2003 Family Camp
Living the Faith
Sunday, 10:00-11:30 AM
1. How would you characterize today’s faith?
A scene from the movie JAWS.
A marine biologist arrives from Woods Hole. In a desperate attempt to find out what is going awry with the sharks in the area, a large shark is caught and brought into the laboratory. The marine biologist lays the shark up on a table and proceeds to do an autopsy. He slits open the shark’s belly. Out comes first one fish and then another. Dozens of fish are extracted. Then there’s a blender and an old Florida license plate. The shark really is an eating machine.
The viewers note that the shark is an utterly indiscriminate eating machine. The shark is consuming everything in sight. This may be a parable for the faith of our young people today.
2. Youth & Young Adults
We say that the best and worst of a society are often mirrored by its youth.
In 1994, commission by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that 1 in 3 college students drink primarily to get drunk. Women who reported drinking to get drunk more than tripled between 1977 and 1993, a rate now equal to men.
According to the US Surgeon General, our country’s college students drink nearly 4 billion cans of beer and enough wine and liquor to bring their annual consumption of alcoholic beverages up to 34 gallons a person. The report noted that college students spend 5.5 billion dollars a year on alcohol, more than on all other beverages and their books combined. The average student spends $446 per student on alcohol per year, far exceeding the per capita expenditure for the college library.
For youth off-campus, the picture is equally disturbing. The rate of violent crimes by youth in the US rose by 25% during the 1980s. The teenage suicide rate has tripled over the past three decades. Suicide is the second leading cause of death of 15-19 year-olds. A Gallup Poll found that 15% of American teenagers have seriously considered suicide and that 6% have actually tried it. Over 70% of teenage suicides involve the frequent use of alcohol and drugs.
The image of our nation’s best and brightest, mindlessly consuming large amounts of alcohol is not an attractive one, yet it is an image which accurately portrays an important aspect of today’s young adults. The omnivorous shark is us!
Some people have dubbed today’s 20-something crowd, “The Postponed Generation.” These are the children of the children of the 60s who were raised by parents so uncertain of their own values that they dared not attempt to pass on values to their young. While today’s young people are looking for truths that they can believe to consume, their parents in most cases have little to give.
3. Doing Theology
Our theology is our belief in God.
Some parents say that they will wait until their children are older, and then let them decide on a religion themselves. Parents are afraid they will “mess up” by teaching one religious tradition, only to have the child decide on another.
In reality, we cannot avoid teaching our children. Whether we realize it or not, we teach every day of our lives. We teach our children and youth intentionally and unintentionally. We either teach them that our faith is important to us, or we teach them that we don’t place enough importance in our Christian faith to share it with them.
In a national study of 11,000 youth, adults, pastors, and teachers in 6 denominations, the Search Institute revealed the family as a major impact on faith maturity, closely followed by Christian education in a church setting. Among the youth polled, “family religiousness” ranked the highest. This included families where the parents talked about faith and God with their children, practiced family devotions, and worked together on projects that helped others.
The earlier you begin the better. In fact, you can begin to lay the foundation during the prenatal months. Establish or improve your relationship with your church family. Enrich your own spiritual foundation and relationship with God.
4. Finding Time to Do Theology
Estimate your time schedule for a typical week:
1. Hours working in career
2. Hours commuting or carpooling
3. Hours housekeeping, shopping, and so on
4. Hours as a volunteer in community
5. Hours socializing with friends
6. Hours in recreational activities
7. Hours resting and sleeping
8. Hours growing closer to God
through study, worship, and prayer
Total number of hours per week 7 X 24 = 168
How might you readjust the hours in your week to spend more time growing closer to God?
Cynthia Tucker, Parents key to a child’s success, SF Chronicle, 7/28/2003.
She shared how her mother handed her a vocabulary book before her 8th grade year and announced that she would spend the summer learning new words. She found out that she still had a little unscheduled time for “Gilligan’s Island” and sandlot baseball, but the book was thick and the words demanding so she studied a lot.
The next summer her mother handed her a reading list. “This is the list of books that all college bound students should have completed by the time they finish high school,” she announced. Once again, Cynthia saw her free hours were crimped, but at least the reading list was a four year project.
Cynthia Tucker from Atlanta points out that even though public schools still have a long way to go to assure Latino and Black students to succeed academically, parents are by far the most important factor in any child’s education. Attentive parents can compensate for classroom neglect. By contrast, parents who don’t demand hard work from their children do as much harm as incompetent or inattentive teachers.
Cynthia concludes by saying, “I was not enthusiastic about my parent’s intrusion on my summer leisure with vocabulary words and classic literature, but they insisted that hours devoted to Hemingway and Hawthorne and Baldwin would be time well spent. It turn out that they were right.”
5. Introducing Jesus
We will not have enough time to focus on the basics of Christianity this weekend. That’s left to Sunday school back home. But today, we will focus on how do we introduce Jesus to our children and youth—“the basic vocabulary words and classic literature” necessary to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
For many of us, we have family scrapbooks that contain pictures to tell our life’s histories. Occasionally we turn to them and retell all the stories when we come to each picture. Jesus is like a scrapbook that tells us the story of who God is. When we know Jesus, we come to know God.
A mother of a five-year old daughter told her pastor that her daughter fully understood the concept of the Trinity. The pastor asked her to explain how this was, because many adults have difficulty with this concept. The mother said, “She can tell you that God is like an egg, there is a shell, the white, and the yolk—all three, but they are one.” No doubt her daughter can repeat this teaching to her mother, but the pastor knowing how concrete children are in their thinking, he could not believe that the girl had a theological understanding of the Trinity.
Small Group
Share your understanding of the Trinity.
Most of us wrestle with the divinity of Jesus. We reason that if Jesus was divine, and if Jesus showed us how we were to act, then you may as well forget it, because Jesus has an advantage over us! We certainly are not divine! And if Jesus was human and told us what God is like, then why do we lift Jesus above the prophets, who also told us what God was like? We have many questions…
God came to earth, in Jesus, not only to tell us about what God was like but also to have a human experience. This is something we can comprehend and relate to our lives. When we may be struggling with our career choices, we think about Jesus’ time in the wilderness as a struggle over just how he might go about his mission. His hunger reminded him of many hungry people in the world. Jesus could have turned stones into bread but he would not have experienced hunger. He could have made himself king and rule in a political sense but then he would not have understood being persecuted and oppressed mean. He could have used his powers and throw himself off the top of the temple but then the common people like his twelve disciples would not have found him approachable because they would have only seen him as God.
With Jesus both fully human and fully divine, we know that God understands our dilemma over career choices. God understands when a friend turns his back on us. God walks in our shoes. God is a personal God in Jesus.
Now we have an understanding of the Trinity that goes beyond the egg. God is in three forms: the Creator/Provider God (Father); God revealed on earth sharing our human state and taking our sinful form so that we might have salvation (Son); and God who is with us every step of the way in our experience on earth (Holy Spirit).
Here are some teaching points about Jesus that you might consider sharing with your children and youth:
1. Young children see Jesus and God separate.
It’s better not to interchange the names of Jesus and God when you speak to young children. Tell the story of how the pancakes were delicious…
2. Remember that conversion is not the responsibility of parents and it’s not the responsibility of the Sunday school teachers. Conversion is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit.
3. Jesus’ birth and childhood.
Jesus lived in the everyday world. We can relate to him because he was human. He was born like any other new baby. We know very little about Jesus’ childhood, but we are confident that he was raised in a home that taught him about God. Mary and Joseph must have been special parents, because if Jesus was wholly human he had the same stumbling blocks each young child has.
4. Jesus as teacher and servant.
As you talk with older children and youth about Jesus’ life, point out the difference between magic and miracles. Magic is built on illusions and miracles are actual interventions of God into our natural world. We do not want children and youth to see Jesus as a magician.
5. Jesus as Savior.
Christians are Easter people. Without Easter we would have no reason to celebrate Christmas. Easter is the heart of our Christian faith.
We can help youth realize that salvation or redemption does not mean that we are forever forgiven no matter what we do. Instead it means that through Christ we can draw closer to God and can therefore live a more complete life, with the Holy Spirit (God within us.) guiding us. Should we slip away from that relationship with God, we can reclaim it simply by asking. But once we have experienced a true oneness with God, we have no desire to do anything that will at any time break that relationship.
Jesus’ life, teachings, and saving acts are the very heart of Christianity. We must introduce the stories to young children, and as they mature, add to that foundation. Although young children can grasp very little of the meaning of Jesus’ life and death, they can certainly enjoy the foundational experiences that will help them understand the concepts later.
We want our children to experience now and label later.
6. Revisiting Youth and Young Adults
Let’s go back and look at our youth and young adults. As parents, we grew up unable to hear the words spoken by anyone over 30. Our parents had lied to us. They didn’t tell us the truth about Vietnam; they failed to be straight with us about the Civil Rights. We had to discover these truths for ourselves. If our parents had been wrong on such important issues, was there any reason to listen to them on any other major matter, like going to church? Thus we inaugurated the “Age of Aquarius.” Everything was so fresh and new that we had to make up the rules as we went along, without instruction from those who had gone before and had taken so many wrong turns.
But the children of the children of the 60s are more characterized by their mindless consumerism, their binge drinking on campus, their cynicism about politics, and disengagement than by their thoughtful struggle with the future. In my opinion, in many of today’s young adults, we are seeing the results of our parenting, or lack of it. One of the values of the upcoming “Mayoral Candidates & Issues Forum” for us as parents is that we have an opportunity to model for our children and young people how to live out our faith in public life.
Our major objective was breaking free of our parents, and their traditions, and their communities. Like parents have always done, we naturally assumed that our children would have the same objective. We were surprised to discover what nearly every generation of parents before us has discovered—our children did not want the same world that we wanted; they did not come from the same place from which we came. We wanted to break free; our children had little to break free from (having been raised by us). Our children yearn more for roots than for freedom.
Today’s “Postponed Generation” is ready to hear the Christian story who having grown up in our churches are ripe for new strategies for evangelism. Can we see the needs and problems of this generation of young adults as an invitation to proclaim the gospel with boldness, to beckon them toward a new world named the kingdom of God?
Personal Mission
Monday, 10:00-11:30
1. Disengaged and Apathetic Citizens
In New Orleans, apparently the truths in the Declaration of Independence aren’t self-evident. When Rep. Roger Wicker asked high school seniors in his Mississippi district to name some unalienable rights, he got silence. So the Republican congressman gave the advanced-placement history students some help.
“Among these are life,” Wicker said, “and…”
“Death?” one student said. So much for liberty and the pursuit of happiness!
The problem on the minds of social studies teachers is that the classroom is not only to make government and history interesting, but to keep the students from becoming alarmingly disengaged. Perhaps one of the positive results of the CA Recall is that more people are registering to vote on Oct. 7th.
Most students could not show a basic understanding of civics at their grade level. Let’s test your knowledge!
*Almost three out of four 4th-graders could not name which part of the government passes laws. Most students thought it was the president (It’s Congress.).
*About 3 out of 4 fourth graders knew that July 4 celebrates the Declaration of Independence. But one in four thought it marked the end of the Civil War, the arrival of the Pilgrims or the start of women’s right to vote.
*More than half of 12th graders, asked to pick a U.S. ally in World War II from a list of countries, thought the answer was Italy, Germany or Japan. The correct answer was Russia.
Educators don’t think this is funny like how Jay Leno scores laughs showing how people offer ridiculous answers to simple questions. In daily life, it’s a lack of understanding about government that prompts people to call Congress when they want the dog catcher, or to complain to a local council member about a federal tax change. Over time, it can add up to disenfranchised and disengaged citizens.
Disengaged means that one’s life is groundless and out of focus. And if asked, one is at a loss to explain his/her purpose in life.
2. Personal Mission
Discovering how and where we fit into God’s plan is sometimes painful. A professor told a college student that she had a real gift as an artist. She was advised to move to another city in order to study art and to develop her talent. The professor even impressed upon her the belief that it was a sin for her not to develop such a talent. When she told the professor that she had family obligations that made it impractical for her to move, the professor simply said, “Leave them!”
This student remained with her family and taught art privately in small groups. She discovered that when she encouraged them, her students talked through their faith as they created their art expressions. This discovery led to a decision to enter seminary when her children were older, looking toward counseling ministry through art. As she phrased it, “I might be in counseling now myself had I not made the decision to be faithful in the relationships to which I had committed myself.”
Each of us has a personal mission, and that mission is our commitment to love God and follow Christ in a manner appropriate to our age and situation. Our ultimate aim in working with our children and youth is that they will live in such a close relationship with God that, as they mature, they will turn their lives over to God’s direction. We want every child and youth to move toward an affirmative understanding of his or her role in life, with God at the center of that role. We want our children and youth to engage in the faith.
3. Faith Development
One way for us as parents and educators of our children and youth to help them to become engaged in the Christian faith and to understand faith is to define faith as our relationship with God.
Sometimes we confused faith and beliefs. Our beliefs are our convictions and they may change from time to time throughout our lives. Our faith may better be defined as our relationship with God. Because of that relationship we can have faith even when we don’t understand.
Stages of Faith
James Fowler (1981) finds that we grow in our faith through a definite pattern. Fowler defines a pre-stage of undifferentiated faith (where we learn by experiencing concepts of God from those around us) followed by six stages.
1. Intuitive-Projective Faith We learn by imitating.
2. Mythic-Literal Faith We take literally the stories of faith supplied
to us.
3. Synthetic-Conventional Faith We pull the different stories together and
begin to form our own faith.
4. Individuative-Reflective Faith We begin to take responsibility for our own
commitments and beliefs.
5. Conjunctive Faith We pull decisions together into a unifying
faith, continuing to examine it.
6. Universalizing Faith We become totally immersed in the being
of God, yet see life as a whole.
John H. Westerhoff suggests four styles of faith. The first two are gifts that we receive from others. These begin early in our lives. The last two require our own work, and some people never acquire those styles.
1. Experiential Faith.
In this style we act, react, observe, and copy. Interaction with others and opportunities to explore and test are vital in this style. This is why it is important that we begin early to help children experience God through other person and in the world. This is why good curriculum contains many experiential learning opportunities for children.
Examples: Participating in protest marches, going to the voting booth, praying at home, attending worship, giving of our resources, voluntary work, etc.
2. Affiliated Faith.
This begins as soon as we relate with other persons. It is of vital importance during pre-teen and teen years. Belonging, feelings, and authority are important factors in this style. Opportunities need to be provided for us to share our faith in groups. Expression is important through arts, singing, drama, creative movements, and so on. Art forms in worship give these expressions. This is the time when we begin to appreciate faith as our story—our way.
Examples: Involvement in youth groups with dedicated leaders, direct missions, Youth Camp, participating in worship, serving as leaders, baptism or inquirers classes, etc.
3. Searching Faith.
This stage or inquiring faith develops during late adolescence and the young adult years. At that time we need opportunities to question and experiment. Critical judgment emerges, and we are developing a commitment to our faith, following through with appropriate action. Adults can best help as clarifiers during this time, enabling persons to think through their beliefs and encouraging dialogue.
Examples: Alternative or non-traditional religious activities, campus ministries, visiting other churches, debating and questioning what one believes, etc.
4. Owned Faith.
After moving through the other styles of faith, we may arrive at our owned faith. We develop personal beliefs of which we are sure, and this allows us to be open to other people’s points of view without feeling a threat to our own. At this stage, our belief has integrity; our belief takes action. We have an identity, and we witness to that belief.
Examples: Engage in social action, involve in ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue and programs, teaching others about the faith, serving as representatives on boards and committees, etc.
According to Westerhoff, all persons must grow through these styles. Sometimes we get hung up on one style or another. Like rings of a growing tree, each is important. And just as we cannot peel off several rings of a tree and have it remain healthy, we continue to need activity in all styles of faith in order to be healthy.
4. Direction from God
A woman hesitated to teach a junior class because she thought she was responsible for each child having a conversion experience that year. Conversion is not her responsibility but the responsibility of the Holy Spirit.
From infancy through the teen years, you can help your child discover his or her personal mission for Christ. It is important to recognize that your role is simply that of facilitator. The direction that your child or teen will receive must come from God, and there are times when we have to remind ourselves that the responsibility is not ours, but belongs to the Holy Spirit.
The best way that you can help children and youth discover God’s call is to teach them, not that they can do whatever they want to do or be in life, but rather that they can do or be whatever God wants them to do or be.
Christianity is always one generation from extinction…We don’t become Christians automatically because our parents are Christians. God calls each generation to say yes—to respond to his gift of grace.
5. Joshua
After every pivotal point in Israel’s history, we see a covenant-making ceremony between God and the people. God made covenant with Noah, beginning again after the flood; with Abraham, Israel’s ancestor; with Moses and Israel in Sinai, where the delivered slaves became a people; and again at Moab, on the brink of entering the promised land. In Joshua 24, the period of the conquest and the era of Joshua’s leadership conclude with another covenant celebration.
From Joshua 24:14-15, “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
When the people heard of Joshua’s commitment, they remembered all the things the Lord did for them, brought them our of slavery in Egypt, did great signs, protected them along the way, and drove out other people so that they could live there. So they said they would serve the Lord too. But Joshua didn’t believe them. He told them that the Lord is a jealous God and if you go around saying that you will only serve the Lord but really serving the foreign gods, the Lord is going to be mad! So the people said, “We really mean it, we will serve the Lord.” Then Joshua challenged them to witness this promise and with a large stone sealed this decision to serve and obey the Lord at Shechem.
Just like how Israel recited their sacred stories, we do the same when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Christmas Eve service or Maundy Thursday. God’s saving deeds are prior; our covenantal obligation is a response to what God has already done.
It may have been prudent to serve Marduk, Baal, and Yahweh. Why would we have to choose? The God of Israel will not settle for fractured allegiance. Reciting the Lord’s saving deeds urges the people toward only one conclusion: Israel lives by the gift of its Lord.
Divine “jealousy” is not about intolerance of other’s religious beliefs or about fanaticism. Rather, it is about the wholehearted commitment to which God lays claim. It is God saying, I will have nothing less than your full devotion, and you will have nothing less than all my love.
What might be some of our “foreign gods?”
Israel was confronted daily with the possibility of serving foreign gods beyond the river. Assimilation, abandoning Israelite religion and customs in favor of Babylonian practices, probably brought economic and social benefits. God gives the people a choice to choose to worship Yahweh or other gods. But when they were reminded that their God had called, delivered, guided, and even given them land, the people chose to serve only the Lord.
We have that choice today as well. But our choice is not necessarily a temptation to worship other gods along side the God of Israel and Jesus. What claims our wholehearted allegiance? Perhaps we do not limp between Yahweh and other deities as much as we limp between God and apathy or autonomy. The choice is nonetheless serious. The story of Joshua calls us to a freely chosen decision to orient our whole life devoted to the God who has acted mightily and mercifully on our behalf.
6. My Goals for My Child (Myself)
Joshua knew what he wanted for his household—to serve the Lord. What do you want for your household, for your child, perhaps for yourself?
My Goals for My Child (Myself)
I want my child to:
*think
________________________________________________about the world.
*feel my love when
_____________________________________________________________.
*experience the joy in the church family when
_____________________________________________________________.
*think
_______________________________________________about him/herself.
*realize that
______________________________________________________________
in our physical world is a gift from God.
*know
____________________________________________________about Jesus.
*learn
_________________________________________________about the Bible.
*begin praying by
_____________________________________________________________.
*feel that God is
_____________________________________________________to her/him.
(signed)_______________________________
Foremost Teacher of Faith for My Child
Here are some ways that you can help your child become whatever God wants them to do and be.
*Each time you answer your infant’s physical needs, add quiet words of assurance and physical tenderness. This establishes trust that will later be related to God’s trust.
*There comes a time when we need to say to youth, “Yes, we have nurtured you, we have loved you, and we have taught you. But there is still something more about life over which you, without God, have no control. There is an impulse to do evil. But, with God, you can sidestep that impulse and use your talents and gifts to follow in the Christian way.”
*Help youth realize that conversion means a change, but although we may make the decision suddenly, the change does not completely happen overnight. The apostle Paul had a very dramatic conversion experience, and he launched a great mission that made a significant difference in the way Christianity spread throughout the world. However, we should remember that Paul told the Galatians, in his letter, that he went immediately into Arabia and spend some time there. Apparently he spent three years in personal reflection and among the Christians of Damascus as his faith matured. Paul also had a teacher, Gamaliel, who was known to lead his students in developing an inquiring mind.
*Remember that after your child has a conversion experience he or she continues to need opportunity to grow in faith. In fact, this is the time when there may be more questions than before. Continue to be open to discussing his or her questions. Conversion is a beginning, not an end.
7. Setting an Example
If we set an example for our family and others, others will follow. We each can make a difference in the lives of our loved ones. You can make a difference as an adult and you will make a difference as you guide your children and youth. God did not place us here, wound up to function automatically. God gave us each individual wills and we must line those wills up so that we move in the direction that God wants.