Seeing as I am the only one who hasn’t posted yet, I figured I should do that. I have been reading “What You Didn’t Learn from Your Parents About Christianity”, written by Matthew Paul Turner and published by Th1nk, a division of NavPress. There was a section at the beginning of the book that hit me hard with relation to our ministry. I’m going to post a few excerpts of it here, and comment on each section immediately after.

“I started hanging out with Jesus when I was 4. I loved Him like I loved Big Bird. Of course, I knew He was much more important than Big Bird, by my affection for Him was similar. The songs we sang in Sunday School made Jesus seem more like a novelty act than a Savior. Jesus was someone who liked to give me hugs and pull me onto his lap, and every once in a while, he would teach me a great truth about how I should be treating my little sister.

See? JUST like Big Bird. Although sometimes Big Bird was actually a little cooler than Jesus. He had his own skating show: Big Bird on Ice. Jesus never put on ice skates, and he didn’t have cool friends like Bert and Ernie.”

Is this not what happens many times with our younger kids? We make Jesus look like the always happy, smiling face who always loves us. But yet at the same time, we make Him look like a total nerd who had no friends outside of church and even those friends weren’t that great. While there’s nothing wrong with singing “Jesus Loves Me” and “The B-I-B-L-E”, we have to tell kids that there is more than that to Jesus! He is deep. Many times we attempt to “dumb down” Jesus for younger kids, but it may be surprising to learn that many times they are not accepting Jesus younger because they are not learning Jesus younger. I accepted Christ at the age of 3, and I feel confident that I knew what I was doing. I don’t expect every kid to be ready then, but recognize that while you may be teaching them more, you can’t always guarantee that your volunteers are promoting the same ideology. Be consistent!

“By the time I had reached fifth grade, my impression of Jesus had matured. Well, somewhat. By then, I was pretty sure I knew what Jesus looked like: He smiled a lot, was well tanned, wore a pretty white robe, and looked kind of like a young Smoky and the Bandit Burt Reynolds. Oh, and he was a HUGE fan of Ronald Reagan!

As I grew in my faith, I began thinking of Jesus more like an overprotective parent than a large yellow bird. You see, according to my church, Jesus was always sitting next to me, watching everything I did. When I was taking a test, he was watching me, making sure I didn’t cheat. If I was on the basketball court, Jesus was helping me run faster and make lots of baskets. When I walked out of the bathroom without washing my hands, Jesus would see me and frown at my poor hygiene. And when I became a teenager, the feeling only intensified that Jesus was watching every move I made. I was taught that jesus liked it when I sat in the front pew during sermons. He jumped up and down and applauded when I turned 90210 off. He thought that going to movies and holding girls’ hands was dirty. He hated it that one of my friends tasted beer on his birthday. By the time I was sixteen, I truly believed that to love Jesus simply meant that I had to say no to a bunch of stuff that seemed like fun.”

Jesus the moral legalist. Jesus the Republican. Jesus the gives-you-strength-to-win-every-basketball-game-you-will-ever-play-man. Jesus the party-pooper.
Many tags could be given to the Jesus that we tell our kids about many times. But is this the Jesus we really see in Scripture? Maybe this Jesus would look a little more like this:
Jesus the moral, but not legalist. Jesus the uniter. Jesus the gives-us-strength-but-we-must-realize-we-are-going-to-fail-man. Jesus the sinner-friend.
If we stopped telling our kids that Jesus is a great force to be feared, and made Him more like a parent, loving yet firm, we might see more passion as our kids grow older and graduate from our ministries.

“I’ve met quite a few Christians who seem to think they have Jesus’ every nuance figured out. Many of us pretend to know what he looked like. Some of us seem to have a super-natural ability to know exactly how he would respond to all the great debates of our time. And of course, with Jesus on our side, the other side is just wrong. Heck, there are even a few of us who even think we know his personality…
Because many of us believe the goal of Christianity is to know Jesus, and because this desire is deeply spiritual, we often begin to view him not as some intangible existence living far away from us, but as a friend. He becomes strangely familiar. We get comfortable with him. And sometimes in our ‘comfort’, we forget that he’s also God and that he’s still a mystery and that we don’t have all the facts.”

The previous two sections have taught us to be consistent and realistic as well as making Jesus a friend. This brings those together. All too often we start to treat Jesus like an earthly friend rather than as a authoritarian. It’s much like a relationship between a parent and a child. A parent can be a child’s best friend, and the child many times will start to spiral out of control, because rather than punishing, the parent is ignoring. A parent could also be a simply an authoritarian to a child, and the child would feel distant and unloved, also leading to a rapid downward spiral. Our relationship with Jesus, much like our parents, needs to be somewhere in the middle. Not too comfortable, yet not too starched.

Don’t pretend to know all about God, because you don’t. Let your kids know that. Don’t make up answers when a kid asks you a question like “How tall was Jesus?” (yes, you know it happens). Admit that you don’t know. But don’t appear to be uncaring either. Give kids a reason to live passionately for Christ.

I lived in what I like to call my “church bubble” until about age 14. I have been homeschooled since 1st grade, and went to church since Day 1 of my life. Church was all I knew. Then I got a job in the “real world”. Talk about shock. Those people that I had heard about for years, but only thought existed in movies, were being presented to me right in front of my very eyes. I was astounded. But a strong spiritual foundation from church and home helped me through that. Things like that are why these keys are so important, for giving kids their 1 Peter 3:15s. That verse says: “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” (NASB) It’s not enough to teach kids how to defend their faith, but to teach them how to do it kindly and in respect.

To sum it all up, here are three quick things to remember.

1. Present consistent, realistic messages to your kids.
2. Present loving, fulfilling messages that present Jesus as something more than a scary dictator to your kids.
3. Present truthful, meaningful messages to your kids.

So I have a question: looking back over your years of ministry, how have you done in this area? Have you fervently pushed the true Jesus, or the romanticized version of Jesus many people know? What do you think on this? Let me know in the comments.