children – Page 4 – Southwest Conference Blog

Holding Out for a Hero

Since I read A Wrinkle in Time in the 5th grade, Madeleine L’Engle has been my favorite author. In high school, I graduated from the Time Quartet and into Ring of Endless Light. In college, I took up L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, adult novels, and spiritual writing.

I loved her. In my head, she was my wise grandmother, full of literary references and charming idiosyncrasies. So imagine my dismay, sadness and confusion when I read the 2004 New Yorker profile. Her book jackets describe a family life of “charming confusion,” but the whole story includes adultery, resentment, alcohol abuse, convenient memory lapses… and perhaps most egregious: the use of family stories and heartbreak in service to her novels.

It took me a while to integrate the story of the real person, her novels, and my idealized image. It was hard work, and I still miss the soft focus Grandmother Madeleine from my adolescent fantasy. Like any person we love or idolize or hate, she was human. Madeline died in 2007.

Were you watching politics last week? After the debate on Sunday October 9, online media anointed Ken Bone, an undecided voter who asked a question about climate change and economic growth, with many accolades:

The Real Winner of the 2nd Debate: Ken Bone!
Ken Bone: The Hero America Needs
Adorable Sweater Wearer Ken Bone (OK maybe I made that one up)

By the end of the week though, Ken had fallen on hard times. Turns out, Ken has some questionable opinions about race relations and an unfortunate online history including pornography. Many Americans are re-thinking their Sexy Ken Bone Halloween costume. It happened so fast: discovery, putting on a pedestal, taking over social media, more discovery, anxiety, disillusionment.

We humans seem to have a deep need to find heroes… or make them. I’m thinking about how this is related to the Myth of Redemptive Violence – how our dualistic and immature thinking encourages us to sort people around us into boxes labeled Hero and Villain. But that connection is the subject of another blog (perhaps after the election!).

For today, I just want to observe this pattern is and suggest a response when we notice it happening.

The Cycle Begins: Who is this person? Why are they suddenly all over the news and social media?
Meme-ification: the boiling down of a flesh-and-blood person into a funny shareable graphic. Case in point: Notorious RBG.
Hmm. This is the pause of awareness. You might notice your eyes narrow into a squint or your forehead wrinkle. Maybe you feel an urge to scratch your chin thoughtfully.
Deep Breath. And deep breath again.
Go Deeper. Why is this person suddenly the cause of many, many problems or the solution? What is it about this person that’s appearing to meet a need in me or in our culture or group?
Compassion. Is it overwhelming to be this week’s Ken Bone? How is that person expected to cope and adapt? Why am I susceptible to this pattern? How can I better acknowledge and meet my own needs?
Listening. We do need heroes and inspiring figures. Heroes remind of us what’s wonderful about being human and what’s possible for all of us. So FIND SOME. We don’t need to look far. When we listen to the stories of those around us, we discover that everyone has something to teach us.

Find a hero this week. Listen to their story and instead of boiling it down to a slogan, look for the complexity. Strive to really see and accept the people you admire.

Be a hero this week. Share your own story humbly and honestly. Acknowledge the complexity in your life. Strive to live a life worthy of your calling.

The readers of the SWC blog aren’t going to overwhelm the hero-making, hero-destroying culture of the Internet all by ourselves. But we can add to the peace and spiritual maturity of the circles in which we move. And that’s a very good thing.

The Kids Are All Right

by Karen Richter

In July, I traveled with a group of Shadow Rock UCC youth to Orlando, FL for National Youth Event. Our little gang of 10 Shadow Rockers was joined by 1 young person from First UCC Phoenix. While there we met with and socialized with many kids from all over the country, including Ktizo UCC in Phoenix and Good Shepherd UCC in Albuquerque. It was a great event overall, with dynamic speakers and workshops.

But as our time together went on, I noticed a couple of problems. Nothing major, nothing catastrophic… just things about the event and our group’s dynamic that I would want to work on or address for our next big travel event. Our last day included some downtime at the host resort, after Closing Worship and before NYE buses would take us to the Orlando airport for the trip home. Our Shadow Rock youth director and my traveling companion Brenda Hensley planned to use some of this downtime for some reflection and connection with the group.

I put my thoughts together about the problems and planned to mention them during our meeting time.

Regarding our group dynamic, I recognized some divisions between the older more seasoned youth (some of which were fresh from a camp staff experience) and our younger and often quieter kids. This wasn’t a terrible thing at all, but I think with more guidance and encouragement from the chaperones, our older participants would have done more to include those younger.
The event was July 27 to 30, and the whole world was enchanted by Pokémon Go… including most of our group. Again, it wasn’t anything insurmountable, but I wished we would have helped the group set some boundaries around Pokémon and screen time before we touched down in Florida.
About the event overall, this National Youth Event was the first to be held at a resort and to include a theme park day. It was also my first time attending an NYE, but I wished the venue had been less distracting and less overwhelming. Even for the adult participants, it was occasionally difficult to stay present to worship, workshops, and sharing ideas with the next day at Magic Kingdom looming in our imaginations.

So we sat down on the floor in the convention center lobby of Coronado Springs Resort – a little bit tired, a little bit homesick, a little bit thoughtful. I was ready to share my observations and perhaps, in my daydreams, a little wisdom. But luckily, thankfully (!!!), I listened to these teens first.

AND THEY MENTIONED, THEMSELVES, EVERY SINGLE THING I SAID ABOVE… 1, 2 AND 3. I didn’t need to say a word, so I didn’t.

So smart. So compassionate. So aware.

It was a gift to be with them. The kids are all right.

The Power of Pretend

by Amanda Petersen

I just spent the morning on a beautiful island eating very juicy oranges and sipping tea. All of this was done on my living room floor with my granddaughter. She is just learning the power of pretend. We laughed and giggled as the imaginary oranges squirted all over us. As I watched the light in her eyes as she figured out this pretend game, I thought of all the other places she will imagine in her lifetime.

Practicing imagination is a wonderful contemplative practice. I know I have spoken about the power of the moment and getting real as contemplative practices, yet giving oneself permission to imagine possibilities is also a great practice. The imagination can lead one to a bigger picture of God, life, and community. For example, one may say God is male, judgmental, or disappointed. Maybe the vision is there is no time for prayer, life is stuck or things could never improve. This is where the gift of the imagination is a Godly pursuit. Think of Martin Luther King saying, “I have a dream.” What if one’s imagination could allow for a kind, beyond gender, forgiving God? The contemplative imagination allows one to sit in a pretend world where one can find the time to pray, where life is full of possibilities beyond what is happening. Who know where it can lead? It also gives the space to try out life in a different way without having to upend everything.

The imagination is a very powerful prayer practice, not to be taken lightly, because it can also lead into places of limits and lack of possibility. When the time of imagining is over, the individual is different, whether the circumstances change or not. The door to life as it is known is open because one has seen it. Then comes the work in the real world. How does this time of pretend make its way into this life? How does imagining a more loving world help one create a more loving world? How does imagining a bigger God help one begin to examine the God they are encountering now?

My time this morning on the island has created a connection and a memory with my granddaughter that will continue to shape our lives together. The world just got a little bigger for both of us. Where do you go in your imagination? How can the power of pretend be a prayer practice for you?

In Relationships, Small Things Count

by Amos Smith

Recently, I dreaded weekday mornings. Getting Luke up and ready for school was a chore. We butt heads. I would wake him, then he would get mad and say he was tired. Then I would prod him. Eventually he would start the day reluctantly and grumpy. It was a gridlocked negative pattern.

Then one day it dawned on me that I could change the dynamic. So now, instead of wake him, I set my iPod in his room and turn on his favorite songs at moderate volume. Then after a few minutes I lay beside him on his bed and talk to him about the day ahead (he likes to know about plans ahead of time). Now he wakes up happy.

Most people do creative problem solving in their relationships like the example above. Yet, since my centering prayer practice has deepened, I’ve noticed that habitual letting go and out-of-the-box ideas come more frequently.

Funding Your Church Plant: The Right People Should Pay for It… And It’s Not the Pastor’s Kids

by Ryan Gear

I occasionally coach church planters, and there is a common denominator between all of them.

They are underpaid.

Nondenominational planters especially are underpaid because they often lack the deep pockets of denominational funders. Unfortunately, some denominations underfund plants, as well, not realizing that an investment in effective planters will eventually result in far more denominational growth and funding.

On top of these challenges, it is very difficult for pastors to raise funds from the new church’s launch team, because so many people in our culture parrot cliches about pastors being in it for the money. Contrary to 30-year old cultural memes still justified by the unethical actions of 1980s televangelists, most pastors are not even close to being in it for the money. Megachurch pastors aside, the average pastor makes about as much as the average schoolteacher. Just like schoolteachers, most pastors are grossly overworked and underpaid.

So, an inspired, idealistic, well-intentioned (and naive) pastor goes out into the field to start something that brings hope to lots of people, totally unmotivated by money. She sacrifices, works long hours, spends less time with family than she wants, inspires people, and pulls a new church together. She tends to downplay her own needs, while the growing congregation appreciates her dedication but is unaware of the daily financial pressure she feels.

Then, after a few years of struggling to pay the pills, she is forced into a another line of work to make ends meet. The church can’t even hire a successor because they don’t pay a competitive salary and never have. (A friend pointed out that the same thing tends to happen with new nonprofits, whether they’re churches or not.)

Like everything else in life, the truth is that someone will have to pay for the new church. Every pastor has a right to earn a fair, honest living, and any congregation that wants to be viable has the responsibility to fund it.

If, as a planting pastor, you struggle to ask for a raise or to believe that your family deserves for you to be paid fairly, here are a couple of questions for you:

Should the financial obligations of a church be spread across the whole congregation, or should they be placed squarely upon your family?

In other words, which is easier, for everyone in a 100 person congregation to give $5 more per week (which adds up to $26,000 per year), or for your kids to have less than they need because you are underpaid by $26,000 per year?

Compensating a pastor fairly is actually a small sacrifice if the expense is shared by the congregation. Either the congregation pays the bills or the pastor’s kids do. It’s one or the other.

What if you don’t have children?

You probably will someday, and they will be affected by the financial decisions you make now.

How would the people in your congregation respond if they actually knew the financial toll the plant takes on you, and if you’re married, the toll it takes on your marriage?

They would probably feel embarrassed and immediately take steps to pay you adequately. If not, then it might be time to leave and let them face reality.

If they simply had more information about the average compensation for pastors, they might make it right far more quickly than you think. Perhaps Googling “pastor compensation guide” and sharing it with your elders or church board would be a good first step. Or perhaps you could invite a church planting coach or consultant to talk with your board and speak the truths you find it difficult to say. They are probably more open to reality than you realize.

Whichever you choose, remaining underpaid until you no longer can is not an option. It will simply ruin your financial future, and you will eventually leave the church because you have no choice. Your congregation will then realize that they have to give the pastor who follows you a massive raise just to be competitive, and they will probably wish they would have done more to help you.

It’s better to be humbly honest now and let them know what you need. The right people should pay for your church plant… all of the people in it.

Mother’s Day Musings

by Karen Richter

I kinda hate Mother’s Day. There are reasons:

My family – and many many other families – feels pressure to spend money for things I don’t need to show their appreciation.
Progressive churches feel pulled in multiple ways: to recognize and appreciate mothers, to honor people who are nurturing others in various ways, to affirm persons who are not parents, to make some nod in the direction of gender equality and the feminist movement, to give at least passing attention to the neglected feminine images of the divine in our scripture and tradition. We end up doing none of these well.
I imagine that in a less patriarchal culture, Mother’s Day wouldn’t need to exist at all. In fact, I suspect that the more we wax nostalgic about motherhood, the less the actual, real life work of women is valued. More concretely, when we have an emotional attachment to the sacrifices parents (particularly women) make for their children’s benefit, we don’t push for public policies that makes families’ lives easier.
I’m encouraged to leave the dishes in the sink… “After all, it’s Mother’s Day!” which in some years just means that they are waiting for me on Monday morning.

Like many of us who think purposefully (and perhaps too often) about theology and gender, I’m conflicted about the whole idea.

Yet this year, almost by accident, I agreed to plan worship for Mother’s Day. There are several of us at Shadow Rock, a mix of clergy, staff, lay members, and members in discernment, that tackle certain liturgical seasons and apply our creativity and inspiration to the lectionary to plan our time together on Sunday mornings.

And, almost with a little wink at my inner conflict, several things began stirring…

First, May 8 roughly coincides with the end of our exhibition of the Shower of Stoles project. Planning around Annual Meeting, we arranged to receive about 80 stoles of LGBTQ pastors, deacons, church staffers, and other faith leaders. Each stole tells a story. For some it’s a story of terrible pain and a loss to the church of a potential leader as someone was denied their ministry because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. For others, it’s a journey of questioning and struggle ending in wonderful affirmation.

As I read the stories attached to the stoles, my heart was enlarged, swollen with tenderness for the lives the stoles represent.

What if this story were my child’s story?

Then I looked at the gospel reading for this Sunday, May 8. It’s John 17.20-26. I’ve heard John Dorhauer preach movingly on this same passage. “The prayer of our dying Savior,” he says. But this time I heard something different… a parent preparing to leave her children.

“I ask… that they may all be one.”

It’s good that I must leave you, Jesus says. You will go on to learn so much more, he promises. Are they really ready to live their faith independently, without the guidance of Jesus? Four times in this section of John’s Gospel, Jesus prays for unity. Do you feel his conflict? Anguish: at having to leave behind these dear friends, these precious beloved students and Confidence: with faith in their continued growth and guidance into all truth (16.13).

He sounds like Mom.

The final movement for me was a parenting meme I ran across online:

Next week, we celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit. This anticipation, too, tied in to the growing idea of Jesus the Mother. As a parent, I hope that my children have absorbed the best of my instruction and attitude as their inner voice. I pray that as adults, they hear my voice from the times when I was accepting and encouraging, peaceful and faith-filled… rather than the times when I failed to express my best intentions. And I wonder if, in the Garden in the midst of this prayer, Jesus wondered about the voice his friends and subsequent generations of Jesus People would hear as their inner voice, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

Now I don’t know if Sunday’s service will reflect in any way this series of ideas and stirrings that have happened for me as I wrote liturgy, prayed, and planned. Who knows what will happen in the hearts and minds of those gathered in the pews? I trust the Spirit will do what it will.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Joyous Pentecost.

May they be for us One Celebration… not of chocolates and Pajamagrams and brunch but love and fire and unity. Amen.

The Gift of Listening

by Karen Richter

We’re all about listening when it’s children doing the listening and we wise grownups are doing all the yappin’.

We tell them they have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

“Listen” and “pay attention” are just behind the word no in their frequency in young humans’ lives.

It seems we teach our children all about listening because

We teach the things we need most to learn ourselves.
We are so desperate to be heard that we ask children to play the role of listener in our families and communities.
We don’t think that we need to be listening to children.

I came home from my first two weeks at Hesychia School of Spiritual Direction with the overwhelming insight that, in every setting of my life, I talk too much. With friends, over coffee. At work, in the staff meeting. In the car, with my kids. Over dinner, with my spouse. At church, teaching and leading. Too. Much. Talking.

So Hesychia was something of a remedial crash course in the art of listening to another human (of course it’s more than that too, but that’s where I needed to start). It’s a gift when we focus our attention on another’s story, not to fix or respond or correct but just to be present. We know this… I’ve read some variation on this theme on this very blog before. But it’s hard work and little valued in our culture.

I’m taking little baby steps. The other week in our Lenten study, one of our small groups asked if I had anything to add to their discussion. “No, I’m just listening,” I replied. They were a tiny bit surprised, but continued their exploration.

Another baby step is watching and expecting surprising examples. I was at Wal-Mart the other day and the customer in front of me was telling her life story to the cashier. I don’t know what prompted her sharing, but she spoke very vulnerably about the end of her marriage, her struggles to find her equilibrium on her own, and her sadness that her life was different from how she always imagined it would be.

I smiled, nodded, listened; the cashier did much the same – adding a small ‘hmmm’ at appropriate times. After the customer finished her transaction and left, I asked the cashier about this experience.

“I guess you’re a little like a bartender… People tell you their stories,” I asked.

“Happens all the time,” she said with a smile.

“Maybe people need someone to listen,” I prompted.

“I guess. Folks need to know that they’re going to be okay, that what’s going on with them is normal… I just try to listen, not jump in with advice or get them more upset. I just listen.”

I started to tell her that she was a spiritual director, or perhaps a retail chaplain, but I didn’t want to add to her stress. But what a gift she gave that morning – a compassionate voice, a nonjudgmental presence. It was certainly a gift to me, just observing and now sharing with you.

On Transfiguration Sunday a few weeks ago, the children at Shadow Rock talked about the command from the voice of God: Listen! We discussed how often adults in their lives are like Peter in that story, bumbling about, making ridiculous plans, and missing the point of what’s happening right in front of him. I asked them how often they wanted adults to stop and listen. Their answers were sad and unsurprising.

So in the spirit of teaching/blogging about what you most need to practice, I suggest a Holy Week discipline:

More listening, less pontificating.
More presence, less judgment.
More gentle nodding, less interrupting.
More compassionate silence, less thinking about your own response.

There are holy stories all around us.

Musings on Spiritual Health

by Kelly Kahlstrom

“To heal, a person must first be a person”

As some of you know, in my Monday through Friday 8-5 life I am a nurse case manager for one of the state Medicaid programs. I work with women who have high risk pregnancies. These risk factors can be physical, like diabetes or high blood pressure; it can be emotional like anxiety/depression or other mood disorders; or social, like being homeless. Bella* is typical of many of the women with whom I have the privilege to speak. She is a 22-year old who is 3 months pregnant with her second child. Her oldest child, Rocky, is 15 months old. Bella’s pre-pregnancy weight was 215 and she was just diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Her mother is her primary support both emotionally and financially while she stays home to care for her son. Bella and the father of the baby are not getting along since the news of this second, unplanned pregnancy. She has a history of anxiety but has never sought treatment for this. She has had one year of college and eventually would like to go back to school but her first pregnancy interrupted her studies. Historically my conversations with her would center on her diabetes and how it affects her pregnancy. I would offer behavioral health support and most of the time the offer would be declined by saying “I can manage it on my own; I just need to stay positive”. And I would leave it at that.

Recently however there has been a push within Medicaid to “integrate” disciplines so we do a better job of addressing more domains of health, noting that physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, and social health are all interrelated. Statistically, patterns have emerged which indicate that symptoms in one domain usually cascade through the other domains in fairly predictable ways. For instance, if one has a food addiction like Belle, it can be predicted that one might also suffer from physical limitations such as obesity and diabetes. Prescription drug use from back or joint pain is likely. Often there is a history of untreated anxiety/depression or other mood disorders and maintaining close relationships with others can be difficult. As you can see, an illness in one domain affects all domains of health. Illness is a spiritual event.

Now if we visualize the domains of health on a horizontal axis, as a snapshot in time, it is also helpful to remember that health throughout a person’s lifetime lies on the vertical axis. There is good reason to believe that two-thirds of us experienced at least one traumatic event in childhood. We now know that the more trauma a child has experienced, the greater the change to the neurobiology of the brain. This affects the body’s ability to process and recover from stress, especially chronic, unpredictable, toxic stress. Chronic exposure to this type of inflammation correlates significantly with auto-immune diseases, mood disorders, as well as substance use in adulthood decades after the initial exposure. So, with Belle, like many of the women I talk to, it is best to assume a history of trauma rather than not. This information radically broadens the conversation. The starting point may indeed be in the physical domain but, as rapport is established, the conversation can move across to other domains or backward to previous experiences and how these experiences might affect present and future health. It is here that I learned she was ridiculed as a child for her weight and she witnessed her older brother die of a heroin overdose. Often interpreted in childhood as a defect in their character, these types of experiences contribute to an ongoing angst in adulthood, pushed from thought by “being positive”, belied by reaching for the 8th cookie on the plate.

Which brings me to my real area of interest…spiritual health, and alas, it is the one domain of health I cannot talk openly about at work so I’ll muse about it here instead. Spiritual health is the point of origin, in my humble opinion, of both the horizontal dimensions of health and the vertical history of “how your biography becomes your biology”.

What exactly is Spiritual Health? Spiritual health is something that we all have a sense of but it is not always easy to articulate. I am drawn to Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s quote “To heal, a person must first be a person”. Could it perhaps be said then that spiritual malaise looks like a forgetting of what it means to be human? Without a protracted discussion with the philosophers amongst us, I would argue that one aspect of personhood is the need to make sense of the experiences in our lives. As Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us, “religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live.” When we have forgotten who we are, what we are put on earth to do, and are unable to live up to our identified values, we have experiences but often miss the meaning of these experiences in our lives. Experiences without meaning leave us feeling empty, anxious, apathetic, conflicted, hurried or harried, self-absorbed or feeling we have something to prove. These disembodied feelings can originate from events that have occurred on either axis.

So if spiritual malaise is a forgetting of who we are, either from not recognizing that each domain of health affects the others, or by not understanding how events from childhood shape our adult health, what is the prescription? How do we recover the meaning by which we are able to re-interpret our experiences? “To heal, a person must first be a person” and awaken (again) to their own identity. I offer these as possibilities but this hardly represents an exhaustive list.

A remembrance can happen through engaging in activities of quietude such as meditation, prayer, visualization, stretching, yoga, dream work, labyrinths, and mandalas.
A remembrance can happen through a flash of insight while engaged in the profane or mundane tasks of our lives.
A remembrance can happen when we take our faith seriously and actively work to deepen our spiritual life.
A remembrance can happen through the development of strong social ties to a community that makes room for questions about identity, purpose and ethics.
A remembrance can happen through consciously seeking ways to exercise each domain of health every day, i.e., eating well, participating in the spiritual practice of your choice, reaching out to a friend, or volunteering with an organization.
A remembrance can happen when we work with professionals like spiritual directors and counselors who help us recognize and name the patterns of our experience.

Spiritual health opens up space to fully claim our humanity in the moments when we are awake. It allows us to be more fully in relationship with God or the Divine. It allows us to feel grounded in our purpose, to live with a sense of wonder and joy, to befriend death, to be a global citizen, and to practice forgiveness, compassion, and unconditional love. Not too shabby, huh?

I would argue that Bella is not unique to the population I work with. Her story, while uniquely hers, has elements that ring true for many of us. In fact, she is our colleague, our neighbor, our fellow congregants, and committee members. Perhaps even ourselves.

To heal a person must first be a person. Blessings on your journey!

* Names have been changed.

Out of Touch with the Poor in Africa

by Amos Smith

After graduation from high school I worked for Habitat for Humanity in Uganda, East Africa. I’ll never forget Semunyo, an elderly gentleman with an oozing foot infection. When my friend Matovu first took me to see Semunyo, his leg had begun to swell and gangrene was days away. It was obvious to me that he needed penicillin. The sorry fact was that Semunyo didn’t have enough money to pay for penicillin shots at the local clinic. So Matovu and I put him in a wheelbarrow and rolled him to the clinic, where I paid five dollars for penicillin which saved Semunyo’s life.

Many Americans have lost touch with the Semunyos of the world. Semunyo is the tip of the iceberg. In fact, Semunyo is a tame example of “third world” realities.

If a jumbo jet went down in North America it would be headline news. If two jumbo jets went down on the same day in North America it would be huge news, congressional committees of inquiry would form, a media shakedown would commence, and reparations would be made.

Every day the equivalent of five jumbo jets goes down in Africa. In other words, over three thousand Africans die from AIDS daily. This is a travesty. We add to the inhumanity of the situation by turning away. Where are the headlines in the daily paper and blog? Where are the congressional committees meeting around the clock to solve the crisis? These human beings are flesh and blood. They’re Christ’s body.

Values stink.

by Karen Richter

Why do you bring your children to church? Why do you think there are children sitting in the pews of your church?

If you ask parents this question (or if just now, you answered this question for yourself), you might hear answers like this:

“It’s important for me that my child learns the values of our church community.”

“I want my kid to be a good person.”

“Church provides my family with moral guidance.”

Values stink. by Karen Richter, Southwest Conference Blog southwestconferenceblog.org United Church of Christ — Can we agree than authenticity is better than shiny and happy?

Nope. Sorry – nope nope nope.

Church is not about values. Not only are there OTHER places in our society to expose your children to good values, there are BETTER places in our society to teach good values.

Scouting, team sports, community theater, chess club, school-based values curricula, VeggieTales… these are excellent sources for parents to teach their children the importance of fairness, teamwork, honesty, and cooperation. The kiddos will make friends along the way – it’ll be great!

Church MUST be more than values instruction. I’ll risk overstating my point (and annoying my readers): if we structure programs for children in churches with the goal of teaching good values, we will lose. Not only are the organizations I listed above doing great things with kids, the Gospel of grace always trumps morality.

What then takes the place of values instruction? In progressive churches, we’ve somewhat abandoned old-timey instruction. I haven’t seen a good fill-in-the-blank Bible worksheet since I was 10 years old. We’re working on abandoning a school-based model and even in some churches we’re getting rid of a star-earning, funfunfun carnival model.

What’s left? Just two principles guide children’s ministry in the post-modern era, and the earlier a child can communicate and internalize these, the better.

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

This means prioritizing relationships and connections over curricula and content. This means children participating in worship – not as cute props for adults to coo at, but as full members of the worshipping community.

“At church, I can ask questions.”

Whether it’s a deep question like this one I got during Advent, ‘How do we know that Jesus was God’s son? What if he was just a good person?’ or it’s a question from the Our Whole Lives question box or just an everyday ‘Why?’ – questions are at the heart of the spiritual journey for every person. When our churches are safe places for questions, doubt, experiential pondering, they will thrive.

In fact, what would our churches look like if every person at every age and in every situation can express these same ideas:

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

“At church, I can ask questions.”

So, yeah, values stink. The Good News we have is so much better, deeper, and wider than values.

Peace to us all in 2016.