Heart and Spine for Children

Okay, think back to when our first son, CJ, was born. Remember that? Thirty-five years ago.

Yeah. What do you think our goal was? Do you think we had any goal?

I'm laughing because we had no goal. We hadn't even really thought about it. Well, no, we did think before he was born, we're like, we're going to raise these guys to love Jesus, our kids. I mean, we had that in mind.

Oh, definitely. Like, we wanted to raise kids that would impact the world for Jesus. That was our goal. But then we'd had no idea how to get there. Don't you think that's true? I think we were like most typical parents. Yeah. We had a dream. We heard what the dream should be, maybe a church.

We had no concept of how hard it would be and what it would look like. And how you get just lost in the dailies. And I would say every parent can relate.

Yeah. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So, in fact, when we wrote No Perfect Parents, that was the purpose. It's like, how can we help parents decide what their bullseye, we call it, what they're trying to raise? And most parents, including us, when we started, really didn't know what that looked like. And I love Family Life's The Art of Parenting because it had that same concept in mind. Like, how can we raise these kids to follow Jesus? Yeah. We wanted resilient kids.

That's what we wanted. Kids said their faith was resilient for their entire lifetime. And, you know, we've got a whole group of writers in the studio today who wrote a book called Resilient, which is all about, let me read you your subtitle, Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church. And as I read this, you know, it was about the church, but it's also about the family. It's the partnership there. And I'm so excited for today because every parent that I know that wants to raise children of the faith has the same dilemma.

It's like, I have this goal, I don't know how to get there, and I'm not even sure how to describe what the goal is. So we've got three authors that are going to help us do this, right? We have Valerie Bell, Matt Markins, and Mike Handler.

You guys, welcome again to Family Life Today. Thank you. Yeah. And some of our listeners know this name probably a lot, do Awana is what Valerie is the CEO of, and you all work with Awana, Chief Strategy. Matt over here. Mike is Chief Communications, right, with the radio voice. That's it. I mean, you're an amazing team for Awana, but also an amazing team as authors, because as we read your book, it was compelling to help families, like we just talked about parents, but also the church understand what we're trying to produce.

And this is elementary. Every church should be able to answer this question. Every family should, but a lot of us can't. What is it we are trying to raise as parents and as children ministers in the church, what should be the goal? We should have our eye on the future church.

We looked at 2050 and we said, these kids are going to be adults in 2050. What are we wanting that church to look like? If you want a strong family, if you want strong children, you should be very invested in building a strong church, because out of that church, children grow in the soil of that rich faith that they find in church.

So, you know, to have this sense of future, what is the future goal that we're trying to build here? So, you know, we've said we want to raise kids who will love Jesus for the rest of their lives. There's that passionate identity with Christ and not just with Christ, but with his church, with God's people. There is this sense that our children have the capacity to, even in this strong culture, to build a primary identity or primary allegiance with God and with Jesus and with the Bible and with the church. And so all of these things fall under this category of discipleship.

That's the broader heading for all of those things that I've been describing. We want to raise disciples. I love how you started that out, because everyone listening is like, of course we want to make disciples.

We want our kids to love Jesus for the rest of their lives. But something has changed. Our listeners are probably thinking the culture around us has changed rapidly. And we talk about this story in the book about a public official who was going before the Senate to be confirmed for public office. And he's being grilled because of his orthodox, evangelical, Bible-believing beliefs. Matt, I was reading that to Dave last night.

Like, listen to this. Yeah, and because of his rootedness in the scripture and in the gospel by one particular senator, he is deemed as being unfit for public service. So what is this telling us? It's telling us things that were once celebrated about the Christian faith in our culture are becoming increasingly no longer celebrated. Christian thinking may in the future be increasingly marginalized.

So we have to ask ourselves, are we giving kids lesser things that will not travel with them into their adult lives? What can we do to disciple resilient young people who are going to gauge the culture and lead the future of the church? Let's speak into the family for a second, too, because the Christian family has changed. And we know from our own record keeping that Christian families who say they are church attenders, their kids from the church roles actually are only going to be there 1.7 times on average per month. Well, Valerie, I thought it was interesting as you're talking about how important the church is. I think especially with COVID, because we've all been in our own homes, worshipping maybe online or just we're thinking, I can make disciples in my own home.

I'm glad you brought that up. And I see a lot of people, they've stopped going to church thinking it's not necessary. And yet you're saying the church is so necessary. OK, there's a difference between being consumers and builders. The builders come and they minister to each other. They contribute financially. They contribute in so many ways. Before COVID, we had become consumer Christians.

I'm sorry, somebody has to say it. What is that? Define that. Well, I'll go to this church because I like the music. And this is where they have these really great programs and I like such and such as preaching.

We are giving it the consumer test, whether we, you know, does it meet our good housekeeping seal of approval standards for Christian entertainment? During COVID, I watched TV and went to church that way. Loved the access to some of the best preaching in the world. But it is very clear to me after having experienced it that that is far removed from being involved in a local body of believers. And so here you've got kids 1.7 times, you know, that's about 24 hours in a year. And listen, you cannot make disciples with that little amount of time. Somewhere our priorities and our primary allegiance as parents has shifted.

And, you know, we need to shift back to primary allegiance being making sure that our kids have access to everything they need, including the things that are more than edutainment that will give them strength to be able to deal with 2050 when they're adults. What would you say? Talk to the mom or dad that's listening and going, okay, I don't want to do what Valerie's saying and maybe I have been doing it. What should I do? I'm a mom, I'm a dad. I want to raise a resilient disciple. How do I do it?

What should I do? Yeah, well, I think the church is the place where life on life discipleship happens. It's seeing a kid in the eye. It's being knee to knee with a child. I'm a parent of four kids and I could say something. I have a teenage son and a soon to be teenage daughter and good night. I mean, that just is enough there to raise one's faith. But I also know that there are other men in my son Griffin's life who can speak to him.

Who will say all the same things I've said, but he'll have a listening ear to some of their words that he won't have to mine. It's crazy. Dave and I would say to our kids, like, he'd come home and say, oh, this is what Rob said and it was amazing. And we look at each other.

We go to bed that night. It's like, we've said that a million times. But they heard it because they respected somebody else. Yeah, it is. It is.

It's that, you know, in Hebrew, the assembly of the believers, right? Like, that is what we're going for here. And the church is in a prime spot right now to start dreaming again. We talked about the fact that possibly COVID, it certainly accelerated some things in our culture. Businesses that had closed or other decisions that had to have been made. COVID probably accelerated some things that were 10, 20, 30 years out. But it also accelerated our ability as a local church to start dreaming again. To start saying, okay, this is a newer reality that we're living in.

Different than what we've lived in before. So what can we do in this present that will line us up for a better future, especially as it relates to our kids? At the same time, you know, I'm sitting here with the father hat on as well as pastor hat. And we wrote it in our book saying it's not the church's job to raise your kids in the Lord. Ephesians 6, 4, fathers, don't exasperate your children, raise them in the instruction and training of the Lord.

That's on, Ann would love to say, that's on you, Dave. But it's obviously fathers and mothers. But, you know, the church obviously is a partner in that. But a lot of us as parents just say, oh, I don't know what to do. Here, church, do your job. And, you know, one hour a week.

So it's a partnership. But as parents, we're called to make disciples. Well-known children's ministry blogger Dale Hudson blogged here recently.

He consults with lots of churches. And he's saying the theme is even in as churches are regathering physically, a lot of families are, they're just simply not coming back. Children's ministries of 600 children pre-COVID are children's ministries of about 150 children now.

So where are the families? What Dale Hudson is saying is what we're saying in the book Resilient. Children need the presence of a loving, caring adult. So Valerie, talk about the Harvard Center for the Developing Child.

Yeah, it's really interesting. There have been a lot of secular studies on what will get children through their childhoods that have been global. And when you think about children, what they experience globally, it's war, it's displacement, homelessness, refugee, it's food shortage, it's disease. You know, there are places now in the world that don't have the vaccinations for COVID even.

They may never get them. But even in that fluent culture here, it's even neglect. Yes, it's neglect. It's all kinds of things. So they look at all these things that impact children.

They say, what will get them through? The UN had a study. Harvard had a study.

There have been a couple of others that have had independent studies from each other. And they all came up with the same solution for kids that will mitigate anything they will go through. This one thing will get children through anything this world can throw at them. And we're on the edge of our seat.

Yeah, and Matt already said what it is. It's the presence of a loving, caring adult. And when I hear that, I see a description of the church, of the presence of a loving, caring adult.

It might be your parent, like you said, that maybe it might be other people who have been gifted by the Spirit to get this. I remember when we were going to seminary, we were taking classes, we were doing ministry. But I decided to lead a girls' awana group of sixth-grade girls. Do you remember this, Dave?

Yeah, you're just throwing that in there because we've got awana with us. I've just been waiting for this moment. But it was so interesting. And Dave was not doing this for boys, apparently. He wasn't.

He was living out of Ephesians right here. Dave, let's talk about that. I'm trying to help you, Dave.

I like this group. I was playing pickup basketball somewhere. Well, you were gone overnight. You were at a retreat, I think a men's retreat. Yeah, I was discipling men. That's what I was doing.

Praise God. And so we had a little sleepover with these sixth-grade girls. And I remember thinking, what am I doing? You know, I don't have kids yet, but I love these girls. And I remember thinking, are they getting it?

Are they knowing that I love them, that I care about them? And it was about one in the morning, and we were in these sleeping bags on the floor. And this girl out of nowhere says, you guys, will you pray for me?

My parents are going through a divorce, and I feel lost and alone. I mean, talk about vulnerable for a 12-year-old. Which then led another girl to share the fears that she was going through, the stress she was going through. Her grandmother was raising her. I get teary thinking about it, because I remember thinking, Lord, what an amazing gift that you've given me, that you're allowing these girls to open up with their hearts and their vulnerability, their fears. And then we prayed for each other, these little sixth-grade girls, just praying for each other and asking God to come in and meet them where they were. That's discipleship. Where you're walking alongside in the highs, in the lows, hearing their hearts and praying for them. That's what we have an opportunity to do, whether you have kids or you don't. Like if God puts that on your heart, you can become one of those people that speaks life into a world changer. Absolutely.

You could be double income, no kids, right? Or you could be a grandparent or you could be somebody who, you know, just God has called to not ever get married or not have kids, but you could still be influential in the life of a child or a community of kids. And that's amazing.

That's stewardship. So I think there's two practical applications. So for parents looking through the homelands, the first practical application is we've got to put our phones down. We've got to put our mobile devices down. We have to remember that vision that Valerie talked about earlier. This is about raising a generation that's going to engage the culture of the future to shape the future of the church.

Let's create space to be present with our kids. Listen to them. Ask them questions. Tell them about a time when we messed up and we needed forgiveness. So live the gospel out in front of them. But the second application I think is that same parent turning toward the church. We've got to have eyes to see other kids in the church that don't have that loving, caring adult. You know, see a family that probably may not be discipling their kids. And we have this feeling that says, I need to reach out to that child. And what would you say to the parent that's listening that's thinking, I don't have time for that. I barely have time to function. What would your encouragement to them be? Find time.

You don't have anything more important to do. Children who are discipled are leaders. That's another word for disciple. They are leaders.

Yes, they follow Jesus, but they don't get led into things that will be self-destructive. Like so many of the things that are happening in culture are right now very self-destructive. I would really encourage a parent who is feeling that spread out in life to start editing away. Especially during these years when you're raising kids.

You can take up that other stuff later. Make sure that you are doing the most primary essential part of parenting, which is discipling. I would say that, Valerie, if our lifestyle is so cluttered that we can't find time to disciple our kids, that we are living the wrong lifestyle. We are not living a lifestyle that's living out the ways of Jesus.

And it's not as though you need to have an MDiv. Or you have gone to Bible college or anything like that as a parent. I mean, it's simple conversations. It's making space in those margins even. You know, it's having conversations in the minivan. Or maybe you have an older child and you're at the pickup line for a younger child at school. Just being able to talk then, to listen as well, to show up. I mean, so much of discipleship is showing up. The word that came to my mind is engage. Yeah.

Just engage. I know, I'm sure we've shared it on this program before. I know we put it in the book this day when I was a young dad. And again, you know my story. I didn't have a dad. So there's part of me thinking, I'm not sure how to raise a disciple.

I'm not even sure how to be a dad, but how to be a spiritual disciple maker, you know, of my three boys. And so we're at the playground. They're all playing on the jungle gym. I'm sitting watching and play with our boys. And I'm literally having this moment like, this is awesome. I'm a dad.

I've got a legacy now. I never did, my dad never did this. I'm sitting there and I actually look around.

I see other dads doing the same thing. And I sort of like, this is cool, you know, and Ann comes walking over and she just told us to worry. So it's fresh, but she comes walking over and tell them what you think you said.

I'll tell them what she really said. The way I thought I said it was, what are you doing? He goes, this is amazing. I'm watching the boys.

I'm like, are you going to be one of those dads that's just sitting observing? He goes, uh, yeah, this is cool. And by the way, she's being nice. She sat down and said, what are you doing? Just like that. Like, look what you're doing. I'm like, and I did, I had no eyes to see what was happening. I'm like, this is great. She goes, are you going to be one of these dads?

I watch this, look at the other dads. Are you going to engage? And she leaves. And I remember sitting there going, God, did you just talk to me? Yes, yes. And all I'm saying is that day, it was a moment for me as a young father. I go, I have an opportunity to engage.

Now, here's the thing. I became that dad, you know, in the front yard and engaging, again, not perfectly. But when you say to me, okay, engage spiritually to lead your boys. And if you have daughters to become disciples, then I was like, what does that look like? And I think a lot of our listeners or parents are like, I can get my kid to church.

And I agree, I need to do that. But my side of training and instructing in the Lord, I'm not sure I know what that looks like. So what would you say to them? Because obviously, getting another person from the church to influence you. That's a key learning.

That's huge. And as we even look back on our sons, we had that and you did as well. But talk to the dad or mom says, I'm not sure what I would do. What would you tell them to do besides connect to the church? You know, I think to answer that question, I would like to just back us up a little bit and look at the context of the culture that we're living in. We are living with people who are shattered. We are living with people whose foundational beliefs have just gone crazy on them and they're not going to find and they know this.

They're not going to find what they want at the country club or the soccer league. The shallowness of the preoccupations pre-COVID are really very evident right now. So I know churches where there was a church I was with last week. They had a Christian school with a thousand kids. They stopped in the middle of COVID. They started up again. They thought, oh, we'll have 500 kids that come.

They got all thousand back plus another 500. Wow, and it reminds me of my neighborhood. We had a terrible situation. We were the only believers in this neighborhood and we try. They knew we were in ministry.

We didn't have a choice not to be a witness or anything, but we had a night where a girl from the high school was killed in a car accident three days very close to graduation. It shook us all and before we knew it, they started showing up with families from our neighborhood to our house. It just was the place to come in this situation.

We held hands. We were all crying and nobody except our family knew how to pray but they knew where to come. They knew that they needed God's people and they needed God's comfort when they couldn't answer those questions for their children.

I think we're living in a very similar time. I think that there is an understanding that our neighbors need God's people. We need the church. They need the church.

We need answers for the questions that we have right now. And so I see this as a tremendous opportunity for the church to be the shining light. I love these scriptures. I was just thinking of you are the light of the world.

Yes. Yes, do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like lights like stars in the sky. That's Philippians 2. I think that's a picture of God's dream for us during this COVID time that the church would shine like stars. Isn't that a beautiful phrase and that they would know that they can come to us for comfort and understanding and interpretation of what they've just gone through. So I'd like to draw a direct line between that and how to make this uber practical.

Some good handles here. Let's talk about that warped and crooked generation. So our children, we've got a choice.

Are we going to build a moat of protection around them, which I think we all know is an illusion, right? Or do we want to prepare them to thrive like those shining stars in the midst of a crooked generation? So our kids need heart and spine, right? They need heart to be compassionate, to engage the culture around them, but they've got to be rooted in the gospel in the spine of truth. So we have to help our kids have compassion to say, I hear you, I'm listening. I love you, but to not waver from the gospel.

Heart and spine. That's what our children need. Yeah, we could also talk about that from being, you know, having the ability to stand uncompromisingly on truth, right?

That would be that spine, but also to be kind of just unquestionable in your love. They'll know we are Christians by our love. That wasn't just a throwaway kind of bumper sticker back in the day of Christ. That was for us today, his disciples here today.

What an opportunity we have in our homes, at our block parties, you know. Mike, there's risk in heart and spine, right? There's risk. Like if I communicate love and if I communicate compassion, but I'm not wavering from my church, we as the church have got to lead. And we've got to help our kids to lead with heart and spine. And the truth is, and you know this, if heart and spine isn't modeled by mom and dad or single mom or single dad or blended family, it's going to be hard for the kids, our children to catch it. Yeah. So the challenge even as we wrap up for me is to look men in the eyes and say, man, heart, radical love for you as dads. And Ian could do that for the moms, but for the parents, man, I would just, I would say, man, what does it look like to radically love God and love your neighbor?

Yeah. What does it look like to stand strong on the word? As a parent, as you're trying to create that in your kids, it starts here.

You can't give away what you don't first possess and it starts with us. I think all of us as parents can recognize that we tend to lean in one direction or another, either heart or spine, full of truth or full of grace, and we need to make sure that we are demonstrating and modeling both of those for our children, that that's a part of the reality of who we are as followers of Christ. Live that out and then call our kids to the same commitment to truth with an equal commitment to grace and mercy and kindness and generosity, the heart of the gospel.

Great conversation today as Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking to Valerie Bell, Matt Markins and Mike Handler. They are the co-authors of a book called Resilient Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church. This is a book not just for church leaders, but it's a book for all of us as parents to be thinking about how we effectively communicate the message of the gospel to our children in a way that penetrates, a way that connects with them. We have copies of the book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can request your copy online at familylifetoday.com.

Again, the title of the book is Resilient or you can call to order. The number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. That's 800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. These conversations that we hear every day on Family Life Today happen because of listeners just like you who have made it happen. Some of you who are listeners have given from time to time to support this ministry. Some of you are regular givers, monthly, what we call legacy partners who invest in this ministry month in and month out. We want to first of all say thank you for your financial support, but we also want to encourage you. As a regular listener, we're praying here in the last two weeks of August as we head into a new fall season, we're praying that God would raise up in every city where Family Life Today is heard, two families who would step forward and say, we want to help make Family Life Today possible in our community. We want to make sure the program is on not just for us, but for the tens of thousands of people who are listening in our community or the hundreds of thousands of people who are listening all around the world.

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How can we raise sons and daughters who are evangelists? We'll talk more about that tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.