Kids Need Choices

I think my favorite moment at our New Year’s Eve event (well, besides witnessing normally reserved kids get down with “Just Dance” on Wii) was when we handed each kid $9 and said, “You have a decision to make.” And the next five minutes was filled with something we don’t see often enough: kids having to think meaningfully about how to allocate scarce resources among unlimited needs.

And it was my favorite because kids learned powerful lessons in doing that, both about what they could do, and also what they couldn’t do. They learned this by having to exercise choices, something that is often sorely lacking in kids’ lives. We have so sanitized their world in the name of being a “child-friendly” society that I wonder if we’ve stunted their development by not making them – or allowing them to – do things for themselves.

The exercise in making donations was part of “A New Year for a New World” where we told the kids that 25% of their $40 registration would be given away. We gathered the kids and showed them four short videos about organizations and people they could give their money to, and then released them to do it. And when you’re 10, deciding whether the group that drills clean water wells should get 3 of your dollars or 4 of your dollars is an important decision.

Making decisions is a developmental imperative. I think it’s important for spiritual development as well. Here’s why. In the evangelical church especially, we are decision-focused: we want kids to make a decision to follow Jesus. Or, as an astute 15-year-old once said to me, “I think becoming a Christian is one decision for Jesus; but living as a Christian is like a million decisions for Jesus.” But here’s the key: how can we expect kids to make (the one decision) and stick with a decision for Jesus (the million decisions) if they are unaccustomed to and unpracticed at making decisions in every other area of their lives?

While we don’t deny that God works in the hearts of those who receive him, Christians should not be so naïve as to believe that continued obedience is simply a given. Look how the disciples struggled. Look at how often Paul had to exhort the new believers to “Stand firm” and to obey. People – kids included – will either make strong decisions on their own, or they will remain at the mercy of other people to make decisions for them. And in my experience, it’s the kids who can’t make decisions (because they’re over-managed and aren’t allowed to) who are most susceptible to peer pressure as teenagers. And why not? They’ve always looked to someone else to define their identity, to tell them what to do, to tell them what to value and what to think.

Strong decision making grows out of the opportunity to make meaningful decisions. Give kids choices – in every sphere of life. If they get good at making decisions where the outcome doesn’t matter much, chances are that they’ll also make decisions when the outcome matters a lot.

And you might be wondering, “What about the other dollar?” They gave away nine that night, but the tenth dollar went home with them. We simply told them they could use it to spend it on themselves, or to give it away, or to use it to make more money. The decision was up to them. And that’s a good thing.

A New Year for A New World

I always looked forward to the start of a new school year when I was a kid. To me, being in a new grade, in a new classroom, with a different set of kids than I was with the year before was a chance for a "new start". I remember thinking, "Maybe this year will be different than last year." I don't know exactly what difference I was looking for, but a fresh page of life seems to brim with possibilities.

That's kind of how we feel at the start of a new year, isn't it? Some of us will arrive at the end of 2012 and be sorry to see it go. Others of us have been ready to put this particular year behind us for some time. Whatever the case, this January 1 like every January 1 will carry a sense of "new beginnings" with it.

And then? Haha - after a few weeks, the joke's on us! Once we discover that a new year hasn't magically strengthened our willpower, that we still have the same bad habits and hindrances and burdens and tendencies (because wherever you go, there you are - still) and the year may be new, but much remains the same.

That's because many of us live life as if it were luck: "Maybe I'll win the lottery", "Maybe I'll meet the love of my life", "Maybe I'll land the perfect job/buy the perfect house/discover the secret to happiness" and we ignore the fact that Christians, of all people, should not be creatures of fate.

Christians do stuff. (I know, profound.) Sin and heartache and exploitation and destructiveness are on the move, so we need to be on the move against it. And what did Jesus say? That the gates of hell would not prevail against His church.

I've been thinking a lot about efforts to change the world lately, as we gear up for a first-time event with our 4th-6th graders called "A New Year for a New World" on New Year's Eve. Is there something distinctive about Christian efforts at world change? Is there something that makes Christ necessary in all of it? Or can any well-intentioned person make the same impact? After all, it's the Holiday Season, and for every recent story of tragedy or of a family who can't afford Christmas, we're bound to hear one about someone who stepped up to make things happy for them.

But that's the problem with these headline-grabbing relief efforts - they're short-term, and they're focused on restoring happiness. Sometimes I wonder if it's our happiness that's really in view. As in, "Oh, I can't bear to see those poor people suffering...let me do something for them," and then we pitch in until our own feelings of discomfort go away. Don't get me wrong. People were wonderfully generous after Hurricane Katrina, and Sandy, and the earthquake in Haiti and the Tsunami in Japan. But those natural disasters have become so common (to say nothing of man-made tragedies like school shootings) we can barely keep them straight. (Remember what happened in Joplin? I didn't. Look it up.) And the Red Cross, among other organizations, does wonderful long-term recovery work at disaster sites.

But I think back to benefit dinners or concerts that have been held for people I know who got sick or injured, all the time and money and attention that got poured into a single event, and then I reflect on the fact that that person is still sick. No one gets out of the woods because of one benefit event. Meanwhile, our collective consciousness has moved on, in part because we can't stand to dwell on suffering, in part because our brains can only remember so much.

I think what God furnishes to these efforts to help the world is this. First, he elevates and has elevated and will continue to elevate the status of human beings so that we bother to notice suffering and want to help at all. Christianity (and yes, I'm partisan) really doesn't get enough credit for the impact it has had historically on human rights and dignity. The influence of Christianity helped end two particularly heinous practices that had become accepted in the Roman Empire - infanticide and child sexual abuse, established the first orphanages and hospitals, advocated for the end of slavery and more humane treatment of the mentally ill, and promoted widespread education of the populace at government expense. We take these things for granted now. Then articles like this one jolt me back into consciousness and remind me we have a long way to go.

And then, after we've convinced that we should care, he gives us the resources to care. It's one thing to drop a quarter into a panhandler's cup. It's another thing to take the time to get to know them. It's still another thing to have the perseverance and the resourcefulness and the patience to walk alongside him to better his life. A few people I know seem to have what it takes. Most of us don't.

And so what God can furnish to us (can furnish) is the promise to make us like him. And the benefit of that is that God is a giving God. He gave us the world - he didn't have to. He gave you your life - but he didn't have to. He made the earth habitable, with just the right mixture of gases in the air and tolerable temperature extremes. When we mistreated each other, he gave us another chance. When he came to earth as a person himself, we mistreated him. Again, he gave us mercy. When the power of death was dismantled, he then gave us an invitation. And he gives his Spirit, his power and nature, to those who believe in him. He gives and gives and gives. We just give - and then we need a break. A one-time act of kindness is good, and I'll take it; but a revolution of kindness is built by faithfulness, one brick at a time.

On New Year's Eve, we won't change the world. Shame on us if we communicate that "because of this night, everything is different" and the work is done. If kids don't leave feeling motivated to keep giving of themselves, we will have fallen short. All we can hope to accomplish in 16 hours is to get the ball rolling, to excite kids' spirits and awaken their imaginations to what if? And of course, at some point, we all top out in kindness. We all top out in generosity. We all top out in patience. It's at that point that we need inspiration, and we need help.

The promise of a new world is grounded in God, who in Revelation 21 tells John that he is making everything new. The hope of the world now is to bring a taste of that future into the present. That's the essence of the kingdom of God. The transposition that brings the end of the story into the middle yields some pretty radical ripple effects. It is by those effects alone that we can say another year has any hope of being "new". Otherwise it's just the same old.

The Words When There Are No Words

On Wednesday, when “that terrible thing in Oregon” was mentioned in conversation, someone else asked, “What happened in Oregon?” They hadn’t heard about the gunman who opened fire at a shopping mall outside Portland, killing two people. What’s sad is that in another week or two, lots of us will struggle to remember “what happened in Oregon?” because our attention has already been torn away, to another horrible and unfathomable shooting.

I’m referring, of course, to what happened Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut: 20 kids and 7 adults murdered in a shooting rampage that lasted only a few minutes and has no readily apparent motive. The blogosphere and social media sites exploded around 10 a.m., with more than a few of the reactions reflecting the sentiment that, “There are no words.”

That’s understandable, coming from a nation worn out by what happened twice this week, and in September in Minneapolis, and in August at Texas A&M, and in July at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and on two separate occasions this year in Wisconsin, to name a few. But, like many conclusions we grasp at when tension runs high, it’s wrong.

It turns out that there are words, plenty of them. And those words will heal us.

Words make the abstract concrete, assigning some meaning to what are otherwise just nebulous feelings. I used words like "horrible" and "unfathomable" in the first paragraph of this post, and they are clues as to how I'm processing this. Notice that, sadly, I didn't use the word "shocking". Apparently I've come to accept that "these things happen", and I hate that that's the case.

We all try to make sense of the world we live in. Kids do this too. Confusion is unsettling; clarity, comforting. Words have to be spoken at a time like this, because it’s not as if the jumble of feelings will just iron themselves out. It doesn’t work that way.

I’ve never understood people who try to prescribe or preempt what we are and aren’t allowed to express in the wake of a tragic death. It’s usually "out of respect for the families", which is noble, but the truth is that death is death, and both its finality and the way it comes unlocks certain things in each of us that otherwise aren’t acknowledged. Words need to flow freely at a time like this, to bring the inside out. Sometimes the words are imprecise, but every attempt at verbalization brings us closer to a realization of what we're dealing with. Sometimes the words are raw, because they reflect the torment raging inside of us.

Two years ago, the thing-that’s-not-supposed-to-happen-here happened here, in Carlsbad, California. Friday’s incident reawakened feelings of panic in parents who had been a part of that. Everyone at that time felt lucky that no one had been killed. How lucky did they feel on Friday, faced with the reminder that what they went through could have been so much worse? (I’ll answer that: extremely lucky.) And there were lots of words spoken back then, many of them redundant, some of them over-the-top, but all of them valid.

President Obama spoke Friday after the shooting, reacting “not as a president, but as a parent.” He was applauded by some for keeping his remarks constrained to the human side of the tragedy and derided by others. Frankly, his obligatory words as mourner-in-chief matter little to me. School officials spoke, and they said about what we expected they would. Pastors will be called on to conduct funerals, and they’ll summon as best they can words of comfort. They’ll try to lend perspective and offer hope.

But the best words at this time come from you and me. People need to get their words out there, and they need to do it now, while thoughts and emotions are fresh. It is healthy. We’ve all been trained a little too well to play nice, to not speak things that will bring upset to other people. The price of that, though, is unprocessed grief that corrodes the soul. Even if inelegantly stated, words are the vehicle that shed light in dark places. They are our coping mechanism.

Does God have anything to say about an event like this? Yes, he does. But let's not forget that God's communication with the world tends to be more global than situation-specific. In the book of Job, he simply lets Job and his friends rail on and on until they run out of steam. And then God speaks. He's not obligated to take the podium within hours of a school shooting. His "reaction" is less a reaction than a reiteration of foundational truths about himself, humankind, sin, and the prospect of redemption. Ultimately, he expressed himself through the Incarnation - "The Word became flesh and lived among us" - and all who were confused about the nature of God needed to wonder no more. That grand articulation is the reason we have Christmas.

I know I said earlier that words need to flow freely at a time like this, but spiritual platitudes meant to "help" are probably the least effective words that can be spoken right now. Christians believe God is true, and if God is forever, then truth is forever too. I think that's one reason we feel compelled to find words, even when it seems there are none, because deep down we can't and won't accept that something so awful can exist for no reason at all.

Someday, long in the future, the parents of 20 kids who died Friday will be able to say, “In 2012, something terrible happened to me and to my child. I couldn’t make sense of it then, and I can’t make sense of it now, but it’s part of my story. And I accept that.” When they can speak those words and mean them, it will mark a great step toward healing.

"There are no words"? But there are. And we'll find them.

The Half-Man becomes a Full-On Christian

Don’t watch Two and a Half Men, the actor who plays the youngest character implored via video this week, despite the fact that us watching the show has made him a multi-millionaire – just not a household name. Ironically, Angus Jones may  be one of those stars whose name was hardly known until he was no longer a star. And we should stop watching because Two and a Half Men is filth, and no one who calls themselves a Christian can be on a show like that, and television is a tool of Satan to distract people from God.

The long-term effects of Jones’ diatribe are unclear – Will he lose his job? Will people actually quit watching? – but the short-term effects are quite clear, and predictable. Jones is being lambasted as a hypocrite, people who’ve never paid attention to the show are intrigued, and every controversial statement Jones’ pastor has ever made on anything is being laid bare for the world to lampoon.

Angus, why?

Why do Christians who gain a platform in the entertainment world (or in this case, someone who has a platform and becomes a Christian) do this? Answers range from “He really believes it” (in which case, why doesn’t he just quit the show?) to “He can’t hold back – let the chips fall where they may.” He’s not the only believer in the entertainment industry, and saying no gracefully to compromising or offensive material is a perennial issue for Christians in Hollywood. I can imagine it makes many of them sad to see this. After trying to establish Christians as people of character and conviction, Jones undercuts them in one interview, feeding the stereotype that Christians are maniacal and judgmental, holier-than-thou.

Now, it is true that Jones’ videotaped testimony was not meant for public consumption. So when he says, “Please stop watching it,” he’s appealing to a closed group – the Christians who are sitting through his hour long testimony. But really? Is he the only 19-year-old on the planet who’s unaware of how easily videos can be posted to the Internet? It’s pretty hard to believe – impossible, in fact – that he didn’t expect the whole world to see this.

Jones has (or at least, he had) a sphere of influence. In my estimation, he blew it. There will be some die-hards who defend what he said and think he did exactly the right thing in launching a full-scale frontal assault on his own show. They’ll call it courageous and say it’s about time Christians crusade against Hollywood.

Are they wrong? Well, tactically, yes. And that’s where your kid comes in. Your kids have a sphere of influence. They, too, are being asked to consume questionable or objectionable media material. Let’s estimate it happens, oh, daily. They pass it on (or not) via likes or shares on Facebook, by downloading and posting and pinning…when they talk about a video “going viral”, kids are often the engines of that, the “carriers” of the virus, facilitating the outbreak.

This is opportunity city. In fact, ask your kids, right now: If a friend were to send you a video that’s inappropriate, what would you do? (And I’m not talking about pornography; that one’s pretty clear-cut. I’m talking about scenes with innuendo, music videos or lyrics that are suggestive, dialogue that normalizes or jokes about marital unfaithfulness or premarital sex – in other words, the stuff people watch.) Then, ask them the more interesting questions: How would you know if something was inappropriate? and What makes some things appropriate or inappropriate? This could open up a fruitful dialogue about why, exactly, the things we see and hear affect the way we think and feel. (Really - go ahead and ask them; I’ll be waiting here when you get back.)

It’s rare to find a kid who would launch into a lecture of his friends about why a particular piece of media is inappropriate or “filthy” and why no one who calls themselves a good Christian would ever watch it or take part in it. And it turns out that instinct is correct! If Christians start speaking like aliens, people will soon regard us as – well – aliens. It’s the classic “in-the-world-but-not-of-it” dilemma. Are we called apart? Yes. Are we the salt of the earth and light of the world? Yes.

But what sometimes gets lost is that life is not about media choices. The substance of my life does not equate to the media choices I make. The significance of life is wrapped up in its design. Just as a table was meant to be a table, and its worth can be judged by its success or failure at that, human worth is entwined with the imago Dei, the image of God. And that means we always reflect the image of God – but each to a greater or lesser degree. Can you make someone care about that? I don’t know. But until they do, they won’t care much about the thoughts and ideas they take in. Or they will care, but it’ll be a misplaced concern because they think life is about scoring 100% on the naughty/nice exam rather than about growth and maturing and purpose and relationships and sanctification and knowing the heart and will of God.

So in a way, Angus got it right. But his execution was tone deaf. I didn’t know who he was before, and I’ve only watched Two and a Half Men a handful of times. I don’t need him to tell me that the content of the show is good, bad, or indifferent. He’s not a role model to me one way or the other. His rant only drew my attention to him: What was he thinking would come of this? We know that friendship influence – person-to-person, sustained, because-I-care-about-you – is what builds up and sticks when you’re trying to make positive change. But some future star saw what Jones modeled for them. And they too will abuse the platform they’ve been given, looking foolish and out of touch by going on the negative.

This Kid’s Got Talent. HIS talent.

Ethan Bortnick is an amazingly talented piano player. At eleven years old, he has played a worldwide concert tour, been on Oprah, and starred in a movie that will be released next year (oh yeah - he wrote all the music for that, too). He holds the Guinness World Record for youngest solo musician to headline a tour, an achievement that - his website boasts - beats out Michael Jackson, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder.

So why am I not excited for this kid?

I’m not excited because behind all of his charm and stupefying skill I’m pretty sure there’s a machine, and the machine is run by a monster called profit. I mean, it’s possible that all of this was his idea. It’s possible that after he started composing music at age 5, he began to dream of opportunities for worldwide exposure and the advancement of his career. It’s possible that he woke up one day and said, “You know what? I need a website. And a publicist. And Twitter.” That’s all possible. But I doubt it.

What’s more likely is that there’s an army of adults behind this seeing dollar signs. Which is not to denigrate his ability. He’s a phenom – watch 30 seconds of him on YouTube and you’ll know that. He’s a phenom; but must he be a superstar? That’s the question that nags at me anytime I see an ultra-talented kid thrust into the limelight.

It even occurs to me from time to time when I encounter a moderately talented kid who locks onto a specialized interest at a young age. I get the benefits. It gives them a goal to achieve, it teaches them self-discipline and the value of practice, it “keeps them out of trouble” (as if idle, unstructured time in a kid’s life necessarily equates with “trouble”). It furnishes an identity and a ready friendship group to relate to. I get that. But I wonder, what’s the cost?

In Ethan’s case, his publicity machine – ahem, team – seems bent on convincing us that he’s “just a normal kid”, who “plays videogames until they call his name and he runs on stage”, who loves his parents and school and his friends, etc. etc. Yep, pretty normal – except for the part about appearing on Good Morning America and recording albums and writing film scores and meeting Elton John. Where is this headed? Lindsay Lohan was a pretty cute kid, too. So was Gary Coleman. And the Brady Bunch kids, many of whom battled drugs and alcohol and depression through their adult years. Show business is notoriously hard on child stars. (Macauley Culkin, anyone? Miley Cyrus? Cory Haim? The list goes on.) Which could be why Bortnick’s public persona stresses his “everyday kid” side (apart from the Guinness World Record thing, of course). I have a feeling the adults behind him want to assure us that he’s above corruption. No doubt they want to believe it themselves, as anyone whose train is hitched to this star stands to make out big.

I’m not predicting that early stardom will hinder his growth into healthy adulthood, and I’m not wishing for that. But is that even the point? Isn’t the bigger issue this matter of him achieving super-stardom on levels that are absolutely inaccessible to 11-year-olds? I mean, the kid’s got talent. And he can play Vegas and with Beyonce and on Oprah…but should he? When does kid-sized exuberance  cross over into adult-sized ambition, reaching the point where it’s ripe for exploitation and no longer about him?

Because the kid’s got talent; but it’s his talent. And with that comes the right to say no, something that’s very hard to do when sponsors and venues and promoters and fans are depending on you for output. Even if Team Bortnick is somehow able to keep him above the pressure and away from the business end of things, the fact remains that him producing and continuing to produce is the key to the whole enterprise. And that’s a little scary.

Just yesterday on ESPN, Sportscenter was showing clips of a nine-year-old girl who is dominating her (mostly all-boy) tackle football league in Utah. But...why? What is it in us that holds almost morbid fascination for extraordinary ability in kids? If this is an instinct (because “dog bites man” isn’t news, but “man bites dog” is), fine. But why must we publicize it? Because before we know it, USC will be recruiting her and we’ll all be locked into a decade-long reality TV-fest of “Sam’s Road to the Heisman”. Unbelievable.

Individual agency – the ability to exercise self-direction and be acknowledged as an autonomous being – presupposes choices. If kids aren’t able to say no, either because they aren’t given permission to, or because no is actually impossible, then we as adults aren't respecting them and we aren't taking them seriously. They’re not living lives so much as they are living out scripts dictated to them by grownups.

What if Ethan said no? Unlikely as it is, what if tomorrow he decided all the concerts, all the fundraising, all the recording were over, and he was done? Could he just go outside and play? No doubt some people would answer, “But kids need to be taught to keep commitments – that’s part of being a responsible grown up.” Yes, they need to keep their commitments – the ones they make and choose. Force your kid to play out the football season? You bet – assuming they knew what they were getting into at the start and freely chose it. Make them persevere through music lessons or other challenging skill-based activities? Up to a certain level of proficiency, sure.

But kids need exposure to lots of different activities. They need to try lots of things, some of which they’ll excel at and others of which they won’t. And since time is limited, that means they need to have the freedom to stop doing some things in order to take up other things. Because it’s not likely that, like Ethan Bortnick, they’ll sit down at the piano at age 3 and play Mozart by ear, launching them on a fast track to fame. Come to think of it, thank God for that.

It's Time to Talk

We must be the most over-communicated-to people in history. Remember the early days of the Internet, when "I've got e-mail" was spoken with awe? Now it's usually accompanied by a groan. Nearly every day, I'm checking three e-mail accounts, two voicemail accounts, and a text-to-email thing from Google - plus Facebook. I sometimes value vacations just because it means I'll have less information coming at me.

With no shortage of information, who decides what gets our attention? We do...sort of. But are we as in control as we think we are? I ask this today (Friday) as I've been evicted from my office because we're getting new carpeting. The phones are unplugged and I'm working in the hallway - and yet every time I hear another phone ring, my instinct is to drop what I'm doing and answer it.

In other words, there is a conditioning process that determines what gets our attention, so that over and above all the noise coming at us, there are some messages that have a way of getting noticed. That's why you can rest assured that when it comes to kids and the Internet, two types of messages are getting through: messages about friends (i.e., social networking) and messages about sex (because as the old advertising saying goes, "sex sells").

The best defense against this - sometimes the only defense - is a good offense. It's called a "filter". Filters can be external or internal. When it comes to kids and the Internet, we need to develop both. Filters work by recognizing threats and mounting defenses against them. When it comes to your standard Internet browser filter, that process is relatively automatic: certain words trigger the defense, and the block goes into place ("This page is unavailable"). The goal in developing your kid's internal filter is this: first to develop that as a conscious process, and then, for the conscious process to become unconscious.

In order for it to happen consciously, kids need to know there is a danger, and recognize the danger, and know why it's a danger. And then they need the skill of redirection - do I turn it off? Ignore it? Click away? Tell someone?

For instance, when a kid encounters a threatening or bullying message on Facebook, they have a choice: do I respond? And if so, how? When they receive an e-mail from a stranger, do they delete it? Report it? Do they label it as spam? Do they even know how to do that? What if they receive a strange link, in an e-mail with an intriguing or suggestive subject line? What's the right thing to do?

Can kids really do this? The answer is, they'd better! Because automated Internet filters will always be imperfect. They'll either shut out legitimate content, or they'll miss things they should catch. The only sure-fire method for blocking harmful Internet content is to not be on the Internet at all. And I don't know many families who are willing to go there! And would that even solve the problem? The Internet is in schools, in libraries...and on their friends' handheld devices.

So while I endorse the use of filtering software and technological restrictions by parents, I cannot recommend that your precautions end there. The "second line" needs to be developed, and that's the defense that resides inside of them. Think it's as simple as knowing "good" from "bad"? For a young child, that's probably enough. But as a kid's understanding of the world grows in sophistication, their understanding of how to fight needs to keep pace. Those elements, again, are knowing there is a danger, recognizing the danger, and knowing why a particular thing is a danger.

Danger to what? Danger to our ability to grow toward God-ordained maturity; danger to our ability to grow into real people. Real people understand who they are, who God is, the difference is between us and God, and consequently, our need for him. A warped view of sexuality, an unhealthy dependence on technology, and the inability to navigate problems in relationships all threaten our journey toward becoming real, healthy people. And all of these things can come from misuse of the Internet.

So, it's time to talk. We have some experts coming in to talk to you, so that you can in turn talk to your kids. "The Online Sexual Minefield: Keeping Your Kids Safe" is up first, next Wednesday night (Nov. 7) at 7 pm. Cory Anderson and Treina Nash, both licensed marriage and family therapists, bring back their helpful and informative presentation on your kids, sex, and the Internet. It's totally free of charge, we'll care for you 4th-6th grade kids (junior high and high school groups meet on-campus that night), and you'll walk away with a ton of information.

The second event will be the first Wednesday in December. On the 5th, we're hosting a training event on how to use "Passport to Purity," which is a kit put out by Family Life. The CDs and journals are meant to help parents construct a fun, meaningful weekend with their preteen and initiate all kinds of conversations about growing up. And it works! The night will be led by moms and dads who've used the material, who can guide you and encourage you on carrying on the program with your son or daughter. Pre-ordering the kits is optional, you can do that here. But, you are also welcome to just come to the night to see what it's all about, free of charge.

I'm glad for technology (obviously; I blog). But it's created a need for all of us to become just a little smarter than the tools we use. We want to make you aware, so you can help your kids be aware. And remember that constructing the filter is a process - it's not one conversation but many. The events November 7 and December 5 are meant to start you in the right direction.

Spiritual Growth Marker #3: Allegiance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual Growth Marker #2: Network

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual Growth Marker #1: Identity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes. Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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