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.

At last week’s staff retreat I was reminded about the importance of both metaphors and measures.

At one part of the discussion I balked at the verbage in one of the goals– “Lifting Jesus Up.” Derek had to remind me that Jesus himself said these words. My beef wasn’t with Jesus, but the impreciseness of the word picture. “Lifting Jesus Up” in all our of educational settings could mean anything to a number of people– is it a red-face shouting of Jesus name? Are we only teaching the Gospels and select passages from Paul?

My hunch– and I admit that I haven’t looked through my tools– that “lifting Jesus up” is might be an allusion to Moses lifting bronze snake on the pole (the nehustan) as a means of salvation from the plaque of snakes. Another possibility is that it’s an allusion to the banners that Roman soldiers would raise to proclaim the rule of Caeser. Or both. Once you get the ideas behind the word picture, creative power is unleashed.

Metaphors are powerful because they are evocative and creative. “Lifting Jesus Up”– if explained– has more power than “present, through a variety of hands-on learning methods, the historical Jesus and provide a template that allows the learner to imitate him.”

The power of an objective is in it’s measurability.  If you write a good objective, anyone can read it and know whether or not you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to do. A good objective measures one three things– speed (when will you accomplish this), quantity, and quality.

Just returned from an overnight staff retreat (Yes, just a few days after returning from the Children’s Retreat). Oh Lord, Kumbaya. (Emphasize any word you’d like in the sentence to the immediate left.) I work with an amazing team. Thirteen of us went to a Christian resort in NY and spent twenty four hours listening to God, goal setting, worshipping, and playing together. Some of my take aways:

1) We discussed the importance of inviting Millenials into key leadership (not just volunteer positions, but volunteer leadership positions). We need to stay young. (I feel like we had just gotten young 10+ years ago when they hired two punk twenty-something kids, Derek and I, to run the youth and children’s ministries, respectively. (I turn forty in July)). I looked around the room at the retreat and realised that we had late Xers and Millenials on the staff– lots of them. I spoke about the opportunity to recruit Millenials at Willowcreek and some of their characteristics. I had a first hand reminder at the retreat as to what that looks like.

2) We opened the retreat by being given three questions to ask God, a Bible, and 1.5 hours. During that time I was confronted by 2 Corinthians 6:11-13. Paul confronts the Corinthians that their lives feel constricted because of where they invest their affections. They felt like they had small lives because they had small love.

3) I blogged a while back about finding opportunities to embody Jesus while going to bars listening to my wife sing in her trio. I haven’t done that in a while do to this crazy month of speaking, retreats, and launching our family ministry. It’s time to get back to that.

4) Chris Yount Jones told us about an exercise her team to sharpen their vision. It was good, so we stole it. We had to write a six word memoir about where we came from and then where we are going.

Here’s my group’s results:

Our Past: External focus makes Grace vital again.

Our Future: Cross-shaped lives will transform Erie.

5) A prediction: The words “mentoring” and “missional” are going to transform our culture.  

I was on the treadmill last Sunday night watching (ok, reading the closed caption) of the speech that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave to the NAACP Detroit chapter. He hit on a variety of subjects that are important to what we do with children in churches; learning styles, right-brain, left-brain learning, etc. But I found his sermon/term-paper full of the kind of conclusions that did nothing to “Advance” the NAACP cause. In fact it was demeaning and subtly bigoted by presuming that African American children cannot compete with European American education structures (his term)! Even his pseudo-logic statement (Chaim Perlman’s a great source for the kind of rhetoric Wright delivered) “Different is not Deficient” was a deeply flawed contrast. It created a straw man Rev. Wright trounced when it came to the kind of brain that belongs to an African American. He offered no solution and in fact created the kind of bombast that made me wonder why he was straying from his area of expertise…pastoral ministry. For a transcript of the speech, click here http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/wright.transcript/index.html

Well, today, Barak Obama gave a press conference where he stated, “[Rev. Wright] was never my, quote/quote, “spiritual advisor.” He was never my spiritual mentor. He was my pastor.” WOW, did you hear what he said? Someone can “pastor’ while not advising nor mentoring! Would you want to hear those words from your lay people or children? Unbelievable!

I think that when a pastor strays from the source of their authority (scripture) they run the risk of neither mentoring nor guiding but becoming a charade and make our churches deeply misguided!

I spend much of this weekend at my son’s Cub Scout pine wood derby event. Three packs merged to for a ninety car heat. The Derby is a great event as it creates an opporunity for a parent to work together with his child to create the car. Our den was fantastic and had a car clinic to help families who didn’t have the tools or skills necessary to build a car.

Of course, there was “that guy” at the event; the middle aged father who apprently took over the project and didn’t let his son anywhere near the block of wood. He turned in a perfectly carved and laquered PT cruiser that looked like it had come off the shelf at Wal-Mart. The car was gorgous but violated the ethos of the event– “parent AND child.” I was relieved when a more imperfect but scout designed car won.

The experience make me think of children’s ministry. My role is to partner with volunteers– not to overpower them with my efforts. “With” not “For.”

Of course this metaphor is could be applied in a patronizing manner. I’m not my volunteer’s parent, they are not children. Sometimes I need to realize that I’m the child holding the pine block in need of their expertise. Two recently examples come to mind. When did our last youth pastor hire, I needed Lisa, a local HR officer, to teach me how to design an effective hiring process. Most recently, I needed Kim Sanford (she designs, builds, and decorates high end homes in the area) and her teams to supply a philosophy of decorating that dictated the look and feel of our children’s wing.

So ministry is like a pinewood derby. It’s always a partnership. The key is knowing when you should take the scout role and when you should take the parent role.  

In my book Lead the Way God Made You, I wrote about my envy over my now supervisor’s leadership gifts and how I wasted time and energy not developing my own chops. Years removed, I’m over the jealousy thing, but am still in awe over how God wired Derek. I’ve learned more from Derek than any of the “leadership celebrities” that I’ve read or had the priviledge to meet. I’m proud to have him as a friend and grateful to have him as a supervisor who inuitively know how to push every button on my dashboard. He’s one of the primary reasons that I’m a lifer at Grace.

Derek recently entered the world of blogging and you can catch him at www.dereksanford.blogspot.com.  Insights on family and leadership abound. Swing by and say “hello!”

I received an email yesterday that forced me to think more about what it means to be culturally relevant.  I have to admit that I don’t often use that term relevant in my own mental process. While I completely agree with the post below with the excerpt from Dale Hudson’s “Turbo Charged” book and follow many of his prescribed disciplines, I believe that this is merely one facet of being relevant.

Here’s the abridged email exchange:

I’m reading the rough draft of a new book Turbocharged: 100 Simple Secrets to Successful Children’s Ministry by Dale Hudson, Director of Central Kidz, Grades 1 – 5 at Central Christian Church in Las Vegas www.cfmteamonline.com ) and Scott Werner, LIFEKids Pastor, at Life Church in Edmond, OK (check out 8300 kids at his VBS article here .  

These two guys are pretty up front with children’s ministries (Dale’s wife led Bruce Berry to the lord years ago) that are on the cutting edge and highly entertaining yet relevant to their culture. I’m writing an endorsement so I read the book this morning but I’ve got to share one chapter (51 titled “Don’t Be A Bubble Boy”) that is just a superb example of two people who are not just DOING ministry and spinning wheels but ABSORBED BY MINISTRY to children!  It is instructive for our blog here since it touches on culture and how to view it. The book comes out in June and you can preorder it here 

One Exerpt:

Some Christ-followers pull away from the culture and place themselves inside a “Christian bubble.” They think the more you are out of touch with the culture, the more godly you are. They might pop out of the bubble occasionally to quote a Bible verse to someone on the outside, but they hastily retreat back inside. Jesus definitely wasn’t in the bubble. The Bible says he ate with “tax collectors and other sinners.” He didn’t pull away from those who needed God’s truth the most. Rather, he hung out with them. He ate with them. He went to their homes. He got involved in their lives. He was right in the middle of the culture of his day. The “religious” people didn’t like it. You could hear their shouts coming from inside the bubble as they called him “the friend of sinners.” What a great thing to be called! We are called to reach the culture in which we live. We must meet people where they are. But it’s hard to build relationships outside the bubble…if you’re never outside of the bubble.

If you don’t know about people’s music, entertainment, styles, and tastes, then it will be hard to connect with them. They will look at you as you sit inside the bubble, and say, “That’s weird. I want no part of that.” The same principle applies to children’s ministry.

We have to get outside our little “bubble” songs, “bubble” DVDs, and “bubble” books, and know the culture that kids live in today. As I stated in another chapter, missionaries spend lots of time learning the culture of the people they are trying to reach. We are missionaries to children. We must know what’s going on in their culture. We have to speak their cultural language if we want them to listen to us. So how do you get outside the bubble and connect with kid culture? Here are some ways to burst out of the bubble: 

Read magazines. Here are some key magazines that will keep you in touch with kid culture.

·                      Nickelodeon

·                      American Girl

·                      Kidscreen (a must-have—order from www.kidscreen.com )

·                      Sports Illustrated Kids

·                      Boys’ Life

·                      Discovery Girls

·                      Girls’ Life

·                      Children’s Ministry Magazine (especially the “Keeping Current WithKids” section)

Regularly check out children’s TV programming. Here are the big four to watch.

·                      Disney Channel

·                      Nickelodeon

·                      Cartoon Network

·                      MTV (for preteens—like it or not, a lot watch it) 

Watch movies kids like. Find out what kids are watching at the box office and on DVD. Ask kids on a regular basis what their favorite movies are. Take time to watch them. You can also check out www.fandango.com or www.pluggedinonline.com  to see what’s currently playing and get reviews. 

Know what video games kids are playing. Ask kids to tell you about their favorite games and why they like them. Go by the video game store and ask the sales clerk what the most popular games are for kids. Read reviews about the games. Rent the games and check them out if you have a game system. 

Know their music. Music is a great refl ection of culture. Ask kids what’s on their iPod. See what’s at the top of the billboard charts. Ask kids who their favorite singers are. 

Know their favorite Web sites. Ask kids where they spend time on the Web, then check out the sites. Find out what Internet game sites they frequent. 

Regularly walk through the toy aisles. Look at the newest toys. Keep abreast of what kids are clamoring for. 

Have kids focus groups. Talk with groups of kids and ask what’s “cool” right now. Make the group as diverse as possible to get the best answers. Instead of avoiding the culture, look at it as something that can help you connect kids to Jesus. Be a student of kid culture, and use it as a vehicle to reach out to them. And when culture collides with God’s truth, use it as an opportunity to show what God’s Word says about the subject. We want kids to be out in the culture when they grow up so they can reach people. So if you’re in the Christian bubble…burst out! Get out there and learn all you can about kid culture. That’s where Jesus wants you…outside the bubble!

Dale writes:

Keith, thanks for the write up about the book on Children’s Ministry and Culture.  Couple of clarifications. Scott is not at Life Church now.  He left to do consulting and is opening a chain of childcare centers. The author info. clarifies that he is the former cp at Life Church.

My wife was the one who found Bruce’s website. It was Dr. Ronnie Floyd who actually led him to Christ while he was building Toon Town in Springdale and I had the privilege of baptizing he and his wife Vivian.

Thanks. Dale

The good folk at Kidology are hosting an Online Q&A for my book Lead the Way God Made You all next week (Wk. of Jan 2 in their forums. You can sneak on over there now and submit your leadership and team building questions. I’ll pop in twice a day all next week to respond!

http://www.kidology.org/network/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5219&PN=1

Sorry for the long title but it was difficult for me to express succinctly my joy in reading the following article (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704687,00.html) which a professor at The University of Minnesota’s Center for Child Development pointed me to. If it has been a while since you read child development this will be a good review, but even for those of us who are awash in our ministries this is an even better take on an old score since it centers around LOVE! Precisely because of this singular topic I would encourage you to read this and evaluate your classroom teachers to see if they respond to this need or if they diminish it. The discussion below on one topic of curriculum makes us all keen evaluators in one way or another. We don’t want to screw up our children and focusing on this one thing would be a GREAT start!

Sample quote:

From the moment we’re born–when the world is mostly sensation, and nothing much matters beyond a full belly, a warm embrace and a clean diaper–until we finally emerge into adulthood and understand the rich mix of tactile, sexual and emotional experiences that come with loving another adult, we are in a constant state of learning and rehearsing.