June 26, 2014July 20, 2015 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Parenting

Dealing With Disobedience: How Discipline Gets Kids To Jesus

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

As an unregenerate kid with a reputation for fighting, I thought the best use of an oxymoron was my parents’ comment that they disciplined me out of “love.” Before I would head off to serve my next sentence, I nodded in disbelieving agreement to my parents’ statement. But I didn’t particularly find long timeouts, T.V. restrictions, or summer school to be all that loving. I much preferred ice cream, video games, and full summer baseball schedule.

All About Love

The Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is perhaps one of the most well-known parenting passages in the Bible, popping up in almost every Christian book on parenting. And as you read the passage, you notice that it is all about love. Moses commands his listeners sitting the banks of the Jordan to love the Lord, their God. Moses states that one the truest expressions of a person’s love for God is to tell their offspring about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It would appear that on face value this passage is all about the positives. Love God and things will go well for you! The sentiment of “All I need is love” appears to be the key to Biblical parenting. Perhaps, my parents would have been better served to combat my sin with a trip to Baskin Robins centered on a brief talk about how much God loves me.

And it’s true; we and (our children) should find God attractive because he is a loving and good God whose character is where, “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet” (Ps 85:10a). Indeed those who dwell with the Lord are never disappointed and have everything they need. But for our children to appreciate the goodness of God, they must first understand how bad their sin is. If they have done nothing wrong, they don’t need a savior or to exclusively follow God.

Why Talk About Sin

Though all about the positives, Moses does reminds his listeners of their need for God. Before he tells them to love the Lord their God in chapter 6, he spends large portions of the first five chapters reminding the nation of Israel of its depravity, of God’s law, and of God’s judgment upon those who break his law. In Deuteronomy 1:26-32, Moses tells the people not to follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents. This older generation saw the fortified cities and the giants dotting the Promise Land and immediately doubted the integrity of God’s promises. They did not believe the word of the Lord. And God punished them with death. Some died when they attempted to fulfill God’s promises by launching an unauthorized attack into the Promise Land. The others died a slow death wandering around the wilderness (2:16). All those who disbelieved God died. And Moses warns that in the future, all those who try live without God, “will be utterly destroyed” (4:26b).

From Sin to Love

Friends, we and our families are just like the people of Israel. We need to be reminded of our sin and of our need to constantly trust Christ. When my parents disciplined me, it was an act of faithfulness. They helped me understand as Matt Chandler helpfully notes, “The bad news of the gospel still applies to everyone” (p. 25).The hours spent in summer school or in timeouts reinforced the truth that my life was separated from God. And, the constant drum of punishments also helped me to see that I could never be good on my own. I tried, I tried every so hard to be good. But like the Israelites, I always failed. As the apostle Paul says in I Timothy the law was given, “for the lawless and disobedient” so that they would believe (1:8-11).

The cure for kids who feel burdened by sin is not to ignore the topic (they feel the burden anyway, even if they aren’t talking about it) but to administer large doses of the good news so that their trust in Jesus grows (Klumpenhower, 2014, p. 39).

My parents’ discipline of me was not an oxymoron. They truly did love me! As Tedd Tripp writes,

The rod is an act of faithfulness toward a child. Recognizing that in discipline there is hope, and refusing to be a willing party to his child’s death, the parent undertakes this task (p. 105).

My parents punished my little unsaved soul because they hoped God would use the reality of the law to draw me to Christ. Let’s point our children to the love Christ by showing them they need a Redeemer.

Works Cited

Chandler, M., & Snetzer, M. (2014). Recovering Redemption: A Gospel-Saturated Perspective on How to Change. Nashville: B&H Publishing .

Klumpenhower, J. (2014). Show Them Jesus: Teaching The Gospel to Kids. Greensboro: New Growth Press.

Tripp, T. (2005). Shepherding A Child’s Heart. Wapwallopen : Shepard Press .

June 21, 2014August 2, 2014 Peter Witkowski Vacation Bible School

The State of VBS: Reflections on VBS 2014

It seems like only yesterday VBS 2014 was just a calendar item off in the distant future. Now after five days of God glorifying craziness, FBCE’s International Spy Academy VBS is at an end. As I reflect back, I happy to report that VBS 2014 was (by the grace of God) a resounding success!

Negatives

Admittedly, not everything was easy. FBCE encountered some struggles located around the registration tables, the pickup zones, and occasionally in our very coolly decorated classrooms. We even had to temporarily dismiss a few Truth Force Agents. Lord willing, we (especially me, your children’s pastor) hope to learn from our struggles and be even better prepared for VBS 2015! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

Positives

And now that all the posters are down and the lights have been turned off, I can confidently say FBCE effectively ministered to 320 children throughout the week, having almost 200 kids on campus each night. Everything from the meals, to games, to missions, to the buses transporting 66 kids went great – albeit a little bonkers at times! Every child left healthy and happy, raving about their time at FBCE. More importantly, all of these children left aware of the Gospel of God! Even the agents who got sent home for misbehaving were confronted with their need for a Savior! They learned firsthand that sin brings sorrow – the immediate sorrow of going home! But they also were presented with Christ who gives the freedom to overcome sin! But the greatest news is that we have had children repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ this week! God has been good to FBCE!

As we all head home for some well-deserved R&R, I wish to thank each and every one of the over 130 people who worked, sacrificed, and faithfully shared Christ to make VBS 2014 a God glorifying success! I especially wish to thank Darla Faulk, Joy Quinones, and Joe Daniel for their insights, support, and endless hours of hard work! FBCE could not have succeeded without you!

Lastly, I wish to thank the staff at Answers In Genesis for creating another wonderful VBS curriculum that faithfully proclaimed Christ! You have been a great encouragement to FBCE!

VBS 2015 here we come!!!

June 11, 2014August 2, 2014 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Vacation Bible School

VBS Exit Interviews

Very soon, my church will be overrun with joyous little faces attached to bodies containing more energy that a nuclear power plant. For the next five nights these guys and gals will clap, scream, run and eat until even the hardiest of volunteers is ready for a soft bed surround by the beauty of silence. And when the lights are switched off and the doors are locked, what will these kids say about VBS? What will they take away from the hours of fun?

For years, I have been content to hear kids say that the best thing about VBS was the Samurai game or the colorful craft with the Styrofoam dolphins. As my ears buzzed with kids talking about how much fun they had at church, I would pat myself on the back for a job well done. We’d connected to the little people and could count on them coming back.

Recently, I realized how far short my standard fell from God’s standard. One of my favorite things in children’s ministry is exit interviews. During these informal encounters in hallways and super markets, I pepper kids with a short series of questions such as, “Do you think we should do the event again?” One day after getting past my preliminary questions with a child who had had great time at one of the church’s spring events, I asked him, “What was the best part of the day?” I was ready for a bunch of different answers ranging from the open access to junk food to the craziness of the games played. But I was not ready for his answer: “The best part was the lesson.”

A light bulb went off. In spite of my church’s heavy emphasis upon Christ, I still expected kids to leave our church impressed with our programming and smiling teachers. In some ways, my expectations were driven by a humble understand of salvation. I know that my teachers and I could not save (John 6:63). Consequently, I did not want to make baptisms our standard of success. I had no desire to start manipulating kids into false professions by offering to repent for them through formulaic repetitions of the sinner’s prayer. But in avoiding one extreme, I slid into the other of being of people pleaser, or more accurately a kid pleaser. I was content to let some activity about Jesus appear to be more attractive than Jesus. I had not been helping kids grasp that Christ is better than everything.

And while I want children to have a great time at this year’s VBS, my goal now goes beyond giving kids some summer fun to talk about. This year, I hope the kids leave talking about Jesus. Yes, my church will use upbeat songs, cool crafts, and exciting games to connect with the kids. And yes, I want every child to feel the welcoming love of Christ while they are at church. But these are not the goal of VBS or of our children’s ministry for that matter. They are tools Christians use to help kids fall in love with the all-powerful creator who sent his son to save sinners! The Lord Jesus is way cooler than any cheesy song, decorated Popsicle stick, or slimy game. Jesus offers real life and freedom from the despair of sin! Let’s make our boast in him! Some unbelieving kids may be bugged by our gospel centeredness. But whether it’s as a praise or as a complaint, I pray that every child leaves VBS talking about Jesus!

As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” Romans 10:15b

If we hope to hear kids chatting about our awesome God, each of us must passionately love Jesus. I fear that kids think Jesus is boring because we portray him as a distant moralistic deity that we talk to every other weekend. When we fail to walk closely with our Savior, we cannot help our kids love Jesus. As Jack Klumpenhower reminds us:

Students sense the difference between a teacher with integrity and a fake. There’s nothing they demand more than integrity. Not hipness. Not entertainment. Not even solid Bible teaching. They want- and need – for us to be practicing believers in everyday life. (pp. 193-94)

To rekindle and grow in our love for Christ, we have to be daily communing with God by reading his Word (John 8:31-32). We should pray, thanking God for his good gifts to us and asking him to work in the universe (James 4:1-3). Then, we need to worship with our church family so that we will be encouraged to love and do good works (Hebrews 10:23-25). Lastly, we can start studying our lessons a day or two in advance, applying the scriptures to our hearts before we teach them to our kids. If we love Jesus with all our heart, soul and mind, kids will see that our God is amazing (Luke 10:27).

In days ahead, I’m sure I’ll have many opportunities to conduct VBS exit interviews in grocery stores and restaurants around my might little town. And when I get to my final question, I hope and pray that each little respondent says that the best thing about VBS was Jesus!