With all the defiance of a mongrel whelp, my four-year-old son stared me down and issued his answer: “No!” For the past four bedtimes, young John had become increasingly obstinate about praying.
“You’re going to pray if I have to wait here all night!”
I heard myself utter this benign threat and had to wonder who let the crazy man in. What had happened to the wisdom of a hundred seminars on child rearing?
But if John could play his role, I was going to get an Oscar for mine.
“John, sit up and tell me what you want to pray for.”
John ignored me and I panicked. Here I was, a pastor, a family counselor, a cherisher of boyhood memories, a crusader for handling children the right way. My jaw was tight, my lip curled, and above those was a top about to blow. (Would God enter the scene with a pearl of wisdom or at least an off-stage prompt? Apparently not. So I improvised.)
“John, you always pray. Isn’t there someone you would like to pray for?” (John pretends he is asleep.)
“John, Jesus likes it when you talk to him.” John emerges from Slumberland just long enough to yawn like a crevice.)
“John, I want you to pray right now.” (John instantly turns onto his stomach.)
“Do you want Daddy to get the belt?” (Not even third-person rhetoric can shake the fever.)
“All right John, I’m leaving. I hope you have a horrible sleep.” (Exit the spiritual father of two, dragging his tail and conscience behind him, agreeing with Bill Cosby that all four-year-olds have brain damage.)
As I walked (i.e., stomped) away, I wondered if this was the same kid who once tore into his bedroom to pray for Grandpa, who was sick. I must have been failing in the fight. Here was cadet mutiny of the Christian kind. My little disciple didn’t want to pray. Quickly, I leafed through my copy of Parents in Pain looking for the section on preschool delinquents.
I believe with all the peanut butter stuck to the roof of my son’s mouth that most pastors share my regard for the megalessons that come through people shorter than our sink. We do love them. We do attempt to teach them. We do fail as parents—and then feel like the Eli we just preached about. We do attempt to understand original sin as it relates to stealing cookies before Mommy and Daddy get out of bed in the morning.
As we plod along, we are painfully aware we need to build a shelter for the spirit, soul, and body, or as Edith Schaeffer defines it, “an ecologically balanced environment.” Like David, I look at the Goliaths seeking to block the learning channel in the family, and I search for some stones to throw.
Here are at least five granules I use to defend our family’s devotional life in the spiritual warfare of the eighties.
The School of the Parable
In Deuteronomy 6:6-8, Moses gives a model for training children, and I began applying it in a new way last year:
“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them 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. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”
Verse 6 emphasizes my need to grow and expand in my relationship with my heavenly Father. Where am I in this process? Wherever I am will be the substance of what my children are learning (verse 7). That will be what I “talk about when [I] sit at home and when [I] walk along the road.”
This perked up my practical ears. The location for devotion is anywhere. The occasions mentioned in verse 7 cover all the daily duties of life: eating, relaxing, working, getting up, and going to bed.
Then comes verse 8, and a new truth: “Tie them as symbols.” Truth is applied daily in symbols.
Our town is in the Canadian Rockies, serenely nestled between two mountain ranges. A bike hike here is a plethora of noise, nature, and God’s majesty. The summer before last, John and I took off one afternoon for a minivacation on my ten-speed. John was perched behind me as I exercised pedal power. At one point we stopped at the edge of a wooded area. John queried me, “Who made those trees, Daddy?”
Nonchalantly I countered, “God did, Son.” After that we discussed everything in sight and explored its origin, design, purpose, and end. John was fascinated by the intricate mosaic of life around him. He was equally pleased with the God who laid it all out for a four-year-old to feast upon.
As we rode home, we sang John’s favorite songs. What a marvelous day we spent in God-talk.
Pictures. Nature. Symbols. Analogy. Parable. These are the heart of God’s teaching method. From the complexity of the Tabernacle to the profundity of a man sowing seed; from the prophet with the plumb line to the master with the multitude needing bread—God loves a symbol.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in child psychology to use a picture along the way. All we need is a keen eye and a God-given desire to teach.
One day I was doing my husbandly duty of caring for the creatures I had helped to create. Andrew cuddled at my feet, and John was playing with the hose in the back yard. All of a sudden, John let out a blood-curdling scream. He was standing on an anthill, and the little things were crawling all over him. I yelled for him to move, but he remained frozen.
I dashed out and began brushing him off. Several thousand ants later, I told John, “This is what God does for us whenever we get into trouble.”
Two nights later, John was praying for me and ended with “Take all the bugs off of Daddy.” Between laughing and crying, I tied another symbol to my hand.
Ministry Moments
Last March, Time magazine reported seventeen new schools in a year and a half devoted exclusively to the training of nannies. Some families are so desperate they even pay the entire tuition of a woman to ensure her availability afterward. The reason for the rush is elementary: The working-mother revolution has spawned a load of guilt-ridden, fear-filled parents who, after reading the newspapers about some baby sitters and day-care centers, are looking for a safer way.
Let me apply this to us fear-filled, guilt-ridden parents trying to instill spiritual values in our children. God has provided a nanny for them: the Holy Spirit. God desires a partnership between us and him.
Several families in our church are learning their kids have special needs that only the Holy Spirit can take care of. We call these “healing points.” A young girl named Jane came to the Thompson family after three previous foster homes. She had been physically and emotionally abused by her father. For almost a year, Carol and Roy Thompson prayed for the healing of hurtful memories, bruised emotions, and fearful thoughts.
The change God brought about in that girl is obvious throughout our congregation. First her distrust fell away; then the smile appeared, a full, warm smile. Jane gained confidence in herself and her new family. She did not sidestep the past; the Holy Spirit healed her of it through her foster parents.
Even in our home, ministry is becoming a way of life. One morning my wife burned her hand with hot oil making play dough. Our oldest son insisted we pray before taking Mommy to the hospital. To this day, she has no scar—and guess who brags on God’s healing power the most?
Why not introduce ministry into children’s lives? They need it, and the framework for understanding God’s workings in later life is established. Ministry helps a child see all of life as God’s restoration-and-recovery clinic.
The Bible and the Bears
Part of our soulishness as living beings created in God’s image is the ability to imagine and create. The Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte used to draw out enormous scriptural insights using what he termed “sanctified imagination.”
Kids seem to have shoe boxes full of the stuff. Not only does it flow in an endless torrent of ideas and thoughts, but kids also respond more fully to anything built for creativity.
One night, weary of reading the same old Bible stories (especially after a long day of studying), I asked John if he wanted to hear a story about Johnny Bear. He was all ears and excitement. I spun a three-minute yarn about a bear that also happened to encompass a simple Bible truth. I colored the tale with ambitious adventures and furry friends. It all came off the top of my head.
Thereafter, every night became an opportunity for Johnny Bear to leap from the Bible into the blank pages of a boy’s mind. After a while he began to set the plot. He asked me for one about the government office. I thought for a moment that my memory file had misplaced that one, until I realized I was now getting maximum involvement from Short Stuff himself. Before long the government office story taught Johnny Bear to be content, to grow up at God’s pace, and not want adult things too fast. (How I arrived there is even a little foggy to me, but the lesson is still retained by my little bear.)
We’ve encouraged others to role-play games where a Christian truth is built from a simple tale. Everyone loves a story. The phenomenal successes of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and others pay tribute to teaching that uses the fertile ground of “sanctified imagination.”
The Multi-unit Family Principle
In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler expounds the virtue and inevitability of the multi-unit society, where people are more concerned with a network of relationships than with countries and ideologies. Intimate gatherings of families and friends, he says, will be the homogeneous unit that attracts the most allegiance.
I have news for Toffler and the other prognosticators: The church has been doing this since its inception.
Acts 2 says people met from house to house breaking bread and fellowshipping. Most scholars agree these home gatherings served both the social and spiritual needs of the budding brotherhood. They laid the groundwork for teaching many different age groups.
We began to employ the same principle almost by accident in our church. Certain ladies were spending hours together every day. Their families, not wanting to be bereft of wives and mothers, joined them, and family times occurred. Out of this, two husbands became Christians, the wives became more adjusted in their roles, and the children became more obedient.
What on earth could explain the change? The convergence of ideas and beliefs brought a network of informal teaching. When one child learned not to throw dirt, they all learned it. When one heard that God supplied their food, they all learned it. Sharing with one another was a group teaching. Loving was a group lesson. God’s Word was heard by all, the older kids helping the younger ones understand.
Now we are beginning to encourage families in our church to get together and study the Word. It’s almost a mini-Sunday school. Kids, even teenagers, like learning through games (especially Bible Trivia), singing, and sharing. Times of multi-family worship fulfill a host of needs.
Attitude Counts the Most
When I counsel with engaged couples, I like to make one suggestion: Keep the wedding simple, but add one element that will make it unique, personal, and unforgettable.
The greatest thing I am learning as a 1980s parent in search of the Lost Ark of family devotions is this: Don’t try too hard. I never plan out a week’s devotions for the family. Like the Three Princes of Serendip, we are just finding treasure along the way. However, even as those picaresque princes, you do have to be searching to find treasure.
The womb of all devotional creating is attitude. I spend the most time trying to relate to my children’s needs. It came as a relief and a shock to find out kids go through passages in life even as we adults do. (I think my youngest is going through menopause.) The secret is to find one thing to relate to a child’s present need—something he or she will remember.
We love our new foster daughter. Since she has been with us, we have tried to meet her great need of emotional healing. In Sunday school she was learning how special she was to God. My wife piggybacked on this by letting her pick out the wallpaper for her room. She chose a pattern with rainbows and pink clouds.
We explained that rainbows meant God always keeps a promise. She said nothing until a few weeks later, when she was about to pray. She asked again if God kept promises. Receiving an affirmative answer, she suddenly began to petition God for the famine in Ethiopia, for her parents, her cousin’s illness, the local mayor (who goes to our church), and on and on.
We’ve seen a new warmth in her since then. The rainbow on her wall will always be remembered as a symbol of a hurt little girl beginning to be healed.
Since looking over these concepts and seeing I could have listed half a dozen more, an awful thought occurs to me. Someone might think I know what I’m doing with kids. I must remind myself that all the techniques in the universe will not eliminate our problems. There are no experts when it comes to raising children (and their parents); just sinner-saints wanting to be in the flow of the Spirit and see children reconciled in the Truth.
Michael E. Phillips is pastor of Lake Windermere Alliance Church, Invermere, British Columbia.
SURVEY: THE STATE OF FAMILY MINISTRY
What topics and situations most concern pastors regarding family ministry?
In 1984, the Task Force on the Family, appointed by the National Association of Evangelicals, conducted a survey to identify the particular problems of families in NAE-affiliated congregations. It also sought where pastors sensed a need for more help.
The top twelve areas (with the percentage of pastors indicating a desire for help in dealing with these areas):
—Communication skills (55)
—Financial affairs (50)
—Divorce and remarriage (30)
—Adolescent issues: peer pressure, rebellion (29)
—Parent/child relationships (26)
—Marital/premarital counseling (26)
—Alcohol and drug abuse (24)
—Sex (19)
—Discipline (19)
—Stress (18)
—Husband/wife roles (18)
—Family worship (16)
Less frequently reported were fidelity problems (14 percent), which was one of the few contrasts with data derived from surveys among the general American society. Nevertheless, 58 percent of the pastors indicated “family breakdown is becoming a more common problem in my congregation.”
Several other findings:
In response to the statement “The problems of today’s Christian families are significantly different compared with those I was trained to deal with,” pastors from metropolitan areas were more likely to agree than those from smaller communities.
Pastors in smaller communities were more likely to agree with the statement “Problems of mixed marriages (Christian married to non-Christian) are very different from those of the all-Christian family.”
Women bring more requests to the pastor than do men. Couples seek the pastor’s help more commonly than do men, but less than do women.
The larger the church, the greater the incidence of family fidelity problems. Also, the larger the church, the greater the tendency of couples, men, and women to inform the pastor and seek counsel on their family problems.
Almost half of the pastors surveyed have never or only once attended any sort of workshop or program to assist them in dealing with family matters. Half indicated they had never turned to another pastor for help with family concerns. Almost half said they had never helped another pastor with such matters.
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