Children’s Ministry and Culture

Our friend Eric Bryant, of Mosaic in LA, will be sharing his thoughts with us again soon. Eric is the author of Peppermint Pinatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love. Eric will be touching some two important themes that resonate with our mission to read culture for the purpose of reaching children. First, he’ll help us figure out how we should respond to CA’s overturning of the same sex marriage ban. Secondly, he’ll explore what the relationship between the economic recession and generosity.

I’ve been oddly fascinated by the recent spate of 20/20 News pieces on a spying camera showing what passers-by would do when a visibly drunk person tries to drive, when kids are berating an overweight woman, or when a child is visibly lost (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=4709538&page=1). These all try to assess the level of cultural readiness to intervene. They ask good questions and seek pretty routinely to reward those who DO intervene.

Now I have to say that my life experience is divided on this. In Minnesota, we are ALWAYS prone to intervene in public because there is a shared sense of values. Growing up in California there was NOT a shared sense of values and in fact a heightened sense of that independent spirit that rewards creativity and a sense of differentness. Intervene? We build fences around our homes in California. Are the neighbors are a little creepy? Well we’ll just move to a gated community and MAKE them clean up their yard.

So you can imagine how interesting it is for me to see these 20/20 segments and cheer when our culture is now applauding the Minnesota norm rather than the California trend.

In one of our counties, Ramsey, we have an amazing community service approach called the Wakanheza Project (http://www.co.ramsey.mn.us/ph/hb/wakanheza.htm). It is “a community-wide effort that provides tools and strategies to help us effectively respond in these every-day situations and prevent them from happening in the first place, by creating welcoming environments for our children, young people and families.” What are “these every-day situations”? Have you ever been in a public place like a grocery store, a library, or a mall and seen a parent struggling with their children, trying to keep them in line and well behaved? Have you watched that situation escalate? Did you wonder then, and are you still wondering, what you could have done? Have you ever BEEN that parent?

This is really remarkable! We are seeing a trend that promotes LESS privacy and isolation and is encouraging MORE involvement! I’ve been in California for the past three days and have had many conversations with ministers who have seen LESS parental connections outside their church and a rise in gang behavior, anti-social anger and other community killing behaviors. What they need is to join the rest of the nation to get MORE involved, not to circle the wagons and wail and moan in our fortress churches!

I feel like I’m the last guy to read Blue Like Jazz and I did so this past Wednesday. Not that I’m a fast reader, but I read steadily and it only took about 5 hours. It was my first Christian read since Larry’s Divine Intention but I liked the tone well enough to offer some comments that might inform the minister to children.

First, I’ve not read many Christian books with words like “crap” and “beer” given center stage so it took some getting used to. I constantly had to wonder is this a before conversion thing? I was hoping it was not put there to feel like I was being set up with a morality tale. It didn’t feel like he wrote crap or typed his thoughts under the influence of beer however (Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, is often so difficult to read PRECISELY because of his drinking).

It was also interesting to hear Don write about how often he CHANGED his behavior because either his friends pointed out some flaw or he just perceived an inconsistency in what he did based on what he read of Jesus in scripture. I think this is remarkable enough, or maybe it reveals in my mind how infrequently writers who are Christians or speakers who are Christians rarely if ever comment on their changes of mind and behavior directly. Refreshing!

I was also refreshed and reminded of the very direct effect of early children’s ministry training that, in Miller’s case, while it might have been rigid or clenched and legalistic (he calls it “Republican” and “Wealthy”) is nonetheless very important throughout this memoir. Important in the sense that it is for him a reference point!

I also love how his faith made him, with the help–often as he strongly resists–of his friends, DO something! The Confession Booth at Reed College (anyone reminded of Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons?) was AMAZING and just floored me. The generation he embodies, the culture he inhabits, is very “Uptown” as my eldest son would say, very “Northwest” and highly ambiguous socially. I love this combination and it gives a fresh look at scripture that we all need!

What I found wierd was his chapter on tithing (it felt like a “God Bless America” comment at the end of a presidential speech–forced, typical yet really out of place in a book on “Christian spirituality”–which, by the way, is a GREAT phrase he distinguishes from “Christianity”). But I think he did that to please his pastor (he also feels very sensitive about the CHURCH as an institution and I felt his editor at Thomas Nelson and he were having a tug-of-war with this institution in especially chapter 13, so I felt that I didn’t hear what Don REALLY felt).

Community, friendship and change; these were the stuff that I found remarkable in their insight and very helpful for those of us in ministry who teach and train and yet need to be reminded of the community we keep. His reflection of the household (Testerhome) of men he had to interact with was priceless with reflection and candor.

Ok, I had to post SOMETHING because at 2:30 am I woke up in a strange hotel (welcome to my world–worrying about the alarm, whether it will go off at 6am or not) and can’t get back to sleep! I’m speaking at 8:30 this morning and my mind keeps rehearsing my topic “Giving Kids A Faith That Grows”!!!

…BUT, it must show an “all-inclusive approach to sex education.” What does “all-inclusive” include? The curricula should include teachings about abstinence, birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. While this sample size includes only one state (Minnesota) the “n” of the research is broad enough to find significance in the broader population.

1605 parents were surveyed by the University of Minnesota Prevention Research Center (http://www.minnpost.com/client_files/pdfs/ParentSurvey08FactSheet.pdf for the pdf report) and it found that only 10 percent of the 1,605 parents of children ages 5 to 17 interviewed for this study felt students should be taught abstinence exclusively. A whopping 89% felt it should be all inclusive. In fact 81% of parents felt that sex education doesn’t lead to more sex by teenagers! I find this to be accurate. I think most thinking children’s ministers would agree that INCLUDING abstinence is a great thing for children.

Making abstinence EXCLUSIVELY the message seems forced and wrong but is hardly taught. The media would THINK this is what is taught or even forced on the masses by hyperventilating fundies. But it is not. I frankly find it as dishonest a characterization as, say, to hear the actress Kate Walsh from Grey’s Anatomy state “Abstinence is one — abstinence is one aspect of sex education, but it is not the complete aspect. And to expect, I think, everybody to remain abstinent is just — it’s like asking them not to grow. It’s like we don’t ask people to not try out for sports.”

Or George Michael’s odd appearance last night on an episode of Eli Stone (http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/03/28/eli_stone_recap_george_michael_comes_to_ for a recap) where he defends a girls protest against an abstinence-only school assembly by playing Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” song over the loud speaker. I was reading while it came on and was totally baffled by the role Michael played of the noble artist-as-ethicist…are you KIDDING ME?

What makes the University of Minnesota study so compelling is because it offers rendolent balance and perspective to what the media often hypes with hyperbole in the two extremes of “abstinence-only” pandered by artists and those outside of the actual hard world of REAL Parenting! But could it be that the media hypes the extreme to EXCUSE its own of what is often the chosen path MOST trod by those same spokespeople?

I love how parents see through the haze of media culture to understand that human sexuality is more than permisiveness and disdain for the chaste.

I am working on a large data sample for a conference in October that seeks to make sense of “Family Ministry” that I’ve heard so many are feeling pain in coming up with a suitable solution. Larry touches on it in his list of trends and so does my colleague, Christine Yount Jones, in a helpful article last year in Children’s Ministry Magazine.

Some feel that “Family Ministry” should be holistic. Such as Ivy Beckwith’s clan linking intergenerational approaches within the church. This is not a new command from educators and professors who are dissatisfied with how we divide on a weekend in worship. I studied this option when I was at BIOLA University in the early 80s reading Dennis Guernsey who advocated as much in the 70s and 80s. Churches should accommodate worship for all ages and spiritual formation should not divide groups but unite them.

This is clearly a model used in smaller churches (they can) or in more mainline churches (they feel they have to) but not in progressive churches of any size. The LAST thing a normal family wants is to worship together all the time–who wants to parent in front of other accusing parents? Once in a while, maybe, but not routinely.

Then there’s the “Family Education” or “Parenting Education” model used by ministers of all age-stages that seeks to infuse a class or two on “terrible twos” or “financing college” to say we’ve “helped” the family. I have many friends who make a living in this manner through their ubiquitous workshops and seminars and they are as helpful as those in attendance feel they can be. But this doesn’t scratch the modern itch ministers feel to actually impose a spiritual intentionality to all parents in their congregation.

To scratch that itch we arrive at our contemporary dilemma. Most take up the clarion call of Barna’s dire statistics (begun with Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, though one has to beg the question what a “champion” like that looks like–I picture John the Baptist, but I doubt that is not what Barna would describe as “the best who ever was born among women”) to help parents obey their primary role as the person in charge of the spiritual nurture of their children. I find this mildly amusing only because if it works, what need do families have of Sunday school or midweek clubs? The cure could be worse than the disease! Am I right? Suppose families were to suddenly begin leading their children at night with prayers and in the morning with candid, casual scripture meditations over Raisin Bran (sorry, over Fruit Loops–I’m showing my age)? As Lyle Schaller says, “What if it works?” We won’t NEED Sunday school!!!! We’d be out of a job! Why would I need to send my kids to Sunday school? Some curriculum writers (not from Group Publishing) have indicated to me that their home connections are “part of a broader puzzle” that seeks to link Sunday with home. But that admission simply evinces their underlying fear that the weekend will become LESS important and thus eliminate the role of a children’s minister.

I find a deep cynicism among Bible College and Seminary professors about Children’s Ministry in general precisely because of this logical outcome! Modern Children’s Ministry has ELIMINATED the need for families to nurture faith in their kids! Hasn’t it? We provide a service FOR parents and have eliminated the guilt they may sense through one easy step: by encouraging weekend and midweek attendance! So what? Let’s be happy with this trend and not seek to find a way to push it back onto parents to a degree that makes our weekend education hours irrelevant (or redundant)! Beware the cure!

But what I think I hear among children’s ministers is the concern that parents actually are harming the good work our churches are doing by prioritizing the “cabin” time on the weekend, or dance competition, or soccer practice or ice time at hockey, or sleeping in and going to Sunday night worship only. Therefore they want to have a family focus on what is valued by our church, not what is claimed by culture! There, now, we’ve hit on the eternal rub we all face by living in two worlds. This is not a problem,however, that a new “family ministry” model will cure! It is only by ENGAGING parents in Christ’s priority for His people that we can eradicate the subtle creep of the secular over the sacred. And seriously, by not shaming parents but showing them a better way! This is ONLY done through community of Christ followers! Community happens when a parent can let down their defenses among THEIR PEERS and not in some silly aquarium where we all swim in the same worship service–they don’t let me talk in THAT room! Small group time, gatherings that are natural as they are unplanned (but not unscripted) and what families normally crave: support, shared values and pursuit of common dreams. Saying parents are not doing what they should do will simply cater to their anxieties in such a way as to lead them to AVOID YOU, the Children’s Minister. And just when you thought you found a “better model”, you will be frustrated because families are sooooo different so your model will only telegraph your anxieties! It’s like locking a child up in a room and making them listen to Preparing For Adolescence tapes as an antidote to STD’s! Now that’s normal!

I just landed in San Diego, and am preparing for the Children’s Pastors’ Conference here. I also just finished Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and was a poor passenger on the plane for the last 100 pages. I spend an inordinate amount of time in airplanes and also in hotel rooms after appointments and meetings with churches and have started to do something unnatural for me. I’ve turned off the TV and picked up a book! Ok, and I read online. But this new habit got me thinking! What does a children’s minister do to exercise their mind? I run my 5 miles every other day, certainly, and I spend time reflecting on the Bible. Since I stopped the TV in my life in the past month and a half (how else to finish War and Peace or Anna Karenina) I am amazed at how much time THAT little distraction can take up in my mind!

If you’ve not read what passes for a great book, or classics or literature that at its core is a moral force of power, then just start with Anna Karenina! The flight attendant probably was a little mystified as I read much with tears of sheer joy as I read ordinary families being who they are. What grabbed me today was page 784 and 785 where Kitty is thinking about her husband Levin (Kostya) as she nurses their baby Dmitry (Mitya). Levin has been having a crisis of faith since he struggles with belief. Kitty, who is a believer without doubt, asks herself ‘what kind of unbeliever is he? With his heart, with that fear of upsetting anyone, even a child! Everything for others, nothing for himself”

and then–this just floored me–when she says to her baby, “Yes, be just like your father, be just like him!”  AH!!!! Love Tolstoy!!!!!

NOTE: Please see Keith’s post about a phone call from Reggie.    

A friend of mine sent me an example of FamilyTimes Virtue Pack from www.familytimes.org and I read and listened through Volume 3, Issue 1 on “Initiative: Seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” First, I want to thank my friend for letting me see what so many, including him, find to be helpful for their family. The fact that this promotes discussion in the home, in the car, at bedtime and in the morning is the major benefit apart from the topic discussed. AWANA for all it’s faults, has one huge benefit. When you see an adult listening attentively to a child (this in itself is REMARKABLE) you realize why something so awkward and cumbersome really “works” and is loved by many parents and children.

Ok, back to FamilyTimes Virtue Pack. I debated whether to discuss this program because often a critique can be seen as a “critical spirit” and I have to say that I’ll try to avoid that human (and for me, effortless) tendency. Objectivity is a rare virtue as we all have our biases. I also debated whether or not to discuss this program because I get a paycheck from a publisher myself. This makes anything I say somewhat self-serving or even creates a conflict of interest. But, I do write for a magazine that prides itself in objectivity and helpfulness so I’ll try to maintain that core value. Finally, someone needs to every now and then say, even in Children’s Ministry, “The Emperor has no clothes” or in this case, “The Emperor, while he does have some clothing on, wears an unfortunate thong that’s distracting.”

I will quote here from the back cover, “Here’s what the bible says to parents about teaching virtues to their children…’Impress them up on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.’ (Deut. 6:7, NIV)” So the whole premise, mission and organization of the FamilyTimes Virtue Pack is outlined in this foundation passage.

Larry has already corrected me that Character qualities are indeed scriptural and he’s right, they are. Peter uses them (2 Peter 1:5 - there is also the fruit of the Spirit and Character Qualities are therefore are emblems or evidences of our status and life in Christ. Character qualities and Virtues are somewhat synonomous. But let’s think about this deeply. Is “Initiative” a virtue? Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Does Deut. 6 really say that we are to “talk about” virtues? AWANA has made this same mistake by taking a verse and establishing their whole method around it: “rightly dividing the word of truth” which candidly does NOT mean “memorizing the word of truth” but that is what they DO! Moses here in Deut. 6 is talking about the “commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me (Moses) to teach you to observe”! It is not VIRTUES and cannot mean what FamilyTimes suggests it should mean. So the FOUNDATION is shakey to begin with!

The virtue I wrote about in an earlier blog was “Orderliness” and it was taught for an entire month. The current one I am reviewing is “Initiative” and we learn about beavers showing initiative and we tell the story of Esther showing initiative. But candidly, is “initiative” really something Christians should show the world to demonstrate our UNIQUENESS? There is a KidJam skit that is all about kids demonstrating this “self-starter” quality and it is funny, quirky and even has inside jokes for adults.

But think about this! This program was designed for the busy parent who is anxious that their child demonstrate the character of God and because “the home should be the primary place where a child learns about God” (according to FamilyTimes and I would agree). Therefore, in this time why on earth are we REDUCING scripture to trite platitudes that DIMINISH the power we have as believers in the very Bible that is stilled by this program? Why does a busy parent resort to anything that is imprecise, unremarkable, trite and misleading? It is the FORM of godliness without the power and frankly it bugs the turkey stuffing out of me!

Last night I was reading to my 16 year old daughter (a passage from Anna Karenina where Kitty looks lovingly at Vronsky and he did not respond and “for years” she remembered that with “cutting shame”–a powerful example of the deceit found in some men) and with my wife playing a Sonata on the piano in the background it was one of those scenes that get etched in a family’s memory. The fact that together time will happen with this curriculum is good and beneficial. But what in the world, “initiative”? Really? I’m going to motivate my daughter to avoid procrastination because Esther took the initiative? (or was it Mordechai who pushed Esther???) We are weakening our position in ways that are unnerving and utterly corrupt. Too strong? I spent two hours reviewing this and found more refreshment in reading 2 Peter in only 5 minutes!!! Just what is “powerful” and “sharper” than any two-edged sword anyway?

The New York Magazine has a very interesting article on why kids lie titled “Learning To Lie”. In it, author Po Bronson (http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Learning+to+Lie&expire=&urlID=26437742&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2F43893%2F&partnerID=73272 ) shares that “kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons–to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents.

“Ironically, the type of parents who are actually most consistent in enforcing rules are the same parents who are most warm and have the most conversations with their kids,” Darling observes. They’ve set a few rules over certain key spheres of influence, and they’ve explained why the rules are there. They expect the child to obey them. Over life’s other spheres, they supported the child’s autonomy, allowing them freedom to make their own decisions.

The kids of these parents lied the least!” Freedom? Now there’s a thought!!!!!

Two chapters in Leo Tolstoy’s Way and Peace are a great read today, of all days, in that they convey the essence of what a family brings to our lives and how joy should come to those who place others first. The Epilogue Part One, Chapter X is Count Tolstoy’s observations of Natasha’s new life after marrying the clumsy hero Pierre.  Listen to this,

The subject that absorbed Natasha fully was her family–that is, her husband, who had to be kept in such a way as to belong entirely to her, to the household; and her children, whom she had to carry, give birth to, nurse and bring up. And the more she entered into the subject that absorbed her, not with her mind, but with her whole soul, with her whole being, the more that subject expanded under her attention, and the weaker and more insignificant her own forces seemed to her, so that she concentrated them all on one thing, and still had no time to do everything that seemed necessary to her.”

or this, from Part One, chapter XVI of the Epilogue which, in my view is one of the best pictures of family living written in the past two hundred years,

“I love you terribly!” Natasha said suddenly. “Terribly. Terribly!” (then Pierre, her husband responded to a question she had posed earlier about an old friend, and what he would think of Pierre now) Pierre, having reflected. “What he would approve of is our family life. He wished so much to see seemliness, happiness, peace in everything, and I would have shown us to him with pride!”

May today be a day of selfless pride in that which matters most!

Finished the book last night. Closed the book more convinced than ever that the reasons that our ministries are not connecting with Outsiders is that we use our evangelical subculture as the point of reference as we design our ministries instead of being cognizant of the needs and perceptions of those outside of the church.

The data in unChristian explored those 16-29, those new parents who a decade ago turned to the church for parenting support, but who now wonder if we would turn their children into intolerant fundies if given half-a-chance. I’m becoming increasing convinced that our habit of reducing Biblical narratives into instructive moral dramas is clouding the gospel– that Jesus died to infuse us with an abundant quality of life and to reconnect us in relationship with God (which, yes, includes the overcoming of sin and sin nature).

1) Our curriculum needs to emphasize how Jesus responded to people– all people, the moral outcasts and those on the societal fringes. One of the unspoken desires of parents is that our children would chose good, safe friends. We want our children to make good moral choices that honor God. However, we subtly or not so sublty do this be labeling those with whom we disagree. I recently saw an advertisement for a “Follywood” VBS that made judgments about Hollywood and the values coming out of the studios. Certainly, discernment is vital. However, there’s a danger of teaching our children to demonize those who have not yet connected to Jesus.

2) Our curriculum needs to emphasize servanthood. We need to teach our children to serve those who are likeable and those who are not.

3) We need to emphasize the doctrine that Jesus died to reverse alienation. We need to hold up Christian heroes like MLK Jr. who referred to the Old Testament prophets as he shared his dream.

4) We need to teach children to befriend those non-biblical family structures. Christian children should the ones protecting the child of the homosexual couple from bullying.

5) Jesus’ work on the Sermon on the Mount needs to be taught with the same emphasis as his work on Mount Calvary. We need to teach children that following Jesus begin with conversion but continues in a life of following Jesus.