As to some new ideas to stop the bleeding, first of all I would like to recommend family devotions. From the earliest times in the lives of your children, awaken your whole family around 4:30 am, and put together an hour long presentation of scripture, sharing, prayer requests, and prayer. Everyone should share, and sleeping is absolutely forbidden…
Okay, not really.
Look, I don’t want to diss anyone. Seriously, if family devotions were a part of your upbringing and it was meaningful and life-altering, I honor you and especially your parents for what they were able to do. Unfortunately, as well-intentioned as they might be, it is not the experience of most people, including parents and their children that devotions accomplished what was intended. More often than not they were forced, dreaded by everyone, too long (no matter how short), ineffective, and generally… uh…hated.
The intentions of family devotions are so good. But is there a way to engage your family in meaningful conversations about your faith and about the things that count? And can we find a way to make that happen naturally and spontaneously?
An idea came to me as I walked through my own home one afternoon. I was picking up papers, crafts, worksheets, coloring pages, loose cotton balls, and some multicolored pipe-cleaners that were all over the house that day. And it occurred to me that this represented just one week in the church life of my daughter. This pile was a collection of work that she had been given beginning with Sunday School on Sunday morning, Children’s Church after that, Sunday night worksheets, Wednesday night choir, and followed by her age-appropriate missions program. Wow!
Talk about drinking from a fire hose! She had at least five different lessons from five different teachers about five different subjects with five different scripture verses to memorize. But then, she would be doing that all over again starting the next Sunday morning. Five more of everything. I started looking through the pile and realized that none of what she had heard that week matched any of the three sermons I had heard in the same time frame.
Then a thought hit me. If the church wanted to help facilitate my being the point man in my daughter’s spiritual formation, why couldn’t they plan it out to where all the pastors were using their creativity to coordinate lesson plans? Wait, hear me out. It would have really helped if my daughter and I were learning the same things, you, know, at our own levels, but the same concepts, maybe even the same scriptures at the same time. That might actually spark some authentic and unforced conversation between us.
Then I thought about Sunday lunch. The Sunday afternoon meal after church has always been a family thing for us. How cool would it be if the conversation around the table at lunch time on Sunday afternoon was to eventually come around to the subject matter of the day? What would it do for our kids if they were to become involved in, included in the deep issues discussed at table on Sunday afternoon? Not compulsory, not strained, but naturally included, encouraged. What if their opinions actually mattered? (I’ll go here next.)
This is something with which we have experimented, and we can see real potential for the future as we grow into having just such a creative planning team. Some object lessons work for all ages. Videos, movie clips, and larger metaphors can bridge or can be made age-appropriate. Whatever tools we have at our disposal. Shouldn’t we be the most creative people on earth?
Just my first idea. What do you think?
2 comments:
This is exactly how I feel about any type of learning. Anything forced is just that: forced and not learned at all. I was a victim of the forced family devotion, but it was all a front in our home. Just something my father could say (brag) that we did.
I cannot even fathom the idea that my father and I could actually have a 'give and take' discussion about anything remotely connected to spirituality.
You are definitely on to something here though. And, for those families who are genuine - like yours - this would be life-changing for everyone involved.
What a concept! Pastors and teachers actually talking to each other and planning their lessons around one principle. Wow. I was a teacher in the church for at least 15 years, teaching children and youth, and not one time did anyone ever discuss with me what I was teaching. It seems to me, as long as that age group was covered, it was one less thing the pastor had to deal with.
I'm not even sure it's the church's desire to disciple parents to lead their children. It seems as though it's all about them, the pastors/preachers. I know they're not all like that, but how do you get them to check their egos at the door??
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