Your kid asks 'What's the deal with Heaven?' and more Qs
The August Kids + Faith Newsletter
Hi! Happy August! Around here we just crossed the halfway line for summer break. My brain is not even a little bit in back to school mode, so please don’t tell me it’s coming.
Scroll on for responses to these 4 questions, plus the countdown is on for Woven’s release!
Today’s Q+As:
Do you feel there needs to be a “sinner’s prayer” moment of salvation for our kids? Do they need to ask Jesus into their heart?
Spanking and a culture of fear and control within evangelical parenting spaces. Thoughts?
Your kid asks: What’s the deal with Heaven?
Your kid asks: If God wants the world to be all good and healed, why doesn’t God just get on with it?
YOU ASK:
Do you feel there needs to be a “sinner’s prayer” moment of salvation for our kids? Do they need to ask Jesus into their heart?
The short answer is no, I don’t. I think the pressure to get kids across some sort of invisible line has brought about a lot of unhelpful, even outright harmful practices with it, mainly because the adults are afraid for the children. Healthy faith cannot grow in the soil of fear.
Some kids will make a decision to trust Jesus that can be timestamped. There will be a before and after. But a great many other kids will simply be raised knowing the love of God and grow into loving and trusting God back.
It’s this latter group that sometimes gets dismissed as illegitimate, and I think that’s a mistake. There are many ways the Spirit of God draws people into relationship with Themself, and we want to help kids listen to what that sounds like for them.
To use another analogy I’ve shared before:
Now, marking one’s choice to follow Jesus can be a wonderful and important right of passage. Baptism or confirmation is often one of those markers, but a family could also create something for that purpose. Our family celebrates all things with ice cream, and that would be our go-to.
(You may also like reading this post on all things Jesus in Your Heart.)
Spanking and a culture of fear and control within evangelical parenting spaces. Thoughts?
I trust the psychologists who share that spanking and other physical punishments are harmful to children and also don’t help them learn what we want in the end. I don’t trust the untrained clergy (and sadly some psychologists) who promoted physical punishments based on a terrible understanding of what Sin even means. (See Are Kids Tiny Sinners?)
But perhaps where I can offer more robust comment is around control. Because I’m struck by the idea some spaces promote that if something is True (gotta get that capital T in there), then it’s OK to control others to make them more aligned with or compliant towards that Truth. Parents think they can control their child’s faith and exhibit controlling behaviors because “it’s the Gospel”. Or grandparents thing they can go around parents to the grandkids and try to control grandkiddo’s faith because “it’s the Gospel”. And linking elbows with Control is their cousin Manipulation. One simple definition of Spiritual Abuse is when an authority figure controls and manipulates someone with less power in God’s name.
We cannot control a child’s faith.
Not just on principle because it’s not a good thing to do, but also practically speaking, because they are a whole person who gets to live their own life and make their own choices. All we can do is cultivate a family faith culture that we feel is wise and life giving.
We have to pick a strategy we can be proud of where we followed Jesus and then invited our kid to join in intentional ways, knowing full well there are no guarantees.
YOUR KID ASKS:
What’s the deal with Heaven?
My answer to kids sounds like this,
“There’s a lot we don’t know about what Heaven will be like. What we know is how it will feel: it will match what God’s like. So what do we know about God? Loving, kind, gentle, creative, joyful, just—Heaven is when the world is always all those things. Sometimes people imagine it’s a whole other place–almost like a planet or city in the sky. Sometimes people imagine Heaven will come down to earth, changing and transforming the world forever. This is because the Bible uses a lot of images for Heaven, so there’s a lot of space for imagination. Soooo…what do you imagine Heaven will be like?”
If God wants the world to be all good and healed, why doesn’t God just get on with it?
We hold tensions between various aspects of God’s character, including that God can do things, and God self limits. God acts, and God sometimes does not act and stuff only happens if people do it. God gets their way, and God doesn’t get their way. I wonder if our answer can speak to that reality.
So you might say, “Yes, God is just, and God will fix it. But the way God fixes things is with people, so we need to help. And someday injustice will end forever. We don’t know why it’s taking a long time. And actually, that’s something we can talk to God about. People do it in the Bible–they tell God to hurry up, and that God’s taking too long, and that they don’t like how the world is working. We can too. The cool part is that when when say that to God and listen back, we might come up with a way we can be on God’s team to help show love and make the world more right.”
Other times I simply say, “As best I can tell, God doesn’t use their power that way. God has always wanted to be a team with people. The people are the plan, not God zapping the world. But it can be hard to wait.”
Woven releases in just 3 weeks!
It’s wild to turn in a book and not see it reach others until a year later. But it’s finally feeling close and I am so excited!
Woven is about how we move away from a fear-based, list-keeping, rule-driven model for kids and what we do instead. It’s for parents and grandparents and church volunteers who want to help kids get to know God most of all.
What I’m proud of is how much it both offers an alternative model to family faith formation and yet retains something so important to me: you get to choose.
It’s your family. Your kids. Your theological tradition. Your church culture. You might take the whole book to heart and your family will look almost entirely different from mine, save a shared love for Jesus. And I love that.
I really believe in this book, and I’d like to ask for your help as it comes out. There are lots of ways to do this, so this is like a menu:
If you’re able, would you please buy a copy? And if you’re able to buy it before release date, that’s just sprinkles on the cupcake. And if you haven’t yet read chapter 1, you can get it here, just scroll down to the form.
Are you a person who leaves book reviews online? If you are, AND if you would be willing to read and review Woven by August 24th, reply and let me know! I can get you an advance digital copy to start reading right away.
Get it in the hands of grandparents. If you have a generation above you that you want on your team, this book can help you have the conversations you need about how you’d like to do faith with the kiddos in the mix.
Send it to your pastor. If you are part of a church community, could you send the link to your pastor with a quick note that this could be a fun book for a group of parents to go through together? (There’s a discussion guide coming! Speaking of…)
Read it with a few others. There are reflection questions and right now ideas included, all so you can process the next right steps for you. And you can do that on your own, of course, but it’s a great one for conversation with others.
Share it online. If you’re on the socials, share the love!
Come hang out!
I’ll be traveling a bit this fall to do some workshops and preaching. If you live nearby, I’d love to see you!
August 27 - South Bend, Indiana - I’ll be preaching and doing a workshop at South Bend City Church. The book, lunch and childcare are all available. Register here.
September 16/17 - Greensboro, North Carolina - Raising Faith weekend, with a workshop and dinner Saturday night, preaching Sunday at First Baptist Church Greensboro. Use the link to get the book below list price PLUS your ticket!
September 18 - Greenville, South Carolina - This free parenting night offered by Holy Cross Episcopal is for the whole community, and includes childcare! You can register here.
September 19 - Charlotte, North Carolina - Parenting night at Mosaic, with an option to get the book and have childcare!
Podcasts!
There’s a new Ask Away out! It’s the story of manna in the wilderness–AND IT’S A POEM!
If you are navigating church life with kiddos in the mix, have a listen to the most recent I Kid You Not with Erin Moon and I on The Bible Binge!
I love book launch teams and can def read and post by launch date 🥰 sign me up!