How Do You Measure Spiritual Growth?

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Do You Nurture Spiritual Growth?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because Girlfriends Care, so do kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Bought a Zoo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.