10 Ways To Share Faith With Children

Sharing our faith with others can be hard. Sharing our faith with children who are at a different developmental stage than us can seem really hard. Here are a few simple ways to reach out to children and share your faith with them. 

(1) Pray with them.
Help them know God is available to them anytime through prayer. Pray out loud together, encouraging them to pray, too.

(2) Read scripture together.
They'll notice if you read your Bible and they'll want to do the same. Set time aside to read a Children's Bible together.

(3) Worship together.
Children learn by observing those around them. Help them know what to expect next in worship and get them involved in the music and the prayers. Make sure they have a front row seat and can observe all that is happening around them.

(4) Be honest about life and death.
Young children are concrete thinkers. They see bugs die and grieve over pets that die. Share with them that death is a natural part of life.

(5) Welcome questions as they grow.
Children are wonderfully curious! Encourage their questions and explore answers together.

(6) Model Jesus' love in action. 
Take children with you to serve the community. Bring them to care for others in the community. Help them see what it means to love others as Jesus loves them.

(7) Reassure your child that God's love is unconditional.
The song "Jesus Loves Me" says it well: "Jesus loves me when I'm good, when I do the things I should. Jesus loves me when I'm bad though it makes him very sad."

(8) Don't try to correct them.
Children experience God in all sorts of beautiful ways. Their understanding of God will change as they develop. Ask what they think about God and explore the mystery together. They may even have something to teach you!

(9) Allow them to notice the injustice in the world.
Our world is an unfair place. Allow children to notice the unfairness and talk together about how we can help. Pray together about the injustice they see.

(10) Pray for them.
This is the most important. Pray for the children in your household, in your community, in the world. Pray that God might work through you to share Christ's love with them.

*Written with LOTS of help from my mom, Rev. Dr. Genie Martin, who has a huge heart for children in the church.

bring them in without burning them out

Volunteers are amazing. Period.

Especially for organizations like the church I lead, where volunteers really make it possible for us to be viable.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how to create space for volunteers, how to engage new volunteers, and how to facilitate expectations and fair loads. In other words, how to "bring them in without burning them out."

My goal is to help those who volunteer to identify their passions and their gifts and then connect them to opportunities where those passions meet the needs in the community. What I'm learning is that there are some pretty talented people out there with LOTS of passions and great ideas. My connection time is short and the limitation is usually time. How do we as an organization make the connections smoothly and (here goes my boundaries awareness again) how do we practice saying "no" so that the load doesn't become too much for any one person?

If only people weren't so awesome with so many talents, right?  :)

The organization has needs, too. Consistency and Commitment. There are things that have to get done "the nitty gritty" to keep the mission alive. Sustainability of the organization is an ongoing pressure I feel as we want to honor the movements of passions, dreams and new ideas.

As I'm thinking about this I'm curious what resources are already out there?

What creative approaches are you using either in your own discernment of how you volunteer your time or as a leader of an organization that depends on volunteers?

Looking forward to learning from you - the community that reads this - to learn how to better enable and support our volunteers. Thanks (in advance) for your help!

church for the broken

I used to think what brought a church together was a communal belief system. We gather on Sundays for worship because we can recite the same prayers and creed. To some extent it is cultural, but also choice.

Now, I think what brings people together to "be church" is a common brokenness. A shared sense of emptiness, a recognition of the hurt in our world, and a hope for something better. As I get to know the people in my church, we do not all ascribe to the same beliefs. The diversity among us is a blessing, actually. Our diverse religious backgrounds and beliefs keep the conversation active and fun. What we share in common is our experience of the brokenness in ourselves and in the world around us. As we come together, we find hope in God and in one another for a world beyond our human experience. One in which healing, reconciliation, justice, peace and love are all possible. Wholeness made a reality.

At first it sounded bizarre to claim that our church was a place for the broken and yet as I think about Jesus on the cross.... brokenness is a huge part of our faith story. It is from this common place of brokenness that new life emerges - resurrection is made possible. Hope again feels real.

Young Adults Leaving Church

Morning Edition did an awesome series this last week called "Losing our Religion." The series focused on why more and more young adults are checking "none" for religious affiliation. One-fifth of Americans now claim no religion and the numbers are growing among those under 30 years old.

Rigoberto Perez (from left), Kyle Simpson and Miriam Nissly participated in a roundtable discussion about
religion with NPR's David Greene at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. click here for NPR article:

I really appreciated NPR's attention to this issue and the way they interviewed young adults to give us a glimpse of why young adults are leaving the religion of their parents. The last part of the series, though, made me a little angry. It was titled: "Social Issues Drive Young from Church, Leaders Try to Keep them."  And...the statement is true. Lots of young adults choose not to participate in religion because the religions they see engaging social issues are making claims that they don't agree with. Melissa Adelman, a 30 year old interviewed, said that she disagrees with the Christian stance on homosexuality and the male hierarchy of power in the church.  Instead of using this opportunity to give progressive Christians (and church bodies) a chance to speak in the media to say "WE EXIST," Morning Edition gave more press to mainline Catholic and Methodist leaders who shared the same exclusion - "we don't ordain women" (Catholicism) and "yes, we tend to be behind modern culture on relevant social issues." 

I think progressive Christians need to be louder. We need to have influence in the media because the majority of young people are only getting one side of what religion can be. Most young people don't know that churches exist where all people are included. Churches exist where emphasis is placed on social justice issues, community, and outreach. 

I've emailed Morning Edition and I hope you will, too. Let's not just view this series as a sad reflection on how we've lost a younger generation. Instead, let's make a demand that the whole story be shared. Let's make sure the world knows that churches exist that are busting at the seams with young people. Churches exist that will welcome young adults and their doubts and make their social issues part of our church mission.