Author Valerie Bell* begins her book Resilient: Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church with this letter.
Dear Child,
You are little for such a short time. But, when you grow up and think back on your childhood, we hope some of your earliest memories are about us, the church. Before you could walk or talk, you probably remember someone at church - even if you don't remember who, exactly - rocking you and singing sweet songs into your fears until your tears were dried. Sitting in a circle with other kids, someone is singing Jesus Loves Me to you. It is probably one of the first songs you will learn to sing.
Today you lisp your way through John 3:16 (KJV), "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." But this verse (along with many others) is being committed to your memory where it will dwell for years, informing your entire lifetime. You will remember the laughter that filled that special kid-friendly place at church and how it became your happy place with other kids every week.
Today we celebrate your childhood among us! In rooms painted with children's' delight in mind and furnished with tables and chairs that are just-your-size, you hear the Good News of the gospel and come to Jesus with childlike faith and trust. Your belief is nurtured by a community that protects your earliest understanding of God's love and demonstrates it to you.
We are the church and you, child, are precious to us.
...We are the people who run your KidMin programs, whose faith is so strong and so accessible that you easily embrace God's love because you can see it in us. We hope you remember us, the adults who show up every week to make sure the church is there for you.
All is fine for now, but there is a rub: you are growing up and today is not the final chapter. Soon you will be an adult, living in a world that is yet unknown to any of us, but a world whose challenges to faith are even now rising on the horizon. As an adult, will your child-like faith hold strong against the secular world's embrace of political correctness, the relativism that challenges absolute truth and sexual and gender choices without boundaries?
Your future looks challenging. ...Have we loved and entertained you, or have we also created disciples? With your adult future in mind, are we intentionally raising you to become Christ-following men and women with both spine and heart - spine to stand firm for your Christian beliefs in an increasingly hostile secular world and heart to embrace that same intolerant-of-faith world with a love that can't be ignored?
Will you grow up and be grateful that we, the church, gave you everything you needed to both lead the church and influence the culture?
As a church, Berean is a community of people that love and care for your kids spiritually. The church is half of the "church and home" partnership for the sake of the development of a firmly-rooted authentic faith in the life of your kids.
The words in this letter are challenging for the church and the teams of people who work with kids. It is important to make sure that we are teaching, nurturing, and offering what is needed to make disciples who will hold onto their faith and engage the world as the body of Christ when they are adults.
As parents, these words are also challenging and a reminder of the role that we play in this partnership. God has entrusted future generations to our care. If all we do is entertain or teach surface-level truth, our kids will not have been properly instructed in the faith, and the church 30 years from now will suffer for it.
Bell and her team offer some good questions that we will be thinking through at Berean and also ring true for the home. Here are a few of them:
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Are our kids becoming Christian disciples or is the culture engulfing them?
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Are we preparing kids to function as Christ-followers in this culture or is our guidance better fit for a previous culture?
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Are we protecting our kids rather than preparing them to engage in a post-Christian culture?
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Are we preparing today's kids to lead the church and influence the culture in 2050?
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Are we simply raising up Bible memory champions and assuming they are disciples?
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Are we about achievement or resilience? Or can we emphasize both?
These are excellent questions for both the church and the family. We are on mission together. As a church team, these are questions that we take seriously. I hope you will too.
It is an incredible honor to be in this together! I can't wait to see what God does in the lives of our church, our homes, and future generations.
*Valerie Bell is the CEO and 2050 vision caster for Awana, a global leader in child discipleship. While Berean has recently moved away from the Awana program (which we are still fans of and celebrate the role that it played for decades at Berean), I am extremely excited about the direction she and her team are taking this ministry. If they keep thinking the way that they are and make practical changes along these lines, I believe Awana has a bright future ahead of it. It has the opportunity to once again play a leading role in the health of the church for generations to come.
