Why I Teach Kids

A friend of mine recently flew down to Sacramento to run a marathon in the rain. I have to admit that my first thought was to ask him what planet he was from. My second thought, however, was a bit more introspective: “What propels this man to fly to California to run 26 miles for 3 hours and 30 minutes in a downpour, beating his body to the point of sheer exhaustion?” So I asked him.


He said that he needed to run in the race and finish under a certain time, to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a lifelong dream of his. Ah, then I understood! He was striving, enduring, and punishing his body because there was a bigger prize at stake. It’s always the bigger prize, or the higher purpose, that drives us to accomplish the smaller things along the way.

I’ve never thought of applying a running analogy to teaching kids the Word of God, but I guess it fits pretty well. Like running a marathon, teaching kids isn’t for everyone; in fact, it might seem just as crazy to some as running 26 miles in the rain. Distractions, noise, short attention spans, separation anxiety, unique learning styles and even tears are just a regular part of any Sunday morning in the life of a children’s worker.

Everyone knows that the marathon is a culmination of months of training out on lonely back roads; no one else around, wondering to yourself if all the hard work will pay off one day. Such it is with teaching kids, as we spend Sunday after Sunday in the back rooms of the church, never fully knowing how much of the Bible lesson stuck, or whether that craft effectively reinforced the Biblical truth.

But God knows….and He uses the Apostle Paul to remind us of the importance of our work, spurring us on to “run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Cor. 9:24), and encouraging us to “not become weary in doing good” (Gal. 6:9). Most importantly, God wants us to “stand firm in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27). I like that phrase “striving together”, because it reminds me that we are not alone, and that God is equally interested in the work He’s doing inside each of us, as He is in what we teach or how we care for the little ones.

The process of teaching kids is a not a sprint, but a marathon, one worth striving for when we think of these children as the next world changers and history makers of our time. They will one day sit in the same church rows that we sit in, hold places of office in the cities we reside, and work in the businesses that we now patronize. And even more than this, they will advance the road of the gospel to the ends of the earth, and that alone drives me to continue to press on, striving forward and together for the faith of the gospel.

To Love is to Obey

"This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world." 1 John 5:3

How many ways has love been redefined and watered down by the world to accommodate or justify our sinful or self-serving actions? The majority of divorces that occur in this country are not a result of some irreconcilable act or broken trust in a marriage. They result from one or both spouses simply declaring that they are no longer “in love” with each other, as if “love” were ever meant to be based on our ever shifting emotions. If we are diluting and distorting the definition of love when it comes to human relationships, how much more are we capable of using the same twisted logic when it comes to choosing to love Christ?

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 clearly maps out a clear definition of love based upon action, not feelings. Eliza puts Freddy in his place in the musical, My Fair Lady, when she exhorts, “Don't talk of stars burning above; if you're in love, show me!”. We must show love to Christ. Love is a verb and requires us to “do” something, not just once, but consistently and often. Jesus doesn’t beat around the bush when defining love for Him. In Matthew 7:26, Jesus clearly states, “But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” In John 14:23, Jesus through simple and clear instruction declares, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

If we can return to the pure and true definition of love for Christ, not just hear the Word, but take the time to understand it, retain it, and put it into practice, we will discover that “his commands are not burdensome”, and we will truly experience that ever eluding "joy" that the world fails to deliver on time and time again.

1 John 5:4 states that, “everyone born of God overcomes the world". The real and honest question that we must ask ourselves is, “Do we want to?” Do we really want to allow God to pry the white knuckles of our will from the worlds grip, die to self, take on the identity of Christ and truly love God and others with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength? What's the alternative....a self-focused, miss guided, train wreck of a life? No thanks.

Ministry Alignment or Entanglement?

American churches often suffer from over programming, or what I call ‘Ministry Entanglement’. It is typical to walk into a church on a Sunday morning and have three to four things to choose from, all simultaneously happening at once. We are required or encouraged to attend a corporate worship service, serve somewhere, attend a class, check out this orientation and that grief share group. How do people get it all done? Unless cloning becomes a reality and viable moral option, the answer is “they don’t”. Sub conscientiously, the average attendee is asking themselves, ‘What do they want really me to do?”….they’re looking for a clear road map….. and all we give them as leaders is a bunch of twisted arrows.

Ministry entanglement doesn’t happen overnight, but over a period of time, much like a messy garage filled with unorganized essentials, deferred decisions and stuff you no longer need. Church leaders are not proud of their over filled garage of programs, nor do they strategically set out to create a web of programs that dilute communications, sabotage budgets, over burden facilities, and take up parking spaces that otherwise should be reserved for new guests and the lost.

The question is ….. “Can’t we approach ministry programs with both the heart as well as head?”. There ARE ways to untangle the web and achieve ministry alignment without causing a church split. And there ARE new leadership rules that can be implemented so the garage doesn’t just fill up again. And there IS purpose and power of a ‘simple church’ model. The real question is….Do we want to fight for it?

Like a messy garage, we don’t necessarily like ministry entanglement, but we certainly do learn to live with it. I would challenge us as leaders to do better with the bride of Christ….better at being good stewards of our money; better at deciding what programs are really important on Sunday morning; better at managing our facilities; better at honoring people with a clear and simple offering when they come: corporately worship, hear the pastor preach, teach the children and youth, and serve the body to support those primary areas. Everything else that is good and right and noble and needed and important will naturally take care of itself through the passions and leadership of the body….not through church supported programs.

The Striving Pastor

When I think about the qualities that an ideal pastor must possess, it’s easy to get lost in the idea that only the cool, trendy and ultra creative that possess a Superman like blend of pastor, CEO, apologist, author and orator are the models of effectiveness who are equipped to handle the complexities of today’s church. They pastor thousands, while simultaneously run a radio broadcast, travel the country, Twitter and Blog. Their subtle, non-verbal message says to us “follow me”, the same words spoken by a man named Jesus on the shores of Lake Gennesaret when he called out to Peter or when He searched the eyes of a tax collector named Matthew. So who do we follow; the pastor or the One who called him to pastor?

A pastor has to resist the temptation to elevate his own personal holiness above the primary and most basic of missions: to proclaim the gospel of Christ. Oswald Chamber states in his book, Utmost for His Highest: [1]

"Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the gospel of God. The one all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality. Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell – it is redemption."

Paul did not say that he separated himself, but “when it pleased God, who separated me…” (Galatians 1:15). Certainly, Paul was an exemplary leader, apologist, encourager, mentor ....but he did not set out to be a celebrity, or anything except to be a slave for Christ. In rebuking the church for believing in a perverted gospel, he says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Paul was not overly interested in his own character. And as long as our eyes our focused on our own personal holiness, we will never even get close to the full reality of redemption.

A pastor can be a leader, a manager, a business owner, a landlord, a husband, a father, a mentor, and a counselor. He can be all these things and he must exemplify integrity, compassion, wisdom and expository intellect of Scripture. But first and foremost, having been set free from sin by the redemption that is in Christ, he must be a slave of righteousness (Romans 6:18) and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1). His proclamation of the gospel must be the main thrust; not personal holiness to please man or earn influence to be heard.

1 Chambers, Oswald. Utmost for His Highest. Michigan: Discovery House Publishers, 1995. Print