Stop the Loss!

I’ve been a Christ follower since age 16. Somebody in my home church (Pearl Road Church of God, Cleveland, Ohio) must have done something right, because I was fully grafted into the Body of Christ and have never left the church, nor even thought about leaving the church. Sadly, my story isn’t typical. The fact of the matter is that churches in America lose most of their own kids. I could (but won’t) point you to study after study that all verify the same thing: we lose anywhere between 50% and 80% of our own young people. L

Not a very good discipling record. If a business lost that many of its customers, it wouldn’t be a business very long!

So when I was a pastor (1975-84), and ever since becoming a professor (in September 1984), one of my chief concerns has been how to stop the loss. How to hold onto our own. How to keep kids from leaving the church, which often means leaving the faith. So you can imagine how my interest was piqued when I saw “3 Common Traits of Youth Who Don’t Leave the Church.” You should read the entire article, but the three common traits are:

1.      They are converted.

2.      They have been equipped, not entertained.

3.      Their parents preached the gospel to them.

Here are my thoughts.

FIRST (They are converted):

It’s not enough just to go to church. We must disciple our young people; we must bring them to a point of being converted, saved, transformed by God’s love. You see, my concern has nothing to do with going to church. It has to do with discipling young people! So parents, pastors, Sunday school teachers, youth counselors, and everyone else who is in a relationship with youth and children really need to point them to Christ and nurture them toward conversion.

Note that we can’t and don’t save or convert anyone. That is the Holy Spirit’s work. But we must move beyond the mentality of “getting them to church,” and into the mentality of “bringing them to Jesus.” They need to be saved.

SECOND (They have been equipped, not entertained):

I fear that much of today’s “youth ministry” is built on an entertainment model. Churches see what kids get at rock concerts and try to provide the same thing on Sunday and Wednesday. Many – not all – churches try to attract and hold young people with entertainment values from Hollywood and Broadway, and the result is that most kids leave the church. It’s time – well, it’s past time – for a new model. A model that equips young Christians for a life of discipleship.

I have been personally involved in a 21-year experiment of equipping youth and children as disciples at Maple Grove Church of God. We started a mid-week intergenerational ministry called LOGOS in 1993, and I’m pleased to report that our attendance statistics reveal that we lose only 36% of the kids who have participated. Am I satisfied with a 36% loss? No way! But it’s a whale of a lot better than the percentage lost by the average Protestant church in America, and nobody has yet found a more effective model of equipping children and teens for a life of discipleship! So while I grieve the 36% 

loss, I’ll take this result over anything else that’s ever been tried.

THIRD (Their parents preached the gospel to them):

I certainly wouldn’t state it the same way, but I do want to mention a couple of salient points:

1.      “Their parents” – plural. Parents, with an “s” on the end. Not “mother” or “father,” parents. Please know that I am not denigrating single parents – many of them are doing a fantastic job! – I am simply raising a point that might go unnoticed, that children who live in a home with an intact marriage have a distinct advantage. And if that intact marriage is also loving, caring, and supportive – so much the better!

PARENTS – The best thing you can do for your children might be to love your spouse well. (And I understand that some spouses aren’t safe to live with and divorce might be the least bad option, so don’t beat me up over this, please.J) 

2.      “Preached the gospel” is the part that I wouldn’t say. Preaching is a special calling from God with its own set of spiritual gifts, skills, preparation, etc. But the meaning of that phrase is right on target! Their parents taught them about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Their parents loved them and modeled Christ for them. Their parents were disciples (Christ followers) and led them to accept Christ and follow Him too. There is no escaping the spiritual responsibility of Christian parents. Period.

So for me, the bottom line is this: The church cannot do it alone. Parents cannot do it alone. There must be a strategic partnership between the church and the family if we are to stop the loss. We need each other, and God calls us to work together for the salvation and discipling of every child born into our families. Into our biological families, and into the Family of God. Stop the loss!

Your Father in Heaven

In last week’s posting, “Mad at God,” I wrote about the anger towards God that some feel when things don’t go right. I called for a new mode of discipling that involves teaching our kids about the loving God revealed in Jesus, who said that the Father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). This week I will explore this teaching a little; come along with me.

Much of this post is borrowed from T4T Lesson 5 (see my August 8, 2014 post). So thank you, Pastor Gary Stump, for Lesson 5!

Before you even think that I might be proof texting, hear me say that the following texts are representative samples of what the Bible teaches about how God loves, protects, provides for, reveals His will for, and trains disciples. Be assured that these are not proof texts; these faithfully represent the consensus of scripture.

God the Heavenly Father

In the model prayer, Jesus taught us to address God as Father. For those who have (or had) a loving father, this form of address makes perfect sense: God is our loving Father in heaven. But for those whose fathers were absent or abusive, seeing God as a father just doesn’t work. Therefore, untold millions of people need to learn (in all three domains, but especially in the Affective Domain!) the characteristics of a loving father, and they need to learn that God is their heavenly Father.

We read about this loving Father in Jeremiah 31:13, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you,” and in Lamentations 3:22f, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The Heavenly Father’s Love

We know that the Father loves us because

1.      Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

2.      We are His children (I John 3:1).

3.      We were once dead in sin, but now are alive with Christ (Ephesians 2:5).

The Heavenly Father’s Protection

The Bible never says that He protects us from bad things; but in more places than I can list here, the Bible teaches that He protects the essence of our being – our soul – the only part of us that will live forever.

1.      “The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” (2 Thessalonians 3:3).

2.      “I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety” (Psalm 4:8).

3.      “The LORD [is] my refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust” (Psalm 91:2).

4.      “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it” (I Corinthians 10:13).

All of scripture boldly declares that God protects His own. I think many believers get off track when they think that this means that accidents will never happen, nobody will ever get sick and die, etc. These things do happen, but for the faithful Christ follower, these things cannot touch our very essence – that is, our soul. Praise God!

The Heavenly Father’s Provision

1.      “My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

2.      Romans 8:18-38 sort of says it all:

a.       The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us (18).

b.      Hope that is seen is not hope (24); think about that!

c.       The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words (26). 

d.      In all things, God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (28).

e.       He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else (32)?

f.       Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword (35)?

g.       No! In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (37ff).

Knowing The Heavenly Father’s Will

Oftentimes, disciples wonder how to know God’s will. Well, here is a big clue!

1.      Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).

2.      Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105).

3.      I Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5 contain prime examples of how the Father reveals His will through scripture.

4.      The bottom line is this: If you want to know God’s will, start with the Bible. Pretty simple. Pretty clear.

The Heavenly Father’s Training of Disciples

Remember that “disciple” is based on the same root as “discipline.” Discipline means training – learning at its deepest. Hebrews 12:5-6 declares, “My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.” That word “punish” gives us trouble; so let me point out that the Greek word behind it means something closer to “correct” or “reprove” than what many think of as punishment (like a beating or a whipping!).

The Heavenly Father trains His children

1.      through one another (Proverbs 27:17),

2.      in scripture (2 Timothy 3:16), and

3.      by trials (James 1:2-4). Gary Stump said in my hearing that “the bigger the test the more it proves what God thinks of your faith” (September 14, 2014).

So my friend, when life throws you a curve, don’t let go of your faith in God; hold on even tighter! 

Because

God is too wise to be mistaken, God is too good to be unkind
So when you don’t understand, When don’t see His plan
When you can’t trace His hand, Trust His Heart.[1]

Yes.

---

[1] Babbie Mason, © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

Mad at God

One of my favorite classes to teach at Anderson University is an undergraduate class in the Department of Adult Studies. It’s called “Faith and Human Development.” Over the last 30 years, I have taught this class about 60 times with a total of some 2,000 students. Their first assignment is to write their own Spiritual Autobiography; I want them to write about their own spiritual growth and development from birth to the present – before I pollute their pristine minds with faith development theory. J

Reading their papers is a joy and a burden.

Joy:

It is truly inspiring to read how God works in their lives. Through parents, grandparents, Sunday school teachers, youth counselors, coaches, you name it! So many of these students have been blessed in so many ways; it is a joy to read their stories.

Burden:

I have also read scores of stories about being molested as a child, about the unexpected death of a loving parent or sibling, about unemployment and homelessness, and the list goes on. Terrible things happen in people’s lives, and it’s burdensome to read their stories.

It’s even more of a burden to read the stories of those who got mad at God for the tragedies in their lives. Somewhere along the line, they picked up the false belief that God “did” these things to them. I read words like, “God took my baby away from me.” And I want to scream against the darkness: “NO! God did not do that!”

Somewhere in our discipling, we have taught people that God is personally responsible for everything that happens: every good thing, and every bad thing. I actually cringe when I hear people rejoice in “a God thing.” It’s as if God gets some perverse pleasure out of manipulating every event, pulling every string like a puppeteer, gleefully watching us suffer through tragedy and occasionally throwing us a bone to make us happy (the so-called God thing).

In a powerful sermon that he delivered in A.U. Chapel, President James Edwards tells the touching story of his granddaughter’s cancer. It was a heartbreaking time in his family. He states that he never asked God “Why did this happen?”

I too have never asked God why. In fact, I tend to lean the other direction. When something unfortunate happens, I often think, “Why not?” God never promised His people that He would build some sort of hedge around them and protect them from all calamity and catastrophe. What God has promised is that He would be with us when these things happen.

Toward the end of his sermon, President Edwards states his belief that this thing didn’t happen for a purpose. He respectfully says that some members of his audience come from traditions that do believe that everything happens for a purpose. And some of my students have quoted to me the old saying, “There’s a purpose for everything and everything happens for a purpose.”

And I want to talk about that philosophy – it’s called determinism. Determinism holds that nothing happens without God’s intention and purpose. I am not a determinist. I believe that some things just happen – with no intent or purpose. Accidents. Fires. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Cancers. 9/11. You name it. Sometimes bad things happen that God never intended and does not want. And God walks with us through those things to strengthen us, comfort us, enable us, empower us, etc. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28 NRSV).

Nowhere in the Bible do we read a word about determinism. Nowhere does the Bible promise us that only good things will happen, or that God is somehow punishing us when bad things happen. Yet many Christians today believe precisely that. And it gets them in spiritual difficulty. And it troubles me. Deeply. My first college psychology professor, Dr. Bill Farmen, once told me that in his experience most – if not all – psychological problems come from bad theology. I think he was right.

I remember my mother. She was a determinist. She believed that God planned and did everything on purpose. So when one of her grandchildren got molested by some older kids in the neighborhood, my mother went through a long time of being mad at God. She told me that she couldn’t even pray, so angry was she at God, who “did this” to her grandchild.

And when my mom died, her only sibling, my aunt, became so angry at God for “taking my sister away” that she couldn’t pray. Imagine that. So mad at God that you can’t even pray. The simple fact is that my mother lived a lifestyle that led to coronary artery disease and she died entirely too young, at age 68. But God didn’t do that! She did it to herself with a lifetime of choices she had made. And I say this with love, and with sadness.

One of my students wrote, “I found out that I was pregnant and I was absolutely devastated. I can’t say that I lost my faith, in that I never felt that God was not real, but I was so very very angry at him.  I shook my fist to the heavens and told him I wanted nothing more to do with what He was.” How sad. Where did she learn that God was responsible for her pregnancy?

Another student wrote, “My son and wife [were] in another wreck that totaled my truck. When I got to the scene all I could think was he was dead by looking at the truck…I thank God that he put us through all of this because it just made us stronger and closer as a family.” No! God did not put them “through all of this.” An accident is an accident – not an act of God. And while Romans 8:28 pertains – “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” – God does not put people through things like this.

So pastors, Sunday school teachers, parents, youth counselors, Christ followers:

I call you to a new mode of discipling. Instead of lying to children and youth, leading them to believe in a deterministic god who plans and does every little thing in life, please – for the sake of your children – teach them about the loving God revealed in Jesus, who said that the Father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45).

Prayer Walking

Last week, it was my privilege to participate in a citywide prayer walk for our schools. It was organized by a godly woman who moved back to Anderson in answer to God’s call; she is currently unemployed, but came here to serve the Lord.

We met in the parking lot of the Wigwam to receive our assignments and a prayer card. One of those on the prayer walk was Terry Thompson, superintendent of the Anderson Community School Corporation; it was a blessing to meet him and to learn that our new superintendent is a Christ follower. I was assigned three of our local public schools; the others went to the other public schools, to the Anderson Preparatory Academy, and to Liberty Christian School. After praying together, we drove to our prayer walking assignments.

My experience was deeply moving, emotionally and spiritually. I went first to East Side Elementary School. Using the prayer card that they gave me, I prayed for the students, faculty, staff, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and crossing guards who serve that school. My heart was strangely warmed; I felt the close presence of God as I prayed through the prayer card three times at that school.

Then I drove to Anderson Middle School and prayed the same way. But this time my emotional and spiritual experience was completely different. I was overwhelmed by an extreme feeling of unworthiness; I did not feel worthy to be praying for this school and its people. But I prayed through. Three times through that prayer card. By the way, if you’re curious about the prayer card, I included it at the end of this post (with my own minor edits, but it is 99% the same as when handed to me).

Finally I went to East 10^th Street Elementary School and prayed through the prayer card a third time (I don’t know why, but I felt that I wanted to pray through it three times at each school; something about the way my mind works, I suppose!). And this time, my emotional and spiritual experience was different again. In place of the extreme closeness of God, instead of the feeling of unworthiness, I just felt a firm determination to pray for the children and their adult leaders at this school.

Overall, it was a wonderful experience. For a long time afterwards, I had no interest in anything else. My mind was fixed on God and his will for the schools of Anderson. I knew that I was a small part of a large movement that was covering all of the schools in our city with prayer. And I won’t be surprised when reports of answered prayer arrive.

If you want to use it, here is my slightly edited version of the prayer card:

Prayer Walking

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone - for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and us, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. – I Timothy 2:1-8

Pray about truth. 

Declare the reality of one God. Ask that the eyes of minds would cease to be blinded 

by Satan.

Pray for people you see in the neighborhood. You don’t have to know their names.

Focus on God and His promises.

Pray for peace. For the godliness and holiness of His people to increase into abundant peace.

Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world." -John 8:12

Pray that God would bring the light of the world right into this neighborhood.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it in abundance. –John 10:10

Where Satan has stolen, murdered or destroyed, invite Jesus to bring life. Describe the abounding life that Christ desires for the people of our city.

But the Lord is faithful and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.

-2 Thess. 3:3

Come before God’s  throne of mercy to seek His powerful intervention.  Ask that evil powers would be frustrated and that many in the city would taste the freedom and joy of life made right with God.

Blessed be the LORD, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation. God is to us a God of deliverances; and to God the LORD belong escapes from death.  –Psalm 68:19-20

Pray for children whose parents don't care; for women abandoned by faithless men; for lonely people who have no one; for those overpowered by the cruelty or greed of others.

What we call The Lord's Prayer can be our prayer to pray for ourselves and our neighbor­ hoods.

Our Father, who art in heaven ...

We come near You in heaven by the way made by Jesus. We come near our neighbors on earth, that a way would be opened for you in their lives.

Hallowed be Your Name ...

We want You honored in this place, recognized by every single person. Work in our lives so that Your will alone will be honored, respected and praised.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven ...

Come loving King! Confront us with healing power. Subdue our rebellion against You. Transform these hearts to follow You soon.  Turn us as individuals, as families, even as a whole community of loyal obedience.

Give us this day our daily bread ...

We ask You to provide every daily need for the people in this place.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors ...

However deep or longstanding the sins of our city, we beg forgiveness.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil ...

Our city is trapped in transgressions.  Only Your forgiveness can free us. However deep or longstanding the sins of our city may be, we beg You Lord, bring forth a wave of reconciliation on the very street we walk. May forgiveness spread from person to person, throughout the families and between the subcultures, and heal our city.

For Yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

-Matthew 6:9-13

May Your kingdom come in its fullness in this neighborhood. May these women, men, girls and boys experience Your power and Your glory. For Your sake!