Other than identity - who you are - the most important factor in effectively passing on the faith to the next generation is message: What you say – specifically, what you say about having a relationship with God. Almost every week I’m in a conversation with a coach or a parent or a friend who is trying to figure out how to talk to someone about having a relationship with God. Here are 10 ideas, specifically focused on talking to kids: · Read the Bible with Your Kids · Read Christian Allegories (Pilgrims Progress, Narnia Chron...

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This week the children at Emmaus will be learning about how God wants us to be kind.  The kids will be hearing the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37). They will be discussing the verse: “Love your neighbor as yourself” Luke 10: 27.  And they will be exploring the idea of “Neighbor.” Who is their neighbor? Who does God want them to be kind to?    Please help your child throughout the week to try to remember to be kind to family members and friends and even people who they don’t know. Encourage your child to pray f...

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We need to believe and embrace that intuition beats intellection. When it comes to religious formation:

meaning our character, our ethics, our beliefs,
the things that ultimately form the way we live, 
Intuitive Development matters
far more than intellectual development.

 

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During Bonus Round on Sunday, the kids will make a book about the sermon series that we have just finished. Read the book together, and ask your child to tell you more about each of the 8 meals from the book of Luke. Read the passages from the Bible to put each story in context. Thay will learn about two disciples who met the resurrected Jesus while taking a long walk from Jerusalem to a town called Emmaus. Take a long walk as a family this week and talk about what it might have been.  Consider asking questions like these: Was...

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Why are Christians failing to pass-on the Faith even to our own children?

The value of one generation sharing the story of God with the next is one of the highest in scripture. But we don’t do this well.

I think one of the reasons we often strike out here is that we fail to appreciate our children’s capacity for spiritual insight. We dumb down spiritual mystery so dramatically that our stories lose their capacity to captivate.

 

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In the midst of listening to this week’s sermon, I thought about certain attitudes we see in our culture. For some reason, we have adopted this idea that everything has to be positively phrased. Telling people “no” is deemed judgmental. Some might say it infringes on our freedoms. Then the Ten Commandments were mentioned. I could hear people I know complaining about the negative nature of these rules. Eight out of the ten tell us what not to do. 

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The Feeding of the 5000 is truly an exciting example of our partnership with Jesus in the restoration of this world. Author and speaker, Jill Briscoe, put it this way, “I’ve got a hunch Jesus wants my lunch.” Whatever we have to give, He wants it. He invites us to give all we have no matter how insignificant we think it may be and use it for the good of others. The disciples quickly identify the need to feed the hungry masses that had gone out to seek the healing power of Jesus. They see the challenge and immediately turn to Jesus for a...

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As our community continues this new series studying the meals in Luke, it is important that we recognize the amazing ministry Jesus carries out as he eats with different groups of people. In His gentle yet revolutionary way, he changes everything in their lives. He accepts the unaccepted. He loves the unlovely. He is kind to the unkind and fair to the unfair. He forgives the unforgivable in society’s eyes. No one is out of His reach. He loves each of us and those we least expect Him to love. He invites all of us to his table. This week...

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Sunday I asked our community why, even though we believe in living a life of compassion, we seldom actually engage in helping others in practical ways. And the one reason on which I focused was the misunderstanding that in order to help others, you, yourself, need to be all healed up. While I think that specific misunderstanding is common, it’s not the reason that most-often holds me back. No, what usually keeps me from helping my neighbor is the nearly exhausting list of needs represented in my own home. I got lost in this daydream a few d...

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Last Sunday I asked our community why compassion so often slips off our priority lists. It’s an interesting question, especially to a church community like ours, because there’s already such a deep level of buy-in on helping others. We already believe we should serve this city. We already want to change the world. But, even we – who are already convinced – rarely do anything. Why is that? The reason I focused on Sunday is the misunderstanding that we need to first reach a point of health before helping others. While in extreme cases this...

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