What Are We Teaching Our Kids?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

In early April, we started a discussion between me and my daughter on the church, the generational divide, and world peace.

Not really that last one. But it sounded good. In a good lead-in to Mother’s Day, we then talked about what we appreciate about one another’s generation. Now, the saga continues.

Jill: Let’s talk about the idea that we don’t really have to worry about the next generation returning to church. You will, as every generation has done before you, come back after a requisite season of rebellion. 

I’m a little concerned about that laissez-faire attitude for a few reasons.

First of all, church is increasingly not a core value in our society, or in your generation. Being a good person and showing love are what it’s all about. Unfortunately, those values are divorced from a foundation in knowing God, largely because we Boomers in the church have taught that being good is the goal. We’ve told you that Jesus wants you to be good, when really Jesus wants you to be his.

Rules versus relationship.

According to that flawed theology, “praying the prayer” and leading a good life are the elements of being a Christian. Not surprisingly, younger generations have latched on to leading a good life and largely dispensed with the praying the prayer part. It sounds like magical thinking to you, and there is therefore no need for it in your efficient, ethics-based world.

Will you really, like the Terminator, will be back?

Emily: Did they have children’s ministries when you guys were kids? When did Sunday School in the modern sense become a thing? I mean the time when it just became a place that kids were sent because otherwise they would be bored or would cause a disruption or wouldn’t understand what was going on. 

That’s where your “do good” stems from. “Be good for mommy, and daddy, and Jesus, too.” True and simplistic as it might be, it lacks action. It lacks depth. It lacks roots.

So, yeah, you’re right. Without the roots leading us back to the church, we can go off and do more than we ever got to in Sunday School (or Children’s Ministry, if it’s a hip new church) and without the restraints of the church to tell us who or what to do good for. It leaves us in control over how we use our resources.

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Jill: Well, I remember my parents sending me up the street to Sunday School. I vaguely recall something about a guy in a blue robe involving lots of flannel.

According to Christian History, the original philanthropic Sunday Schools always had an aspect of religious education, as they used the Bible for learning to read and write. They also imported moral behavior into the curriculum. When the government established mandatory public education in the 1870’s, churches moved to teaching solely Christian doctrine and behavior rather than general education.

Given that Rational Theory (i.e., human society is perfectable through the use of reason) still coursed through the church’s veins at the time, moral education would certainly have been the focus. Be good for mommy, daddy, and Jesus, indeed, has a long history.

Sally Lloyd-Jones, author of The Jesus Storybook Bible, laments the present disinterest in church among children she has interviewed:

“These are children in Sunday schools who know the Bible stories. These are children who probably also know all the right answers — and yet they have somehow missed the most important thing of all. They have missed what the Bible is all about. It is a picture of what happens to a child when we turn a story into a moral lesson. When we drill a Bible story down into a moral lesson, we make it all about us. . . . When we tie up the story in a nice neat little package, and answer all the questions, we leave no room for mystery. Or discovery. We leave no room for the child. No room for God.” –Sally Lloyd-Jones

So she seems to be saying what you are. We need to start young to let children explore the Bible story — not simple or simplistic Bible stories, but the entirety of the Big Story. We need to let them ask questions, see how the smaller stories, and their story, fit into God’s big picture, and give them something to do about it now.

Emily: I mean, I wouldn’t recommend certain stories from the Bible told straight up to four year olds (Jezebel comes to mind). But when the Bible becomes a tool or vehicle with which to deliver a human-devised moral, it not only puts God in a box, it puts us into a box too. And that box can get kind of constricting as we grow, until finally we break out and, believing the box itself is religion, we walk away, refusing to ever be constrained again.

Jill: There’s this book by some lady where she says something like this.

“Research tells us that 75 percent of young people in our churches today will leave them when they leave home. Why? Because they increasingly believe that church is irrelevant to their daily lives and out of touch with the culture. In other words, they don’t see the point. And in ever-busier lives, everything we spend our time on has to have a point. 

What would happen if, instead, our churches taught kids from the time they could walk that they were ministers? That they were the hands and feet to make the church relevant? That the ends of the earth weren’t as far away or impossible to impact as they thought? I truly believe we could turn those statistics upside down.” –Jill Richardson, Don’t Forget to Pack the Kids

Emily: Blatant self-promotion.

Jill: Yeah. But I completely agree with you. Teaching kids to “do good” divorced from the grand story of why only creates people who know how to follow rules. Once they internalize those rules, who needs the church to continue doing good? You can cut loose from the strings now that you know the rules. Plus, you can create your own rules. Christian education has got to be about a connection to the story more than a moral to it.

Photo by dimas aditya on Unsplash

Emily: But the box isn’t God. I think we worry that if we try to teach kids God as God is, that their heads are going to explode. Or maybe our heads will explode if we have to start thinking of God as God is.

Jill: So if we want future generations to stay in church, we need to start connecting them to the whole gospel, and the whole God. We need to teach them how being Christian isn’t about rules and being good but about the entire creation to redemption story of why we are trying to do good things and what our role is in the story.

Emily:

What Not To Say

Coffee and I do not have  relationship. At all.

Not everyone is OK with women in ministry. Well, that was an understatement to begin with. Always start with the obvious and go from there.

I remember the first time I realized this. I was on summer break after my sophomore year of college. The pastor had invited me into the pulpit on a Sunday morning to talk about what I’d been doing in school and what I felt God calling me to do. When I mentioned that I felt called into ministry, he asked what sort. As a joke, I replied, “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take your job.”

This was not received as a joke. (It was by him—he was a wonderful, kind, and honest man. Wherever you are, Gerry Robertson, you are one of the best men I’ve ever known.) There was silence in the congregation like you would hear after an announcement that California had dropped into the ocean. I didn’t know why. As a new Christian, I knew none of the cultural norms. I had no clue that, for some denominations, women could not be pastors. I barely had an idea what denominations were.

In the ensuing years, I’ve met people with whom I’ve disagreed on this issue who were gracious thoughtful people, and I’ve met those who were . . . not. I’m not here to debate who is right and who is wrong. I could do a series of posts on that—but I don’t particularly want to.

What I’m going to offer are a few tips for talking about it together. There are ways to talk to women in ministry and ways not to, no matter which side you fall on. There are things to say and things not to say. If we all want to veer toward the gracious and thoughtful side, even while disagreeing, here I offer:

Five things not to say to a woman in ministry

(And yes, all of them have been said to me. All of them.)

Yes, I know where my spoons are. Usually. But not anyone else’s.

Where are the serving spoons in the church kitchen?

I don’t know. I also don’t know how to turn on the oven or make the coffee. Honestly—I don’t. You would not want me to make the coffee. Unless you’re going to ask the male pastor the same questions, don’t ask me. Being female does not equate to knowing my way around the kitchen by some cosmic genetic cooking code. (If there is a genetic cooking code, I so did not get it.)

So, your degree is in Children’s Ministry?

There is a reason my first career was high school teaching. I love interacting with teens. I love interacting with kids under ten solely on an individual basis. An entire room full of them? I think I’d rather take a job selling frostbite balm in Panama.

So no, my MDiv is in theology, in fact. Just like the question above, if you would not dream of asking my male colleagues this, don’t ask me. Try, “Is there a particular area of ministry you’re passionate about?” That opens a door for us to talk about so many things.

Is your husband a pastor, too, then?

Assumption underlying this question: You could not/should not do this alone; therefore, the only possible option is if you’re helping your husband. It’s so much fun when we are introduced in groups. Inevitably, as soon as they hear, “This is Pastor Richardson,” people turn to my husband and say, “So tell me about your church. What kind of ministry do you do?” At which point my husband, having a good sense of humor, says, “Well, I cut peoples’ throats for a living.” (He’s a surgeon—just making that quite clear.) “But you should probably ask my wife about the church.”

If you want to know what my husband does, just ask that. Then, if you’re more comfortable talking about that, great. I love bragging on my husband. He’s one of my favorite topics. (Although I have to admit to being far less comfortable talking about cutting out cancer than about theology. But maybe that’s just me.)

I don’t think I could take a women in the pulpit seriously. They’re too emotional/hormonal.

I once had a fellow seminary student critique my sermon by saying, “I was too distracted by the fact that you’re pregnant to listen.” Um, sorry. Next time I’ll just . . . deflate. (To his credit, the professor made it very clear that criticism based on physical appearance was not OK, ever. I had some good profs.)

I am not this. You are not this. Which is good. Because I’ve not seen an episode where they end well.

Some women are emotional. Some men are emotional. Most of us are just human, with a wide range of feeling depending on the topic. Would it be OK for me to say, “I don’t think I can take a man in the pulpit seriously. They’re unfeeling, sports-crazed, Mr. Spock wannabes?” Of course not—because that’s a generalized male stereotype. I’ve never worked with a pastor it fits.

People should be evaluated for who they are individually, not as a herd. God creates individuals. We’re not assembly line. Only Cybermen all get the same wiring. Hey, let’s talk instead about the last sermon you did take seriously and learn something from. I’d love to hear those thoughts and learn something, too.

I read my Bible and I believe it means what it says.

I’m very glad you do. That’s a good choice. If more people did, we’d be a lot less messed up.

I read my Bible. I really do. Every day. Almost. Heck, I spent four years of my life and lots of student loan money studying that book and reading it a lot. If I truly believe it’s in the Bible and I do not obey it, I am grieved. I know the effects of disobedience, and I don’t want them in my life. I read the Bible, and I believe that it means what it says. But I’ve read it front to back, inside and out, in context, and I don’t believe it says I can’t minister equally beside my brothers.

We can never have a rational, fair discussion if there is an a prioriassumption that I am not as dedicated to Scripture as someone with whom I don’t agree. If you expect me to believe in your integrity and devotion to Scripture, please believe in mine. Let’s start from there.

Ask me why I believe in interpreting Corinthians or Timothy differently than you do. Ask me what I do with difficult passages that talk about submission. That would make a great discussion. We can still come out of it not agreeing. But we will have respected one another. And that makes Jesus happy, if I interpret John 13 correctly.

What do you think? Can we disagree and still be respectful and generous? How?