Children who know they are loved, know they have a purpose, and know they have a hope are prepared for anything this world wants to dish up.
Tim Kimmel
f you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, depend upon it, you have more business on hand than God ever intended you should have.
D. L. Moody
Why is it that sublime intentions often wind up looking ridiculous in reality? Even the noblest intentions of a vital devotional life can wind up looking like tragi-comedy. Consider this pastor’s description of the bedtime prayer routine:
With all the defiance of a mongrel whelp, my 4-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 4-year-olds have brain damage.)
A number of parents can identify with this pastor’s dilemma. They believe in the importance of spiritual training, but how to do it effectively? According to the Leadership survey, ministry homes are places where parents take seriously the task of growing spiritually together. When we asked, Do you do anything consciously to build a spiritual life together as a family? almost 86 percent of the pastors and spouses said yes. But their methods differed radically.
Here are some ways ministry families attempt to build a shelter for the spirit, soul, and body — or as Edith Schaeffer defines it, “an ecologically balanced environment.”
Structured Times
Virtually every ministry family prays together, usually at meals, and most read Bible stories and pray with younger children at bedtime. “We pray with our children before they go to school in the morning, and we take time to listen and pray with the children before they go to bed,” said one survey respondent.
Another pastor explained the benefits of the before-bed-time moments with his 6-year-old son: “It makes sure that I have an unhurried conversation with Kyle at least once a day. And that’s important. Last week, as we finished reading and praying, I asked, as I usually do, ‘Well, Kyle, what do you remember that happened today?’
“‘Mom got angry at me and didn’t let me finish my lunch,’ he said. When I asked what happened, he said his younger sister had yanked his soup bowl off the table, spilling it on the floor. He had pushed his sister away, knocking her down. His mother walked in just in time to see the mess and the push, and she banished Kyle to his room. ‘But it wasn’t my fault, Dad.’
“He needed to explain his side of things. And I explained that he should call his mother instead of push his sister. It was a good conversation. But if I hadn’t taken the time to read and pray with him, I might have missed it. If I’d rushed in and asked, ‘What happened today?’ he’d have said, ‘Nothing.’ That’s all you’ll get if that’s all the time you spend. Getting kids to be open with you takes time.”
One benefit of a regular devotional time with the family is that, if unhurried and with the right atmosphere, it can build togetherness even within a busy family. Here are other ways of structuring times that have worked for pastoral families that responded to the survey.
“We try to sing hymns or Christian songs whenever we’re in the car. This is an especially good discipline as we’re driving to church on Sunday morning. It helps calm the frazzled nerves.”
“We play a lot of tapes of Christian music. There are some great ones specifically for youngsters, and our kids love them.”
“Our preschoolers faithfully watch some of the Superbook videos every day. These are animated Bible stories. We’ve bought some at Christian bookstores; others we’ve taped off the Christian TV station.”
Several pastors mentioned using drama within the family. One missionary candidate wrote: “When Sarah, our toddler, would no longer sit still on Mommy’s lap during family devotions, we had to think of some way to involve her. We decided to try acting out the story together. Soon Sarah, cloaked with a towel, was walking bent over and crying because she could not stand up straight, portraying the woman mentioned in Luke 13:10-13. I was Jesus, and told her, ‘Be well!’ as I put my hand on her. Immediately she stood up straight and began to shout, ‘Hooray, I can stand up straight! I can stand up straight! Jesus healed me!’ We no longer had a problem keeping Sarah involved.”
A pastor from Chicago said, “We’ve been frustrated in our attempts to have a calm, orderly devotional time. Our three children range in age from 11 to 3, and their varying verbal and conceptual abilities make it almost impossible to do something that’s meaningful for all. So the only thing we do as a whole family is to tell a Bible story occasionally, discuss it, and act it out.
“But our normal procedure is to read a story with our 11-year-old and pray with her, and then do the same thing separately with our two younger ones. We use The Picture Bible (David C. Cook) which presents the material in comic strip form. The kids enjoy seeing what the characters look like.”
A structured family time is tough to make work. Many pastoral families no longer try — the struggle to interest every child every night seemed to be counterproductive. As one pastor said, “For a long time we felt bound to the family-altar concept, but finally realized it didn’t work for us. We have, for the past few years, made a conscious effort to make our relationship with Christ a ‘living way’ — every situation becoming a normal opportunity to grow together spiritually. God is included in almost all conversations about every subject.”
But others continue to feel it’s worth the effort. Those who maintain the practice find three principles key:
The value of variety. David McDowell of College Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, says, “Anything done too many times, at least in our house, outlives its usefulness. Variety is essential. So sometimes we simply pray together; sometimes we’ll have the older kids read to the younger ones; sometimes we’ll tell a Bible story or act one out; sometimes we’ll go around the table and have each person tell about one kind deed given or received that day; other times we’ll read from a devotional booklet.”
Another pastor put it this way: “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, like those picaresque princes, you do have to be searching to find treasure.”
Avoid the teaching trap. One of the occupational hazards of ministry is taking our preaching/teaching role too seriously and not seeing ourselves as learners, especially with our children.
Psychiatrist Louis McBurney, who has counseled hundreds of pastors, says, “Some pastors never get out of the ‘teacher’ role. Most conversations with their children are devoted to telling their children what they need to know. That’s why it was so refreshing to have Smith and Mary Helen Noland in our home. They had their 11-year-old son, Gregory, with them, and they consistently listened to him and invited him into the conversation. Rather than looking for things they could instruct him about, they asked him about his ideas and feelings. Gregory responded with relaxed confidence. The mutual respect was obvious.”
Help children see that values are personal, not professional. You can tell a child, “We don’t get drunk because we’re Christians, the Bible says no, and besides, we’re the pastoral family.” None of those reasons may be strong enough, however, when peers suggest drinking and parents aren’t around to enforce the family position.
Ministry families have found the more effective route is to discuss the world’s values and their consequences, and then help the child form his or her own reasons for behavioral decisions. One of Jim Conway’s daughters used to say when confronted with alcohol, “I’ve come up with ten reasons why I don’t drink. The first is that it’s fattening.…” Further down her list were reasons more “spiritual.”
Many have found that family discussions about such issues need to start at least two years before children are confronted with the real thing. The regular family discussion and prayer time is one setting parents use to raise the issues: “Sometime down the road, kids are going to ask you what you believe about____. Let’s talk about it now. What do you want to stand for when such situations come up?” Such conversations bear far more fruit than do imposed expectations based on church roles.
When Things Break Down
Even with the best intentions, however, structured family times can fall apart. “Our regular daily devotions — reading a portion of Scripture and discussing it — were generally successful until our kids hit high school,” wrote one pastor’s wife. “With their busy schedules, our devotions broke down. We have more ‘misses’ than ‘hits.'”
Another pastor said, “Last summer I took a three-month sabbatical, and the purpose of that time was to rest, to be together as a family, to do some traveling, and to expose ourselves to different churches and other Christian people. One of our other goals was to have a consistent devotional time together.
“And it worked. We all had our Bibles and notebooks, and before coming to breakfast, we’d each read the designated paragraph from the Gospel of Luke and jot our thoughts in our notebooks. Then we’d come together for breakfast and talk about what we’d read. It was the first time since the children had gotten older that we’d been able to do that on a regular basis. It was wonderful. So I said, ‘There’s no reason we can’t keep doing this after we get back home.’
“But the minute we rolled into the driveway back home, it seemed like everyone took off in different directions. We had our morning devotions, I think, once in those next two months. Our breakfasts were just too rushed getting ready for school. Finally I gave up. Now we try to read something at suppertime, but in all honesty, we’re doing well if we do that once a week.
“But we have been successful in encouraging the older kids to read the Bible and Christian books on their own. Our 16-year-old continues to keep a spiritual notebook. And I often ask them about what they’re reading. We’ve had some helpful discussions.”
The point is not to feel unduly guilty if a structured family devotional time doesn’t come easily. The goal is to create an atmosphere in which focused attention on God is a natural part of life but not a tyranny.
“I tell my kids, and try to show with my life,” says a minister in Virginia, “that we don’t do this because it’s the law, but because it helps us, and the older we get the more we realize we need it.”
Unstructured Times
“I grew up in a home in which family devotions were rigidly observed, so we began that way,” says David Seamands, former pastor and now professor at Asbury Seminary. “Well, with little children, devotions can be such bedlam you wonder if any spiritual value results. We were constantly disciplining the kids. Sometimes we just stopped, and then we had to get over the guilt of missing devotions. When the kids were teenagers, schedules were wild, and getting everyone together was impossible.
“Gradually, Helen and I began to see that table talk was just as important as a regular family altar. We began to major on this. We were able to have at least one meal a day together. At that meal we ran the whole day’s events through a Christian sieve; everything that happened that day was discussed. I remember one meal where our oldest daughter, then about age 14, told about her first kiss. She could hardly wait to tell us. We were a very open family, and slowly, subtly, everything was dealt with in light of a Christian world view.”
This perspective was a recurring theme among those returning the Leadership surveys. For instance, one wrote: “Occasional Bible reading and a song after supper is a joy. But our emphasis is to build spiritual life naturally all day. God oozes throughout our family life rather than breaking in at one special devotional time.”
For those who major on the unstructured, a few important principles stand out.
Be prepared for significant moments at unexpected times. Deborah Milam Berkley writes about her experience as a pastor’s wife seeing God reveal himself to one of her children — and almost missing it because of the busyness of pastoral life.
Like young Samuel in Shiloh, 7-year-old Peter lived with a minister of God — in this case, his father, Jim. Also like young Samuel, when Peter first encountered the Lord, it was not at a moving worship service led by his father, nor during bedtime prayers. It was at 5:15 on a busy weekday evening, when both of his parents were unaware.
It had been a full day, and I was almost late for my evening swim. Pleased with my first athletic success (I was able to write my number of laps on the public record board!), I was eager for as much time in the pool as possible. Jim was running late for a church appointment.
We were relieved that our two children were ready to go and were quietly listening to music. As we hurriedly changed clothes, Peter came into our room with tears trickling down his cheeks.
“That song is making me cry,” he said.
Jim mumbled something to the effect of “Oh, that’s too bad,” as he slipped past Peter and hurried out the door.
“Peter, I’m going to be late! Go back to the living room and wait,” I said. But when his small form was gone, I started wondering if perhaps something was happening that was more important than swimming laps. So I called him back into the bedroom.
“Why is the song making you cry, Peter?” I asked.
“Well, it’s the song about ‘In my life, Lord, be glorified,'” Peter sobbed, “and I just have a feeling like I want to be that way.”
A thrill ran through me as I tipped up his face and looked into his eyes.
“Do you mean you want to glorify God in your life, like the song says?” When he nodded, I hugged him to me, grateful to God for not letting me ignore my son. Peter needed me to direct him to God, as Eli had done for Samuel. We prayed together, and Peter told God that he loved him and wanted to serve him. That evening we had a profoundly contented little boy at our house — and two very thankful parents.
But we almost missed it. Our adult priorities almost kept us from responding to Peter when he needed us. Since that time, I have tried to be better prepared to listen and to help.
Bring God into the daily events. One pastor said he was gratified to see his son apply spiritual lessons he’s been taught. “One morning my wife burned her hand with hot oil making play dough. Our oldest son suggested that 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?”
Be open about both successes and struggles. Children can see both the joys and the trials of the Christian life, so many parents consciously walk both the high road and the low road with their children.
A Christian Reformed pastor’s wife observed: “Our children need to know what is going on in our spiritual lives — our victories and our failures. Our kids became our prayer partners while they were still quite young. Some things were beyond them, but many could be shared in prayer. When children share spiritual struggles, they see our weaknesses and our sins, all the small and not-so-small failures that make up the walk of anyone who is serious about following Christ. But because they were spiritually involved with us, our inconsistencies weren’t a stumbling block for them. It is much harder to be put off by your parents’ sins when they admit them and you are helping them pray to overcome them.
“In the same way, our spiritual victories were not inflated out of proportion. They were seen as answers to prayer, things that can be achieved by anyone who is serious about letting God use him. When my daughters see my counsel help someone through a serious problem, or see someone introduced to Christ through my efforts, they are pleased, but not unduly impressed.”
Take advantage of ministry opportunities. Says Mary Manz Simon, a Lutheran pastor’s wife from Belleville, Illinois: “Our general rule is to accept assignments in the church at large that will allow at least the two of us and often our whole family to participate. For example, last summer we took some responsibility for an international gathering of Lutheran media misionaries in nearby St. Louis because our children would have a chance to meet people from around the world.
“Belleville is a rather closed, traditional community, and we wanted our kids to see what missionary ministry, the whole wider concept of sharing the gospel, was really about.
“One night we hosted men from nineteen countries at our home. They played T-ball in the backyard. One of the men from Brazil had never seen T-ball before. To this day, our son Matthew is convinced that he came to the United States just to play T-ball with him. The kids did a puppet show about sharing Jesus around the world. Our daughter Angela gave one of the men from France a pencil shaped like a cross, and every time we get a note from him he says, ‘I’m using Angie’s pencil.’ Then, in our living room, our children got to hear them all sing ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ in each of their native tongues. Our children will never forget that. We grew closer as a family and to the Lord that night.”
Ministry as Family Tradition
As the Simons’ example shows, somewhere between structured and unstructured approaches lies an important method many pastoral families capitalize on: developing a pattern of outreach. When children understand that ministry is rooted in a love for Christ and a desire to share that love with others, each event helps build a solid spiritual foundation.
Donald Bubna describes a tradition of hospitality his family developed while serving churches in San Diego and later in Salem, Oregon: “On Christmas Eve we would have a buffet in our home after the early Christmas Eve service for people who were alone. Christmas Day was our family celebration, but Christmas Eve was always an outreach event, and we’d invite people who needed it the most. That was part of our ministry as a family.
“As the children got older, we’d ask each child, ‘Who do you want to invite this year?’ And they would say, ‘Let’s have so-and-so. I don’t know them very well’ or ‘I don’t think so-and-so has anyplace to go.’ At times, we would end up with strange combinations of people. But it was a rich time of ministry.”
Now the Bubna children are grown and living on their own, but Don reports, “Last Christmas, we called our daughter, and she had put together a Christmas Eve buffet for some twenty people. Then we called our son who’s in Alaska, and he’d had a group of people in, too, ‘just like we always did, Dad.’
“As a parent, this is one of my greatest rewards: to see children freely choose to reach out to others by continuing, and building on, our family’s tradition.”
Copyright ©1988 Christianity Today
