The Child’s Story Bible

For nearly two years now, Abigail and I have been reading through The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos for homeschool.  We started it the first day of preschool, and have read one story a day.  We finally read the last story yesterday, now that kindergarten is almost over.

This is an absolutely excellent book for children to read through the stories of the Bible.  We owned it even before we began Veritas Press, and it turned out to be the Bible storybook that they recommend, so that is what we chose to use for our Bible curriculum.  It has several features that are worth a big thumbs up.

It is extremely thorough, as you might have guessed by the length of time it took us to read every story.  Some chapters are broken up into sections, and we read only one section a day, not the whole chapter.  That added many days to our reading.  You could get through it faster by reading the whole chapter in a day, but each section was long enough to stand on its own, so we just read the sections.  It covers every Bible story that you could think of from your Sunday school days.  It also has sections and chapters that cover background information, such as describing the feasts, the tabernacle, the division of Israel, the journeys of Paul, the preaching of Paul, the legacy of Paul, and John’s vision on the island of Patmos.  We used The Big Picture Bible Timeline coloring pages to accompany the stories, and we averaged 1-2 pictures for every five stories because of the thoroughness of the story book.

Another feature I loved was the language used in the stories.  There were many, many times when I was reading a story to Abigail and recognized the very language of Scripture.  The author tells the stories in narrative form, but uses verbatim Scripture phrases throughout.  One good result of this, I realized, is that the child will become that much more accustomed to hearing the cadence and tone that is so distinct to Scripture.  I also liked knowing that using the words of Scripture guaranteed that the story stayed true to the Bible without straying off the point or including too much of the author’s own interpretation.

The book also includes beautiful illustrations sprinkled throughout.  Abigail loved looking at these when there was one corresponding to the story for that day.

On reading the preface to the revised edition, we learn the incredible origin of the book.  Catherine Vos’ mother told these Bible stories to her as she was growing up.  Catherine then told them to her own children when they were small, who began to ask to read the Bible stories for themselves.  Catherine searched for an existing Bible storybook that would be faithful to Scripture and convey the natural excitement and warmth of the stories.  Finding none, she undertook the monumental task of writing them herself.  The book first appeared in three volumes, appearing from 1934 to 1936.  It was combined into one volume in 1940, after Catherine’s death.  Her daughter, Marianne, is responsible for the revised edition that we have.

I, for one, am thankful for one mother’s diligence and determination to provide her children with a solid, true-to-Scripture, engaging story book, and then to make that book available to parents everywhere to share with their own children.   These stories were easy for Abigail to understand, and she repeatedly got caught up in the emotions of the stories.  I treasure the two years I spent with her in these pages, and look forward to starting again at the beginning this fall with Catherine.  I highly recommend The Child’s Story Bible to any parent looking for a Bible storybook to read to their children.

Rethink

A few months ago I posted my take on Voddie Baucham’s Family Driven Faith.  Then I thought about it some more and posted a clarification in which I said that the ideal would be to find a happy medium between traditional youth/children’s ministry, and the total age-integration Baucham recommends.  Well, I think I found it.  Clay recently read Rethink by Steve Wright and loved it.  After speaking with the author in a phone interview and hearing him at a conference recently, he is convinced that this book describes the happy medium that would integrate parents/families into a youth ministry model that still allows for age-segregation at church.

The statistics cannot be argued.  Traditional, existing youth ministry is not working.  Students are leaving the church as soon as they graduate high school, if not sooner.  We cannot lure  them in with food and lights and games, entertain them the whole time they’re with us, be their hero and best friend, and leave it at that, which is what so many youth ministries do.  Wright gives thorough research that I will not repeat, and his conclusion is logical.  Involve the parents, champion the family, champion the church.  We must not pull the youth out into their own little sub-church where they rarely if ever mingle with the rest of the body.  We must not try to be the primary disciplers of these kids, rarely if ever directing them to their parents with their questions.  We  must not ignore parents, leaving them out of their children’s spiritual journey.  Steve Wright gives many suggestions and principles for making sure that the above does not happen in a biblically-based youth ministry.

As we work with youth, we must work with parents.  Parents must be equipped with resources and encouraged with “how-to” for being the primary disciplers of their children.  Parents, you cannot just leave that to the youth guy.  It’s not his job.  It’s yours.  Youth guys, you cannot try to fill in that role.  It’s not yours to fill.  Parents, be the parent.  Be the spiritual model for your kids.  Be their hero.  A youth minister with this “rethought” philosophy will enable and equip you to do this.

Any parent of teens, and especially anyone working with students in a church, needs to read this book.

In response

After reading some of the responses to my book review on Family Driven Faith, and rereading my original post, I feel the need to clarify a few things:

1) Let me just say that I still agree wholeheartedly with his philosophy as far as families worshipping together. Now, this does not mean that I will never send my kids to any kind of group activity with kids their own age, or that I will never let them be influenced by other adults. I’m not sure how Baucham’s church operates, but when Clay and I had dreamed about this type of church, we envisioned a church with age-integrated worship and even a few (not all) classes, yes. But we realized that age-segregated Sunday school or Bible study still has important benefits for all ages that should not be overlooked. And we also envisioned extra times when parents or other adults in the church would take the initiative to coordinate and chaperone kid and teen activities outside of regular church hours. These would be great times for children and youth to be together, being mentored by other adults, studying and discussing topics that are relevant to them at their stage of life, and just building good relationships. So I’m not saying that I want my kids with me and only with me all the time, or that I don’t want them in groups at times with other kids their own age talking about age-relevant issues. I’m sorry if it came across that way.

2) Another issue is that I don’t think people give kids enough credit. Abigail sits still through an entire worship service without making hardly a peep, and most of the time she has no clue what is going on. But she is learning things, as well. She is learning self-control, to sit still even when things are not entertaining to her. She is learning the songs and the routine involved with a worship service. And little by little, she’ll start to pick up things from the prayers and sermons as well. Then, when she’s in middle school, high school, or college, whatever age the kids join the adults at any given church, she won’t have to have a harsh adjustment to “big” church, which could leave a negative taste in her mouth toward worship services after spending so many years in a kid-focused service. If children are taught from the beginning, they will learn and act appropriately even if they don’t understand what’s going on. Now, some questions will always be raised here. One, what about kids who don’t come with their parents? In this case, a wonderful solution would be for an adult with no or grown children to step in and take over the role of training that child. Now that child has a mentor that could be very special to them, and that adult has a new and very rewarding place of service. Also, what about parents who serve during the worship service, like as musicians or in the choir? In this case, there could be a couple solutions. For us, we gave up the choir for the more important (in our eyes) task of training our children. Or one parent could sit with the kids while the other one serves. I don’t have all the answers for every situation, but I do know that a sad truth is, that in a lot of churches, at least the ones I’ve seen, “children’s church” does absolutely nothing to train children in worship. They may color, sing, eat snacks, play games, watch skits or puppets, but that does nothing to help them know what’s expected when they finally graduate to “big” church, and then they get a culture shock, and after years of the hour being focused on them instead of them focusing on God, it’s no wonder most older kids and teenagers think the worship service is boring.

3) Next, I think that I really lean more toward a happy medium, but one that is closer to integration than segregation. As I said in my original post, we are taking our kids to the worship service, but not to our Sunday school classes. Lots of good things can go on in children and youth Sunday school, depending on the teacher, and my children have grown to love their teachers each year. And it’s good for the adults to have a time for serious, in-depth Bible study, where topics may be discussed that are not appropriate for children. Also, we won’t expect our children to sit through the entire worship service until they are 4 or 5; right now, Abigail stays the whole time and I take Catherine to her class right before the sermon. She gets to participate in the songs, prayers, and offering, all of which are aspects of worship that a three year old can understand. And as I stated above, I think there need to be times, especially for middle and high school, and maybe even college, when they are in a group of peers and trusted adults and can discuss biblically the issues that are specific to their age, like modesty, dating/courtship, and being a bold witness on campus. So, I will say that I think a blend of integration and segregation would be my ideal. HOWEVER, I will unashamedly say that most churches are way too segregated. The church body, while not made up solely of families, is itself one big family, and if someone goes to church and never has significant interaction with anyone outside of his or her age range or life situation, then the family as a whole will suffer. We need elderly, middle age, young singles, young marrieds, college age, teens, kids, preschoolers, married with kids, married without kids, divorced, widowed, everyone mingling and interacting with each other, more than just at the occasional potluck meal. Each group can learn much from the other, and would become incredibly stunted in their spiritual growth if they remain in their own little bubble, as is the trend these days with all the special-focus groups that are popping up all over the place. Another point from which I will not back down, is that a full and separate children and youth ministry could make it way too easy for parents to delegate their responsibility of training up their children to the paid staff member in charge of that age group. There will be times in my kids’ lives, I’m sure, that they will find guidance, comfort, or spiritual support from adults other than their dad and me. And this is good. They need to have spiritual mentors and guides other than us. But who is to be the primary adult guide for them? We are. When my husband was a youth pastor, there were several instances of parents asking him to talk to their kids about spiritual or moral issues, and they had not even done so themselves first. They just asked him because he was the youth pastor, so that was his job, not theirs. This is a danger in a church that does not do everything they can to equip the parents to disciple their own children. As I said in the other post, I want my kids coming to me to talk first and foremost, and then hopefully the guidance that we give them as we’ve prayed over and invested in their lives, would then be supplemented if they choose next to go to someone else as well. But as issues crop up in my kids that I think need addressing, they will be addressed by Clay and myself. We may encourage a mentoring relationship secondarily, but it is our role first and foremost.

4) Finally, I will say that the church that I’ve described and have envisioned in my mind, does not exist in most places. I understand that a lot of this is in a dream world. The church I attend now is not like this, my home church is not like this, no church I’ve ever been a part of is like this. So we will adapt our ideals as best we can to the church we’re in at the time. In order for this type of integration to take place, the entire church would have to be on board. And since a booming children’s or youth or singles or college ministry is a huge trend and goal in church life today, I don’t really look for a big rise in age-integrated churches anytime soon. But it really gives one something to think about, doesn’t it? And for those of you who still just do not agree with me or my views, that’s perfectly fine. I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, that the beauty of Christian liberty is that we can disagree in love without barriers in our relationships. Feel free to think I’m weird for my views (frankly, sometimes I think I’m weird myself), just don’t let it come between us.

Family Driven Faith

***Note: Due to several responses to this post that made me go back and reread and rethink, I published a later post that better clarifies some of my thoughts. Please keep searching my blog. You can find it under Books I’m Reading, and it’s called In Response.

This is an excellent book by Voddie Baucham that provides lots of food for thought for parents who desire to not only raise their children, but disciple into mature believers as well. Some of his ideas will be a little (or maybe a lot) far-fetched for some (or maybe most) readers, but I’m right there with him as far as philosophy goes. The main disciplers of children are not to be youth pastors, children’s pastors, or teachers, even if these people are very godly and doing a great job. The main disciplers of children are to be parents, and we can not just delegate that responsibility to someone else and check it off of our list. He advocates strongly having a regular family worship time in the home, which is something that we try to do and have been trying to do since Abigail turned two. Unfortunately, we are very hit and miss, especially with Clay’s working hours, and we have not given this the priority that it demands. As he and his wife are homeschoolers, it is no surprise that he is also a strong advocate of homeschooling. I was able to read these sections guilt-free, but to be fair, someone who does not homeschool may not like the strength of his passion on this subject. However, while he does note that not everyone does or can homeschool, he cautions everyone to seriously examine the matter biblically and practically and make an informed, well-prayed-over decision for their family, instead of just defaulting to the educational status quo, or tossing out lame excuses like, “I could never homeschool my children, I don’t have the right temperament for that,” or “My kids and I couldn’t stand each other if we spent all day every day together,” which I hear moms say to me personally all the time.

Then you find out what his real passion is, and that is family integrated church. A simple definition of family integrated church would be a church that encourages families to worship together. Period. No age-segragated Sunday school. No youth group. No children’s church. No nursery. Children intermingling with adults in every facet of church. I know, I know, most of you are immediately turned off by that idea. I think it sounds wonderful philosophically, but just for honesty’s sake, all practical questions aside as to how that would really work, there is a selfish part of me that cries, “But I love those two hours when someone else is taking care of my kids!!” Most people are negative toward this, and one reason, to put it bluntly, is because they don’t want to put up with the extra noise and effort this would involve during worship or Bible study. But a careful look at such Scriptures as Titus 2, where the older are exhorted to train up the younger, is pretty convincing. When is this being done when the younger are always in another room or another building? My husband and I have leaned toward the philosophy of family integration for some time, and in the early days of dreaming about our church plant, we encountered lots of strange looks and shocked comments as we talked about this radical idea, some from people that I know are going to be reading this. That’s okay. We know that many people close to us think we’re kind of out there on some issues. But I love this idea of family integration. It strikes a chord in my soul. I don’t want my kids going to talk to some youth pastor when they’re older and have questions. I want them coming to me. I want to experience worship with my children and then teenagers sitting beside me, worshipping along with me, not across the parking lot watching videos and puppet shows and eating animal crackers. Yes, there will be bumps in the road as they are learning what worship is and how one acts during a worship setting. But who better to teach them than Clay and myself? (Another book, Parenting in the Pew by Robbie Castleman, is an excellent resource for how to train your kids to participate in a worship service from a very young age.)

Anyone who just absolutely cannot give this idea a fair chance needs a serious dose of statistics. Survey after survey shows the alarming numbers of teens who were raised in Christian homes and evangelical churches, who leave the church and the faith soon after high school. Never seen one of these surveys? Okay, picture the youth group at your church ten years ago. If you’re from a small town, you probably know where a lot of those people are right now. Are they in church? I can go down the list of the people that I graduated with that never missed a Sunday, and even the kids that were in our youth group while Clay was youth pastor, that now show absolutely no church involvement whatsoever. Obviously, youth groups don’t exactly work.

Okay, I’ll step down off my soapbox now, but I will encourage you to read this book. Even if you have no interest in learning more about this idea for yourself, or if your kids are grown or whatever. At the very least, if you’ve got more than a passing interest in my family, it will give you a framework for why we do some of the things that we’re now convicted to do. You may not agree with us completely, but you may understand us a little better. Two immediate changes that we’re committed to make (Clay just finished this book too, so we’re all fired up together): 1) A renewed and strengthened commitment to family worship time. This will take some creativity with Clay’s crazy schedule, but we’ll get creative. 2) We’re going to drop out of the choir and take our older two girls to worship with us and start training them in worship and spending that time together as a family. This is a baby step, as a true family integrated church would have even babies together with families, and we’re going to leave Elisabeth in the nursery, and the children would be with adults in Bible study as well, and we’ll take ours back to their classrooms after worship while we go to Bible study. But it’s the step we’re going to take right now.

I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend reading it with an open mind. It will make you think, at least.

A human tragedy

I recently read the book Schindler’s List.  I had seen the movie long ago, but my husband, knowing of my (morbid?) interest in the Holocaust, has gotten me several books on the subject and I finally sat down to read this one.  It took quite some time for me to read, mainly because it was difficult emotionally to get through, to realize the wickedness that humanity can achieve.  It includes many, many examples of the atrocious acts against Jews by the Nazi leaders.  However, the main theme of the story, of course, is that of Oskar Schindler, who devised a way to protect nearly 1200 Jews from Poland through the factory he owned.  He was able to somehow deceive the Nazi regime, claiming that his workers were essential to the war effort and producing much needed ammunition, while at the same time managing to avoid actually producing any usable ammunition, an incredible feat.  I knew the basics of the story, but what struck me the most, at first, was the sad end to his tale. When he escaped at the end of the war (having to prove to the Allies that although he was German, he was a “good” German), he lost all his material possessions.  Throughout the war, he was incredibly rich, and accomplished much of his heroic acts through buying off certain SS officers.  After the war, he had nothing.  He and his wife emigrated to Argentina, where he failed at the first of several business ventures, all of which would end in failure.  He was basically destitute for the rest of his life, even living at times off of the generosity of the Jews he had rescued. This struck me as tragic as I finished the book.  However, for some reason, early this morning when I couldn’t sleep I was thinking about the book again, and an even deeper tragedy struck me.  We have absolutely no evidence, at least not presented in this book or movie, that Oskar Schindler ever even crossed paths with the Gospel.  Granted, I have done absolutely no research on his life, so I cannot say this with certainty, but as far as it appears through this book, Oskar Schindler died a lost man without Christ.  For all the believers reading this, you know that means that upon his death he was separated eternally from Christ.  How utterly tragic that someone who was such a hero, such a savior, if you will, on Earth, is most likely spending eternity in Hell.  Does that upset you, to read that, or that I would dare say such a thing?  Remember the Scripture:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)  Scripture is clear that no matter what righteous works we do on earth, our works are not our salvation.  Schindler’s works could not be his salvation.  How many people throughout history have done many wonderful things for humanity, and failed to do the one thing that would save their eternity.  Schindler “saved” 1200 Jews, but he failed to acknowledge the one Jew that was there to save him.  If you were upset that I would insinuate that Schindler was in Hell, would it upset you even more if I pointed out the irony that he is most likely sharing his eternal home with Hitler, the person that he dedicated several years of his life to fight against?  How tragically ironic.  To make this train of thought even more miserable, many of the Jews that he fought so hard to save are probably there with him.  Just as works don’t save a person, neither does heritage.  No matter what bloodline or family or race, no matter how many righteous deeds, no matter what we do or are in this life, our only salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ.  We are not born into faith and we cannot achieve it by any works.  It comes by grace alone, through faith alone.

I know this is kind of a depressing post.  It was just so sobering to me as this occurred to me this morning, I needed to write it down to order my thoughts.  What are the take-aways from this?  I’m not exactly sure.  Maybe some reading this are doing some righteous works themselves, doing great good for humanity.  Maybe you need to be told that while that counts for a lot to us humans and here on this Earth, but as far as entering into God’s kingdom, your good deeds are as filthy rags in God’s eyes.  There is absolutely no good thing that anyone could do that could even begin to bridge the gulf between that person and God, the gulf that is carved by their sin.  If you are counting on any good thing in yourself to earn favor with God, you are being deceived.  Scripture says, “There is none righteous, no not one.”  When you acknowledge this truth as being true indeed of yourself, and admit that there is no way for you to earn favor with God apart from Himself and His grace, then your heart will be ripe for true righteousness.  Do not be deceived.  Do not spend your life doing wonderful things and miss out on the one thing that matters eternally.  Do not let your life end in a tragedy, as I assume Oskar Schindler’s did.