One of the things our local Body of Believers is constantly asking is: What do we do about the children.
Most of the time, our answer is: We have no idea, but we should at least keep them alive and relatively happy. I guess that's a start.
How do you raise up a generation of people who know the love God has for them and who choose to live by the life of Jesus? And how do you do that when you are meeting together in homes without paid staff?
I have no idea. But these are questions that are getting harder to ignore as our children get older.
We have a lot of children in our church. With a church of 30-35 adults, I am guessing we have 25 or so children. When they are young, it basically comes down to providing adequate childcare while the adults meet together. But as they become young boys and girls, questions arise about what to include them in and how to teach them.
For the most part, we are not great at this. We have a few who really have hearts for teaching the children, but it takes much more than a few to tackle such a lofty mission. I'm beginning to see that this has to be a whole church thing. We have to stop outsourcing - hoping that the few will somehow take care of it so that the rest of us can go on with our lives.
And I am definitely part of the problem, not the solution. I've got issues. I've got baggage. I'm messed up.
I did not grow up in a Christian household. No one taught me Bible stories. And, to tell the truth, I think I am better off for that (or at least a part of me thinks that). I did not touch a Bible until I really wanted to know what it said. Therefore, at a relatively young age, I dove into it. And it wasn't to impress adults or because I was supposed to do so, but rather because I wanted to know God and believed that Scripture could help.
I'm afraid of making God cheesy. I'm afraid of presenting Him in such a way that our sweet children will one day grow up and rebel against the stories that we told them when they were young. That, like Santa Claus, they will decide that Abraham, Noah, Daniel, and Jesus were nice to hear about as boys and girls, but it's time they moved on to bigger and better things.
Recently, during a Bible story lesson that a precious sister in our church was teaching to our children, the teacher asked Ellis (my 5-year-old son) whether his dad ever reads him the Bible. Ellis responded by saying that I never read the Bible with him, but that I read lots of other stuff.
And Ellis was right. I will read Shel Silverstein, Lemony Snicket, a book about dinosaurs...anything I can to Ellis. But reading the Bible to him? That makes me queasy. What if he doesn't like it? What if he doesn't understand it?
God's working on me. On us. I know there has to be a middle ground here. I know that there has to be a way of talking about this wonderful Book we have with our children that is truly beneficial. Ellis sees me reading the Bible. He knows that the book is precious to me. And, as one older brother likes to say with raising children, it's caught more than taught - children benefit more from seeing these things lived out than from overt teaching. But that doesn't mean the teaching part isn't important!
Maybe I should just demand Ellis to be Hindu. Then, he can meet Jesus, reject hinduism, and be a Christian for the rest of his life. That's much better than the opposite, of which the thought I just can't bear.
Don't get me wrong. I know, as a father, I have a role to play in the faith of my children.
It just absolutely petrifies me.