All right, as parents, we have one job. To lead our kids to Christ and disciple them. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of looking for that. Even as a pastor, and I think we get lost in this when we peel it all back and say, what are we really trying to do? It's the Great Commission. You go back to Matthew 28, Jesus said, go and make disciples and we can lose that. We do services, we do ministries.
And it's like, wait, wait, at the end of the day, we are actually trying to raise up a man and woman who is a resilient follower of Jesus Christ. 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. And this is Family Life Today. As parents, we have one job. To lead our kids to Christ and disciple them. Yeah, that's the goal. That's the target.
That's what we're shooting for. How do we get there? And so we have three people in the studio that wrote a book that basically tells us how to get there. And it didn't take one person.
It took three to write this. All three of you work with Awana, this amazing ministry that's been around for 70 years. 70 years. 70 years. And it's really discipled, can I say millions?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, over the years, children in churches in different areas. But Valerie Bell is the CEO of Awana now and leads this ministry. And Matt Markins and Mike Handler here as well who bring communication and strategy.
You're all parents. Prolific, award-winning author, Valerie. And I'm sure this book will do just as well. And you've written the book called Resilient Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church. We're excited to have you guys back with us today. We're happy to be with you. It's good to be with you.
Yeah. And I know you're doing a lot of things besides just writing a book. Talk about something that's coming up in September that's going to help parents and ministers raise up resilient disciples. We have a community called the Child Discipleship Forum, which is going to be hosted in Nashville and online on September 16th and 17th, 2021. But we're not standing alone. We're standing with a community of church leaders. So we're going to be joined by about 16 different communicators.
Valerie is one of them, Pastor Darren Whitehead, David Kenneman of the Barna Group, Ed Stetzer, Cynthia Dixon of Tony Evans Church. And we can just keep going and going. And it's a different conversation today, right?
Yes. It's one of the reasons you have to get together and say, okay, we live in a different culture. We've talked about this earlier. The culture's shifted, the family's shifted, there's seismic shifts going on around us. And so discipleship in the family, in the home, and in the church looks different. So church leaders are asking, are we adequately preparing today's kids to lead the future of the church? So as a part of that, we're also launching an assessment with the Barna Group.
Everybody knows the Barna Group. They help do research to measure the effectiveness of churches and parenting and discipling. And so we're partnering together with them to produce this assessment that we're released in 2022. So if your church is asking questions in this space, like, how are we doing with discipling our kids?
This assessment is going to release and your church will be able to evaluate that so you can know, hey, here's some areas we can improve on to do better. Well, one of the questions we all have, and you use the term in the book, I guess it's another word for disciple, fire carriers. And when I first heard that, again, I've never read it anywhere else. I see it here and I'm like, oh, as a dad, as a mom, as a minister, I want to raise fire carriers.
First define it, and then let's talk about how do we do that? Well, fire carriers come from our Western culture, where out on the prairies, the cowboys would have to make these fires. And there was always one person that was designated to carry the fire to make sure that the fire didn't go out so that they could be protected from wild animals so that they could have warmth and so that they could cook their food.
This person had an honored position. But I thought about that and I thought, you know, all through the church's history, we have had fire carriers. You know, we've had fire carriers who from the beginning, early church, carried the fire of the gospel, even during persecution and great pressure from the government, Rome to fold. They continued to carry the fire of the gospel. If you look at all through history, no matter what terrible thing was happening, there was always this group who refused to let the fire go out and they carried the gospel passionately to the next generation. And they made sure that those who came behind them had the protection of this spiritual fire that they carried. And so, you know, we ask ourselves, are we fire carriers? Are we carrying that fire to the next generations?
And will it give them protection, strength and warmth spiritually when we're gone? Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, at the beginning of the book, we haven't even talked about this. I knew a little bit about this man who stood at the flag. Yes.
You know, and when you just talked about fire carrier, I thought this is pretty interesting. He would be a high school kid, right? Tell that story. It's pretty powerful to think of as a parent listening to this.
This is what I'm hoping someday my son or daughter would be. Yeah. So there's a national event that goes on every year called See You at the Pole. Hayden was this young man who, like any high schooler who is standing up for their faith, was thinking he was taking a courageous move and being public with his faith. And he went to this event called See You at the Pole at his local high school, where students gather around their flag poles to pray. And he was the only one there at first. And he thought, okay, I'll just I'll wait this out.
My friends are coming. I know, like, you know, in my house at the handlers were chronically late. So, I mean, maybe he was waiting for us.
I don't know. But like he was just waiting. He thought his his friends will show and they didn't show. And time went on. And as you guys know, when you're taking a public stand, no matter if you're preaching or teaching or whatever it is, time can stop.
Oh, yeah. It feels like an eons just pass. And he felt like it was going on forever and ever. And nobody showed and nobody showed and nobody showed. And Valerie, what was Hayden's prayer? He prayed, God, do something with my standing alone.
Help people to wonder when they drive by why I'm here. And so he surrendered to that and stayed there through the whole time. He was resilient. He was resilient.
We call him resilient. And Hayden's mom uploaded the picture and it went viral throughout social media. There were a number of people who brought it up and who commented on it. And then Hayden became that symbol, if you will, of resilience, especially on a public high school campus. Hayden's mom said this. Hayden told me that as he stood alone and prayed, the cry of his heart had been, God, as people drive by, let them wonder, let their hearts be pricked. Eventually, when he realized that no one else was coming, the cry of his heart changed. He asked that God would do something with his standing alone.
The little boy had rocked asleep in blue airplane pajamas. I'm sure he was thrilled that his mom put that out there. The toddler who loved Elmo and couldn't go to sleep without holding his VeggieTales characters in his hand had captured the attention of our community by standing alone, by doing everything we'd ever taught him, everything we'd ever hoped he would do.
I was completely undone. Yeah, it's interesting. When I read that story and I remember hearing about it, but hearing the perspective of the mom, that's all of us as parents. That's what we're trying to raise a fire carrier, a resilient young man who will become a man or a woman who carries the gospel to the next generation. But the big question then again is, help us understand how do we do that?
What are some of the steps we can take? Because I'm sure our listeners are like, okay, I'm with you. I'm all in. Got it. Yeah.
Give me some help to do it. And Dave, I want to reassure parents too that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Yes, we have our part. The church has our part, but I'm always reassured that the Holy Spirit's walking alongside us and our kids. When I was in high school, I never grew up in the church. And at 16 years old, I surrendered my life to Jesus. And it was the first time I had ever heard the gospel. And I was thinking, how has no one told me this? Like I now know how to get to heaven.
I can have an impact. And it was the good news to me. And so everywhere I'm going and you guys, I was the most annoying person. I walked into my home at night and said, we're all going to hell unless we know Jesus. And I would go to school and none of my friends were believers. And I would take my big Bible and I would read it in class and in study hall.
I would push it every day over to my friend, like read this. This is amazing. This is in the Bible. And I was so annoying. It came to the point where she took my Bible.
She looked at me right in the eyes. She took a big handful of pages and ripped them out of my Bible. And I was like, oh, that's God's word, you know? And I felt like such a failure. And it's so interesting too, because as I'm praying, I'm asking the Lord like, Lord, did I fail you today? Did I let you down?
Am I being so annoying? And I just thought, just talk to me, Lord, through your word. And I came to the Beatitudes, blessed are you who are persecuted for my name's sake. And then I was like, yes, yes.
But I look at these high schoolers and I think, oh, there's so much power through God's spirit living in you. You got to tell them what happened with Carolyn, that friend that ripped up the Bible. I think years later, we were out of college. We were married. And she came to my home when we were at home, just in town for a weekend. And she knocked on the door. And I was so thrilled to see her because I loved her.
Our paths kind of had split. And she said, do you remember when I tore out all those pages of your Bible? And I said, and I laughed.
Sort of a memorable moment. And I said, I do. And I apologize.
I said, I was probably so annoying. I'm so sorry, but I was so excited about what Jesus was doing in my life. And she said, could you tell me all of that now? And she gave her life to Christ right there.
And I thought it was a failure. And yet again, God's spirit was moving and working. Well, here's the thing.
I mean, you think about what Anne experienced and Hayden and resilient fire carrier disciples. You have studied this. This is what you do. Help young people become followers of Christ and resilient disciples. What have you learned? How can we as parents, how can the church accomplish our mission? We talked about heart and spine. Let's put that into practice right now.
So heart that's leading with love and compassion and spine that's being rooted in an unmovable truth. So heart, let's build a bridge right now to parents out there listening. I just want to say to parents, you have a lot on your plate.
You're juggling a lot of balls. There's just so many responsibilities you have weekly and daily, hourly and by the minutes. And I would say the same for the local church.
Pastors, you have a lot of ministries and programs you're responsible for to fulfill the mission of the church. But let me ask the question. Let's move to spine. What if there were certain areas where these investments were more fruitful than others?
Would we put more energy into fewer areas? So this is the pursuit. These types of questions is what led Awana to continue to do a lot of research. So from 2014 to 2019, we conducted at least four research projects and pulled together other organizations research. We studied the Gospels. We wanted to know how did Jesus make disciples?
And Valerie as CEO, she gets hundreds and even thousands of letters over the course of a long time period. And we comb through those types of real life testimonies. And all of our research, it came down to three factors.
So parents, local church leaders, these are the three factors that most shape a child's long-term identity as a disciple. And it's belong, believe, become. Mike, why don't we define those?
Wait, wait, how did it end up being three Bs? Dave loves this. This will preach right here. Well, let's define it. We'll unpack that.
Yeah. So belong is, the short version of it is highly relational. It's creating an environment of relationship. The Gospel doesn't happen in isolation very often. We're not made for that.
We're made for community. I think of that illustration with your girlfriend. You were already discipling through your relationship with her. There was that highly relational thing that was going on between these two high school girls. So you were laying down the tracks for discipleship even back then. And you don't want to miss this though, because you're also saying, so if I have a child or I am a child and I want to become a disciple, it's going to be through relationship. But it isn't just, like I'm thinking of the parents and saying, I want to disciple my child. I have to have relation with them. It isn't just, I'm going to give them a bunch of Bible.
I'm going to get them to church. There's got to be a cultivating, especially as they become teenagers that we have a relationship. So that first B is belonging, highly relational. The second B is believe. Which is deeply scriptural ministry rooted in the truth of God's word. You can't come to know and abide with Jesus without getting to know him through his word. And so the ability to not just know a child or be known as a child, but to be known and walk through the word of God that reveals to us Jesus. John writes, I write to you these things that you would believe. So we know that the Bible is given to us as God's word, that we would believe in Jesus as the Christ, as the King.
Let's pause there for a minute. Talk about how you guys have done that. Your parents, all of you are parents.
How have you done that? First of all, we've always explained to our kids from as early as they were able to comprehend. We explain the gospel as a big picture story, creation, fall, redemption, restoration, because they're hearing outside of our home that life happens by happenstance. And, you know, we came about by natural processes. So there's a better story than that.
It's that there's a creator. We chose in our own rebellion to pull away from God and to put ourselves above him. Jesus is our Redeemer, and he's going to restore us over time.
That's a better story. So helping our kids see that, but then engaging them in community reading of the Bible at church and at the home and helping them to read the Bible on their own. You're trying to eventually get them to where it's not just a checklist that I'm reading the Bible for knowledge. It's an intimate relationship with Jesus because they see, like your friend, he's my savior. He is the truth. Well, it's like when Matt or Valerie text me, I'm interested in their lives.
I love both of these two. So when they text me, I'm going to read their text like I'm excited to read their text and to engage in that. And it's the same thing about the Bible, right? I mean, we should be excited about who Jesus is so that when we encounter the word, it's not just checklist.
And we all have seasons where some things can seem a little bit harder. I think we all need to acknowledge that. But let's just say we have God's word before us and to even communicate that to our kids. I probably have said it a million times to our kids, like his word is so good. It's so practical.
It's so applicable. We said, God is who he says he is in the Bible, not who you think he is or somebody else thinks he is. And he is for us. That is the message all the way through the scripture.
God is for us. And so he is personal. He is involved in your life. He is active in your life. And he wants to be a part of everything that you do. So we emphasize like you guys, the personal aspect of God as shown to us through scripture.
And it is interesting. I'm guessing you put these three B's in order. They are semi sequential, but you know, the Holy Spirit can work in ways. However, what I'm thinking though, because we missed it. I'm saying we as the church in the nineties, as I led a church, we put believe first. We were like, man, we want people to come to our church. Once they become believers, we can get them connected to belong. And we missed what God is like. No, he created relational beings.
Many people want to belong before they even consider. And so you're saying, man, that's key to discipleships. Studying the life of Jesus, studying how Jesus made disciples is what helped us to put them in that. Look at the woman at the well, look at how Jesus was walking along the road, how he was engaging them before. Absolutely. And that's where some of the sequence does come out of play. Cause I mean, Jesus was hanging around people and they were catching from Jesus some things before he even taught them to them.
Here's why I brought it up. I'm also, again, I got my dad hat on in a family life today program is marriage and family. I'm thinking so dad or mom, if you're really trying to help your son or daughter become a disciple, don't miss this.
It isn't just get them into church, get them into Sunday school and drive them home. And especially as they become teenagers, is there a relationship? Are you spending time? Are you hanging with them?
Are you just loving them and being their dad? And then the belief is going to come out of that relationship. It's key and help them walk through life circumstances through the matrix of scripture as well.
Oh, so good. They become biblical thinkers. Exactly. Exactly.
I would like to connect to that comment. So you might be a dad thinking, well, we do family devotions. We do all these things, but to your point, Dave, you know, what are we doing outside of that?
Or am I connecting with them relationally and am I interested in who they are as a person? So we're talking about the three critical factors in developing resilient disciples. We talked about belong and belief and the third one is what?
Become, which is what traditionally people have just only that one have we qualified as disciples, but we believe that become is truly experiential ministry designed to move kids from a simulation to real world application of their faith. That happens around dinner tables. That happens post soccer games where we lose. That happens everywhere that we're with our kids.
It's not just segmented or sanctioned for one space or one place. It's all of life. That happens when your child says, I'm feeling left out or how do I navigate this situation? And we step right beside them through dialogue, through conversation. We help them to have eyes to see that our faith story, Valerie, talk about helping kids have.
Well, I see it in that Hayden illustration. Here you have someone who has become a disciple. They are willing to have primary allegiance and let the other groups in their life kind of take second row seats. They are willing to be different.
They are willing to be extraordinary in some ways. They are disciples. So it's not just the head knowledge or the church affiliation.
There's what I call ownership. Suddenly, you know, there's this ownership and I am following the Christ way. I'm following the Jesus pathway.
As loving, caring adults, as parents, we can tell our faith stories to our kids in a way that helps them to see this is real. And my parents are helping me see like God is active in my life. That's becoming, we haven't even told you the best news yet. The best news is not just these three components. It's all three factors combined together.
What's happening there? That's shaping their identity as a resilient disciple. So not only did this come through in our research, but Christian Smith, the author of Souls in Transition says that there were three factors present and combined that influence long-term faith in children and in students. And it's scripture, experiences, and relationships.
What are those? Those are belong relationships, believe scripture engagement and experiences. I'd like to say something else too, because even though we are talking about child discipleship, we're really not talking about child discipleship. We're talking about lifelong discipleship. So how do we create an environment for our children that they will want to be disciples throughout their lifetime?
Yeah, that's really what we're talking about. Let me ask you this as we sort of wrap up a long discussion. How has this worked in your own home? As you think about your kids, maybe think highs, lows, learnings, what we did right, what we did wrong. Have you seen God work in your children? This is real.
This is real. In our organization, the churches that we serve and work with, people are stepping forward and saying this resonates with me because this is what I actually see happening. This is what's fruitful. I think of my own children, right?
They come to me because they felt like they could, because we had a relationship. We talk about that. We listen, we go back to the scripture. What does God's word say? And we commission them back out to do what?
To go back and get that life's experience. We see these patterns happening in our lives. We see them in the way Jesus built disciples and we see it in our own families. Yeah, and I think it's also in our house, I think about, I'm dad taxing in the morning.
I take kids to school. And I love it because even during those small moments, we're able to process some pretty big things. And there's a prayer we pray every day. And a portion of that prayer that I pray with my kids as we go to school is simply like, allow us to be kind to others, even when they're not kind to us. Now, that's not all of life per se. This is one example, one little snapshot, but even in those kind of simple words, I want my kids to understand that the gospel doesn't just happen when it's convenient or when things are easy or when life is light.
It happens during heaviness. It happens during difficult times. And it also, hopefully in dialogue and discussion and relationship with my kids, we're able to process together. Look, life isn't going to always be neat and orderly and tidy.
You will get treated unfairly, unkind. And we're still, in the words of Christ, supposed to love our enemies. Right. And that's just again, a small little snapshot in our own home about how this type of thing applies itself to our everyday life. I mean, a simple prayer on the way to school every day. And Valerie, you're a grandmother, like we are grandparents. What would you say to the parent? And I'm guessing there's a lot of them listening that are going, my son or daughter walked away. They're still prodigal. How do I process that? What do I think as a parent in that home?
I believe that God writes the last chapter and God puts the period on the story and it is never over until God does that. So I have a girlfriend whose husband died when she had teenagers and had to raise teenagers, four teenagers by herself. You can imagine what they put her through. And one of her boys got involved in drugs. He had a child out of wedlock. He spent some time in prison. This was a, you know, upstanding Christian home that this was happening to her, but he did come back to Christ. I thought it was so interesting. His summary of that time in his life, he said, I was doing all the things the other guys were doing, but not enjoying it.
There was a Holy Spirit in his life. And so I do believe that God hears our prayers. Keep building that bridge. Don't ever break the bridge off. Make it easy for them to come back.
Keep sending the birthday cards, even if they come back to you, you know, send the Christmas gifts, keep inviting, even if they say no, just wear them down with love. And I've also seen that God brings other people into this scenario. I've seen these scenarios many times where a parent can't get through anymore, but God brings other people. So I want you to hear my heart. I understand how very painful that is.
And I feel that we all feel that for you. Don't give up hope though, because there is a God who loves your child more than you do. And I think for parents that feel like, oh, I'm too late.
I have teenagers and they're not listening to me. It's never too late, even for you to sit down and to say, tell me your thoughts. I want to know who you are and to speak life into them. It's that loving, like I see that you're a leader. I see that strong passion that you have. Our kids will always be drawn to our words of life. And never give up your hope and dream of a resilient disciple of your children.
It's still God's hope. Get on your knees. We do it every day and surrender yourself and surrender them again. Surrender your kids back to Him and say, they're yours. They're not mine.
They're yours. We can do everything right. It doesn't work. We can do everything wrong. God, we surrender this vision to you. Valerie, will you close us with praying for the parents, the listeners? Absolutely.
Yeah. Let's pray. Father, we don't know the names of the people who are listening, but you do.
And there is a reason that they were listening. We ask you to bless their lives. We ask you to show your presence to them, that you would come alongside them as they diligently work towards being Christian families and Christian parents. We pray that you'll give them a dream that they won't be afraid to dream for their children.
That will include the future where their children are resilient, disciples, resilient leaders who will infuse the church of 2050 with leadership and vision and love. And so, Father, we pray this blessing over each of them and may it be accomplished in your power and in your name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks for being with us, you guys.
Thanks for having us. As Valerie Bell was praying, I was praying as well, praying for my kids, for my grandchildren, praying for the future of the church in America and around the world in the next 30 years. That ought to be on the heart of every person listening.
We ought to be not only wanting God to be at work in the lives of our children and our families in the years to come, but wanting God's kingdom to advance through our kids and our grandkids in the years to come. That's what's at the heart of the book that Valerie Bell, Matt Markins, and Mike Handler have written, a book called Resilient. And it's a book we're making available this week to Family Life Today listeners. You can go online at familylifetoday.com to request your copy or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. The title of the book is Resilient Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church.
You can also request your copy by calling 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, I know for a lot of you, this is kind of a season of shifting gears as we end the summer, as the fall is beginning, back to school time happening. Here at Family Life, we're shifting gears as well. David Robbins, who's the president of Family Life, is here with us. And David, we've got a lot of exciting plans ahead for the fall of 2021.
That's right, Bobby. September really does begin a full throttle mode for us and was really exciting to be able to say in the context of this past year of a pandemic. But we're planning many things for this fall. One is that our Weekend to Remember Getaways, we will have all 30 of them.
And we've gone from a pandemic year where we had seven events at about 30 percent capacity. And we are so encouraged and grateful that we get to move into this fall and have a full slate of Weekend to Remember Getaways. And that's why we need your help. That's just one of our initiatives of being able to come into this fall and really go full steam ahead and taking the gospel and the biblical principles of marriages and family to as many people as possible. And we need your help to be able to do it well. And here's how you can help us this week and next week.
We've set a goal. We're praying that God would raise up two families in every city where family life today is heard, who would step forward and become new monthly legacy partners, supporters of this ministry on a monthly basis. You're actually making family life today possible not just for you, but for people in your community, in your city. And we'd like to say thank you if you can join us as a legacy partner by sending you a copy of Dave and Ann Wilson's new book, No Perfect Parents, along with an all access pass to more than a dozen messages from Dave and Ann. Some have been featured on Family Life Today. Some have not been heard yet. You'll have access to those messages and we'll send you a certificate so that either you and your spouse or someone you know who you'd like to give a gift to, you can attend a Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaway this fall.
We've got about 30 getaways happening. We'll send the certificate and you can use it for yourself or pass it on to somebody else. All of this is our way of saying thank you for being a part of the team that makes Family Life Today possible in your community.
You do that by becoming a monthly legacy partner. Information is available online at familylifetoday.com or call us and say, I want to join the team. I want to help make Family Life Today happen in our community.
The number to call is 1-800-FL-TODAY and we look forward to hearing from you. Now tomorrow we're going to talk about how we do family discipleship in our home. How do we help train our kids to be the kind of future leaders of the church that we've been talking about this week. Kennan Vaughn, who's a pastor, is going to join us to talk about what he's doing in his home and I hope you can tune in for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back tomorrow 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.
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