{"id":9465,"date":"2011-06-20T01:59:42","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T01:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/2011\/06\/20\/helpgettheirveggies\/"},"modified":"2011-06-20T01:59:42","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T01:59:42","slug":"helpgettheirveggies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/helpgettheirveggies\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Them Get Their Veggies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether it was writing for VeggieTales, or for my new educational series, What’s in the Bible?<\/em>, I’ve always started with two goals: First, to lead my audience to a new understanding of a spiritual truth. Second, to make my lesson entertaining, or the first goal just isn’t going to happen.<\/p>

This leads to the issue of generating even more “hard-to-please” Christian consumers. (“This Sunday school class isn’t as funny as VeggieTales! I’m outta here!”) I wish there was an easy answer to this problem, but there isn’t. Once upon a time, kids were more than happy to sit around the fire, listening to Pa read aloud from the “Good Book.” Of course that was typically after 8-12 hours of hard work in a field or a textile mill. Maybe even a coal mine.<\/p>

Kids today don’t spend eight hours a day in a factory or a coal mine. They spend eight hours a day watching the Disney Channel<\/em> or playing video games on an Xbox 360. As a result, dryly reading from the “Good Book” seems to have lost its appeal. Hence a talking tomato and cucumber, or a bunch of wisecracking puppets—and the problem of consumer Christians.<\/p>

So what to do? I use humor to get kids’ attention, but then I try to slow them down at some point so we can talk seriously. Humor buys me that opportunity and earns me the right to talk seriously.<\/p>

—Phil Vischer Veggie Tales Creator Wheaton, Illinois<\/p>

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today\/Leadership<\/em> Journal.Click here<\/a> for reprint information on Leadership<\/em> Journal.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether it was writing for VeggieTales, or for my new educational series, What’s in the Bible?, I’ve always started with two goals: First, to lead my audience to a new understanding of a spiritual truth. Second, to make my lesson entertaining, or the first goal just isn’t going to happen.This leads to the issue of Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2691],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[156],"tax_ctp_tags":[3557,3682,3726,4085,4444,4662,5125,5129,5190,5305],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-9465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-phil-vischer","tax_publications-leadership-journal","tax_ctp_tags-change","tax_ctp_tags-consumerism","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-gospel","tax_ctp_tags-media","tax_ctp_tags-pop-culture","tax_ctp_tags-teachings-of-jesus","tax_ctp_tags-technology","tax_ctp_tags-trends","tax_ctp_tags-worship"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"\nHelp 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