Stemming The Tide of Faith Defection in Us All
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This document discusses factors contributing to young adult dropout from church and proposes strategies to address it. It suggests the dropout problem stems from a lack of parental discipleship, incomplete youth conversions, and churches not having clear plans for making disciples. The document outlines an essential model for churches with four elements: simplify discipleship process, deepen biblical teaching, expect member commitment, and multiply outward focus. It advocates discipling youth through milestones and providing guidance through life transitions. The goal is for churches to develop proven plans that deepen faith and commitment.
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Stemming The Tide of Faith Defection in Us All
- 2. A TALE OF TWO TABLES
- 5. REVIEW Our Conversion Story, when we rightly understand it, and rightly communicate it, becomes the strategy God wants to use to extend His kingdom. Acts 1:8!
- 6. MAIN QUESTION Does your church have a plan for making disciples of its members? Does it have a well-designed, well- communicated, intently pursued plan for making disciples?
- 7. DISSUADED FROM DROPOUT? (1) If you had a proven plan for your spiritual growth to take place this next year? (2) If the Bible was explained to you and taught behind the pulpit and in your small group? (3) If the people in your church were all deeply and seriously committed to your church body and to you? (4) If there was a vision matched by well thought out plans for reaching out to the community for the sake of Jesus Christ?
- 8. ESSENTIAL MODEL Simplify—develop a clear structure and process for making disciples, Deepen—provide strong, biblical teaching and preaching, Expectation—have an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation, and Multiply—have an outward focus and be driven to reach people for Christ (start new churches!)
- 9. GOD’S WILL FOR THE NEXT GENERATION Deuteronomy 6 7 Impress them on your children... Talk when you sit…walk …lie down …get up. Judges 1 …another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel Psalm 78:1-8 We will not hide the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done …so the next generation would know them…
- 10. I WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST (1) The dropout problem is a naturally inherited problem from our spiritual grandparents. (2) The dropout problem is not just a youth problem, but an entire church problem. (3) Young adults might be leaving for good reasons. Be missionaries to our youth in their culture!
- 11. INTRO SUMMARY There isn’t ONE factor when we research the dropout problem or faith defection. Problem: Young adults, after graduating High School, are (1) not interested in keeping up the habit of attending church, (2) have much their spiritual energy fade, and (3) lack a faith that is consequential.
- 12. NOTE The greatest influences in young adult lives are those of adults, most specifically, the parents.
- 14. A FRAMEWORK FOR MINISTRY TO FAMILIES
- 15. A FRAMEWORK FOR MINISTRY TO FAMILIES
- 17. Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; the expectation is for you to be a disciple of Jesus! Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches --(Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God. IN SUMMARY
- 18. FOR EVERY GRADE
- 19. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory.
- 20. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team.
- 21. Introduce a milestone that helps train parents and kids about the importance of reading the Word of God. At the beginning of the year, parents attend a class on the importance of teaching and reading the Bible to their kids and helping their kids start to read their own Bibles. Then during the following Sunday service, families are brought forward and the parents are given Bibles by the pastors. The parents then hand the Bible to their own kids and make a promise in front of the church to teach them and read them the Word of God. Then throughout the school year, kids are encouraged to bring their Bibles to Sunday School so that they can learn how to read and learn from them.
- 22. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time.
- 23. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory.
- 24. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families.
- 25. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther.
- 26. Each student receives a new Bible as they enter Confirmation/Middle School ministry
- 27. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation [Easter?] Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet (Seder?) dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community.
- 28. Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school.
- 29. Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern his or her S.H.A.P.E., how their spiritual gifts, heart, natural abilities, personality, and experience work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community.
- 30. Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond.
- 31. Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 32. FOR EVERY GRADE See also "Milestones" by Brian Haynes, http://www.onemag.org/milestones.htm
- 33. FOR EVERY GRADE 1 Transition Prayers; 2 Milestones of Faith; Teaching 4th graders to Risk; Rite of Passage Rituals (here you go); 3 Anxiety in the In-Between Stages of Our Lives; 4 Sixth and Ninth-Grade Blessing Ceremonies; 5 What You Need to Know About Faith in College; 6 How Do I See Myself After Graduation?; 7 Vision Plans; 8 Grad Gift Bibles with a Twist; 9 The Jacket; 10 Emergency Response Plans; 11 How Can My Struggles Help My Faith Stick?; 12 Sticky Faith Story about Confirmation +this post about Confirmation, + this one with more ideas! 13 What You Need to Know about Life After Youth Group; 14 Sticky Faith Deployed; 15 Grad Summer Ideas; +senior retreat +church visit field trips; 16 How Can I Find a New Church?; 17 How Can I Manage My Life After High School? 18 Out of the Nest; 19 College Transition Packages; 20 Don’t Send Them Off Without Leads! - See more at: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/fyi-playlist-20-free-resources-for-transition- season#sthash.NAZLKFoc.dpuf
- 34. DISSUADED FROM DROPOUT? (1) If you had A PROVEN PLAN for your spiritual growth to take place this next year? (2) If the BIBLE was EXPLAINED TO YOU and taught behind the pulpit and in your small group? (3) If the people in your church were all DEEPLY and SERIOUSLY committed to your church body AND TO YOU? (4) If there was a vision matched by well thought out plans for REACHING OUT to the community for the sake of Jesus Christ?
- 35. IDEAS TO END ON 1. The ALPHA Course (Intentional Jesus-Hospitality) 2. Tweaked BIBLE QUIZZING Program 3. OHIO CU Missions Trips 4. Expected Discipleship Training Program in every church
- 37. IDEAS TO END ON 1. The ALPHA Course (Intentional Jesus-Hospitality) 2. Tweaked BIBLE QUIZZING Program 3. All State Missions Trips 4. Expected Discipleship Training Program in every church 5. Rolling Youth Church Camp 6. All Church Rites of Passage (as seen) 7. Youth Mentor 5:1 Catechism/Bar Barakah/PTP 8. Bible Story: Paint My Kitchen Ministry http://7weekgospel10.weebly.com
Editor's Notes
- Has your church so emphasized the need for conversion there is now a big gap in their vision of what being a Christian is all about—they know how to becoming one rather than being one? The lead belief “supplanting Christianity as the dominant religion in American churches” is called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (Dean 2010, 7). The five guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism are: 1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth. 2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. 3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem. 5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (Dean 2010, 14) We have been missing something while doing church—we have failed to pass on as of greatest importance the faith we possess. Or we have been passing it on, but it just an inconsequential faith we ourselves possess. Acts 1:8 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses …when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Why did Jesus have to go? So you could be HIS witness—an example to others of HIS work In SESSION 2, I spoke about how Our Conversion Story, when we rightly understand it, and rightly communicate it, becomes THE strategy God wants to use to extend His kingdom. The seeds of dropout are rooted before age twenty; the age of sixteen is “where the church begins to lose the majority of people in the battle over generations” (Rainer 2008, 15). “The generational battle reaches a flash point when teens reach the age sixteen” and continues until they are nineteen, for in “just three short years of a teen’s life, he or she makes a decision to leave the church” (2008, 15). The Church needs to shift from being nonessential in the lives of the next generation to being an “essential church.” If you were going to become a church dropout, whatever the reason you thought about, would these four things dissuade you from dropping out? (1) If you had a proven plan for your spiritual growth to take place this next year? (2) If the Bible was explained to you and taught behind the pulpit and in your small group? (3) If the people in your church were all deeply and seriously committed to your church body and to you? (4) If there was a vision matched by well thought out plans for reaching out to the community for the sake of Jesus Christ? The Rainers present a four-phase “essential model” to help make an essential church: Simplify—develop a clear structure and process for making disciples, Deepen—provide strong, biblical teaching and preaching, Expectation—have an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation, and Multiply—have an outward focus and be driven to reach people for Christ (start new churches!) I am using this four-phase model as the frame to which I add other authors’ insights as walls to form an “essential church” giving Christ-follower an essential faith in a very essential Savior. The Walls of an Essential Church Make Intergenerational Relationships a Priority (Kinnaman) The Great Commission: “Teaching them to obey whatsover things I have commanded you…” [Rediscover Christian calling and vocation and Reprioritize wisdom over information as we seek to know God] In helping to reconnect the next generation, David Kinnaman believes the key is not just emphasizing relationships but in making “intergenerational relationships a priority” (Kinnaman 2011, 204). The church is “one of the few places on earth where those who represent the full scope of human life come together with a singular motive and mission” not for an older generation to pass along its wisdom to the next, but “the church is a partnership of generations fulfilling God’s purposes in their time” (Kinnaman 2011, 203). Each generation needs all of the other ones. We segregate our church learning opportunities after the model of public schools and doing this unintentionally contributes to the rising tide of alienation that defines our time. Your church needs to have ways the whole body reconnects regardless of age. You will need to battle fears and the tendency to be overprotective; you will be challenged to leave shallow faith behind and help younger people use their gifts/talents for God; It will require learning how to live fully sexual beings that rejects both the traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex; You will need to be inclusive of others while being exclusively Christ’s. Would Bruce (I mean Caitlyn) Jenner be welcome in your church? Dennis Rainey recently stated that at their Weekends To Remember same-sex couples would be welcomed. An Intentional, Decisive, Initiated Discipleship Plan The dropout problem is at its root a discipleship problem. If there is one conclusion you need to walk away with today is that your church needs a well thought out plan on how it is going to make disciples; it needs to have an intentional, decisive, initiated plan. At the end of his book YOU LOST ME, Kinnaman shared, not fifty shades of black, white or grey, but instead shares fifty ideas for “creating the ‘new mind’ we need to have to make disciples as Jesus commanded.” Almost all of the authors I researched highlight a relational-discipleship remedy. You and I should know by now that ultimately, the reason people leave the Christian faith is because of a failed or failing relationship with Jesus Christ; regardless of whom the person is, young or old, seasoned or beginner, the process in walking away from the faith is the same: “The soul’s intimate and personal communion with Christ is shifted to something else. You and I also certainly know that some people who professed to be Christians never had an authentic relationship with Christ. And we also know too well that there is an enemy: faith rejection is about spiritual warfare; it’s about “Satan desiring to destroy us and our children. These are the topics of your discipleship methods. Effective Parenting Will Maximize the Early Years and Have a Plan (Barna/Joy) Parents need help in knowing how to influence their children as part of the next generation. Six ways parents and their children can have meaningful devotional times together: 1. Have fun reading Bible stories (acting them out as they are read) 2. One night ask your children whom they would like to pray for as a family 3. Have kids draw and color pictures of Bible stories and hang them up on your wall to talk about them 4. Pray for your pastor, missionaries, and your church, 5. Pray how God can use you to witness at school and friends, 6. Challenge them to memorize the Scriptures together. “What plans do you have right now to be sure your children maintain their Christian life?” “Many parents don’t have the foggiest notion.” Some Tips For Raising Godly Young Adults 1. Your impact on your children’s lives is proportional to the depth of the relationship you have fostered with them, 2. You must wholeheartedly embrace the outcomes you are pushing the child to achieve, The coach must have a comprehensive plan for reaching the “promised land” (the information, skills, behaviors, and beliefs the child should come to own). 3. See yourself more as a coach equal to being a parent; Impact is derived by coaching “in the moment,” and great coaches are great communicators (they involved the young people they’re coaching in a dialogue related to where they are heading). (2007, 19-21) Parents who raise spiritual champions never pushed salvation on their children. Every one of these parents considered the salvation of their children to be of paramount importance, but most of them opted for a lifelong emphasis upon discipleship rather than evangelism. I believe one of the reasons for dropping out of church and the faith journey is because of an overemphasized focus on salvation by parents, ministers and mentors instead of a lifelong emphasis on discipleship; when students see hypocrisy in the lives of those who stress salvation without a transformed lifestyle issuing out of them by example, it leads teens to dropout. A Needed Return to Biblical Conversion (Smith) Gordon Smith believes renewal will come “as we embrace three things:” A clear goal—a well-articulated, thoroughly biblical and relevant notion of sanctification as transformation in Christ, capturing the longings of our hearts to be a people who grow in holiness and become saints as we grow older. A good beginning—a thorough and radical conversion, for there is no sanctification without justification, no transformation without a complete conversion. An intentional program of spiritual formation that has the clear goal of personal transformation and builds on a good beginning—a complete conversion. (2001, 24) Smith believes “inconsequential conversions” to be a weakness of our churches today which contributes to a lack in “spiritual depth and vitality, with little impact on society and culture” (Smith 2001, 154). Revivalism has made us 1. Confuse Conversion and salvation 2. Overemphasize human volition—we think people just need to make a decision and that God does nothing 3. See Conversion as an event 4. Anti-intellectual 5. See Conversion as an individualized transaction with God 6. Anti-sacramental 7. See Conversion as easy and painless and certainly not costly 8. See Evangelism as a technique 9. See God having grandchildren (“I’m a Christian because mom and dad were”) 10. Disconnect conversion from baptism, and the gift of the Spirit. 11. See the Church’s mission as obtaining conversions 12. Focus on the afterlife with minimal reference to this world. We need a “new way of speaking about conversion” and about how people “come to faith.” Our theology of conversion needs to be informed by the biblical text, the church’s tradition, and the experience of those who come to faith, recognizing in this experience a witness to the work of the Spirit.” Structuring Ministries toward Consequential Faith Development (Dean) Kendra Creasy Dean believes “young people will not develop consequential faith simply by being absorbed into a so-called “Christian” culture (if such a thing is even possible)” (Dean 2010, 84). What is needed is to turn “self-focused spirituality on its head” (Dean 2010, 84). One way youth ministries have made this shift is to being more missional; youth leader view themselves more as missionaries and focusing on being incarnational in their approach to youth in their culture. We desperately need an antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and three ingredients are: the arts of translation, testimony and detachment. The “Art of Translation” = “Luther was convinced that youth ministry started at home” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther believed in the instruction of the young as a means of church renewal. “Luther developed a method of instruction-by-memorization he called catechism, from catechize, to ‘echo back,’ or teach out loud” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther’s Small Catechism, widely regarded as an educational masterpiece, was noteworthy for another reason as well. It located teaching out loud in households, not congregations, which had the effect of locating Christian formation in the intimacy of families, where children drew direct connections between religious instruction at the dinner table and the lives of the people who loved them. … It was an educational stroke of genius, since it effectively ensured that parents, children, and servants learned the core teachings of the church together. (Dean 2010, 111) Catechesis works by evoking “trust in a person” more than trust in religious ideas” (2010, 115). “Knowing by heart” is the means by which the “whole person” is submitted to “the ways of Christ,” because “faith is a way of life, not just a body of information to master” (Dean 2010, 115-116). We need to be able to communicate the faith as a way of life, not just a way to believe—a way to trust Jesus, not just a way to believe about him (Dean 2010, 118). Some guidelines for translating faith with young people: 1) The best translators are people, not programs, 2) The best translators are bilingual, 3) The best translators invoke imagination, and 4) Translation can threaten the people in charge (Dean 2010, 123). Think about the Incarnation as an act of love. Without the previous generation’s translation of the faith into the language of the next generation, the faith will stay in-house and behind the walls. Just imagine where the local church would be if it ever decided to place the very power of the gospel into the hands of teenagers! The “Art of Testimony” = “Testimony is a learned art form” (Dean 2010, 132). “Youth who don’t have a language for Christ are unlikely to imagine an identity in Christ,” (2010, 142). This is so significant. Talking about Jesus Christ actually deepens our identity as people who follow him. Many churches have forgotten how to say what they believe! I believe this point is greatly necessary in developing consequential faith. We need to develop the practices of “spiritual apprenticeships and faith immersions where we plunge young people into Christian “language communities” that give them “the language necessary to testify to God’s faithfulness” (2010, 149). Church camps and mission trips and even weekend retreats can be spaces where consequential faith is developed. In spiritual apprenticeships, young people learn to speak Christian as apprentices in a community that talks about Jesus, “where people testify to what it costs to love him and to love others because of him” (Dean 2010, 151). “Teenagers learn to articulate faith by hearing adults articulate theirs = this is referred to as the practice of “sacred eavesdropping.” If adults cannot speak Christian any better than young people can, spiritual apprenticeship fails” (Dean 2010, 152). The dropout problem is a discipleship problem. Church camps, mission trips and retreats are only as effective as the guidance provided during those times. We need to provide space for young people to articulate faith but these experiences are only as good as the guidance before and the debriefing after” (2010, 154). These spaces as provide opportunities to make use of a “God-language” as a “decoder ring” for teenagers in two ways: in their “immediate experience of God during the event itself” and “for interpreting one’s life in relationship to this experience”(Dean 2010, 155). Unless we can provide opportunities and space for young people to respond back out loud the faith story they have found themselves in, “Christianity remains on mute” instead of a “good news ‘gone viral’” (Dean 2010, 156). In Emmaus-like fashion, “Without a story to tell, there is no faith;” imagine where the Church would be if it confesses the God-story for teenagers in a “run from the tomb to tell” fashion! Thirdly, what makes these camps, retreats, and mission trips so wonderful is the process of “disentangling ourselves from whatever distracts us from Jesus Christ, so all of our attention—and all of our lives—may be fixed upon him!” This is called the “Art of Detachment” (2010, 159). This practice does not come natural; this ability must be cultivated. It is a process we must learn. We need to carve out moments when we have “decentering encounters” with God, “faithful reflexivity—a kind of self-awareness that allows us to momentarily view ourselves and others from a new vantage point as we watch God work” (2010, 159). Mature discipleship depends on this faithful reflexivity to integrate into our emerging identities those experiences in which God grasps us and lets us see ourselves and others differently” (2010, 161). This identity formation is a key issue in regards to stemming the dropout tide. Research involving college freshman bucking the trend to “stash their identities” found that one in seven college freshmen had what it took to avoid “the identity lockbox phenomenon” and continued to mature in their identity formation because of their “capacity for reflexivity” (Dean 2010, 161). 85% of these (one in seven) college freshmen were what he called “religious emissaries”—kids who had a growing awareness of others and of God. “Most of the church’s signature practices aim for these forms of awareness,” but this artistry in detachment, although learnable and coachable, is not teachable—we must have experiences of God for ourselves (Dean 2010, 162). I strongly believe that “until we have experienced God’s engulfing presence with us—the relationship between faith and other aspects of our lives will seem opaque and meaningless” (2010, 162). Having experiences of God can catapult us into thin places—those space between heaven and earth where the detachment is needed MUST BE planned for with intentionality—children need reflective space that frames their experience with God to who they see themselves to be and can become (Dean 2010, 166). The Church community is very necessary to “confirm new insights” young people have in the thin spaces we seek to create (Dean 2010, 182). Recap: First, fostering a consequential faith in teenagers “can be done.” Second, “religious formation is not an accident” but instead “key social relationships and organizations” have held significant influence in teens reporting high degrees of religious devotion. Third, every Christian faith community has available to them all of the cultural tools they need to promote consequential faith. These tools are most effective when they highlight “those aspects of the Christian story” in at least four ways: those aspects that speak to “God’s personal and powerful nature, the interpersonal and spiritual significance of the faith community, the centrality of Christian vocation (righteousness), and the hope that the world is ultimately in good hands” (Dean 2010, 194). We must also stress the importance of the presence of the Holy Spirit to activate and empower youth’s imaginations and resist promoting “self-focused spiritualities”. Fourth, “consequential faith has risks,” primarily because the gospel asks so much of teenagers that adults are not ready for them to respond to, or at least not respond entirely. It is Christ himself who sends young people into the world on His behalf—and the local church is to help them focus on who they are to become to best fulfill that call. Fifth, “we are called to participate in the imagination of a sending God” and this is an outer focus on the world, not an inner focus on the church in some self-preserving or reinventing way. “The single most important thing a church can do to cultivate missional imagination in young people is to develop one as a church, reclaiming our call to follow Christ into the world as envoys of God’s self-giving love” (2010, 194-195). Researchers asked the question, “Is the frequency of how often a youth worker teaches from the Bible associated with an attachment relationship between a youth worker and a young person” (2009, 339)? The strongest adolescent attachments were found (73%) by those who “had leaders who taught about Jesus through Bible study at least once per week” (Belsterling 2009, 345). The “window for forming a sense of security in attached relationships closes quickly after adolescence,” a Church would be wise to not "disregard the importance of ministry specifically tailored to adolescents,” because to do so would be to “neglect the best opportunity the church has to effect fundamental change in people” (Belsterling 2009, 349). The positive effects, both “personal and practical” of “Bible study in the context of relational youth ministry” cannot go unnoted (Belsterling 2009, 348). Summary (With Support)[Handout] Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God.
- SESSION III: Stemming the Tide of Faith Defection…in All of Us! How many of your churches have plan for making disciples of its members? Does it have a well-designed, well-communicated, intently pursued plan for making disciples? In SESSION 1 I asked, “If YOU were Going To Quit Church, what would be the first good reason?” Then I had you write it down. “Faith departures are NOT ACCIDENTAL or random events. People who walk away from faith in God do so for SPECIFIC reasons” (Bisset 1992, 11). We talked about God’s Will For the Next Generation in Deuteronomy 6 & Psalm 78 [Handout] and we compared that Judges 1. The dropout problem is an inherited problem. From 1950 to today, Christians “do not truly understand the faith they profess,” do not “integrate their faith into their daily lives,” and treat the Bible like “a comfortable storybook more than the Word of God” (Peters 2009, 381). This is not a new aspect of today’s youth but rather a symptom of the mainstream Christian culture. The dropout problem is not just a youth problem, but an entire church problem. God never gave youth workers the responsibility for making disciples of other people’s kids. Renewal of the church won’t come through revival efforts, “but through a renewal of the nature of conversion.” Does your church have an active, well-designed, intently pursued plan for making disciples of its members?
- The seeds of dropout are rooted before age twenty; the age of sixteen is “where the church begins to lose the majority of people in the battle over generations” (Rainer 2008, 15). “The generational battle reaches a flash point when teens reach the age sixteen” and continues until they are nineteen, for in “just three short years of a teen’s life, he or she makes a decision to leave the church” (2008, 15). The Church needs to shift from being nonessential in the lives of the next generation to being an “essential church.” If you were going to become a church dropout, whatever the reason you thought about, would these four things dissuade you from dropping out? (1) If you had a proven plan for your spiritual growth to take place this next year? (2) If the Bible was explained to you and taught behind the pulpit and in your small group? (3) If the people in your church were all deeply and seriously committed to your church body and to you? (4) If there was a vision matched by well thought out plans for reaching out to the community for the sake of Jesus Christ? The Rainers present a four-phase “essential model” to help make an essential church: Simplify—develop a clear structure and process for making disciples, Deepen—provide strong, biblical teaching and preaching, Expectation—have an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation, and Multiply—have an outward focus and be driven to reach people for Christ (start new churches!) The Walls of an Essential Church Make Intergenerational Relationships a Priority (Kinnaman) The Great Commission: “Teaching them to obey whatsover things I have commanded you…” [Rediscover Christian calling and vocation and Reprioritize wisdom over information as we seek to know God] In helping to reconnect the next generation, David Kinnaman believes the key is not just emphasizing relationships but in making “intergenerational relationships a priority” (Kinnaman 2011, 204). The church is “one of the few places on earth where those who represent the full scope of human life come together with a singular motive and mission” not for an older generation to pass along its wisdom to the next, but “the church is a partnership of generations fulfilling God’s purposes in their time” (Kinnaman 2011, 203). Each generation needs all of the other ones. We segregate our church learning opportunities after the model of public schools and doing this unintentionally contributes to the rising tide of alienation that defines our time. Your church needs to have ways the whole body reconnects regardless of age. You will need to battle fears and the tendency to be overprotective; you will be challenged to leave shallow faith behind and help younger people use their gifts/talents for God; It will require learning how to live fully sexual beings that rejects both the traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex; You will need to be inclusive of others while being exclusively Christ’s. Would Bruce (I mean Caitlyn) Jenner be welcome in your church? Dennis Rainey recently stated that at their Weekends To Remember same-sex couples would be welcomed. An Intentional, Decisive, Initiated Discipleship Plan The dropout problem is at its root a discipleship problem. If there is one conclusion you need to walk away with today is that your church needs a well thought out plan on how it is going to make disciples; it needs to have an intentional, decisive, initiated plan. At the end of his book YOU LOST ME, Kinnaman shared, not fifty shades of black, white or grey, but instead shares fifty ideas for “creating the ‘new mind’ we need to have to make disciples as Jesus commanded.” Almost all of the authors I researched highlight a relational-discipleship remedy. You and I should know by now that ultimately, the reason people leave the Christian faith is because of a failed or failing relationship with Jesus Christ; regardless of whom the person is, young or old, seasoned or beginner, the process in walking away from the faith is the same: “The soul’s intimate and personal communion with Christ is shifted to something else. You and I also certainly know that some people who professed to be Christians never had an authentic relationship with Christ. And we also know too well that there is an enemy: faith rejection is about spiritual warfare; it’s about “Satan desiring to destroy us and our children. These are the topics of your discipleship methods. Effective Parenting Will Maximize the Early Years and Have a Plan (Barna/Joy) Parents need help in knowing how to influence their children as part of the next generation. Six ways parents and their children can have meaningful devotional times together: 1. Have fun reading Bible stories (acting them out as they are read) 2. One night ask your children whom they would like to pray for as a family 3. Have kids draw and color pictures of Bible stories and hang them up on your wall to talk about them 4. Pray for your pastor, missionaries, and your church, 5. Pray how God can use you to witness at school and friends, 6. Challenge them to memorize the Scriptures together. “What plans do you have right now to be sure your children maintain their Christian life?” “Many parents don’t have the foggiest notion.” Some Tips For Raising Godly Young Adults 1. Your impact on your children’s lives is proportional to the depth of the relationship you have fostered with them, 2. You must wholeheartedly embrace the outcomes you are pushing the child to achieve, The coach must have a comprehensive plan for reaching the “promised land” (the information, skills, behaviors, and beliefs the child should come to own). 3. See yourself more as a coach equal to being a parent; Impact is derived by coaching “in the moment,” and great coaches are great communicators (they involved the young people they’re coaching in a dialogue related to where they are heading). (2007, 19-21) Parents who raise spiritual champions never pushed salvation on their children. Every one of these parents considered the salvation of their children to be of paramount importance, but most of them opted for a lifelong emphasis upon discipleship rather than evangelism. I believe one of the reasons for dropping out of church and the faith journey is because of an overemphasized focus on salvation by parents, ministers and mentors instead of a lifelong emphasis on discipleship; when students see hypocrisy in the lives of those who stress salvation without a transformed lifestyle issuing out of them by example, it leads teens to dropout. A Needed Return to Biblical Conversion (Smith) Gordon Smith believes renewal will come “as we embrace three things:” A clear goal—a well-articulated, thoroughly biblical and relevant notion of sanctification as transformation in Christ, capturing the longings of our hearts to be a people who grow in holiness and become saints as we grow older. A good beginning—a thorough and radical conversion, for there is no sanctification without justification, no transformation without a complete conversion. An intentional program of spiritual formation that has the clear goal of personal transformation and builds on a good beginning—a complete conversion. (2001, 24) Smith believes “inconsequential conversions” to be a weakness of our churches today which contributes to a lack in “spiritual depth and vitality, with little impact on society and culture” (Smith 2001, 154). Revivalism has made us 1. Confuse Conversion and salvation 2. Overemphasize human volition—we think people just need to make a decision and that God does nothing 3. See Conversion as an event 4. Anti-intellectual 5. See Conversion as an individualized transaction with God 6. Anti-sacramental 7. See Conversion as easy and painless and certainly not costly 8. See Evangelism as a technique 9. See God having grandchildren (“I’m a Christian because mom and dad were”) 10. Disconnect conversion from baptism, and the gift of the Spirit. 11. See the Church’s mission as obtaining conversions 12. Focus on the afterlife with minimal reference to this world. We need a “new way of speaking about conversion” and about how people “come to faith.” Our theology of conversion needs to be informed by the biblical text, the church’s tradition, and the experience of those who come to faith, recognizing in this experience a witness to the work of the Spirit.” Structuring Ministries toward Consequential Faith Development (Dean) Kendra Creasy Dean believes “young people will not develop consequential faith simply by being absorbed into a so-called “Christian” culture (if such a thing is even possible)” (Dean 2010, 84). What is needed is to turn “self-focused spirituality on its head” (Dean 2010, 84). One way youth ministries have made this shift is to being more missional; youth leader view themselves more as missionaries and focusing on being incarnational in their approach to youth in their culture. We desperately need an antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and three ingredients are: the arts of translation, testimony and detachment. The “Art of Translation” = “Luther was convinced that youth ministry started at home” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther believed in the instruction of the young as a means of church renewal. “Luther developed a method of instruction-by-memorization he called catechism, from catechize, to ‘echo back,’ or teach out loud” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther’s Small Catechism, widely regarded as an educational masterpiece, was noteworthy for another reason as well. It located teaching out loud in households, not congregations, which had the effect of locating Christian formation in the intimacy of families, where children drew direct connections between religious instruction at the dinner table and the lives of the people who loved them. … It was an educational stroke of genius, since it effectively ensured that parents, children, and servants learned the core teachings of the church together. (Dean 2010, 111) Catechesis works by evoking “trust in a person” more than trust in religious ideas” (2010, 115). “Knowing by heart” is the means by which the “whole person” is submitted to “the ways of Christ,” because “faith is a way of life, not just a body of information to master” (Dean 2010, 115-116). We need to be able to communicate the faith as a way of life, not just a way to believe—a way to trust Jesus, not just a way to believe about him (Dean 2010, 118). Some guidelines for translating faith with young people: 1) The best translators are people, not programs, 2) The best translators are bilingual, 3) The best translators invoke imagination, and 4) Translation can threaten the people in charge (Dean 2010, 123). Think about the Incarnation as an act of love. Without the previous generation’s translation of the faith into the language of the next generation, the faith will stay in-house and behind the walls. Just imagine where the local church would be if it ever decided to place the very power of the gospel into the hands of teenagers! The “Art of Testimony” = “Testimony is a learned art form” (Dean 2010, 132). “Youth who don’t have a language for Christ are unlikely to imagine an identity in Christ,” (2010, 142). This is so significant. Talking about Jesus Christ actually deepens our identity as people who follow him. Many churches have forgotten how to say what they believe! I believe this point is greatly necessary in developing consequential faith. We need to develop the practices of “spiritual apprenticeships and faith immersions where we plunge young people into Christian “language communities” that give them “the language necessary to testify to God’s faithfulness” (2010, 149). Church camps and mission trips and even weekend retreats can be spaces where consequential faith is developed. In spiritual apprenticeships, young people learn to speak Christian as apprentices in a community that talks about Jesus, “where people testify to what it costs to love him and to love others because of him” (Dean 2010, 151). “Teenagers learn to articulate faith by hearing adults articulate theirs = this is referred to as the practice of “sacred eavesdropping.” If adults cannot speak Christian any better than young people can, spiritual apprenticeship fails” (Dean 2010, 152). The dropout problem is a discipleship problem. Church camps, mission trips and retreats are only as effective as the guidance provided during those times. We need to provide space for young people to articulate faith but these experiences are only as good as the guidance before and the debriefing after” (2010, 154). These spaces as provide opportunities to make use of a “God-language” as a “decoder ring” for teenagers in two ways: in their “immediate experience of God during the event itself” and “for interpreting one’s life in relationship to this experience”(Dean 2010, 155). Unless we can provide opportunities and space for young people to respond back out loud the faith story they have found themselves in, “Christianity remains on mute” instead of a “good news ‘gone viral’” (Dean 2010, 156). In Emmaus-like fashion, “Without a story to tell, there is no faith;” imagine where the Church would be if it confesses the God-story for teenagers in a “run from the tomb to tell” fashion! Thirdly, what makes these camps, retreats, and mission trips so wonderful is the process of “disentangling ourselves from whatever distracts us from Jesus Christ, so all of our attention—and all of our lives—may be fixed upon him!” This is called the “Art of Detachment” (2010, 159). This practice does not come natural; this ability must be cultivated. It is a process we must learn. We need to carve out moments when we have “decentering encounters” with God, “faithful reflexivity—a kind of self-awareness that allows us to momentarily view ourselves and others from a new vantage point as we watch God work” (2010, 159). Mature discipleship depends on this faithful reflexivity to integrate into our emerging identities those experiences in which God grasps us and lets us see ourselves and others differently” (2010, 161). This identity formation is a key issue in regards to stemming the dropout tide. Research involving college freshman bucking the trend to “stash their identities” found that one in seven college freshmen had what it took to avoid “the identity lockbox phenomenon” and continued to mature in their identity formation because of their “capacity for reflexivity” (Dean 2010, 161). 85% of these (one in seven) college freshmen were what he called “religious emissaries”—kids who had a growing awareness of others and of God. “Most of the church’s signature practices aim for these forms of awareness,” but this artistry in detachment, although learnable and coachable, is not teachable—we must have experiences of God for ourselves (Dean 2010, 162). I strongly believe that “until we have experienced God’s engulfing presence with us—the relationship between faith and other aspects of our lives will seem opaque and meaningless” (2010, 162). Having experiences of God can catapult us into thin places—those space between heaven and earth where the detachment is needed MUST BE planned for with intentionality—children need reflective space that frames their experience with God to who they see themselves to be and can become (Dean 2010, 166). The Church community is very necessary to “confirm new insights” young people have in the thin spaces we seek to create (Dean 2010, 182). Recap: First, fostering a consequential faith in teenagers “can be done.” Second, “religious formation is not an accident” but instead “key social relationships and organizations” have held significant influence in teens reporting high degrees of religious devotion. Third, every Christian faith community has available to them all of the cultural tools they need to promote consequential faith. These tools are most effective when they highlight “those aspects of the Christian story” in at least four ways: those aspects that speak to “God’s personal and powerful nature, the interpersonal and spiritual significance of the faith community, the centrality of Christian vocation (righteousness), and the hope that the world is ultimately in good hands” (Dean 2010, 194). We must also stress the importance of the presence of the Holy Spirit to activate and empower youth’s imaginations and resist promoting “self-focused spiritualities”. Fourth, “consequential faith has risks,” primarily because the gospel asks so much of teenagers that adults are not ready for them to respond to, or at least not respond entirely. It is Christ himself who sends young people into the world on His behalf—and the local church is to help them focus on who they are to become to best fulfill that call. Fifth, “we are called to participate in the imagination of a sending God” and this is an outer focus on the world, not an inner focus on the church in some self-preserving or reinventing way. “The single most important thing a church can do to cultivate missional imagination in young people is to develop one as a church, reclaiming our call to follow Christ into the world as envoys of God’s self-giving love” (2010, 194-195). Researchers asked the question, “Is the frequency of how often a youth worker teaches from the Bible associated with an attachment relationship between a youth worker and a young person” (2009, 339)? The strongest adolescent attachments were found (73%) by those who “had leaders who taught about Jesus through Bible study at least once per week” (Belsterling 2009, 345). The “window for forming a sense of security in attached relationships closes quickly after adolescence,” a Church would be wise to not "disregard the importance of ministry specifically tailored to adolescents,” because to do so would be to “neglect the best opportunity the church has to effect fundamental change in people” (Belsterling 2009, 349). The positive effects, both “personal and practical” of “Bible study in the context of relational youth ministry” cannot go unnoted (Belsterling 2009, 348). Summary (With Support)[Handout] Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God.
- The Rainers present a four-phase “essential model” to help make an essential church: Simplify—develop a clear structure and process for making disciples, Deepen—provide strong, biblical teaching and preaching, Expectation—have an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation, and Multiply—have an outward focus and be driven to reach people for Christ (start new churches!)
- The Walls of an Essential Church 1. Make Intergenerational Relationships a Priority (Kinnaman) = Each generation needs all of the other ones. We segregate our church learning opportunities after the model of public schools and doing this unintentionally contributes to the rising tide of alienation that defines our time. Your church needs to have ways the whole body reconnects regardless of age. You will need to battle fears and the tendency to be overprotective; you will be challenged to leave shallow faith behind and help younger people use their gifts/talents for God; It will require learning how to live fully sexual beings that rejects both the traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex; You will need to be inclusive of others while being exclusively Christ’s. Would Bruce (I mean Caitlyn) Jenner be welcome in your church? Dennis Rainey recently stated that at their Weekends To Remember same-sex couples would be welcomed. An Intentional, Decisive, Initiated Discipleship Plan The dropout problem is at its root a discipleship problem. If there is one conclusion you need to walk away with today is that your church needs a well thought out plan on how it is going to make disciples; it needs to have an intentional, decisive, initiated plan. At the end of his book YOU LOST ME, Kinnaman shared, not fifty shades of black, white or grey, but instead shares fifty ideas for “creating the ‘new mind’ we need to have to make disciples as Jesus commanded.” Almost all of the authors I researched highlight a relational-discipleship remedy. You and I should know by now that ultimately, the reason people leave the Christian faith is because of a failed or failing relationship with Jesus Christ; regardless of whom the person is, young or old, seasoned or beginner, the process in walking away from the faith is the same: “The soul’s intimate and personal communion with Christ is shifted to something else. You and I also certainly know that some people who professed to be Christians never had an authentic relationship with Christ. And we also know too well that there is an enemy: faith rejection is about spiritual warfare; it’s about “Satan desiring to destroy us and our children. These are the topics of your discipleship methods. 2. Effective Parenting Will Maximize the Early Years and Have a Plan (Barna/Joy) Parents need help in knowing how to influence their children as part of the next generation. Six ways parents and their children can have meaningful devotional times together: 1. Have fun reading Bible stories (acting them out as they are read) 2. One night ask your children whom they would like to pray for as a family 3. Have kids draw and color pictures of Bible stories and hang them up on your wall to talk about them 4. Pray for your pastor, missionaries, and your church, 5. Pray how God can use you to witness at school and friends, 6. Challenge them to memorize the Scriptures together. “What plans do you have right now to be sure your children maintain their Christian life?” “Many parents don’t have the foggiest notion.” Some Tips For Raising Godly Young Adults 1. Your impact on your children’s lives is proportional to the depth of the relationship you have fostered with them, 2. You must wholeheartedly embrace the outcomes you are pushing the child to achieve, The coach must have a comprehensive plan for reaching the “promised land” (the information, skills, behaviors, and beliefs the child should come to own). 3. See yourself more as a coach equal to being a parent; Impact is derived by coaching “in the moment,” and great coaches are great communicators (they involved the young people they’re coaching in a dialogue related to where they are heading). (2007, 19-21) Parents who raise spiritual champions never pushed salvation on their children. Every one of these parents considered the salvation of their children to be of paramount importance, but most of them opted for a lifelong emphasis upon discipleship rather than evangelism. I believe one of the reasons for dropping out of church and the faith journey is because of an overemphasized focus on salvation by parents, ministers and mentors instead of a lifelong emphasis on discipleship; when students see hypocrisy in the lives of those who stress salvation without a transformed lifestyle issuing out of them by example, it leads teens to dropout. 3. A Needed Return to Biblical Conversion (Smith) Gordon Smith believes renewal will come “as we embrace three things:” A clear goal—a well-articulated, thoroughly biblical and relevant notion of sanctification as transformation in Christ, capturing the longings of our hearts to be a people who grow in holiness and become saints as we grow older. A good beginning—a thorough and radical conversion, for there is no sanctification without justification, no transformation without a complete conversion. An intentional program of spiritual formation that has the clear goal of personal transformation and builds on a good beginning—a complete conversion. (2001, 24) Smith believes “inconsequential conversions” to be a weakness of our churches today which contributes to a lack in “spiritual depth and vitality, with little impact on society and culture” (Smith 2001, 154). Revivalism has made us 1. Confuse Conversion and salvation 2. Overemphasize human volition—we think people just need to make a decision and that God does nothing 3. See Conversion as an event 4. Anti-intellectual 5. See Conversion as an individualized transaction with God 6. Anti-sacramental 7. See Conversion as easy and painless and certainly not costly 8. See Evangelism as a technique 9. See God having grandchildren (“I’m a Christian because mom and dad were”) 10. Disconnect conversion from baptism, and the gift of the Spirit. 11. See the Church’s mission as obtaining conversions 12. Focus on the afterlife with minimal reference to this world. We need a “new way of speaking about conversion” and about how people “come to faith.” Our theology of conversion needs to be informed by the biblical text, the church’s tradition, and the experience of those who come to faith, recognizing in this experience a witness to the work of the Spirit.” 4. Structuring Ministries toward Consequential Faith Development (Dean) Kendra Creasy Dean believes “young people will not develop consequential faith simply by being absorbed into a so-called “Christian” culture (if such a thing is even possible)” (Dean 2010, 84). What is needed is to turn “self-focused spirituality on its head” (Dean 2010, 84). One way youth ministries have made this shift is to being more missional; youth leader view themselves more as missionaries and focusing on being incarnational in their approach to youth in their culture. We desperately need an antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and three ingredients are: the arts of translation, testimony and detachment. The “Art of Translation” = “Luther was convinced that youth ministry started at home” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther believed in the instruction of the young as a means of church renewal. “Luther developed a method of instruction-by-memorization he called catechism, from catechize, to ‘echo back,’ or teach out loud” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther’s Small Catechism, widely regarded as an educational masterpiece, was noteworthy for another reason as well. It located teaching out loud in households, not congregations, which had the effect of locating Christian formation in the intimacy of families, where children drew direct connections between religious instruction at the dinner table and the lives of the people who loved them. … It was an educational stroke of genius, since it effectively ensured that parents, children, and servants learned the core teachings of the church together. (Dean 2010, 111) Catechesis works by evoking “trust in a person” more than trust in religious ideas” (2010, 115). “Knowing by heart” is the means by which the “whole person” is submitted to “the ways of Christ,” because “faith is a way of life, not just a body of information to master” (Dean 2010, 115-116). We need to be able to communicate the faith as a way of life, not just a way to believe—a way to trust Jesus, not just a way to believe about him (Dean 2010, 118). Some guidelines for translating faith with young people: 1) The best translators are people, not programs, 2) The best translators are bilingual, 3) The best translators invoke imagination, and 4) Translation can threaten the people in charge (Dean 2010, 123). Think about the Incarnation as an act of love. Without the previous generation’s translation of the faith into the language of the next generation, the faith will stay in-house and behind the walls. Just imagine where the local church would be if it ever decided to place the very power of the gospel into the hands of teenagers! The “Art of Testimony” = “Testimony is a learned art form” (Dean 2010, 132). “Youth who don’t have a language for Christ are unlikely to imagine an identity in Christ,” (2010, 142). This is so significant. Talking about Jesus Christ actually deepens our identity as people who follow him. Many churches have forgotten how to say what they believe! I believe this point is greatly necessary in developing consequential faith. We need to develop the practices of “spiritual apprenticeships and faith immersions where we plunge young people into Christian “language communities” that give them “the language necessary to testify to God’s faithfulness” (2010, 149). Church camps and mission trips and even weekend retreats can be spaces where consequential faith is developed. In spiritual apprenticeships, young people learn to speak Christian as apprentices in a community that talks about Jesus, “where people testify to what it costs to love him and to love others because of him” (Dean 2010, 151). “Teenagers learn to articulate faith by hearing adults articulate theirs = this is referred to as the practice of “sacred eavesdropping.” If adults cannot speak Christian any better than young people can, spiritual apprenticeship fails” (Dean 2010, 152). The dropout problem is a discipleship problem. Church camps, mission trips and retreats are only as effective as the guidance provided during those times. We need to provide space for young people to articulate faith but these experiences are only as good as the guidance before and the debriefing after” (2010, 154). These spaces as provide opportunities to make use of a “God-language” as a “decoder ring” for teenagers in two ways: in their “immediate experience of God during the event itself” and “for interpreting one’s life in relationship to this experience”(Dean 2010, 155). Unless we can provide opportunities and space for young people to respond back out loud the faith story they have found themselves in, “Christianity remains on mute” instead of a “good news ‘gone viral’” (Dean 2010, 156). In Emmaus-like fashion, “Without a story to tell, there is no faith;” imagine where the Church would be if it confesses the God-story for teenagers in a “run from the tomb to tell” fashion! Thirdly, what makes these camps, retreats, and mission trips so wonderful is the process of “disentangling ourselves from whatever distracts us from Jesus Christ, so all of our attention—and all of our lives—may be fixed upon him!” This is called the “Art of Detachment” (2010, 159). This practice does not come natural; this ability must be cultivated. It is a process we must learn. We need to carve out moments when we have “decentering encounters” with God, “faithful reflexivity—a kind of self-awareness that allows us to momentarily view ourselves and others from a new vantage point as we watch God work” (2010, 159). Mature discipleship depends on this faithful reflexivity to integrate into our emerging identities those experiences in which God grasps us and lets us see ourselves and others differently” (2010, 161). This identity formation is a key issue in regards to stemming the dropout tide. Research involving college freshman bucking the trend to “stash their identities” found that one in seven college freshmen had what it took to avoid “the identity lockbox phenomenon” and continued to mature in their identity formation because of their “capacity for reflexivity” (Dean 2010, 161). 85% of these (one in seven) college freshmen were what he called “religious emissaries”—kids who had a growing awareness of others and of God. “Most of the church’s signature practices aim for these forms of awareness,” but this artistry in detachment, although learnable and coachable, is not teachable—we must have experiences of God for ourselves (Dean 2010, 162). I strongly believe that “until we have experienced God’s engulfing presence with us—the relationship between faith and other aspects of our lives will seem opaque and meaningless” (2010, 162). Having experiences of God can catapult us into thin places—those space between heaven and earth where the detachment is needed MUST BE planned for with intentionality—children need reflective space that frames their experience with God to who they see themselves to be and can become (Dean 2010, 166). The Church community is very necessary to “confirm new insights” young people have in the thin spaces we seek to create (Dean 2010, 182). Recap: First, fostering a consequential faith in teenagers “can be done.” Second, “religious formation is not an accident” but instead “key social relationships and organizations” have held significant influence in teens reporting high degrees of religious devotion. Third, every Christian faith community has available to them all of the cultural tools they need to promote consequential faith. These tools are most effective when they highlight “those aspects of the Christian story” in at least four ways: those aspects that speak to “God’s personal and powerful nature, the interpersonal and spiritual significance of the faith community, the centrality of Christian vocation (righteousness), and the hope that the world is ultimately in good hands” (Dean 2010, 194). We must also stress the importance of the presence of the Holy Spirit to activate and empower youth’s imaginations and resist promoting “self-focused spiritualities”. Fourth, “consequential faith has risks,” primarily because the gospel asks so much of teenagers that adults are not ready for them to respond to, or at least not respond entirely. It is Christ himself who sends young people into the world on His behalf—and the local church is to help them focus on who they are to become to best fulfill that call. Fifth, “we are called to participate in the imagination of a sending God” and this is an outer focus on the world, not an inner focus on the church in some self-preserving or reinventing way. “The single most important thing a church can do to cultivate missional imagination in young people is to develop one as a church, reclaiming our call to follow Christ into the world as envoys of God’s self-giving love” (2010, 194-195). Researchers asked the question, “Is the frequency of how often a youth worker teaches from the Bible associated with an attachment relationship between a youth worker and a young person” (2009, 339)? The strongest adolescent attachments were found (73%) by those who “had leaders who taught about Jesus through Bible study at least once per week” (Belsterling 2009, 345). The “window for forming a sense of security in attached relationships closes quickly after adolescence,” a Church would be wise to not "disregard the importance of ministry specifically tailored to adolescents,” because to do so would be to “neglect the best opportunity the church has to effect fundamental change in people” (Belsterling 2009, 349). The positive effects, both “personal and practical” of “Bible study in the context of relational youth ministry” cannot go unnoted (Belsterling 2009, 348). Summary (With Support)[Handout] Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God.
- Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God. A Framework for Ministry to Families 1. Shared Wisdom: Share what you have learned—accompany it with confessions of what was learned wrong and what was learned right. Each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s (parenting) wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for their own use and then passing it on for future generations. 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: Families need to be intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context and requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community. The Golden Rule is for parents too—Treat your children as God treats you! 3. Parental Discipleship: Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. There is a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of children. 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents (or kids), but this doesn’t mean we should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. But parents must have a plan. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language we use to communicate our faith, conversion stories, and growth in our walk with Christ is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces (camps, mission trips, conferences) intentionally carved out, with guidance and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith had a half-dozen mentors present during their growing up years. Non-parental natural mentoring is crucial. 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence is through the surrounding culture but we should not retreat from it; we should instead learn to engage it. Parents who engage the culture with their children will develop within them healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. The investment of adult youth leaders who cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church. 11. Identity formation: Without intentional cultivation of identity development, adolescents may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion and never mature. 12. Their Choice: The decision to follow Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Between adolescence and emerging adulthood the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children dissolves. Parents must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ.
- Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God. A Framework for Ministry to Families 1. Shared Wisdom: Share what you have learned—accompany it with confessions of what was learned wrong and what was learned right. Each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s (parenting) wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for their own use and then passing it on for future generations. 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: Families need to be intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context and requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community. The Golden Rule is for parents too—Treat your children as God treats you! 3. Parental Discipleship: Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. There is a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of children. 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents (or kids), but this doesn’t mean we should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. But parents must have a plan. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language we use to communicate our faith, conversion stories, and growth in our walk with Christ is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces (camps, mission trips, conferences) intentionally carved out, with guidance and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith had a half-dozen mentors present during their growing up years. Non-parental natural mentoring is crucial. 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence is through the surrounding culture but we should not retreat from it; we should instead learn to engage it. Parents who engage the culture with their children will develop within them healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. The investment of adult youth leaders who cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church. 11. Identity formation: Without intentional cultivation of identity development, adolescents may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion and never mature. 12. Their Choice: The decision to follow Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Between adolescence and emerging adulthood the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children dissolves. Parents must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ.
- 1. Shared Wisdom 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule 3. Parental Discipleship 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat 5. The Earlier the Better 6. Faith Talk Regularly 7. Adult Support (5:1) 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His 10. Biblical Teaching 11. Identity Formation 12. Their Choice
- Adding Rites of Passage for Every Grade Once our ministry staff started to drive toward our vision, we began with the faith celebrations already present in our community: first communion, first Bible, and confirmation. The next step was developing these celebrations into something that accomplished the other two goals of our milestone program—equipping parents and inviting the community to celebrate with the kids. We asked ourselves: What do we want kids and families to learn during this stage of their life? Around this question we built key learning goals for each grade level that were developmentally appropriate. It is out of this conversation that we developed our milestones for each grade level. For example, when a child enters into second grade we wanted to them to start to grasp the importance of the Bible in their faith development. Therefore we introduced a milestone that helps train parents and kids about the importance of reading the Word of God. At the beginning of the year, parents attend a class on the importance of teaching and reading the Bible to their kids and helping their kids start to read their own Bibles. Then during the following Sunday service, families are brought forward and the parents are given Bibles by the pastors. The parents then hand the Bible to their own kids and make a promise in front of the church to teach them and read them the Word of God. Then throughout the school year, kids are encouraged to bring their Bibles to Sunday School so that they can learn how to read and learn from them. Through the process of developing milestones, we saw that some rites of passage traditionally held more significance than others. For example, within the Lutheran church, First Communion and Confirmation hold a lot of meaning to our tradition. We decided to build on that enthusiasm within our tradition while also introducing new milestones. Here is a list of our elementary and middle school milestones: Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- Adding Rites of Passage for Every Grade Once our ministry staff started to drive toward our vision, we began with the faith celebrations already present in our community: first communion, first Bible, and confirmation. The next step was developing these celebrations into something that accomplished the other two goals of our milestone program—equipping parents and inviting the community to celebrate with the kids. We asked ourselves: What do we want kids and families to learn during this stage of their life? Around this question we built key learning goals for each grade level that were developmentally appropriate. It is out of this conversation that we developed our milestones for each grade level. For example, when a child enters into second grade we wanted to them to start to grasp the importance of the Bible in their faith development. Therefore we introduced a milestone that helps train parents and kids about the importance of reading the Word of God. At the beginning of the year, parents attend a class on the importance of teaching and reading the Bible to their kids and helping their kids start to read their own Bibles. Then during the following Sunday service, families are brought forward and the parents are given Bibles by the pastors. The parents then hand the Bible to their own kids and make a promise in front of the church to teach them and read them the Word of God. Then throughout the school year, kids are encouraged to bring their Bibles to Sunday School so that they can learn how to read and learn from them. Through the process of developing milestones, we saw that some rites of passage traditionally held more significance than others. For example, within the Lutheran church, First Communion and Confirmation hold a lot of meaning to our tradition. We decided to build on that enthusiasm within our tradition while also introducing new milestones. Here is a list of our elementary and middle school milestones: Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- For example, when a child enters into second grade we wanted to them to start to grasp the importance of the Bible in their faith development. Therefore we introduced a milestone that helps train parents and kids about the importance of reading the Word of God. At the beginning of the year, parents attend a class on the importance of teaching and reading the Bible to their kids and helping their kids start to read their own Bibles. Then during the following Sunday service, families are brought forward and the parents are given Bibles by the pastors. The parents then hand the Bible to their own kids and make a promise in front of the church to teach them and read them the Word of God. Then throughout the school year, kids are encouraged to bring their Bibles to Sunday School so that they can learn how to read and learn from them. Through the process of developing milestones, we saw that some rites of passage traditionally held more significance than others. For example, within the Lutheran church, First Communion and Confirmation hold a lot of meaning to our tradition. We decided to build on that enthusiasm within our tradition while also introducing new milestones. Here is a list of our elementary and middle school milestones: Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- For example, when a child enters into second grade we wanted to them to start to grasp the importance of the Bible in their faith development. Therefore we introduced a milestone that helps train parents and kids about the importance of reading the Word of God. At the beginning of the year, parents attend a class on the importance of teaching and reading the Bible to their kids and helping their kids start to read their own Bibles. Then during the following Sunday service, families are brought forward and the parents are given Bibles by the pastors. The parents then hand the Bible to their own kids and make a promise in front of the church to teach them and read them the Word of God. Then throughout the school year, kids are encouraged to bring their Bibles to Sunday School so that they can learn how to read and learn from them. Through the process of developing milestones, we saw that some rites of passage traditionally held more significance than others. For example, within the Lutheran church, First Communion and Confirmation hold a lot of meaning to our tradition. We decided to build on that enthusiasm within our tradition while also introducing new milestones. Here is a list of our elementary and middle school milestones: Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- Elementary Milestones: Kindergarten: Lord’s Prayer. The kids learn the Lord’s prayer and explore what it means. At the end of the lessons, kids recite the prayer by memory. 1st Grade: John 3:16. During Sunday School students start to learn the basic idea of the gospel. Families work with their kids to understand this concept over dinner conversations designed by our Children’s Ministry team. 2nd Grade: First Bible. Each parent presents their child with a Children’s Bible at the beginning of the year in church. Then the kids are invited to learn how to use it all year long in Sunday School as they journey through the Bible. Parents also attend a class on the role of the Bible in faith development. 3rd Grade: First Communion. Parents and kids attend a special class that teaches kids the meaning of communion. Then at a special ceremony during worship, parents serve their kids communion for the first time. 4th Grade: 10 Commandments. Kids learn the meaning of the “law” and what the 10 Commandments are in the context of a Sunday School class. At the end of the year, they recite the 10 commandments by memory. 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 5th Grade: Apostle’s Creed. Each family receives Luther’s Small Catechism as kids start to learn the meaning of their faith and what the Apostle’s Creed means with their families. 6th Grade: Martin Luther. Being raised in a Lutheran church, during this time kids start to learn why Martin Luther was important to our faith tradition through special classes on Martin Luther. Middle School Milestones: 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 7th Grade: Youth Bible and Confirmation Introduction. Students each get a new youth Bible as they enter into Confirmation/Middle School Ministry. 8th Grade: Confirmation. After the student has gone through the 2 years of our Confirmation that trains them through scripture and theological discussion, they can be confirmed as members of the congregation. On the Saturday before Confirmation Sunday, families are invited to celebrate their teen’s faith milestone at a special banquet dinner. As a part of the banquet dinner, each teen is affirmed by their parent(s) in a public affirmation. Then on the following Sunday, the confirmands are confirmed in front of their church community and prayed over by pastors, family, friends, and the community. Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- Building Milestones in High School Youth Ministry Only after the children’s ministry faith milestones were developed did the youth ministry start to include milestones into our middle and high school ministry. When creating high school milestones, our ministry team created a milestone for every grade level that would help to equip adolescents with a faith that would stick. At the same time, we partnered with the children’s ministry to introduce new parent seminars into our yearly calendar to equip parents to spiritually lead their kids. Using the Sticky Faith research and other rites of passage ideas, we created four high school milestones: 9th Grade Discipleship: Placing each new high school teen into a discipleship group that would last for the rest of high school. 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- 10th Grade Gifting: Offering a spiritual gifts class that would help teens discern how their passions, natural gifting, and spiritual gifts work together as God’s calling to serve. We then work to place each student in roles in our church serving alongside other adults in our community. 11th Grade Retreat: Building two spiritual retreats into the year that encourage students to recharge during their craziest year of high school, as well as help train them in deeper spiritual disciplines and prepare for their senior year and beyond. 12th Grade Commissioning: Creating a monthly class for seniors to help them think through their spiritual life after high school. At the end of the year, students are asked to invite friends and family to a barbeque celebration honoring all seniors. During this time, seniors thank friends and family for helping them develop as a Christian, and seniors are invited to share the testimonies of their spiritual journeys. On the following Sunday, the church community commissions students into the next phase of their spiritual life in a special ceremony.
- See also "Milestones" by Brian Haynes, http://www.onemag.org/milestones.htm
- 1 Transition Prayers: A sample liturgy that my church used for back-to-school season last fall, but could easily be adapted for an end of school worship service. 2 Milestones of Faith: Creating rhythms through rites of passage across every grade of the school years. Here’s one from another church teaching 4th graders to risk. And if you’re dying for more help with crafting rituals and rites of passage, here you go. 3 Anxiety in the In-Between Stages of Our Lives: Healthy Strategies for Coping with Transitions (ideas for students and parents from a licensed therapist) 4 Sixth and Ninth-Grade Blessing Ceremonies: Ideas from a Texas church 5 What You Need to Know About Faith in College: Three ministry leaders share honestly with students about what’s coming. 6 How Do I See Myself After Graduation? A free downloadable curriculum sample to use with seniors or grads! 7 Vision Plans: One church’s unique approach to blessing graduates 8 Grad Gift Bibles with a Twist: Intrigued? 9 The Jacket: A video and discussion guide about what can happen when we treat faith like a jacket, especially when young people leave home for the first time. 10 Emergency Response Plans: Helping students prepare ahead of time for when things go downhill. 11 How Can My Struggles Help My Faith Stick? Another free curriculum sample for grads! 12 A brand-new Sticky Faith Story about Confirmation and getting adults to write down their wisdom for students. Plus this post about Confirmation, and this one with more ideas! 13 What You Need to Know about Life After Youth Group: Believe it or not, your students have no idea what life will look like beyond your care. Here’s a good discussion starter for that hard conversation. 14 Sticky Faith Deployed: Helping young people prepare for military service. 15 Grad Summer Ideas: including weekly discussions, plus posts about a senior retreat and church visit field trips. 16 How Can I Find a New Church? Free curriculum sample via Youth Specialties! 17 How Can I Manage My Life After High School? Yet ANOTHER free curriculum sample to use with grads!! 18 Out of the Nest: Tips for parents to successfully launch kids into college 19 College Transition Packages (it’s not too soon to develop a great idea for August.) 20 And finally, Don’t Send Them Off Without Leads! - See more at: http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/fyi-playlist-20-free-resources-for-transition-season#sthash.NAZLKFoc.dpuf
- The seeds of dropout are rooted before age twenty; the age of sixteen is “where the church begins to lose the majority of people in the battle over generations” (Rainer 2008, 15). “The generational battle reaches a flash point when teens reach the age sixteen” and continues until they are nineteen, for in “just three short years of a teen’s life, he or she makes a decision to leave the church” (2008, 15). The Church needs to shift from being nonessential in the lives of the next generation to being an “essential church.” If you were going to become a church dropout, whatever the reason you thought about, would these four things dissuade you from dropping out? (1) If you had a proven plan for your spiritual growth to take place this next year? (2) If the Bible was explained to you and taught behind the pulpit and in your small group? (3) If the people in your church were all deeply and seriously committed to your church body and to you? (4) If there was a vision matched by well thought out plans for reaching out to the community for the sake of Jesus Christ? The Rainers present a four-phase “essential model” to help make an essential church: Simplify—develop a clear structure and process for making disciples, Deepen—provide strong, biblical teaching and preaching, Expectation—have an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation, and Multiply—have an outward focus and be driven to reach people for Christ (start new churches!) The Walls of an Essential Church Make Intergenerational Relationships a Priority (Kinnaman) The Great Commission: “Teaching them to obey whatsover things I have commanded you…” [Rediscover Christian calling and vocation and Reprioritize wisdom over information as we seek to know God] In helping to reconnect the next generation, David Kinnaman believes the key is not just emphasizing relationships but in making “intergenerational relationships a priority” (Kinnaman 2011, 204). The church is “one of the few places on earth where those who represent the full scope of human life come together with a singular motive and mission” not for an older generation to pass along its wisdom to the next, but “the church is a partnership of generations fulfilling God’s purposes in their time” (Kinnaman 2011, 203). Each generation needs all of the other ones. We segregate our church learning opportunities after the model of public schools and doing this unintentionally contributes to the rising tide of alienation that defines our time. Your church needs to have ways the whole body reconnects regardless of age. You will need to battle fears and the tendency to be overprotective; you will be challenged to leave shallow faith behind and help younger people use their gifts/talents for God; It will require learning how to live fully sexual beings that rejects both the traditionalist and individualist narratives of sex; You will need to be inclusive of others while being exclusively Christ’s. Would Bruce (I mean Caitlyn) Jenner be welcome in your church? Dennis Rainey recently stated that at their Weekends To Remember same-sex couples would be welcomed. An Intentional, Decisive, Initiated Discipleship Plan The dropout problem is at its root a discipleship problem. If there is one conclusion you need to walk away with today is that your church needs a well thought out plan on how it is going to make disciples; it needs to have an intentional, decisive, initiated plan. At the end of his book YOU LOST ME, Kinnaman shared, not fifty shades of black, white or grey, but instead shares fifty ideas for “creating the ‘new mind’ we need to have to make disciples as Jesus commanded.” Almost all of the authors I researched highlight a relational-discipleship remedy. You and I should know by now that ultimately, the reason people leave the Christian faith is because of a failed or failing relationship with Jesus Christ; regardless of whom the person is, young or old, seasoned or beginner, the process in walking away from the faith is the same: “The soul’s intimate and personal communion with Christ is shifted to something else. You and I also certainly know that some people who professed to be Christians never had an authentic relationship with Christ. And we also know too well that there is an enemy: faith rejection is about spiritual warfare; it’s about “Satan desiring to destroy us and our children. These are the topics of your discipleship methods. Effective Parenting Will Maximize the Early Years and Have a Plan (Barna/Joy) Parents need help in knowing how to influence their children as part of the next generation. Six ways parents and their children can have meaningful devotional times together: 1. Have fun reading Bible stories (acting them out as they are read) 2. One night ask your children whom they would like to pray for as a family 3. Have kids draw and color pictures of Bible stories and hang them up on your wall to talk about them 4. Pray for your pastor, missionaries, and your church, 5. Pray how God can use you to witness at school and friends, 6. Challenge them to memorize the Scriptures together. “What plans do you have right now to be sure your children maintain their Christian life?” “Many parents don’t have the foggiest notion.” Some Tips For Raising Godly Young Adults 1. Your impact on your children’s lives is proportional to the depth of the relationship you have fostered with them, 2. You must wholeheartedly embrace the outcomes you are pushing the child to achieve, The coach must have a comprehensive plan for reaching the “promised land” (the information, skills, behaviors, and beliefs the child should come to own). 3. See yourself more as a coach equal to being a parent; Impact is derived by coaching “in the moment,” and great coaches are great communicators (they involved the young people they’re coaching in a dialogue related to where they are heading). (2007, 19-21) Parents who raise spiritual champions never pushed salvation on their children. Every one of these parents considered the salvation of their children to be of paramount importance, but most of them opted for a lifelong emphasis upon discipleship rather than evangelism. I believe one of the reasons for dropping out of church and the faith journey is because of an overemphasized focus on salvation by parents, ministers and mentors instead of a lifelong emphasis on discipleship; when students see hypocrisy in the lives of those who stress salvation without a transformed lifestyle issuing out of them by example, it leads teens to dropout. A Needed Return to Biblical Conversion (Smith) Gordon Smith believes renewal will come “as we embrace three things:” A clear goal—a well-articulated, thoroughly biblical and relevant notion of sanctification as transformation in Christ, capturing the longings of our hearts to be a people who grow in holiness and become saints as we grow older. A good beginning—a thorough and radical conversion, for there is no sanctification without justification, no transformation without a complete conversion. An intentional program of spiritual formation that has the clear goal of personal transformation and builds on a good beginning—a complete conversion. (2001, 24) Smith believes “inconsequential conversions” to be a weakness of our churches today which contributes to a lack in “spiritual depth and vitality, with little impact on society and culture” (Smith 2001, 154). Revivalism has made us 1. Confuse Conversion and salvation 2. Overemphasize human volition—we think people just need to make a decision and that God does nothing 3. See Conversion as an event 4. Anti-intellectual 5. See Conversion as an individualized transaction with God 6. Anti-sacramental 7. See Conversion as easy and painless and certainly not costly 8. See Evangelism as a technique 9. See God having grandchildren (“I’m a Christian because mom and dad were”) 10. Disconnect conversion from baptism, and the gift of the Spirit. 11. See the Church’s mission as obtaining conversions 12. Focus on the afterlife with minimal reference to this world. We need a “new way of speaking about conversion” and about how people “come to faith.” Our theology of conversion needs to be informed by the biblical text, the church’s tradition, and the experience of those who come to faith, recognizing in this experience a witness to the work of the Spirit.” Structuring Ministries toward Consequential Faith Development (Dean) Kendra Creasy Dean believes “young people will not develop consequential faith simply by being absorbed into a so-called “Christian” culture (if such a thing is even possible)” (Dean 2010, 84). What is needed is to turn “self-focused spirituality on its head” (Dean 2010, 84). One way youth ministries have made this shift is to being more missional; youth leader view themselves more as missionaries and focusing on being incarnational in their approach to youth in their culture. We desperately need an antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and three ingredients are: the arts of translation, testimony and detachment. The “Art of Translation” = “Luther was convinced that youth ministry started at home” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther believed in the instruction of the young as a means of church renewal. “Luther developed a method of instruction-by-memorization he called catechism, from catechize, to ‘echo back,’ or teach out loud” (Dean 2010, 111). Luther’s Small Catechism, widely regarded as an educational masterpiece, was noteworthy for another reason as well. It located teaching out loud in households, not congregations, which had the effect of locating Christian formation in the intimacy of families, where children drew direct connections between religious instruction at the dinner table and the lives of the people who loved them. … It was an educational stroke of genius, since it effectively ensured that parents, children, and servants learned the core teachings of the church together. (Dean 2010, 111) Catechesis works by evoking “trust in a person” more than trust in religious ideas” (2010, 115). “Knowing by heart” is the means by which the “whole person” is submitted to “the ways of Christ,” because “faith is a way of life, not just a body of information to master” (Dean 2010, 115-116). We need to be able to communicate the faith as a way of life, not just a way to believe—a way to trust Jesus, not just a way to believe about him (Dean 2010, 118). Some guidelines for translating faith with young people: 1) The best translators are people, not programs, 2) The best translators are bilingual, 3) The best translators invoke imagination, and 4) Translation can threaten the people in charge (Dean 2010, 123). Think about the Incarnation as an act of love. Without the previous generation’s translation of the faith into the language of the next generation, the faith will stay in-house and behind the walls. Just imagine where the local church would be if it ever decided to place the very power of the gospel into the hands of teenagers! The “Art of Testimony” = “Testimony is a learned art form” (Dean 2010, 132). “Youth who don’t have a language for Christ are unlikely to imagine an identity in Christ,” (2010, 142). This is so significant. Talking about Jesus Christ actually deepens our identity as people who follow him. Many churches have forgotten how to say what they believe! I believe this point is greatly necessary in developing consequential faith. We need to develop the practices of “spiritual apprenticeships and faith immersions where we plunge young people into Christian “language communities” that give them “the language necessary to testify to God’s faithfulness” (2010, 149). Church camps and mission trips and even weekend retreats can be spaces where consequential faith is developed. In spiritual apprenticeships, young people learn to speak Christian as apprentices in a community that talks about Jesus, “where people testify to what it costs to love him and to love others because of him” (Dean 2010, 151). “Teenagers learn to articulate faith by hearing adults articulate theirs = this is referred to as the practice of “sacred eavesdropping.” If adults cannot speak Christian any better than young people can, spiritual apprenticeship fails” (Dean 2010, 152). The dropout problem is a discipleship problem. Church camps, mission trips and retreats are only as effective as the guidance provided during those times. We need to provide space for young people to articulate faith but these experiences are only as good as the guidance before and the debriefing after” (2010, 154). These spaces as provide opportunities to make use of a “God-language” as a “decoder ring” for teenagers in two ways: in their “immediate experience of God during the event itself” and “for interpreting one’s life in relationship to this experience”(Dean 2010, 155). Unless we can provide opportunities and space for young people to respond back out loud the faith story they have found themselves in, “Christianity remains on mute” instead of a “good news ‘gone viral’” (Dean 2010, 156). In Emmaus-like fashion, “Without a story to tell, there is no faith;” imagine where the Church would be if it confesses the God-story for teenagers in a “run from the tomb to tell” fashion! Thirdly, what makes these camps, retreats, and mission trips so wonderful is the process of “disentangling ourselves from whatever distracts us from Jesus Christ, so all of our attention—and all of our lives—may be fixed upon him!” This is called the “Art of Detachment” (2010, 159). This practice does not come natural; this ability must be cultivated. It is a process we must learn. We need to carve out moments when we have “decentering encounters” with God, “faithful reflexivity—a kind of self-awareness that allows us to momentarily view ourselves and others from a new vantage point as we watch God work” (2010, 159). Mature discipleship depends on this faithful reflexivity to integrate into our emerging identities those experiences in which God grasps us and lets us see ourselves and others differently” (2010, 161). This identity formation is a key issue in regards to stemming the dropout tide. Research involving college freshman bucking the trend to “stash their identities” found that one in seven college freshmen had what it took to avoid “the identity lockbox phenomenon” and continued to mature in their identity formation because of their “capacity for reflexivity” (Dean 2010, 161). 85% of these (one in seven) college freshmen were what he called “religious emissaries”—kids who had a growing awareness of others and of God. “Most of the church’s signature practices aim for these forms of awareness,” but this artistry in detachment, although learnable and coachable, is not teachable—we must have experiences of God for ourselves (Dean 2010, 162). I strongly believe that “until we have experienced God’s engulfing presence with us—the relationship between faith and other aspects of our lives will seem opaque and meaningless” (2010, 162). Having experiences of God can catapult us into thin places—those space between heaven and earth where the detachment is needed MUST BE planned for with intentionality—children need reflective space that frames their experience with God to who they see themselves to be and can become (Dean 2010, 166). The Church community is very necessary to “confirm new insights” young people have in the thin spaces we seek to create (Dean 2010, 182). Recap: First, fostering a consequential faith in teenagers “can be done.” Second, “religious formation is not an accident” but instead “key social relationships and organizations” have held significant influence in teens reporting high degrees of religious devotion. Third, every Christian faith community has available to them all of the cultural tools they need to promote consequential faith. These tools are most effective when they highlight “those aspects of the Christian story” in at least four ways: those aspects that speak to “God’s personal and powerful nature, the interpersonal and spiritual significance of the faith community, the centrality of Christian vocation (righteousness), and the hope that the world is ultimately in good hands” (Dean 2010, 194). We must also stress the importance of the presence of the Holy Spirit to activate and empower youth’s imaginations and resist promoting “self-focused spiritualities”. Fourth, “consequential faith has risks,” primarily because the gospel asks so much of teenagers that adults are not ready for them to respond to, or at least not respond entirely. It is Christ himself who sends young people into the world on His behalf—and the local church is to help them focus on who they are to become to best fulfill that call. Fifth, “we are called to participate in the imagination of a sending God” and this is an outer focus on the world, not an inner focus on the church in some self-preserving or reinventing way. “The single most important thing a church can do to cultivate missional imagination in young people is to develop one as a church, reclaiming our call to follow Christ into the world as envoys of God’s self-giving love” (2010, 194-195). Researchers asked the question, “Is the frequency of how often a youth worker teaches from the Bible associated with an attachment relationship between a youth worker and a young person” (2009, 339)? The strongest adolescent attachments were found (73%) by those who “had leaders who taught about Jesus through Bible study at least once per week” (Belsterling 2009, 345). The “window for forming a sense of security in attached relationships closes quickly after adolescence,” a Church would be wise to not "disregard the importance of ministry specifically tailored to adolescents,” because to do so would be to “neglect the best opportunity the church has to effect fundamental change in people” (Belsterling 2009, 349). The positive effects, both “personal and practical” of “Bible study in the context of relational youth ministry” cannot go unnoted (Belsterling 2009, 348). Summary (With Support)[Handout] Main Themes To Explore in Developing A Ministry Model To Families and Faith Communities: 1. Shared Wisdom: The most common theme among these authors is stated in a “What I learned” way accompanied by a confession of what was learned that was wrong and a passing on of what was learned right. This generation is not just parenting for themselves, but for each subsequent generation as well. However, as Pazmiño and Kang advise, each subsequent generation must embrace the previous generation’s wisdom as their own after gratefully receiving it, critically examining it, creatively refashioning it for themselves, and then generatively transforming it “for future generations” (2011, 381). 2. The Intergenerational Golden Rule: For this rule to work, each generation cannot be segregated from the others. We need to treat kids the way we as adults want to be treated—with grace; parents must learn to treat their children like God treats them as His children. Churches and families need to become intentional and committed in communicating faith inter-generationally. Passing on the faith happens in social context. Glassford and Elliot summarize this point well when they state, “Socialization requires that each member of the community be willing to spend time with and learn from the other members of the community” (2011, 373). 3. Parental Discipleship: A strong focus on parental discipleship must be grounded in the spiritual disciplines. Parents must take care of their own spiritual health first. Parents who stoke the fire on their spiritual disciplines will be greatly rewarded in seeing the next generation build on that solid foundation. It is “imperative that Christian parents provide a strong model of faith for their children,” for there is “a direct relationship between the piety of the parents and the Christian development of the children” (Maddix 2012, 313). 4. Plan, Pray, Repeat: There are no perfect parents or perfect kids, but this doesn’t mean parents should give up or give in. Parenting is still a top priority. Praying regularly for your children, being graced-based in parenting, and living a lifestyle of faith are a parent’s main goals. Parents must have a plan of influencing the next generation. Church leadership can assist parents by engaging them to answer the question: What steps are you taking to help your children build a faith that lasts for a lifetime? Dallas Willard reminds that our “general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy (1988, 6). 5. The Earlier the Better: The earlier the spiritual influence begins in a child’s life the better; invest in being the spiritual coach for your children early and intentionally. 6. Faith Talk Regularly: The language of the faith, our conversion stories, and how we speak about our growing walk with Christ, is deeply formative and necessary for faith to be consequential and owned by our children. Kids need faith spaces intentionally carved out, added guidance in those moments, and challenges set up for them to speak their faith out loud. Camps and retreats provide such a space. 7. Adult Support: The more authentic adult believers investing in your kids the better—parents need all of the secondary, positive spiritual support they can get. Jason Lanker reports that ninety percent of the adults who stuck with their faith after “had a half-dozen ‘mentors’ present during their growing up years;” and this mentoring was an intentional outgrowth “pursued through the means of non-parental natural mentoring (2010, 269-274). 8. Enemy Awareness and Cultural Engagement: Satan’s influence through the surrounding culture is very pervasive and seeks to thwart our efforts to establish grounded faith in the next generation. Parents should not take the defensive ostracize their children. On the contrary, parents who engage the culture and take the offensive with their children will develop within their children healthy discernment tools that will last a lifetime. Kids need to see how faith is bridged from home and church to culture. “People grow best when they continuously experience an ingenious blend of support and challenge” Powell and Clark remind us, and this balance of “challenge and support leads to vital engagement” (2011, 63) 9. Do Your Part, Let God Do His: Discipleship of your child is a life-long process you assist in, but salvation is between your child and God. Draw the line between where you stop and where God must take over. You are not your child’s Savior or Lord. Do your part, and let God do His. 10. Biblical Teaching: In the home, local church, and youth ministries the Bible must remain the main teaching source and focus. Ron Belsterling reminds us that the investment of adult youth leaders who “cultivate trusting relationships with adolescents by having regular Bible study with them, mold not only today’s teenager, but also tomorrow’s church” (2009, 349). Two additions from Sticky Faith to the ten themes afore mentioned: 11. Identity formation: For teenagers, identity formation needs to be a top priority especially in the local church’s curriculum. Kevin Gushiken argues that “without intentional cultivation of identity development, the adolescent may remain in the fragile state of identity diffusion;” there needs to be a youth curriculum that addresses identity formation (2010, 320). 12. Their Choice: The final decision for following Christ is ultimately the choice of each young adult. We cannot choose for them. Jeffrey Arnett remarks how “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (2004, 174). Since this is expected, we must develop a lifestyle that is an example for young adults today to follow in being passionate about living for Jesus Christ. The community of faith is a place for every teenager to discover who they really are created by God to be. “A rich and sustainable faith recognizes that as I walk in community with God’s people, I ultimately discover who I am” and in this way, identity formation really is a counter-cultural venue (Powell and Clark 2011, 59). God has given us His family to help us secure our identities in Christ. The cultural way of parenting suggests we turn our kids loose to discover who they are on their own. Christian parents can get caught in the trap of teaching our kids to find their identities in what they do and focus on developing a particular skill when instead “we should celebrate who our kids are in the midst of their involvement more than, or at least as much as, their accomplishments and skill” (Powell and Clark 2011, 63). We need to “affirm character development above academic achievement” as we steward God’s beloved child and help our kids “do what is so hard for most of us adults: find balance in their life” (Powell and Clark 2011, 64-65). One more way to help build a child’s identity in Christ is to treat them again with the golden rule of godly parenthood—“when your child fails or is disappointing, model a tenderness that communicates that God understands and will in time lift them up”—just like God does for you (Powell and Clark 2011, 66). Another topic so poignantly brought to light is “by the time your child enters late adolescence, your faith is no longer what sustains them, or even holds their interest in God or church” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). There has to come a time when they claim the Name of Jesus Christ on their own. What each kid needs (and adults too) is unconditional love communicated in unconditional support. Again, this is counter-cultural and can be a witness to a world that seeks to make kids into some kind of athletic star, or American Idol, or some other highlighted social image whom adults “pour themselves into” with a “self-serving agenda” making growing up for kids “difficult and lonely” (Powell and Clark 2011, 178). When kids fail, the world walks away, but God doesn’t and neither should His people. Research shows that “when kids don’t feel abandoned—but instead supported—by their parents and other adults, they are more likely to develop Sticky Faith” (Powell and Clark 2011, 180). But “your child’s faith journey must be their own” for it is “ultimately between them and Jesus” (Powell and Clark 2011, 190). Funneling all of these prominent ways of ministering to families and faith communities down into a few focal points for ministry development: 1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; 2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; 3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; and 4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God, for as promised, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church Jesus Christ Himself is building (Mt 16:18). If we align these with Thom and Sam Rainer’s four-phase model for the essential church, there is definitely overlap (below). Simplify —the Church develops a clear structure and process for making disciples (1) Parental discipleship and training in sharing their faith; Deepen —the Church provides strong biblical teaching and preaching (2) Providing intentional guided space and time for young people to claim the Name of Jesus Christ for themselves; Expect —the church has an attitude that communicates to its members that they must be committed to the local congregation (3) Structuring the entire local church’s vision of having “Eternal Life” as a “Family of God” identity and experience; Multiply —the church has an outward focus, driven to reach people for Christ and starting new churches (Rainer and Rainer 2008, 21) (4) Providing tools and training in spiritual warfare as “behind the wall” tactic for infiltration in our culture and being on the offensive for the Kingdom of God.