Faith That A Child Can Grow Into, Not Out Of
... and how to help children share that faith with others in this week's podcasts.
Jim Rayburn said it was a sin to bore a kid with the gospel. I’m not convinced that that is the case, but if it is, praise Jesus for his perfect life, death and resurrection that covers over a multitude of my sins!
What is interesting is how the fear of boring kids and teenagers sometimes produced a fun but frivolous presentation of faith; one that was paper-thin and not robust enough to stand once the rain comes down, streams rise, and winds beat against the house.
This week, the topic of forming a robust faith in young people comes up in both The Shock Absorber and Cross Formed Kidmin podcasts. Here’s a brief summary…
The Shock Absorber
This week, Stuart Crawshaw, Joel McMaster, and I discuss the way language shapes intergenerational engagement.
We kick off with an insight from the book, How to Teach Kids Theology by Sam Luce and Hunter Williams (full review coming soon). Luce and Williams make the distinction between simplification and distillation. As they describe it, simplification removes complexity, but sometimes at the expense of truth. Distillation, on the other hand, keeps the essentials, removes the unnecessary, and produces a more concentrated version of the truth. When it comes to teaching kids theology, distillation gives children a faith they can grow into rather than a faith to grow out of.
Using this as a launchpad, we discuss Jim Rayburn’s catch phrase that it is a sin to bore kids with the gospel, as well as Lee Strobel’s adolescent drift into atheism due to the lack of apologetic answers he received to his questions around faith.
The common thread? Simple answers (or non-answers) to complex questions. To grow our intergenerational, ‘shock absorbing’ relationships, leaders and parents need to know how to communicate with young people in a way that honours their curiosity and responds with both cognitive and relational answers to their questions.
My takeaway: distil, don’t simplify. Listen well to young people. Give them the honour of being image bearers of God. And in the church, the honour of being actual or potential sisters and brothers in Christ.
Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcasting app.
Cross Formed Kidmin
From communicating faith to young people to helping them share faith with each other. This week on CFK, Hunter Williams and I discuss one of my training seminars on ‘Teaching Kids to Know and Share Their Faith’.
Building out of my definition of faith as ‘knowing, loving and obeying King Jesus’, we then discuss the relevance of age and stage development and how children can share their faith in thoughts, affections, words and deeds.
Catch the full conversation in the link below or on your favourite podcasting app.
Have you got a topic of question about Children’s Ministry you would like us to discuss. Let us know in a comment below.