by Timothy Paul Jones
I saw something beautiful the other day while
walking down Breckenridge Lane. In a front yard not far from my home, a young
mother was removing a layer of leftover leaves from the fall in preparation for
planting spring flowers—an ordinary activity in the middle of an ordinary day.
What was extraordinary about this scene was
what I saw beside this young woman.
A tow-haired boy, perhaps three or four years
old, was attempting to assist her. His rake was man-sized, his movements were
far from efficient, and he was leaving more leaves than he moved. Yet, as I
passed this mother and child, I heard no criticisms. Instead, I heard a
constant stream of encouragement: “Daddy will be so proud of your hard work!
Can you try to get those leaves over there? You know, honey, it might work
better if you turned the rake over.”
If this woman’s sole goal for the afternoon
was leaf removal, her best bet would have been to plop her preschooler in front
of a television to watch professionally-produced children’s programs that
pretend to equip children with skills for life while leaching away their
capacity for meaningful relationships. If this mother had chosen this option,
she could have pursued the goal of planting spring flowers far more
efficiently.
But this woman had a goal that was far bigger
than any flower-bed.
This woman understood that her deeper purpose
on this day was not to improve a yard but to shape a soul. She was teaching her
child the value of work and partnership and family structures, in addition to
the quite crucial skill of knowing which side of a rake is supposed to face the
ground. She was an amateur, in the best and oldest sense of the word “amateur”:
a person who engages in a particular activity because of love. She most likely
possessed no transcripted credential in the fields of motherhood or leaf
removal. But that was all for the best anyway because no credential could
develop in a child what this mother was engraving in her son’s soul that
afternoon.
::Equipping My Brothers and Sisters, the Neglected Role of Church Leaders::
So what does all of this have to do with
church leadership?
Simply this: If you’re a church leader trying
to train parents to embrace their role as disciple-makers in their children’s
lives, you are likely to wonder at some point, “Wouldn’t it be more efficient
for hired professionals to disciple children through church programs instead of
expecting parents to participate in this process? No matter how many times I
encourage and equip the moms and dads, some of them don’t even seem to be
trying! Even the ones that try don’t always do a good job. Why constantly acknowledge
the parents as primary disciple-makers when so many of them do it so poorly?
This is so inefficient!”
If that’s the way you feel, you’re partly
correct! If your goal is organizational efficiency, equipping parents to
disciple their children may be an inefficient use of your time, and turning
over children’s spiritual lives to professionals at church might make perfect
sense.
But efficiency is not the goal of
gospel-motivated ministry.
The crucified and risen Lord Jesus determines
the shape and establishes the goal for his church, and it has been his Father’s
good pleasure to constitute his church as a conglomeration of amateurs, not as
a corporation managed by professionals (1 Cor 12:4–31). His Spirit does not
give gifts for the purpose of making the church efficient. The Holy Spirit
arranges gifts in the body according to his will in order to make his people
holy (1 Cor 12:11).
The role of God-called leaders is to
encourage and to equip their brothers and sisters in their communities of faith
to serve as ministers and missionaries first within their own households, and
then far beyond their households (Acts 2:39; Eph 4:11–13). These processes are
not likely to be quick or efficient. Sometimes, it will feel as if
professionalized programs would be an easier solution, but no church program
can develop in a child what parents are able to engrave in their children’s
souls day-by-day. And so, despite the apparent inefficiency of expecting
parents to disciple their own children, family-equipping ministers persist in
their passion for training fathers and mothers as the primary disciple-makers
in their children’s lives.
::Divinely-Designated Amateur Disciple-Makers, the Neglected Role of Christian Parents::
In the early twentieth century, a journalist
named G.K. Chesterton offered these comments
about the British and American jury system:
The
trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards specialism and
professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better,
trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance
better, specially
instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. …
[Yet] our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining
the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained
men. When it wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no
more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box.
When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any
trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done
which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.
The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
A similar statement might be made regarding
the training of children to respond to the gospel day-by-day.
Though
professionals may certainly partner with parents in this task, such a serious
undertaking is too significant to be relinquished to professionals, too
profound to be befuddled by a focus on efficiency. The formation of a child’s
faith is not a skill for specialists. It is a habit to be developed in the lives
of divinely-designated amateurs, and these amateurs are known as “Dad” and
“Mom.”
In my childhood, one of the most significant
habits that shaped my soul was a single, simple pattern that required no
special skills, no particular curriculum. Each night, my mother came into my
room, sat on the side of my bed, and listened to me pray.
What was significant about this wasn’t so
much the praying, which was pretty much the same every night. It was the
conversations about life that arose in the context of prayer—coupled with the
fact that I had to face my mother every evening, regardless of what I might
have done during the day.
At some point in early adolescence, I
informed my mother that, from that point forward, I could handle praying on my
own. Deep inside, I regretted my request even then, and I regret it even more
now. In some inexplicable way, knowing that I would have to pray with my mother
each night placed a limit on what I was willing to say and to do during the
day.
Today, this pattern from my childhood marks
the end of each day in the lives of each of my own children. A few months ago,
when my teenager suggested that she might not need me to pray with her each
night, my response ran something like this: “You know, I think you are totally
able to pray on your own, and I want you to pray on your own as well. But, even
though you don’t need my help to pray, I need the reminder every night that God
gave you to me and that I’m responsible to guide you toward him. So, every
night, I’ll still be here to pray with you, no matter what.”
Since that moment, my daughter and I have had
dozens of important night-time conversations that I might otherwise have
missed.
There is no curriculum for this habit. Life
itself is the curriculum. There is no special training, only the gift of time
given each night. Sometimes it works well, other times it doesn’t. It’s an
inefficient use of time by any earthly standard—but it is a right and good
response to God’s work of grace in our lives.
