a life well-lived. It meant he would step into heaven, realizing in full the eternal life that had begun in him when Bear became a Christian more than 30 years ago.

But if death has meaning, then life has to have meaning, too. Bear probably would summarized it in some memorable, pithy three-word phrase. Which three words, I can only guess. I’m not as succinct, so I’ll suggest several candidates, based on what I know of his life – all of which were clearly evident: Family. Loyalty. Faith. Sacrifice. Service. Strength. Youth. Compassion. Love.

I will miss seeing him in the familiar places – at Wednesday staff meetings, backstage on Sunday nights. I’ll miss hearing that voice. This past weekend, I half-expected to see him lumbering across the plaza. I felt empty when that didn’t happen. I startled a couple of times when I glimpsed people with a similar build.

Most of all, though, I’ll miss him because Bear was my go-to guy. I realize I’m among many who would say this, but I felt like Bear was one of the few people who really got me. When I was near the boiling point, or someone had really rubbed a nerve raw, or I had reached my last straw, it was Bear who I'd seek out. Not because he’d salve the wounds always; sometimes, he’d be very direct in setting you straight on faulty thinking. He always seemed to know the right thing to say. If Bear was quick with advice, it’s because he’d seen it all. (Thirty-two years of dealing with teenagers and young adults and every relationship scenario imaginable will do that.) And even apart from the crisis times, he was simply fun to be around. You never felt like you had to impress him. He genuinely thought your song, your program, your thing was totally great. And he let you know it.

Yes, Bear is in heaven. Somehow that doesn’t make me miss him less. Life will grind on, even if right now it seems appropriate that it might stop for a while in honor of a guy who lived a life that was all about everyone but himself. I’m sure I’ll meet others in the course of ministry who affect me as profoundly. I hope so.

But for now, I need to talk to someone. Bear, I feel like it’s you.

(No) Surprise: Kids Need Time for Free Play

What can parents and other caring adults do to promote social development in kids and ensure their future health and well-being? Those of us who work with kids spend hours considering this question. But the answer may be simple: quit trying, and let kids go play. As the saying goes, sometimes less is more.

Of course, it's not entirely as simple as that, but allowing kids to play freely is an important part of the equation. Sadly, it's also the element that's been crowded out as education reform and the uber-professionalization of youth sports have encroached on childhood. Free play - that is, activities that are freely chosen by kids and that have no time limits, no adult management, and whose starting and ending points depend solely on what a kid wants to do - stands in opposition to the way we've regimented kids' lives, all in the name of making things "better" for them by measuring and evaluating everything they do. This is progress?

The call for more free time for kids to play is not new. A Google search of "kids need free play" turned up articles from October 2006, January 2009, and October of 2010. And - get this - there's actually an organization called the "Alliance for Childhood", a major focus of which is advocating for kids' opportunity to have time to play. Really? There is actually a national organization whose mission is to see that your son or daughter be allowed to go outside and play tag? Yep - and the movement faces formidable opposition.

Not principled opposition, of course - what kind of Scrooge would actually come out and say that they were against kids getting to play together? The opposition instead rests in the very structure of kids' lives, and is rooted in the belief that compared to academics, music lessons, organized sports leagues, and club activities (and yes, even church activities can contribute), free time to simply play isn't that important.

The latest voice in the wilderness is a man named Peter Gray, a professor at Boston College, who's been studying the positive effects of play for years, but who recently garnered media attention for his paper linking the decline of free play with an increase in emotional and behavioral problems once kids grow up. Gray makes the case that when kids don't play, the skills of emotional regulation - how to get along, how to share, how to make decisions - don't get a workout. The eventual result is teenagers who have poor impulse control, underdeveloped social skills, and who suffer more anxiety and depression as a result. And Carlo Rotella, writing about Gray's research in the Boston Globe, points out that substituting adult-regulated activities doesn't cut it:

"The 'free' part matters. There's a deceptively big difference between being told by and adult to get in line to take your turn on the slide and learning from interaction with other kids, through trial and error and conflict and cooperation, that it's not OK to hog the slide."

I'll never forget when I substitute taught in a kindergarten classroom, and the lead teacher was guiding the kids through an art project. At one point, she demanded that all the kids fix their eyes on her, because "I'm going to show you how to make a spider." These were five year olds drawing. She no doubt thought she was helping. She wasn't. Little wonder that as I circulated through the room and suggested to a boy that he could draw a woman in a skirt, he looked at me and said, "I don't know how." What he was really saying was, "I don't want to get it wrong...so I'd rather not try."

Art projects aren't exactly free play (because they are solitary pursuits, not requiring the skills of interaction), but the point is that one thing preventing kids from doing their own thing is our fear that they might get it wrong. Put yourself in the shoes of an adult witnessing the dispute over the slide that Rotella describes above. If you saw one child budging the line, or stopping midway down the slide, or climbing up the wrong way so others couldn't take their turn, would you intervene, or let kids work it out? I'll admit it would be hard not to mediate, to think that they need my help in solving the problem, because what if they do it wrong? And what if there's a fight? And what if someone's feelings are hurt in the fight? To stay out of it is to risk that kids might not resolve things - at least not right away. Kid justice can be brutal.

Another factor keeping kids from interacting is that they have no place to play. Two of the greatest parental fears - that their child will be kidnapped or that they will be hit by a car - work against kids being able to be outside. Today's parenting generation grew up in the days of some high-profile abductions (like Adam Walsh and Polly Klaas) and were taught in schools (even in my midwestern hometown of 7,000) to fear strangers. Despite the fact that the probability of a child being kidnapped is quite low (about 1 in 347,000; there are between 100-150 stranger abductions in the U.S. each year, nowhere near a million a year, which was what we were told in the 1980s), that's no comfort to the family it does happen to. And with every missing child story now receiving national attention on cable news, it makes us all think: It could be us.

And there are other reasons kids don't play. Lack of time is certainly one. We're more mobile, which allows us to "spread out" our lives - but that also results in moms and dads spending hours each week toting kids from one scheduled activity to the next. Time spent consuming screen media also gobbles up time kids could be playing together. (I think it remains to be seen whether "social" media actually enhances kids' sociability or not. Part of me admires its ability to put people in touch with each other. And what are we doing online? We're communicating - which isn't all bad.) And schools have changed. Not only do they assign more homework, but things like recess and physical education have been pared back, and the teaching itself is different - more directed, more teacher-centered, and very outcomes-oriented.

You could make the argument, of course, that it's outcomes that matter most, and therefore there's nothing wrong with teaching kids how to hit a baseball (by enrolling them in a league), or how to do math (by hiring a private tutor), or how to play the guitar (at $50 a lesson). And there is nothing wrong with those things. Except to remember that the outcomes kids care about often relate to things adults find trivial. When I was 10, we spent a lot of time dreaming up improvements to my friend's fort in the loft of his garage, or pursuing ever-better "jumps" on our dirtbikes, or figuring out really clever places to hide when we played kick the can. Today those things matter nothing to me - I've got bigger fish to fry - but maybe there was something in the process of doing those things that mattered far more than the final product.

In the end, granting kids more freedom to play isn't an easy matter. We didn't get here because of some stated ideology that kids shouldn't play. We got here by building a society that believes in outcomes and status more than we do the intrinsic value of being a kid. Can you imagine getting out of bed and spending an entire day playing? I can't. But they can. And the adult priorities and responsibilities that keep us from living in that world will soon enough creep into their lives, pulling them away from a time in life they'll never recapture. Part of our job is to help them enjoy and embrace these years, which are some of the best of their life - they just don't know it. And, unbelievably, it appears one of the best things we can do is to leave them alone, to play.

Can Kids Outgrow God?

During the last six years of overseeing 4th-6th grade ministry at NCCC, I’ve had the parallel experience of watching my nieces and nephews grow up from babies to preschool and elementary school-aged children. Through holiday visits, Skype, Facebook, and home videos I have been able to glimpse pieces of their faith development, and it’s been fascinating. I’ve observed prayers, Sunday school programs and songs, heard some Bible stories retold, and picked up some nuggets that reflect their young understanding of God’s big world and their place in it.

At the same time, I've witnessed each developmental stage and phase, and laughed with the rest of my family as the kids move from one obsession to the next. Blue, Dora, The Wiggles, Elmo, Spiderman, cowboys, and the Disney princesses have all had their day. But soon, each is eclipsed by the next favorite thing, and the old hero gets passed down to the next-youngest sibling. At their houses, Santa Claus is still alive and well at Christmas time. But this won’t last forever.

My hope, of course, is that their curiosity, interest, and affinity for God as they grow up will never go the way of Elmo. And that is my hope for your kid as well. It’s worth asking the question: Can kids outgrow God? Can he lose his currency, becoming yesterday’s news, just at the time when kids begin facing questions like, “Who am I?” and “What was I created for?” and “What am I worth?” Too many adults attempt to answer those questions with the very author of life shunted to the sidelines.

We dare not let that happen.

Does God live in storybooks?
I am a fan of Bible storybooks for young kids. Our family had one, and I still can recall “what Adam and Eve looked like,” and the fierceness of God’s wrath represented by a red sky, and the wily Jacob fooling his father into thinking he was Esau. Of course, those weren’t true pictures, but some artist’s rendering. But to me, they were “real." Young kids, being concrete thinkers, receive and store those early impressions and images for a long, long time. (When I was four, I thought our pastor and God were one and the same - probably the reason I still, without thinking, picture God having a red beard and not a gray one.) The downside to cartoonish representations, though, is that they can lead kids to believe that “Bible stories” and
“Bible characters” were fictional. This is a symptom of a larger phenomenon that kids face as they grow. Bible storybooks are not the problem (not even a problem).

The issue is this: are kids’ conceptions of God allowed and encouraged to grow as they do?

We – the churches that serve them and the families that raise them – hold the key to the answer. To the extent that we “create” their understanding of God by the stories we tell, the symbols we use, the holidays we celebrate, and the way we worship (and countless other ways), kids’ knowledge of God is largely dependent on us. I do not deny that young children think thoughts about God completely on their own, nor that they can enjoy an unmediated relationship with him without any help from us. But that relationship does not exist in a vacuum. It is always culturally conditioned by the expressed thoughts and attitudes of the adults (that is, the authority figures) who run their world.

And so, we are responsible, not only for creating a picture of God that is true in their minds as young children, but also for continuing to refine and update kids’ views of God as they grow. If we are diligent about giving them Jesus when they are young, but then back off as they grow older, we run the risk that as kids grow up, they’ll consider God “kiddie stuff”, a relic from early childhood.

We dare not let that happen.

A different approach
As a kid becomes a preteen (and there’s no defining criteria for that), their ability to think and reason abstractly will blossom. As it does, they reach a junction in the development of personal faith. The question usually takes a form like, “Is God really real?” but what they’re actually asking is “Is God relevant?” As the serpent tempted Eve – “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree?” – kids also want to know whether God belongs only to the simple world they’re growing out of, or if he has a place in the more complicated world of the future? And if so, what is it?

About this same time, kids come to realize that parents and other adults aren’t perfect, that grown-ups break promises, aren’t superhuman, and actually get away with doing a fair number of the things they tell their kids not to do. What does this knowledge do to a kid’s faith, when up until that time, the adults in their lives have been the embodiment of qualities like power and might and authority and love and right – all of the same attributes that are ascribed to God? It’s common and almost unavoidable for a young child to perceive of God as a human. The concept of God being beyond human – that he is spiritual and eternal and holy? That’s a new one for older kids to make sense of.

And here’s another change: older kids exercise more leadership over their own lives. Young children make very few meaningful decisions for themselves. But older elementary kids get much greater latitude to decide who they’ll be and how they’ll act and how they’ll spend their time. And this is good – it is the birth of autonomy, which will someday lead them into life as an adult, no longer dependent on parental oversight. (Some preteen ministry colleagues of mine refer to this necessary stage as “Letting Go of the Bike.”) But, one of the skills needed to handle autonomy is the ability to discern good leaders from bad leaders. “Who should I follow?” is a key developmental step – it is the art of self-leadership. Older kids and adolescents are bombarded with cues about “how to be”: social cues, academic cues, family cues, cultural cues, internal emotional cues. It’s bewildering. Obeying God is suddenly no longer as simple as just obeying Mom and Dad.

I believe that to minister (literally, to serve or to meet the needs of) this age group, we ought to encourage and allow kids to bring God out of the box, out from the packaging he resided in when they were young children, and to meet, experience, relate, and walk with him in a new way. I don’t dismiss childhood faith; but neither do I rest on it. Young kids, for instance, say some pretty cute things about God. But what 10-year-old wants to be known for the cute things he used to say when he was five?

So, can kids outgrow God? In an actual sense, no. Of course God is big enough for all of our lives, and is always several steps ahead of us. But in a practical sense, yes. If we’re not diligent to push kids to grow in their faith – just as we would encourage them at this age to grow in athletic potential or grow in knowledge or grow in new experiences – then their faith will be immature as they grow right past it. I can’t help but think of a 9th grade boy I once led in a high school small group. We had just met, but it was evident he was attending youth group in body only. As he explained, “I figure I pretty much know everything there is to know about God.” How wrong he was, and how sadly his life unfolded in the years that followed, when he reached the point of his greatest need, yet God wasn’t even on the radar screen.

I don’t know what exactly brought him to the point where he thought he “pretty much knew everything there was to know about God,” but I suspect the culprit may have been one of the following:

• Church programs for kids that were boring
• Church programs that too closely resembled school
• Programming that mistook fervor (“Scream for Jesus!”) for spiritual depth
• Adults who talked too much and listened too little
• Music intended to glorify God but that was too childish to work
• Too-simple, pat answers to his questions

We will not let that happen! Growth is God’s intention for us. And growth implies change. An acorn is destined to become a shoot. A shoot is destined to become a baby oak. A young oak, while pleasing to the eye, is not meant to stop there, but to become a mighty, tall tree. In the same way, the Apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” All kids want to grow up. (Yes, I know: if only we could convince them how great it is to be a kid!) We owe it to them to introduce and re-introduce them to the God who’s big enough for the future.

A Royal Myth

Quick question: If a couple lives together before they get married, does this increase or decrease the chance of later divorcing? If you said “increase”, you’re right: studies show that cohabitation does not ensure marital success, particularly if the reason for living together is to “test the waters” before marriage. Now, someone needs to tell Piers Morgan.

The CNN host, who took over Larry King’s timeslot, was interviewing actress Jane Seymour on the royal wedding of Wiliam and Kate last week when he made the observation that William’s parents were 13 years apart in age, and that because of Diana’s inexperience (read between the lines here), this doomed the relationship. Whereas, he continued, Kate and William faced a much brighter future because they’d lived together already. Times have changed, he observed, and this is for the better: William and Kate are protected from the buyer’s remorse that afflicted Williams’ dad.

It’s a nice theory for why Charles and Di didn’t work out, and it’s utterly false. That is, apart from that royal match that turned into a royal mess (and who will ever know precisely what went wrong?), cohabitation simply does not immunize couples against later difficulties in their marriage. The idea that “test driving” a relationship ensures a better marriage is a myth.

But it’s a persistent myth, in part because it’s easier to acquiesce to the culture than to be counter-cultural, and because beliefs help us organize our world. If we are determined to believe that humans are getting smarter and modernity is trending us toward greater happiness and peace, even in our relationships, then believing the myth of premarital cohabitation fits. As the thinking goes, of course it’s better for couples to live together before they get married – and that happens to be the way things are going anyhow.

We don’t believe them because they’re myths; we believe them because they work for us. And that’s unfortunate, because they cause us to buy into what will in fact make us less happy in our relationships.

Here are three other persistent myths that I think oppress families in their effort to raise mature, emotionally-socially-spiritually well adjusted kids:

“Parents and teenage kids are bound to be at odds.” This is another way of saying, “Parenting a teenager is war.” I wholeheartedly disagree, and the more families I meet where that isn’t the case, the more harmful I believe this myth is. Parents who buy it adopt a warlike stance, dreading their kids growing up (when they should be welcoming it and celebrating it) and expecting the worst from their kid because, after all, “teenagers are just a pain.” This line of reasoning has got to go. Kids – of all ages – need their parents. It’s just that as they get older, they need them in different ways. We intuitively grasp that preschoolers need not be parented as infants are, and that grade-schoolers can do more for themselves than when they were younger; why must burgeoning autonomy in the last part of childhood – adolescence – feared?

“Everyone is bound to rebel/Everyone will have a Prodigal Son experience.” Is this true? It certainly wouldn’t seem so from reading the New Testament, including the passage where that story appears. Luke 15 makes more of a statement about the Father – that his love will never be exhausted, that he rejoices when a sinner repents – than it does about us. And why would Paul and the other NT letter writers bother to exhort their recipients to grow, to persevere, to avoid sinful behavior, if straying from the Lord was the norm, even expected? That doesn’t wash, but this myth causes us to shrug when kids begin to make poor choices or surround themselves with bad influences. We can promote better alternatives for them, and we should believe the best in them. To do otherwise is a bad gamble.

“It’s really no big deal if kids leave the church after graduating high school – someday they’ll come back.” This one’s related to the previous one, but it’s demonstrably untrue. Those who walk away from their faith while in college – either because the seed was never planted while they were in our care or the plant never took root or because the world lured them away – are by and large not coming back to churches. Those who are usually do so after they’ve gotten married and had children. In the meantime, the critical formative years of late adolescence and early adulthood are shaped by the priorities and values of the secular world. Think of it: how many life-shaping decisions did you make between the ages of 18 and 28? And how many of those decisions would you have made differently if God had been in the picture? It won’t do for us to mortgage kids’ futures by adopting an “Eh,” stance when it comes to their spiritual growth. Being firmly rooted in the faith is an imperative for kids before they leave high school. No, we can’t force it and shouldn’t try. But if we’re not giving our best efforts to come alongside kids while we have the chance, we’re missing the golden opportunity.

The Apostle Paul didn’t shrug off the responsibility or urgency of nurturing those he’d led to Christ. To the church at Corinth, he wrote, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some,” to the Ephesians and the Colossians he urged, “Make the most of every opportunity.” You do not see him saying, “Now that you have Christ, I fully expect that you will abandon everything I’ve taught you, return to your former lives, and then maybe possibly come back to him in the end – so I’m not worried.” No – Paul believed that redemption was an all-consuming work and that growth and maturity should be expected.

What is our expectation when God is infused in the life of the family? The Bible teaches us to be realistic about humans’ potential – we are fallen and incomplete, after all – but not pessimistic. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” When parents believe rebellion and abandoning faith is a sure stop on their kid’s life journey, and when churches ratify these myths, we are aiming too low – a royal whiff.

A Royal Myth

Quick question: If a couple lives together before they get married, does this increase or decrease the chance of later divorcing? If you said “increase”, you’re right: studies show that cohabitation does not ensure marital success, particularly if the reason for living together is to “test the waters” before marriage. Now, someone needs to tell Piers Morgan.

The CNN host, who took over Larry King’s timeslot, was interviewing actress Jane Seymour on the royal wedding of Wiliam and Kate last week when he made the observation that William’s parents were 13 years apart in age, and that because of Diana’s inexperience (read between the lines here), this doomed the relationship. Whereas, he continued, Kate and William faced a much brighter future because they’d lived together. Times have changed, he observed, and this is for the better: William and Kate are protected from the buyer’s remorse that afflicted Williams’ dad.

It’s a nice theory for why Charles and Di didn’t work out, and it’s utterly false. That is, apart from that royal match that turned into a royal mess (and who will ever know precisely what went wrong?), cohabitation simply does not immunize couples against later difficulties in their marriage. The idea that “test driving” a relationship ensures a better marriage is a myth.

But it’s a persistent myth, in part because it’s easier to acquiesce to the culture than to be counter-cultural, and because beliefs help us organize our world. If we are determined to believe that humans are getting smarter and modernity is trending us toward greater happiness and peace, even in our relationships, then believing the myth of premarital cohabitation fits. As the thinking goes, of course it’s better for couples to live together before they get married – and that happens to be the way things are going anyhow.

We don’t believe them because they’re myths; we believe them because they work for us. And that’s unfortunate, because they cause us to buy into what will in fact make us less happy in our relationships.

Here are three other persistent myths that I think oppress families in their effort to spiritually nurture kids:

“Parents and teenage kids are bound to be at odds.” This is another way of saying, “Parenting a teenager is war.” I wholeheartedly disagree, and the more families I meet where that isn’t the case, the more harmful I believe this myth is. Parents who buy it adopt a warlike stance, dreading their kids growing up (when they should be welcoming it and celebrating it) and expecting the worst from their kid because, after all, “teenagers are just a pain.” This line of reasoning has got to go. Kids – of all ages – need their parents. It’s just that as they get older, they need them in different ways. We intuitively grasp that preschoolers need not be parented as infants are, and that grade-schoolers can do more for themselves than when they were younger; why is burgeoning autonomy in the last part of childhood – adolescence – feared?

“Everyone is bound to rebel/Everyone will have a Prodigal Son experience.” Is this true? It certainly wouldn’t seem so from reading the New Testament, including the passage where that story appears. Luke 15 makes more of a statement about the Father – that his love will never be exhausted, that he rejoices when a sinner repents – than it does about us. And why would Paul and the other NT letter writers bother to exhort their recipients to grow, to persevere, to avoid sinful behavior, if straying from the Lord was the norm, even expected? That doesn’t wash, but this myth causes us to shrug when kids begin to make poor choices or surround themselves with bad influences. We can promote better alternatives for them, and we should believe the best in them. To do otherwise is a bad gamble.

“It’s really no big deal if kids leave the church after graduating high school – someday they’ll come back.” This one’s related to the previous one, but it’s demonstrably untrue. Those who walk away from their faith while in college – either because the seed was never planted while they were in our care or the plant never took root or because the world lured them away – are by and large not coming back to churches. Those who are usually do so after they’ve gotten married and had children. In the meantime, the critical formative years of late adolescence and early adulthood are shaped by the priorities and values of the secular world. Think of it: how many life-shaping decisions did you make between the ages of 18 and 28? And how many of those decisions would you have made differently if God had been in the picture? It won’t do for us to mortgage kids’ futures by adopting an “Eh,” stance when it comes to their spiritual growth. Being firmly rooted in the faith is an imperative for kids before they leave high school. No, we can’t force it and shouldn’t try. But if we’re not giving our best efforts to come alongside kids while we have the chance, we’re missing the golden opportunity.

The Apostle Paul didn’t shrug off the responsibility or urgency of nurturing those he’d led to Christ. To the church at Corinth, he wrote, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some,” to the Ephesians and the Colossians he urged, “Make the most of every opportunity.” You do not see him saying, “Now that you have Christ, I fully expect that you will abandon everything I’ve taught you, return to your former lives, and then maybe possibly come back to him in the end – so I’m not worried.” No – Paul believed that redemption was an all-consuming work and that growth and maturity should be expected.

What is our expectation when God is infused in the life of the family? The Bible teaches us to be realistic about humans’ potential – we are fallen and incomplete, after all – but not pessimistic. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” When parents believe rebellion and faithlessness is a sure stop on their kid’s life journey, and when churches ratify these myths, we are aiming too low – a royal whiff.

Something New

Next weekend we begin piloting something new in 4th-6th grade: an automated check-in system. The benefits to you will ultimately be a streamlined check-in process. The benefits to us will be better tracking of kids' attendance - and a streamlined check-in process. Our hope is that sometime in the not-too-distant future, long check-in lines (for all ages) will be a thing of the past.

To get the system off the ground, we're asking for your help. For starters, anytime you implement a new system - especially if it's technology-based - there are bound to be hiccups. This system will rely on our computers, network, and printers running as they should. While there's no reason to believe they won't, tech problems have a way of surfacing at the 11th hour.

Secondly, the easiest way kids & families will access the check-in system is by entering their phone number. We can also look up kids by last name, but phone number is far faster. So - does your kid know your phone number?

And which number? Good question. The answer is, whichever number(s) we have on file for you. Depending on when you first registered your child (which could have been many years ago!), we may have a home phone, cell phone, or both listed for you. Not to worry - we will have lists of all the kids cross-referenced with the phone number we have on file. But ultimately, the phone number will be the quickest way to check-in.

In the beginning, anyhow. Well down the road our hope is to allow you to use a barcode, like you might at the library or the gym, to check-in. Before we get there, we need to iron out any wrinkles in the system as it is.

Here's what the "new" check-in system will look like (and remember, this is only being implemented in 4th-6th grade to begin with; a full children's ministry rollout is a few months away):

1. Kids will arrive and give the check-in volunteer the last seven digits of their phone number.

2. A screen for your family will pop-up, showing any kids in 4th-6th grade.

3. The check-in volunteer will click next to the name of the kids checking in, and -

4. At the same time, the printer will spit out a fully printed nametag, containing the kid's name, the age group, and their small group number.

And that's it! Quick and efficient, the program also creates electronic records for us, so we can look back at individual attendance records and patterns. Currently we have a team of volunteers who takes the paper check-in packets from the weekends and enters the attendance into our database by hand. Needless to say, we are eager to find a quicker way to do that.

Next weekend, the automated system will be set up for 4th-6th graders in the lobby outside our room. If kids forget to come upstairs, they can still do paper check-in downstairs. Beginning the weekend of March 19-20, we hope to have the system fully implemented & operational upstairs.

Again, your patience with us during a period of change is much appreciated. We know that this upgrade will be a great thing in the long run.

Is It All a Race to Nowhere?

If you've ever fought with your kid over homework, stressed about whether they'll get into a good college someday, or worried about the strain on one of your older children's health because of the demands of middle or high school, then you owe it to yourself to see a new documentary titled, "Race to Nowhere".

It remains to be seen if the film will become what it aims to be, which is a game-changer. Before that will happen, it needs to be a conversation starter. And it will give you a lot to think about.

Consider the following "nuggets" pulled from the film (I am quoting from some rough notes I took while watching it, so the transcription may not be exact):

• "Everybody talks about getting their kid into the best school. There is no "best school"; what you should be looking for is the best match."
• On college kids who had to check into stress clinics to recover from the performance stress at the end of academic terms: one college official cites parents who express shock - "How could this happen? They're a good kid." And he answers them, "No, they're a good performer. You never knew if they were a good kid."
• On communities that pride themselves on high test scores at schools: "Community is not about boasting that all is right with the world. Community is like being family; it's being yourself."

"Race to Nowhere" was produced by Vicki Abeles, a mom from Northern California who observed the toll performance pressure was taking on her kids. After her 12-year-old daughter was rushed to the hospital with stress-related illness, she began to investigate what exactly was happening in schools to stress kids out - and more importantly, to question whether it was all worth it.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of the film is when her 3rd grade son testifies to the headaches and stomachaches he feels when he's "stressed out". Um, excuse me? Third-graders should not be "stressed out" - ever. To feel stress is to be aware that someone else is holding performance expectations over you. That's inappropriate enough for a kid of that age, but "stressed out" implies that the pressure has gone on long enough that the target of the stress - the kid - is starting to break down.

The examples in the film get more grim from there. You meet a girl who discovered she could stay up later (and "get so much done") if she didn't eat. She developed anorexia. After a stint at a clinic, she returned to her school, only to be asked by the principal to leave: her weight loss was making other students and teachers worried about her.

It all leads up to the story of 13-year-old Devon Marvin. The 8th grade honor roll student from Danville took her own life when the pressure got to be too much. She was pushed over the edge by a bad grade on a math test.

But it isn't just the effects of stress on students that this film addresses. "Race to Nowhere" also sheds light on high-stakes testing, the college entrance game, the loss of teacher creativity and flexibility (because their jobs have been narrowed to test preparation), the use of drugs by students to stay alert and to relax, and the prevalence of cheating. It barely touches on the industry of SAT test prep, which uses old exams to teach kids "strategies" for gaming the test, turning what should be a measure of student academic potential into another crude and cynical exercise in outperforming an exam. Also alluded to is the dismal reality that vast numbers of high school students admitted to Cal State schools end up needing to take remedial courses. In other words, despite their high test scores and impressive GPAs, they really aren't as smart or proficient as those measures seem to indicate.

And - most importantly - they don't love to learn. School becomes just a joyless enterprise. As one boy in the film describes it, he crams as much information into his brain as he can in preparation for a test, and then, "Two hours later - it's gone." And this causes idealistic young teachers to either harden and accommodate to what the system demands of them, or quit. As a former teacher who got tired of chasing down missing assignments and giving grades, I could identify with the young female teacher interviewed in the film, who became so disgusted with the lack of real learning that was happening that she decided to resign.

It isn't hard to understand why it's gotten to this. Simple economics and demographics paint a grim picture: the Baby Boomers had kids, and there were lots of them. But colleges only have so much room, so competition builds. As the next kid achieves a 4.2 GPA on the strength of his two Advanced Placement courses, your kid suddenly needs a 4.3 and three AP's in order to maintain an advantage. Meanwhile, every parent is keenly aware of the kind of income their kid will need to have in order to have a better life than they do. (And what parent doesn't want that?) The film doesn't go so far as to question whether kids will forever be able to live more affluently than their parents, but it begs the question.

In the end, "Race to Nowhere" is a call to reevaluation and redefinition: what do we mean when we say someone is a "good student" who attends a "good school" with "good teachers"? What should "good grades" represent? But most importantly, what is it all for? The film isn't balanced - and that's the point. The subtitle of "Race to Nowhere" is "The Dark Side of America's Achievement Culture." Clearly, Director Abeles wants us to agree with her that all of this - the super-charged, achieve-at-any-cost, outperform-the-next-kid system that is American education - is damaging to kids and needs to be rethought.

The documentary is thought-provoking, but it stops just short of being compelling. Right now it is being screened at select showings across the country. Apparently a nationwide release is set for March, but the beauty of the early screenings has been that they are all sponsored by organizations which promise to facilitate dialogue sessions as part of the showing. The screening I attended was at Carrillo Elementary, and judging from parents' comments after the film, it was apparent that the movie struck a chord with most of them. But the overall thrust of the film, which is hinted at in the title, is muted and understated. So, for instance, our discussion group spent most of its time talking over whether kids should be given so much homework and pushed to be involved in after school clubs and sports. These are issues broached in the film, to be sure, but they are not the main point, which is that the seeds of over-achievement that are planted in elementary school end up leading...well, to nowhere.

And it is here that Christians should take note, first of all because some of us have unwittingly contributed to a high-stakes culture and not been counter-cultural enough, but also because "Race to Nowhere" can prompt some existential questions about, say, the purpose of life and the value of the mind and the importance of childhood and the meaning of "success". The film doesn't offer answers to any of those questions, from a Christian perspective or another other perspective, but if you take its message to its logical conclusion, those questions are where you end up.

Jesus said, "What good is it for you to gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit your soul?" We should still be asking that question today. And it shouldn't take dangerous threats to our kids' physical health, their self-concepts, and their sanity to get us there.

"Race to Nowhere" is currently showing at select screenings. An early December showing in Carlsbad sold out; another showing for January 6 has also sold out. But check www.racetonowhere.com/screenings for info on other scheduled screenings (for instance, Jan. 12 in Rancho Santa Fe; the film has also been shown in San Diego and Orange County), which continue to be added.

Families Matter

Why hold a FallLaunch for parents on maximizing spiritual influence? Why offer a PG-13 class, equipping parents to guide a young adolescent? Why teach a five-week overview of the Bible for parents & kids to take together?

Simply, because if we care about kids, we have to.

More precisely, if we take seriously the responsibility we've been given to lead kids to faith and through faith, we have to pay attention to the facts about relative influence. "Relative influence" doesn't refer to the fact that families have more influence than churches - but it could! Because in a study by Search Institute, when teenagers were asked who had most influenced the faith they had, "parents" was the #1 response - ahead of church programs, youth ministers, or peers.

That's something to think about. But we need to do more than just think about it. We - churches and parents - need to consider the implications. Here's the truth: church programming is probably better than it's ever been for children and youth. There is a ton of published material out there for groups of all sizes, addressing every topic under the sun. Five years ago the amount of curriculum and devotional materials specifically for preteens was pretty sparse. No longer. Churches and what we do are important. But we are not enough.

Consider: A kid who came to church every weekend and attended our midweek program every single week would have about 111 hours invested at the church each year. By contrast, they spend over 1,000 hours in school per year, and - ready? - about 4 hours watching TV and more than 7.5 hours using all forms of electronic media on a typical day (for kids 8-18, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). So with packed schedules, how can parents possibly make a difference?

The answer is that parents set the context of a kid's whole life, and most importantly, they are the ones available when the opportunity for spiritual influence arises. One formal study of parent-child "God talks" found that discussion of spiritual matters was most likely to occur randomly, and not on the way to and from religious services or activities. It seems churches can do all they want to try to make spiritual dialogue happen inside their walls (and they sometimes succeed), but for the most part, kids will talk when they're good and ready! And those times tend to fall among the everyday experiences of life: in the car on the way to school, at mealtimes and bedtimes, while on vacation, during commercial breaks of TV shows, and so on. Families matter because parents are consistently there.

That's not to say that churches don't have a role. We have an important one. But it's wrong to think of kids as empty vessels, who will only think about the things we give them to think about and ask about the things we happen to be talking about. Kids' minds are always at work trying to make sense of the world they live in, and parents, by their proximity, are in perfect position to be the day-to-day leaders.

Imagine for a minute that you were going to tend to your kid's spiritual health the same way you tend to their physical health. What would that look like?

First, you'd recognize that kids are resilient. We don't have to be perfect in the way that we nurture, but we shouldn't be totally negligent, either. Somewhere between "whatever doesn't kill 'em, makes 'em stronger" and perfectionist parenting lies a happy medium, where we do our best with what we have and recognize that one person's efforts won't make or break a kid spiritually.

Still, that wouldn't keep you from bringing your child in for doctor's visits. It wouldn't stop you from giving your kid medicine and rest when they are sick. In the same way, we're right to expose kids to good church programming, to use the counseling and support group resources of a church when needed. It's good to make regular church attendance part of the routine of your family, and for your kid to become known by other kids and leaders.

But if you left the doctor's office and then returned to a steady diet of junk food, that'd be pretty counterproductive. Because you know and recognize that good health is in your hands, a product of the decisions you make day in and day out. You'd buy healthy foods and learn how to prepare healthy meals. You'd encourage your child to get adequate exercise, and rest. As best you could, you'd try to incorporate good health habits into the rhythm of your family's life. And you'd stay up on what promotes health, talking to others who care about what you care about, reading articles and books.

So it is with spiritual health. Our health - bodily and spiritually - depends on the decisions we make, which become habits. What are the habits parents should develop with their kids to promote a spiritually healthy family, and what's just a waste of time? How do we distinguish between spiritual growth and moral development? How do we get kids to want the things we want them to? In short, how do we nurture their hearts?

These questions are what we'll begin to tackle on Wednesday night at FallLaunch, a program which will be repeated in identical form on Sunday, September 19. We're buying dinner (lunch for the 19th) and we'll even care for your kids.

Everyone's time is limited. Let's spend it focusing on questions that matter, which ultimately are not "Which game should we play in class Sunday?" or "What's a new song the kids will like to sing?" The one that matters is, "Given the access and position a mom or dad holds, what can they do to really make a difference in nurturing faithful, faith-filled kids?"

Let's Get This Ball...Spinning? part two

Last week I referred to a basketball spinning on someone's finger as a metaphor for the type of relationship we should want our kids to have with God. And I suggested that much of what we try to do - in ministering to kids and in parenting them - stops short of this ultimate goal. Everything we do, if we intend it to be spiritually nurturing, should either encourage kids to set the ball on their finger, or impart a little extra momentum to the ball if it's already spinning.

Truth is, there's some cool things happening with a spinning ball that, once understood, make for some helpful metaphors for understanding kids' spiritual lives:

1. To begin with, ask yourself this question: Is spinning a basketball on your finger easy, or hard? And the answer, of course, depends on how much practice you've had. Anyone who tries that trick for the first time finds it extremely challenging - particularly if you are young and lack coordination. Most people do not "succeed" when they first attempt it. However, the longer someone has worked at it, the more effortless it (apparently) becomes. People who are very good at this can do other things while spinning the ball: walking, talking, spinning a second ball with the other hand.

What we can learn: While it's not always true that those who have been Christians the longest make for the strongest Christians, there is some truth to the fact that the more practiced you become in spiritual habits and disciplines, the easier it is to keep them up. And why? Because they become habits. And habits, by definition, are things we don't need to think about or force ourselves to do, because they've become second nature. Hebrews 5:14 gives a good example of this when it refers to mature believers as those who, by constant use (that is, consistent righteous behavior), have trained themselves to recognize good from evil.

We do kids a favor when we teach them that a Christian life is just that, a life, and it is lifelong, and it is forever. To keep God and things of spiritual value from being crowded out of the picture takes vigilance. We are right to teach kids that salvation is a free gift of God, but we don't teach enough on the work (and it is work, at first) of following him, learning obedience, setting aside the time to be with him, making it a habit to ask (consciously at first, then subconsciously): "What would Jesus do?" The great thing is that the habit of following Jesus can be developed, and once developed, it works in our favor, because any habit - good or bad - is hard to break.

2. Which brings us to another feature of the spinning ball: inertia. Inertia refers to an object's tendency to remain either in motion, or at rest. Specifically, with a basketball, there is rotational inertia causing it to continue spinning round and round. When the ball loses its inertia, it slows and then quickly falls. There isn't a lot of in-between - no such thing as spinning at medium speed. The ball either spins fast, or it doesn't spin at all.

What we can learn: In the same way, our spiritual lives and those of kids tend to either be in motion and on-track, or lackluster and nearly dead. As one pastor I knew liked to say, "If you don't grow, you will go - away from the Lord." It's hard to operate on spiritual half-throttle. Either you are experiencing spiritual growth - palpable, radical growth - or you aren't. But one leap tends to build on another, and then another. The lesson, I think, is pretty clear: we should teach kids to seek the active work of God in their lives, and to expect it. No, life will not be spent on the mountain tops. Recognizing and participating in the work of God in your life is no shield against hard times. It is, however, the ongoing assent to the process of being shaped and formed and built into Christ's likeness - whether through victorious times or challenging ones.

3. Why that ball eventually slows brings us to another principle: the effect of friction. It cannot be totally avoided. Sooner or later, the contact between a finger and the ball slows the ball down, so that regardless of how much inertia it has at any given time, we can predict that the ball is on its way to stopping.

What we can learn: Friction operates in a way very similar to sin. Kids can grasp this: sin drags everything down. Even nice people sin. Even spiritual champions sin. Our tendencies, even in the spiritually strongest of us, will eventually be toward selfishness, greed, envy, and pride. "So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" (1 Cor. 10:12) No matter how far we've advanced toward spiritual maturity, temptation and the world and the flesh are working against us. And they will win...but only kind of. That's where the power of the resurrection comes in. A Jesus who's been raised from the dead makes the eventual perfection and you and me possible. What can't be done now - a basketball that spins forever, a person who is perfect in all they say, think, and do - will happen one day because God's power over the grave signals the end for sin. Take away sin and eternal life becomes a reality. Take away friction and the ball spins forever. In the meantime, just as a strong finger, held perfectly straight, supports the ball's inertia, we do our best to minimize the amount of sin that we allow in our lives by keeping ourselves strong, sharp, and focused on the purpose of our lives.

4. To counteract friction, every spinning ball needs a little help to keep it going. This help takes the form of a push - but not just any push. If handled clumsily, the ball will come unbalanced and fly off the finger that's supporting it. Instead, the push needs to support the ball where its rotation appears to be weakening, and it needs to move in the same direction but at a slightly faster speed than the ball is already going.

What we can learn: Don Ratcliff has observed in his new book ChildFaith: Experiencing God and Spiritual Growth with your Children that we too often look for and listen to kids' programmed responses about God and pay little attention to their spontaneous ones. In other words, the questions they ask and comments they make that we haven't solicited often give us the best insight into a particular child's theology and spiritual vitality. Very often we don't teach to their interests because we are afraid we won't cover "the important material", when in fact what's "important" is whatever information speaks to things they're already thinking about.

The best spiritual nurture does not impose itself, but comes alongside what is already happening, helping kids to make sense of it (for example, giving them a spiritual vocabulary) and encouraging them to keep doing whatever it is they are doing that has been good for their spiritual growth. We need to be really careful that the help we give kids in their spiritual lives is just that - help - and that it is sensitive to what they've experienced of God and where God is trying to grow them. And, just as the push needs to be slightly faster than the ball is already rotating, we need to be great spiritual leaders and to put great spiritual leaders into our kids' lives.

5. It is one thing to talk about or to demonstrate how to spin a ball on someone's finger; it is entirely something else to get them to do it themselves. That is the product of practice - a lot of self-doing. If we think that hours and hours spent watching others spin the ball will make someone better at it, we're fooling ourselves. People need to grab the ball and go, and fail, and try again, and they may need encouragement to try it enough times to where it really sticks.

What we can learn: Strong Christianity is built by doing. We must give kids opportunities to live out the faith, because there is a point beyond which demonstration and explanation stalls. Ultimately, we can't practice Christianity for our kids, though we might be comforted to think so. They own their own faith. It is nurtured by what they do.

Unfortunately though, unless a robust understanding of what a Christian "does" and ought to do is held, we can quickly push kids into community service work that lacks any spiritual dimension. The fact is, as we live out our faith, some of the doing is inner and vertical - what might actually appear to outsiders as inaction. A person who wants to change the world but has no regard for spiritual things cannot make sense of Martin Luther's statement that whenever he faced a busy day, he was unable to make any progress unless he spent three hours in prayer. But a spiritually mature person begins to understand. Yet another dimension of our spirituality is the horizontal one - our relationships with one another. We "do" Christianity when we enter into relationships and strive to do them right, overcoming isolation and alienation and growing into real relationships. The third aspect involves our service to the rest of the world, but the value of that is cheapened if it is not accompanied by a heart for God and a heart for others.

So, a rounded approach to nurturing kids' spirituality is called for. There are no "just" answers, as in:

• "Kids just need to go to Mexico and serve at an orphanage. That will open their eyes to how much they have." Missions trips are important, yes; but they alone do not fuel sustained spiritual growth.
• "Kids just need to learn the Bible. Once they have the basics, that will get them ready for what they'll face as adults." Bible knowledge can contribute to spiritual maturity; but merely knowing lots of facts divorced from their contexts really does not produce kids who are devoted to God.
• "Kids just need to have a church that they love going to." As a professional in ministry, it's hard for me to disagree. But, allegiance to a church program alone does not yield spiritual maturity.

Kids need lots of things; there is no magic bullet. We do well to take this holistic view of what it is to be spiritually healthy, and to help kids attend to their personal relationship with God, their day-to-day relationships with family and friends, and their personal sense of calling and service.

6. The final thing a spinning ball does is attract a lot of attention! And while there may be recognition that the person holding the ball is responsible, peoples focus is generally drawn to the ball itself.

What we can learn: Ideally, when a kid is really growing spiritually and living out what they believe, people will be drawn to what they see. The overflow of a Christian life should leave a memorable footprint, as qualities like love, care, kindness, mercy, and gentleness impact the recipient long after the one who acted in that way is out of the picture: the gift outlasts the giver.

Can we create spiritual growth in kids? No, we can't create it, anymore than we can coax a basketball up onto someone's finger all by itself. Can we manage it for them, so that they live spiritual lives because of our fervor or our example? No - the best we can do is cast compelling vision by the way we live. And we can do more, by encouraging kids to develop the sorts of lifelong habits and practices that make their souls fertile ground for God's spirit. When we recognize that God is already at work, we are more likely to help in ways that actually are help, that compliment the work that is being done rather than disrupt it. I look forward to this year of ministry, and the many opportunities we will have together to impart a little extra spin to the ball, so that it might continue ever-more gracefully and forcefully, spurring our kids on to great outward acts of faith, and inspiring onlookers to want the same.

Let's Get This Ball...Spinning?

To the parents of new fourth graders, welcome. This is a blog where I bandy about ideas on ministry to children and adolescents, but specifically preteens. I have just completed ten weeks of coursework on the subject of family ministry, namely the consideration of how churches ought to help families become the most nurturing places they can be. The course involved lots and lots of reading, observation of other churches, consultation with fellow ministry professionals, exposure to multiple models of family programming, and development of curriculum. The byproduct, of course, was extended reflection on the unique role that families and churches each play in promoting the development of faith-filled kids, and what sort of balance actually constitutes partnership. And for me, now having reached the end, one question stands out: How can we get kids to initiate and maintain dynamic, personal relationships with God?

This question bedevils youth pastors and children's pastors, parents, Christian educators and, more and more, senior pastors, as we cope with the dismaying reality that between half and three-quarters of young people who are raised in the church will leave when they get to college. That fact motivates us all to do better by our kids and teenagers (even though we have slightly different reasons: ministry folks are alarmed by this statistic for what it says about their programming. Parents are alarmed because their kid could be in the 50-75% who walk away.).

The answer isn't simple. But one of the reasons we fail to make progress towards an answer is that we spend a lot of time seeking answers to the wrong questions. The question above - how can we get kids to initiate and maintain dynamic, personal relationships with God? - is the question. Here's why.

As Christians, we believe the hope of humanity lies in this thing called redemption, and that just as all things were created good, all things also groan under the yoke of sin, yearning for liberation and transformation back into their original design. "All things" includes people, of course, but also groups of people: families, marriages, communities, friendships, governments, cultures. So while we insist on the value of knowing a personal savior, we are not unaware that the very contexts people live in - their primary relationships - are sometimes themselves what is keeping an individual from knowing Christ and loving him fully.

So a Christian approach to the healing of humanity necessarily centers on personal redemption: Does this man or woman, boy or girl, believe in (trust in) the finished work of Jesus Christ - his death and resurrection - for the forgiveness of their sins? We long to see people reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:19-20). Sometimes this new life will give them strength to endure or new resources to work through life challenges: a troubled marriage, strained friendships, the loss of a job, bad habits, personal unhealth. Other times, those are hurdles people need help clearing so that they may experience the goodness of God more fully.

Ultimately, we want people to experience (and re-experience, and re-experience...) reconciliation with God. To live in a state of grace. To walk by faith. All different ways of saying the same thing. In every case, the relationship with God - personal, intimate, and meaningful - is the inner engine that fuels the outward blessing.

So where - specifically when it comes to youth and children - are we falling short? Why, despite our best efforts and best intentions, do kids fall away from churches in droves once they get to college?

I'm going to suggest, this week and next, an answer by way of a metaphor: The ball keeps falling off the finger.

It's not that we're not caring. It's not that we don't have great intentions. It's that our efforts - in churches and in homes - inhabit the periphery of second- or third-tier issues and never connect those all the way to the target, which is inhabited by our central question: How can we get kids to initiate and maintain a dynamic, personal relationship with God?

We miss in two directions. Some church programs and Christian parenting books (and consequently, Christian parenting practices) focus on manufacturing good fruit. The unspoken message is: with the right amount of self-discipline you, too, can pretty much live the way God wants you to - a message which is decidedly not the gospel. The other misdirection is harder to detect: we either attack things that might stand in the way of kids' relationship with God, or we provide good, wholesome events and programs that point them in the direction of Christ, but we fail to carry the ball across the goal line. More specfically, we fail to make the hand-off so that kids can carry the ball across the goal line.

What do I mean? A few examples: Sunday schools abound with lessons on the importance of being nice, kind, generous, etc., to other people. But that's a little too simple. Any Christian perspective on "being good" must take into account the God who made us good, that our ability to do good comes from God, the purpose of being good, the potential of goodness to altar our character, and the importance of obedience to the good even when we don't feel like it. Ultimately, a lesson on goodness must equip and challenge kids to go out and do good, then to reflect and share how that experience impacted their relationship with a transcendent and all-good God. But that almost never happens. We stop at, "It's wrong to be mean to people."

Or we might educate parents on shielding their kids from violent or sexually explicit media content. We might put literature in your hands that teaches you how to use filtering software and to block certain TV programs, or we might recommend alternative sources of movies and music. Ultimately, though, if it fails to nurture kids' spiritual relationship with God (that is, if our kids don't enjoy and appreciate God more), all we've done is shield them from bad stuff. Not a wrong intention in and of itself, but incomplete - a peripheral issue - if our real desire is to see them in a life-giving relationship with God.

Some national youth and children's ministries have "worldview" in their crosshairs. They pump out product after product aimed at getting kids to adopt a worldview that believes in the concept of objective truth. But they aren't always careful or successful in leading kids through the "Now that..." step: Now that you understand that there is objective truth, how can we help you get closer to the One who gave it? Kids might become more morally discerning or morally dogmatic, but they aren't necessarily any closer to God.

Or, we might offer terrific church programming where everyone is safe and happy and the pizza shows up on time and the music is great and kids laugh and make new friends...but in the end, we haven't offered much that a secular youth-serving organization could have done. Our ministry has been guilty of that at times. Are we attentive to nurturing the seed that was planted? Honestly, no. It's all we can do to see an event through to its conclusion, and we're grateful when the last kid gets picked up. Don't get me wrong. I think care, programming, relationships, and a fun environment all matter. But properly understood, they are means to an end. And God is the end.

The answer, by the way, is not to be spiritually ham-handed. Kids see through that. They know when you're layering on spiritual language or practice that doesn't fit with the context or is inauthentic. Sometimes a fun bowling event or a fishing trip can be allowed to be just that. Often kids are more profoundly affected when adults simply "be church" rather than "have church".

By choice, I am an optimist. I do think the efforts families and churches make for the good of kids are all useful, and I don't want to see them go away. But could we be more complete in ensuring that we are always driving toward the ultimate goal? Yes, we could. A lot of it involves consciously driving ourselves back to the question that matters: Is this getting kids to initiate and maintain dynamic, personal relationships with God?

So here's the metaphor: a vibrant spiritual life, one that overflows into all other aspects of life, is like a basketball spinning on someone's finger. I myself am not very good at that trick. But when I do sometimes get it to work, it's amazing to me how effortless it is. Which is itself an illusion: there's a great deal of effort involved in getting the ball spinning and keeping it spinning, but it doesn't look like it. It just looks and feels amazing. Kind of like a vibrant spiritual life. Therefore, as we minister to kids and adolescents, I think our eye should be on getting, and keeping, that ball spinning. Spinning with such ease that a child's relationship with God becomes almost second-nature. Spinning with such force that its existence alters their habits, relationships, mindset, future plans, and affections.

But, the ball rarely spins and keeps spinning the first time the trick is tried. And it never keeps spinning wholly on its own. There are lots of false starts, and a constant need to supply the energy that will keep it going. So it is with kids as they develop a spiritual life. Every one of our attempts to "help" should have the ultimate aim of getting that ball spinning on their finger. Demonstration can be important, but for the most part, kids will benefit when we hand the ball to them and work with them on getting it to spin on their own finger.

I've written in this space before that kids are like diamonds: successful formation is the product of consistent heat and pressure over a long period of time. We might well ask ourselves: is our ministry to kids, in homes (through parenting) and in the church (through ministry programs), having the effect of getting that ball spinning?

(to be continued)