![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/230\/2014\/04\/cm-300x225.jpg\" "\\"cm\\"")
<\/a>It\u2019s pouring down rain in Kansas City, so here\u2019s a little rainy day repost from a little over a year ago. The post was developed from questions I have gotten over the years from parents in my church who are trying their best to pass along their faith to their children. They don\u2019t want to screw this up. Often the questions come as parents realize the ways in which their faith was passed on to them by their parents were either ineffective or damaging, or else they were effective but cannot be effective now (because of cultural changes). What follows is not the sum total of what I think, but a pretty good snapshot of where I would begin:<\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
How do we talk to our kids about God, heaven, hell, salvation and how it all works?\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m a big fan of answering questions with stories, or else more questions. But there are some situations where kids don\u2019t want the run-around. They want you to tell them what kind of story they are living in right now. It\u2019s important to remember these questions are developmental as much as spiritual. Whether or not you buy into Piaget\u2019s stages, during the movement toward the concrete operational stage, kids start to want to nail down a few things. They need a category in which to file the information and experiences they encounter that relate to God. Much of what your child is looking for is the answer to \u201cwho am I?\u201d or \u201cWho are we?\u201d<\/p>\nFirst, do not start by telling your kid they are a sinner bound for hell. That will forever distort the story of God for them. They\u2019ll learn all about sin later (through their own life). Right now we talk about God\u2019s love. God has made everything with an intended purpose. Our job is to live toward that purpose; to live at peace with God, ourselves, each other, and the world.<\/p>\n
Tell them who they are:<\/strong>\u00a0She is part of the people of God. She doesn\u2019t belong to a club called Christianity that she can voluntarily leave. Her base identity before she is a girl, your daughter, a sister, asian, American, etc, is that she belongs to Jesus. Nothing can stop this from being true. This is incredibly grounding for a child. You almost border on telling them, \u201cYou have no choice \u2013 you belong to Jesus. He bought you.\u201d You get to tell her she will live her life this way, and that when she dies one day, she will still be safe in the arms of Jesus forever.<\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
Her base identity before she is a girl, your daughter, a sister, asian, American, etc, is that she belongs to Jesus. Nothing can stop this from being true.<\/strong><\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
What she has a choice about, is living into that story, or running away from that story. To live into that story will bring life and even more life. To run away from that story will rob life and destroy life. This is her constant challenge as she lives her life. (Running from that story is something you will address constantly as you are parenting\/guiding your kid, but not in this conversation \u2013 not in the conversation about her salvation. In this conversation, we only tell the good news). Jesus is Lord of all, Jesus bought us with his blood, and we have always belonged to Him, and we always will! We are his & he will take us everywhere we need to go if we follow him.<\/p>\n
Public profession:<\/strong>\u00a0The most concrete expression of this identity in this life is her involvement with the people of God. So I would teach her that every single time she comes to church she is making a public profession of faith. She identifies with Jesus when she identifies with the body of Christ. We come to church not to learn how to be a better person, or to learn more about Jesus \u2013 although those both happen. We come to church to express the reality that we are a part of the body of Christ. Later on in moral development stages \u2013 adolescence \u2013 you begin to teach more about how every moral choice is a public profession of faith & how some moral choices can destroy us. But I think that\u2019s to confusing early on. It builds too much guilt & ends up making kids experience anxiety about whether or not they are really \u201csaved.\u201d She needs to know she was saved the moment Jesus came out of that tomb. All of life is allowing her salvation to be expressed through the way that she lives her life.<\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
We come to church not to learn how to be a better person, or to learn more about Jesus \u2013 although those both happen. We come to church to express the reality that we are a part of the body of Christ.<\/strong><\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
Communion and baptism:<\/strong>\u00a0These are also about our public profession of faith. As you eat the body of Jesus, you become the body of Jesus. We are what we eat. We feast on Jesus & become his hands and feet. Then we take Jesus everywhere we go. In baptism, as you go under the water all other allegiances die\u2026 they don\u2019t come back up \u2013 only your identification with Jesus and the people of God. When we receive communion and baptism, created things \u2013 bread, wine, water \u2013 become infused with the Spirit of God and something holy happens. That\u2019s why we do those things. They don\u2019t save us, but there are expressions of God\u2019s salvation.<\/p>\nA few particulars:<\/strong>\u00a0I think we can say that salvation is a one time deal \u2013 but it happened in the resurrection of Jesus. It\u2019s not a one time deal, like \u201cI accepted Jesus\u201d so I\u2019m in. (Or conversely, \u201cYou haven\u2019t said the sinner\u2019s prayer, received the Holy Spirit & the gift of tongues, been baptized by the Roman Catholic Church, or whatever line people draw and ask people to step across so you are out!\u201d).<\/p>\nAccepting Jesus is a constant thing; a day to day choice. Moment to moment, we choose how we are living into Jesus\u2019s salvation, or in light of Jesus\u2019s salvation (or not), This can be a little confusing to kids who need concrete stuff to hang their hat on. So I would pick some phrases that you and your husband say exactly alike and then use with them as a matter of routine. This forms a liturgy for the kids they can begin to know and parrot back to you. These phrases will serve as important categories to build on. They are so important because as they grow older, you need to be able to fill them with ever greater content. Q & A w\/kids often goes like this:<\/p>\n
Am I \u201csaved\u201d or \u201cam I a Christian?\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cYou were saved the moment Jesus came out of that tomb. That\u2019s when your salvation happened. That\u2019s when all salvation happened. Now you are beginning to consciously live into that reality. This means you are a Christian, you are a part of the people of God, the body of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\nHow did it work?\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cJesus took all of the pain, death, sin, brokenness (whatever you want to use to describe that \u2013 evil, bad stuff), and he sort of swallowed it. He\u2019s a death eater. Even though it ended up killing him, he was raised from the dead. Now, if we live IN JESUS, we don\u2019t have to live in pain, death, sin, brokenness, etc. In fact we begin to swallow up those things and rid the world of them the way jesus did. We don\u2019t fear those things because they are not powerful enough to steal us out of God hands. Even if we die they can\u2019t steal us out of God\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cIs everybody saved?\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cJesus died and rose again to save every single person who ever lived. But some people get really lost. Some don\u2019t know that they are saved through Jesus, that\u2019s why we tell people about him. Some other people know he died for them, but they don\u2019t want him to save them. That\u2019s why we pray for them. Some people are so hungry, so hurt, so poor, or so sick that they can\u2019t even be bothered to think about these questions. That\u2019s why we serve them. Who Jesus saves is not our problem \u2013 that\u2019s God\u2019s deal.\u201d<\/p>\nIf I do things wrong, will I stop being saved?\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThe Spirit of God is alive in your heart \u2013 with you every moment of every day. There\u2019s nothing you can ever do to make him go away.\u201d (There\u2019s much more to say about this later on \u2013 but for now we stop there).<\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Spirit of God is alive in your heart \u2013 with you every moment of every day. There\u2019s nothing you can ever do to make him go away.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n
Do I have to pray to accept Jesus?\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThe Christian constantly prays to accept Jesus. We pray all the time and ask Jesus to be the Lord of our lives. You can do this as much as you want. God never stops loving to hear this from us. \u201cI love you God. I give myself to you,\u201d is the best thing we can ever say to God and God loves it.\u201d<\/p>\nWhat will happen when I die?\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cYou will always be with Jesus. You will live again. You will feast and party and sing and play and rest and you will always be with the Lord. You will find family and love and good work to do with your hands. You will live at peace with all things and life will be joyful and full. Don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\nSometimes I\u2019m afraid about this stuff.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cIt\u2019s okay to feel afraid. The best thing to do if you are ever afraid is to recite this Psalm over and over: \u201cWhen I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord.\u201d Say it and remember that Jesus is with you.\u201d And, you need to tell someone else.\u201d I will often say it this way: \u201cWhen you have worries or troubles, you bring them to the body of Christ \u2013 that means you tell someone like mommy, or daddy, or your brother, or small group at church.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s pouring down rain in Kansas City, so here\u2019s a little rainy day repost from a little over a year ago. The post was developed from questions I have gotten over the years from parents in my church who are trying their best to pass along their faith to their children. They don\u2019t want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[431,1007,1006,386],"class_list":["post-3057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrens-ministry","tag-christian-education","tag-narrative-theology","tag-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>It\u2019s pouring down rain in Kansas City, so here\u2019s a little rainy day repost from a little over a year ago. The post was developed from questions I have gotten over the years from parents in my church who are trying their best to pass along their faith to their children. They don\u2019t want to screw this up. Often the questions come as parents realize the ways in which their faith was passed on to them by their parents were either ineffective or damaging, or else they were effective but cannot be effective now (because of cultural changes). What follows is not the sum total of what I think, but a pretty good snapshot of where I would begin:<\/p>\n