September 11, 2014September 19, 2014 Peter Witkowski Babies and Birth

Let Your Kids Be Your Guide?

One of today’s new and up and coming parenting trends is to replace Jiminy Cricket with your kid’s voice. When it comes time to evaluate the value of same-sex marriage or time to choose which charity to support, increasing number of parent are asking their kids to be their guides. Since my little guy can only communicate through grunts and cries, I am not all that tempted to jump on this latest bandwagon. But this new development in the world of postmodern, American parenting poses a great question for us to think through: “Should our kids be allowed to speak into our lives?” The simple answer is both yes and …no. Let’s take a look.

Negative Words

First, let’s get the negative out of the way. As Christians, we should not surrender our decision making to our kids. Once while working as a server, I witnessed a 5 year-old order for her parents. She asked for refills and dictated the pace of the table for the entire evening. In addition to being awkward, such a situation is not healthy. As Christian parents, we should not let our preschooler order us around for the following three reasons:

Our authority is God. It makes sense for non-Christians to make kids their authority because they’ve rejected the Bible and the idea of real truth. For secular parents, it ultimately makes little difference whether they choose their middle schooler or Buddha to be source their source of wisdom. It’s all relative. But as Christian parents, we claim to have direct access to truth through the Bible. If we want to know which charity to support or decided whether or not divorce is bad, we should look towards Jesus. God has all truth and all power. Why would we turn to anyone else for spiritual and moral guidance? “For you are complete in him who is head over all principality and power” (Col. 2:10).
God calls parents to guide their children. We even see this example in the Trinity as Jesus follows the will of God the father (Luke 22:42). Moreover, our perfect savior obeyed his human parents (Luke 2:51). If ever there was a kid who could legitimately tell his parents what to do, it was Jesus. And yet he still followed his Mary and Joseph’s wishes. What God models, we are to follow. All throughout the Old and New Testaments children are told to obey their parents. And parents are charged with instructing their kids. To be faithful parents, we have to guide our families (Col 3:20; Eph. 6:1-4; Ex. 20:12; Deut. 6)
Our kids will fail us. If we make any person our source of wisdom and happiness our lives will end in despair. Because all kids are touched by sin (if not control by it) and lack the day to day knowledge of life (like how to use a credit card), our kids will fail us. If anything, surrendering our adult responsibilities to our kids is cruel. We are asking them to make decisions they are not prepared to make. Perhaps they can order a meal that we like, but most cannot balance our budget or determine right from wrong on their own. When we place unreasonable expectations our children, our family life will be filled with frustration, chaos, and bitterness.

Positive Words

Now for the positive! Although we should not allow children to control our lives, we should invite them to speak into our lives for the following three reasons:

Though my little man can’t say a word, God has used facial expressions, the words of my younger siblings, and the comments of other children to convict me of sin.Kids are super perceptive. They can often spot hypocrisy as quicker than free candy in the grocery store. After all it was a little boy in the famous fable who first said, “The Emperor has no clothes on.” When our children do speak up, we need to be humbly receptive and repent. Accepting rebukes is one of the many ways by which we can encourage our children’s hearts (Eph. 6:4; Col 3:21).
God uses children to proclaim truth. Think of the Naaman’s servant girl and or Samuel who all pointed people to God (2 Kings 5:2-3; 1 Sam 3:10-21). As parents we need to realize that God can and does deliver messages of hope, salvation, and comfort through children. My wife and I experienced this first hand as several children encouraged our hearts through signs, notes, and kind words as we mourned the death of our first son.
And Lastly, we should want to hear from our children because we are not God. We all misunderstand people. We will think our kids love dance with in reality they would rather taking guitar lessons. If we always assume we know what our kids like without talking to them and discovering their god given interests, we cannot help but make them bitter. Let’s encourage their hearts and get to know our kids as they change and grow.

Although we should never appoint our kids to be our conscience’s guide, we also should never shut them out of our lives. God’s given us children in-part to help us grow in our faith. For this to happen and for us to by godly parents, we need to listen to our kids without surrendering to them.

September 4, 2014October 14, 2014 Peter Witkowski Parenting

Teach Jesus. Use Football?

College football is amazing. The sport has fanatical bands, big hits, and unfettered enthusiasm. Quite simply the sport is the perfect blend of World Cup craziness and rugged manliness. As we watch the college season unfold, we will being watched by our kids. Good or bad, our interactions with our favorite teams have a spiritual element. Let’s seize the day and use football as a tool to teach our kids about Jesus.

Don’t Be A Loser

When our team wins only two games (like my Air force Falcons did in 2013,) is our Fall ruined? Or if our team captures the National Championship like Florida State did, is our year made? If the status of our team is our spiritual identity, the answer will be a yes. Now I do not think expressing happiness or sadness about the outcome of your team’s last game is wrong. I was pretty excited to watch Texas win the national title in 2008! But living by the outcome of your team’s score is a problem. As Pastor Tim Keller rightfully warns,

sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things (168).

How do we know if the sport has become an ultimate thing in our life? College football is the ultimate thing if it determines our emotions and actions. For example if we are short with our kids all week or extremely generous with our money because of how our quarterback played, we are teaching our kids that joy is found in a leather ball. Our football identity is melting off our t-shirts and into our hearts. This is a huge problem. As Pastor Tim Keller explains, “Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Without God, our sense of worth may seem solid on the surface, but it never is – it can destroy you in a moment” (170-71). Every team (even SEC teams) will lose eventually. And scandals hit even little schools like the Air Force Academy at some point. If we live for college football, we will be fragile, miserable people with really strong and yet very indefensible prejudices. And we will encourage our kids to create equally fragile lives founded upon stadiums, swag, and whatever other trinkets that promise happiness but deliver despair. If this is you, repent and make Jesus your identity!

Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes “Lord of your life,” whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally (p179).

Make Jesus Your Soul’s Captain

But if we flip the field, college football will be a great teaching tool. In a very real way, we can use football to show the sufficiency and power of Christ. When our team gets blown out (…Air Force…), we can still have a great Saturday because Jesus is king. And when our team collects the umpteenth championship, we can be humble and happy, because we base our identity on Christ’s free gift of salvation. As we flip between games on Saturday afternoon, let’s show our kids that every Saturday is a good day because we get to worship on Sunday. By teaching our kids that games are just that – games, we can point them to things above where Christ is!

Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord. Jer 9:24b

Get Back Up

If you are like me, you probably have had at least one sin fueled identity crisis during the college football season. A little ways back, I dug my way under a friend’s skin by chanting, “Cry, Tebow Cry” after the former quarterback got slammed hard to the turf. A few seconds later, I heard my Gator buddy say, “You need to leave my apartment, NOW!” Ultimately our issue was not a battle between the SEC and the Big 12. Our issue was a sin issue. I had missed the whole “love your neighbor as yourself and let you speech always be with grace (Matt. 22:36-40; Col 4:6)” We need to be gracious and loving even during sports. Eventually, I had to repent of being rude and unkind with my words. When we sin during college football, let’s be quick to repent and return to our Jesus identity.

Its Ok Leave The Team

Lastly, we can’t forget that sin is always displeasing to God. Boasting about Notre Dame until it’s our identity is never excusable in God’s eyes. And if we can’t watch football without sinning against God and hurting our friends, let’s embrace the Frozen mantra and “Let it go!” It’s better to cut out an eye and miss a little football than for us and our kids to suffer from the deadly effects of sin (Matt 5:29).

Closing Thoughts

I truly think college football is fantastically entertaining! And I have me some swag: t-shirts, mini football helmets, and banners. But it is just a sport, nothing more. Jesus is so much better. Will we embrace the Jesus identity this football season? Our kids are watching. More importantly God is watching!

Works Cited

Keller, T. (2008). The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York : Penguin .

July 31, 2014June 15, 2015 Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry

Don’t Be Kid Focused

Jesus Focused

Although it sounds ironic, kids should not be the focus of our kids’ ministry. Now before you write me off as a kid hater or as a fuddy duddy who thinks singing along to cassette tapes makes a great Sunday school lesson, let’s consider John 3:30. Just as Jesus’ ministry had started flourishing, John the Baptist’s disciples come to John frustrated that all the focus has switched to the Jesus. Notice what John says, “He must increase but I must decrease.” This should be the heart of every biblical ministry, kids or otherwise. We are to be making a big to-do about Jesus. A biblical kids’ ministry will always be focused upon our Savior. Instead of seeking to satisfy our kids’ longing for fun with hi-tech, adventurous activities, our kids’ programs should be designed to introduce our kids to the awesome Savior of the world. We (including our kids) must decrease. Christ must increase.

Kid Focused And Failed

If we don’t decrease, weird things start happening. Recently, several kids from my church and I attended a Centrikid camp put on by Lifeway. My church kids had a blast and my adults were impressed with the camp’s gospel focus. Before we scrambled back on the bus to go home, I heard another church leader say, “Our kids have all been complaining that this camp is too much like church. We really miss all the games during the worship times.” Although I do not know everything about this church’s kid’s ministry, I do know that they think “church” is a negative thing to be avoided.

Think about this for a second, a church’s children’s ministry is calling the Word of God and the body of Christ boring, unattractive, and expendable. The only way for a kid’s ministry to conclude that Jesus is boring or an obstacle to happiness is to think that ministry is all about you and your kids. Equipped with this mindset, people come to church to have fun, make friends, and feel loved. Each kids prominence and desires is increasing. But this mindset contradicts the purpose point of church and fails its followers. As counselor Ed Welch notes:

God has given us gifts to serve rather than needs to be served. Any other perspective is less than biblical and will ultimately lead us toward misery rather than joy – p. 167

If we truly want our kids to be happy, we will have ministries that cause us all to decrease.

Jesus Focused And Approved

Immediately, someone will object that kids learn differently. They don’t belong in church. They can’t be expected to survive waves of the adult world.

Yes, kids do learn differently. I fully support having children’s programs that use music with motions and visual object lessons to introduce children to Jesus. I am constantly looking for ways to better connect the gospel to the kids of FBCE. But the goal of children’s ministry is always to link kids into the church by making much of our awesome God. Just as the children in my church enjoy hanging around my wife, the kids in hte “Fun Zone” or the “Happy Village” of our churches should leave Sunday with a growing love for Jesus and his bride, the church. As longtime Sunday school teacher, Jack Klumperhower, writes, “We shouldn’t let fun become a tool to keep kids interested so we can feed them good news on the side. Jesus isn’t a side dish…[he’s] the selling point” (p. 155). Jesus must increase!

Now many fear that we will lose kids by going all gospels on them. Perhaps, some kids will check out. Or some may bug their parents until they convince the family to find a church that is more “fun.” But friends, a majority of the kids in our ministry are not Christians. Naturally, they are going to find the gospel offense because by they are: “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” ( 2 Tim 3:1-4).Unredeemed kids reject the gospel because the are blind sinners.

The Defining Question

Today, we all face the following question: how should we respond to kids who find the gospel and the people of God offensive? How we answer this question will radically shape our children’s ministries and our kids’ view of Jesus and the church. We have two options.

First, we can appeal to our kids’self-love as many mainstream churches have begun to do. We attempt to compete with Nickelodeon, Disney, and PS4’s by offering slimy games, cheesy videos, and kidcentric Bible lesson’s- Jesus loves you; he wants you to be happy.

Second, we can challenge our kids with the hope of the gospel like the Centrikid camp staff did. We can preach Christ crucified abandoning gimmicks and manipulative story telling. Moreover, we trust that:

The Holy Spirit is working, and once [kids] get a taste of Christ, they will be irreversibly captured for his kingdom. Rather than pander to kids…[we] offer life to kids who are thirsting for something more – 156

Go Gospel

If we hope to reach kids for Christ, we must choose the way of the gospel. If we go with the cool appeal, we will ultimately lose. The church can never outpace the world’s indulgence of self-love. One day, our kids will discover that the pursuit of wealth, alcohol, sex, and a host of other things is more fun than Sunday school worship bands; they’ll leave the church. But if we give them Jesus who outshines all this world has to offer, many will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ! They will stay, grow, and begin introducing others to Christ. Jesus must increase, we must decrease.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. – I John 3:15-17