Surrender is Not a Strategy

From the day your child is born, you dream big dreams and hope the best for them. You desire to give them a better upbringing than you had and you fret about how you're going to provide it. You hope they won't make the same mistakes you did and you agonize when they do. You go the distance to get them a great education, to live in a safe neighborhood, to enrich them with social and cultural experiences, and to develop their athletic and artistic potential.

Great. Now what about their character?

It's surprising how many parents will instinctively respond to the question, "What do you want for your child?" by saying, "I just want them to be happy" without fully realizing the trade-off that could entail. Would you be satisfied if your kids grew up to be wealthy, well-educated, well-traveled, and even happy, but lacked the qualities of integrity, morality, honesty, trustworthiness, and empathy that constitute what we know as character?

It all begs the question: where is "good enough" when it comes to raising kids? Somehow we've devalued character and morality (if we ever truly did value them) to the point that if you just have the outward appearance of success or affluence or niceness, then inner qualities don't matter. Forgive me, but that is so California. And it is so bankrupt. I'm not saying that perfect character is or ought to be the goal, only that we've ceded far too much in the area of character development, so much so that young people could be excused for believing that there are no standards, and that in any case, it would be impolite and wrong to judge.

What set me thinking about all of this is news that the City of Mission Viejo is considering passing a "social host" ordinance which would hold parents liable when teens consume alcohol at their homes. The proposed law came about because teenage weekend house parties are rampant there (it's the O.C., after all) and other jurisdictions have had success in fining the owner of the property when alcohol is illegally consumed there. (I've since learned that in San Diego County, only Carlsbad and Del Mar do not have such an ordinance on the books.)

Want to discover someone's attitude about what a parent can and ought to do when it comes to communicating values and expectations and providing moral guidance? Start a discussion on the issue of whether parents should be held ultimately accountable for the behavior of their kids. The ordinance came up on talk radio recently, and a man who said he was the dad of two teenage boys weighed in with this:

"I have two teenagers myself and I've had a couple of parties for them myself...I take their keys, I monitor the party, and if someone's getting out of control, they're done...Just a small, closed group of friends over here, havin' a good time, they like to play 'Beer Pong' - what they call it - you know, and - if a parent is going to have a party, they have to be responsible about it."

From the outset, this dad betrays his own ignorance. For those of you who don't know, let me enlighten you about "Beer Pong". You set up cups of beer, usually in a triangle shape (think bowling pins), at opposite ends of a table and take turns bouncing or tossing a ping pong ball at the other team's cups. Ball in a cup = opposing team has to drink that cup. Once all of the cups have been drained, the losing side customarily has to drink whatever beer remains on the winning side. The goal is to get the other team to drink a lot of beer, fast. In other words, if you were - as this dad is apparently claiming - trying to teach kids how to responsibly enjoy alcohol, "Beer Pong" would be a poor method to use.

Moreover, as the dad continued it became evident he really had no idea how much the kids were consuming, nor did he care to know, because nobody was going to be leaving: "They all spend the night. I usually have about 7 or 8 couples, you know, that's about it, no more than 20 at the most." (You read that right - "couples". To which the host asked, "How do you know they're not groping each other?" and the father responded, "Well I don't know that, but they're teenagers, you know, it's gonna happen anywhere.")

Then the dad said, "But I don't let the kids get, you know, crazy drunk." (Drunk is apparently ok, just not "crazy drunk".) "Just like a bartender should...if they're getting to a point where they're way too drunk or they're - before that, you gotta stop 'em."

They say if you give someone enough rope, they'll hang themselves, and sure enough, the man's real rationale came through as he prattled on:

"Well, I've got - my boys are pretty good, you know? They've got a great group of friends, they all get good grades, they're all in sports, you know, they all do the right thing. They're not troublemakers." Then he hastened to add, "I don't tolerate any drugs. No drugs at all. You know, if I see that, they're gone."

At this point, allow me to translate:

"My boys and I have a bargain. I am their dad, and they know the thing I care about most is image, keeping up with the Joneses, but also being a cool dad. Really, I just want them to be happy. I like their friends, and their friends like me, and we've pretty much worked it out so that as long as no one makes waves (no drugs, no "crazy drunk" stuff), everything's chill. As long as they keep getting good grades and don't embarrass me, like by dropping out of sports and dressing all in black or something, I'll appease them by providing alcohol and hosting co-ed sleepovers at our house."

Well. A full consideration of this matter wouldn't be complete if I didn't also share with you the thoughts of another caller to the same show, this one from the opposite end of the age spectrum. The girl, who said she was 23, chimed in, "What better way to teach kids healthy drinking habits other than in their own home, I mean, kids are going to get drunk anyways, whether or not you fine their parents, but why not keep them at home and keep them safe?" Monitoring parties, "is harm reduction, you know? We can't prevent it, that's been proven: kids die every day in drunk-driving accidents, but why not keep it at the home and show them how to drink?" (She didn't say whether Beer Pong would be part of that curriculum.)

The point - in part - is that kids are not interested in being taught how to drink. Illicitness and overdoing it is part of the appeal of underage drinking to those who are underage. They get drunk because "you never know what might happen" as opposed to light social drinking that accompanies some other event. Here's a newsflash: Teenagers don't have parties so they can get together and catch up on old times. At teenage house parties, drinking is the event.

But the point is also bigger than underage drinking alone. The point is that no one seriously believes that parents have no authority or that there ought to be no standard, whether it's "no drugs" or "no getting crazy drunk" or "no drinking and driving". Everyone implicitly recognizes that parents have a right to, well, be parents, to put their foot down and draw a line and say, "Here is where I stand, and as my son or daughter, this is the standard that you will be held to." The question isn't as simple as whether the drinking age should be lowered or abolished (as some would have you believe) because even then, a parent would have to set limits - "Mom, why can't I go to the bar on Mondays?" The question is where will you stake out those boundaries of character development?

Underage drinking is an issue of character because of the often-ignored fact that it is illegal and as long as it remains illegal it will involve deception. Kids have to lie about where they're going and where they've been, they have to lie about their age or pay someone who will lie if questioned about why they're buying the booze, they have to lie about whether so-and-so's parents will be home, and they have to clean up beer stains and get rid of the trash so they aren't found out - and I have never known a busted teenager to be honest about how much they actually drank and not claim to have been surprised that alcohol was there ("It just sort of showed up").

Or, it need not involve (much) deception if they're friends of that Orange County dad, who presumes to decide for himself that that law need not be followed. Which in turn brings us back to the female caller, who opined: "Adults have a lot of influence. I grew up here and I went to a lot of parties and I watched a lot of my friends die in drunk driving accidents and it's unfortunate, but they never told us what to do if we got in trouble. It was always, 'Say no, say no, don't drink'; never 'don't drink and drive' or 'eat before you drink', there was never any of that."

Catch the doublespeak? "Adults have a lot of influence" - yet she chose to ignore the messages they were giving: "Say no...don't drink." I don't know why those messages didn't penetrate (but she did hear them, didn't she?), but her prescription is horrible. Enabling kids is not guiding them. Surrender is not a strategy. Responsible parenting is not advising kids to drink on a full stomach. That's not the point. The point is to do the right thing. Do it over and over. As caregivers of children, you have the right and responsibility to stake out the moral boundaries of those living under your care. (And yes, kids will develop and define their own moral boundaries, and one day they'll get to test them, and to see if they're practical and wise. But not while they live under your roof.) As I've written before, you absolutely have the right to hold kids to a higher standard than you yourself may have met. Without this idealism, our collective morality races to the bottom.

Ultimately, a social host ordinance can slap fines on overly accommodating parents, it can deter teenage drinking in homes, it can cause parents who've foolishly trusted their kids to mind the house for the weekend to be smarter; but it cannot give parents the fortitude to stop caving into the culture. Only the culture itself, or a force within the culture, can stem that tide. Parental idealism is one of those forces. It has pushed our kids to higher and higher levels of academic, athletic, and creative achievement. So why can't that idealism be brought to bear on our kids' character, too?

Where did Lucy go?

Some time in the next two weeks, take your kids and go see Prince Caspian. It really is that good. They might not grasp all of the spiritual parallels, but they'll like the story anyhow, and the movie might cause them to pick up the book series. For your part, if you watch Caspian closely enough, you just might spot yourself.

As much as I liked Narnia, I loved Caspian. Not only did they produce a two-and-a-half hour movie that held my interest, but they adapted a book which uses lots of dialogue to bring readers up to speed on what happened in Narnia between the Pevensie's first visit and their return. While much of the first movie focuses on the kids (and the viewers) discovering Narnia, Caspian opens with the kids missing Narnia intensely; stuck in the world for a time, but eagerly awaiting another transcendent experience that will re-place them where their hearts had been all along.

It's the same "already-not yet" tension that we believers live in every day, and the movie captures this longing beautifully. Yet, none of the kids seems to know fully what to do with Narnia once they've arrived. Could this be the clue as to why we don't inherit the eternal kingdom at the moment of our salvation? The three oldest children sense that there is a battle at hand, but are still growing into their roles. But it is in Lucy that we see the picture of a girl with single-minded devotion to the one who enthralls her, her King, Aslan.

I think everyone who discovers Jesus goes through a Lucy period in their lives, when God is new and fresh and thrilling and it's enough just to be with him, demanding nothing. I can relate to that. But I can also surely relate to Edmund - carnal and tempted and wanting to enjoy pleasure too much for his own good; and to Susan - older, wiser, but too level-headed at times to appreciate the immaterial or too impatient to tolerate the intangible; and to Peter - serious about kingdom work to a fault (as an ambitious, battle-ready Peter exclaims in the movie, "We've waited for Aslan long enough!").

It seems no one can stay Lucy forever. New believers are confronted with the reality that others couldn't give two cents about what they believe. They meet the colder reality that even fellow believers don't share their zeal. They come to realize that the Church is filled with still-fallible humans - forgiven, yes, but still toting the baggage of the "old man" with them. Anyone who has grown into a ministry leadership position comes to terms quickly with the fact that laws of economics and politics don't check themselves at the front door of the church. We are forced to temper our idealism with a certain amount of practicality, even cunning. As we "grow up" in our faith, we lose our sense of awe. Bible stories that were once vivid become familiar and then passe; songs that once moved us become background noise; rituals that were meaningful become rote. Once we were enthralled; we become hardened. Once we were on fire; we cool to a steady burn. And before we know it, the baby skin is gone: Where did Lucy go?

The question matters to parents and others who work with children because if we are to guide them to a mature faith and a faith that outlasts Sunday school programming, enduring into young adulthood and anchoring them as they raise families of their own, we must understand how the character of religious faith changes as kids develop, and why. Or to put it another way, why can't Edmund, Susan, and Peter believe the way Lucy does?

To begin with, spiritual development is thought to be shaped by cognitive development. It is generally accepted that you do not speak to a preschooler about spiritual things in the same way you would speak to an adult: preschoolers lack the facility with language to make sense of immaterial concepts. Thus, in a preschooler's mind God is a kindly old man who lives in heaven (which is actually, physically, in the clouds) and people who go to heaven become angels (because the wings allow them to stay in flight). In one sense, the job of teaching adults is to reshape those perceptions formed as children which weren't quite right, but were necessary because a child couldn't understand it any other way (ever try to explain a "soul" to a five-year-old?). The degree to which cognitive development limits spiritual development is disputed by those who study child spirituality: Can a young child be as spiritually deep as a grown adult? is a matter of disagreement, and I can't settle the question here. But, nearly everyone would concede that a child's ability to communicate spiritual understanding is developmentally determined, and for purposes of measuring and evaluating, only what can be articulated is useful.

What happens as kids grow is that they begin to use language in ever-more sophisticated ways, and their holistic grasp of how the world works improves. Thus, a young child has no problem believing in Santa Claus, who is able to personally deliver presents to every girl and boy on Christmas Eve. Young children are given to magical thinking, and the existence of a loving God is no stretch. Lots of children's curricula have moved away from asking children to "ask Jesus to be their Lord and Savior" because such terms hold little meaning to a four-year-old. Instead, kids are invited to "ask Jesus to be their forever friend" - understandable and certainly more developmentally appropriate, but not fully adequate as a substitute for "Savior": I can be your friend (even your "forever friend") without being your savior.

What is needed, then, is for us to be vigilant and diligent in following up with kids as they grow and as their capacity for grasping spiritual concepts changes. If we are perceptive, we will catch when they are ready for a more nuanced understanding. One way to do this is to intentionally dialogue with your child about spiritual things, and to listen. Too many people have the idea that unless we (adults) are doing most of the talking, kids can't be learning. Quite to the contrary, I believe the best learning happens when kids themselves are talking because they are being forced to put ideas into words - to think about what they think, if you will - and it's that very process that makes them more receptive to the answers adults have.

A second way to help kids keep their faith as they mature is to be developmentally sensitive and appropriate. In general, churches (and more specifically, the companies that write church curriculum) have done a good job adjusting down: preschool and early elementary Sunday school classes have the same look and feel as academic school classrooms do, and proven effective methods of communication and instruction have been adapted into a religious education context. The same cannot be said for what's out there for older elementary students. Some of the programs packaged for 3rd-5th graders are truly awful. They are, in a word, facile. They do not challenge kids to think and as such they do not teach anything; instead, they re-tell the same Bible stories kids have heard since they were three (leading to the widespread, documented perception among junior high-aged students that they pretty much know everything in the Bible and don't believe it has anything left to teach them). They are fraught with moralizing and allegorizing (the point of the David and Goliath story is not that God gave the Israelites victory, it's that we should be unafraid when facing the giants in our own lives), and focus mainly on developing character qualities, as if the reason Christ died was to motivate us to be better people.

A third imperative is to change the way we use the Bible. Most kids are unaware of the Bible's Big Story, or that it even has a Big Story, and tend to hold the "B.I.B.L.E." (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) mindset or the "Yellow Pages" mindset, wherein the Bible is believed to be a collection of passages on topical issues (Today: anger. Tomorrow: lust.). Kids are rarely taught that there is a continuity to the story, but grasping that continuity is the key to understanding why the Bible is consistent and why it retains relevance thousands of years after it was written! One way to do this is to teach two Bible stories side by side and ask kids to draw out the parallels: how did God act? What was common in the peoples' responses? How might God act in a similar way today? This method will be part of the Kids Games program this summer.

A fourth way to help kids accommodate their faith as they grow is to have someone else who knows your child spiritually who is not their parent walking alongside. The only way this happens is organically, as your child is continually exposed to older Christians in their church. Across the children's ministry at our church, we have made a deliberate attempt to match students with consistent small group leaders, but we are limited by ratios that don't lend themselves to familiarity (it's much harder to get to know 12 kids and their families than it is to know six) and inconsistency of attendance. When kids only come once or twice a month, the chances of bonding with an adult leader are much less.

As kids grow up, they'll naturally move beyond a Lucy stage. The job is not to hold them there, but to promote and cheer their development, to assure them that God is bigger than their doubts, to encourage their questions, to help them discern their role to play in God's kingdom, and to ready them for that. After all, the older children didn't love Aslan any less, but they did love him differently.

Whatever Happened to Modesty?

I wasn't going to write about Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Really, I wasn't. I try not to exaggerate the effect pop culture has on kids. Movies (The Da Vinci Code, The Golden Compass), "Harry Potter" (and the is-J.K. Rowling-a-Christian-or-isn't-she? fuss), teenage television shows (The O.C., Dawson's Creek, and MTV's appalling My Super Sweet 16), and Bad Boy & Bad Girl actors (Brittney & Jamie Lynn Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton) - all come and go. You (a parent) remain the most consistent, persistent, and willing influence in your child's life as long as they live under your roof.

I don't fixate on those things because I don't care about them much. Maybe I should care more. Yes, they create culture to a degree. But what makes them frightening - and does make me take notice - is when they actually reflect the culture, when I look at them and see us.

Such is the case now with Miley/Hannah. First she posed for some suggestive photos in Vanity Fair magazine, then it was disclosed that she has posted her own revealing shots on her MySpace page. By "revealing" I mean typical of what one would find on MySpace, and the reason this is news is that it's Hannah Montana for goodness sake, the Queen of Wholesome and Disney and the hottest pre-teen concert ticket around. (Amusing sidenote: hottest ticket for girls, anyhow. Recently when we played a game at our midweek program that asked kids to name a singer, almost every girl immediately wrote down "Hannah Montana". The boys, stumped, finally came up with "Elvis".) We didn't want to believe Hannah/Miley was, you know, like that, which is to say a "normal" or "typical" teenager, which is also to say, "just like everyone else."

Which shines the spotlight uncomfortably back on us and begs the question: whatever happened to modesty?

In case you're feeling out of the loop at this point, a primer: Miley Cyrus is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus whose fame has far eclipsed her father's, as the star of the Disney Channel show "Hannah Montana." She's a far cry from Lindsay Lohan, and in no way am I predicting this is the beginning of a long slide for her. But in this month's Vanity Fair magazine, she appears in a photo spread that, depending on your view of the pictures, you might choose to call "provocative" or "artistic" or "inappropriate".

From there, we've descended into a spiral of who's to blame? and just-how-bad-are-they? second-guessing, all the while missing the bigger picture. That bigger picture, apart from whether the photographer or her dad or the editors of Vanity Fair or Cyrus' agent bear responsibility for her appearing like that, is that she herself wasn't sufficiently bothered by the prospect of nationwide exposure (no pun intended). This fact was doubly evidenced by the revelation this week that her MySpace page features photos of her, for instance, stretched out across a boy's lap, in a bathtub (clothed) with two friends, and wearing far less than she'd ever get away with on Disney.

Cyrus said at first that the photographer was persuasive...then that she was embarrassed and sorry... Whatever. The point is (and the MySpace thing just backs this up) that her standards - our standards - are not very high, and they certainly don't include modesty. Kids, I think, are naturally modest when it comes to baring certain body parts, or seeing them bared on someone else. Somewhere, the "eww" factor always kicks in. But at some young age - and apparently 15 is not now too young - it becomes accepted and even expected to show much more. If maturity is the rush to throw off childish innocence, I would suggest that modesty has been wrongly discarded.

I'm not talking about shame, I don't think. Shame is unreasonable and it is imposed from the outside. Released from the spectre of shame, inhibitions are cast off. I'm talking about modesty as self-control, an internalized inhibition, a willful decision not to present myself in a way that shocks or draws attention or even flatters my own self.

Where did we get this idea that everyone is entitled to every private bit of ourselves - and even worse, that they desire that? So, this beautiful self-restraint might begin with physical appearance but it need not end there. A degree of modesty can be evidenced in the things I say, and in what I choose to talk about (namely, is my favorite topic of conversation me?); in what I own; in how I carry myself; in how I handle successes and setbacks. Immodesty is related to narcissism, self-love that is the fuel of boastfulness. We've all been around self-absorbed, boastful people - they're boorish. So why has our culture come to accept vane self-representations as any more welcome?

The problem is that somewhere along the line, modesty became prudish. Only very conservative religious types favored it, but for everyone else, sexualization and disclosure became the norm. "Being confident in yourself" and "having nothing to hide" got conflated with "letting it all hang out". As a result, we know far more about each other than we probably care to, or need to. Who needs scripted TV dramas when tell-all reality TV psychodramas are proving once and for all that truth really is stranger (and more engrossing) than fiction?

Which brings us back to Miley, in a way, because her MySpace photos are nothing if not representative of the flavor of the whole site: put yourself on display, hold nothing back, and make sure to add a little sizzle. The world is one big party, starring you. She's not leading the pack on anything here, she's reflecting the prevailing teenage social ethic. An ethic which is deeply self-obsessed, engrossed in drama, careless about sexuality, and pretty brazen about broadcasting all of it to the world. Teenagers, guarded and secretive as they are with grown ups, put it all on display on a MySpace page.

And it's all...a little much. And a little troubling. I'll not be modest about proclaiming that.

My Crazy Idea

I'm looking for a few good men. And women. And children. For a very simple experiment in promoting the spiritual lives of kids.

As one who works with children and families in a Christian context, I have an interest in promoting Bible literacy. I believe in the power of the Bible to shape people, and I wish more people would read it and I wish more people would understand it. To that end, we've offered a "Stumped by the Bible" class this spring (which is being re-tooled for rollout again in the Fall), taken time in our class to show off new Bible products, written about those products in this space, and searched high and low for the most appropriate translation we could find at a reasonable cost. (What we found was The Illustrated New Testament, a gem of a Bible, available from www.biblesplus.com.) We get kids to open the Bible every weekend, we teach from it, and we send home discussion pages with at least one question that is directly related to the meaning and application of a verse or passage.

I know firsthand how the Bible can spur spiritual growth. Yet as much as I believe in personal Bible study, I know most Christians don't read it - and that certainly goes for kids, too. It's too hard, too boring, takes too much time, or found to be not impactful. Some kids are reading from adult translations. Many just don't know where to read. And, their reading skills are still developing. They get grace for the fact that they can't readily interpret texts that are 2,000+ years old.

As I wrestled with, and continue to wrestle with, the question of how to make our kids Bible-literate, I happened to attend the seminar by Marcia Bunge at Bethel Seminary in San Diego, where she presented 10 best practices for promoting spiritual development in children. First on the list: Reading and discussing the Bible and interpretations of it with children.

Could it really be that simple? Can we really launch kids on a path of Bible understanding, Bible reverence, and Bible living just by taking the time to read it to them, out loud, regularly? Parents will sometimes ask for recommendations of devotional books to use, or that their pre-teen son or daughter might have for themselves. What if the answer is, simply, "The Bible", read out loud over and over again?

So I'm looking for a few good men, women, and children, to take a 30-day challenge. The assignment is to endeavor to read aloud from the Bible to your children every day for a month. I want to know if it's practical. If it's workable. If it's palatable to kids. And you have to discuss, as Bunge said, meanings and interpretations with kids. By "discuss" it means that you distinctly don't bring an outline or notes to the devotion time - that's a sermon. Discussion is collaborative. To discuss "interpretations" is to acknowledge that the Bible has a rich history of varying interpretations, and that fact doesn't cheapen God's word in any way, but only reflects the fact that people have thought seriously about it for a good long time and serious thinkers have raised questions without definitive answers. You need to get comfortable in that territory of what we don't know because it's exactly those things that make the Bible intriguing and worth thinking about. One of the tragedies of Sunday school is the way we answer every question so neatly and perfectly, oh-so-carefully tying up every loose end, so that the mystery of God is extinguished. God is not simple, but wonderfully complex. Whenever I hear a kid preface a question with, "There's something I don't get about God…" or "I've been thinking about that…" I know they're developing some depth of understanding. I love that.

What would you read? That's up to you. Obviously anyone who takes this on will want to complete the 30 days, so there will be some trial and error with which books and passages you choose. Proverbs is simple. So is James. Romans is harder. Gospels are great, and don't always lend themselves to common-sense interpretation. Or, try some OT history - Kings and Chronicles. But whatever you choose, the goal is to create an uninterrupted time that happens regularly. (The amount of time you read each day will vary based on the age of your kids, and other factors.)

The only other requirement is that you keep a journal, which we'll give you, that records what happened each day, and then that you write a summary reflecting on the experience at the end of the 30 days.

Now, an important, and necessary, distinction. My desire is to promote living in the Book, not by the Book. When we live in the Book, we recognize our own place in God's story. We see the Bible as history, yes, but also as a story that continues to this day - the story of God's interaction with mankind. We see there stories of faith and yes, virtue, but the Bible is not primarily a collection of moral tales. But there are plenty of characters we wouldn't want to emulate, and the story is richer for them, despite their moral lapses. The tendency is to use the Bible with children only as a tool of character formation, leading to kids' perceptions that it's a catalog of do's and don'ts. The old cannard that "Bible" stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" is cute, but not helpful to kids. Living by the Book breeds legalism. Living in the Book reminds us why we're alive.

Let's see what this does. School's getting out soon, summer looms on the horizon, life is busy...which makes this a perfect time to try. Martin Luther once said of prayer that when he felt like he was too busy to spend an hour in devotion he immediately set aside what he had to do and spent two hours. Just the act of reading the Bible together could be as beneficial and transformative to your family as the content covered during that time.

Interested? Intrigued? Willing to try it? (Incidentally, it is impossible to fail at this, because even if you only manage to read 1 day out of 30, that will tell us something.) E-mail me and let me know you're on board, and I'll send you the journal. I'm looking for at least 10 families to try this, and evaluate after 30 days. You're invited to see what happens.

10 Tested Ways to Promote the Spiritual Lives of Kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the Church Really the Family of God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I Learned on the Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What should we teach kids about other religions?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible-less Christianity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Good in Good Friday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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