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What Harvard Discovered About Kids and Church

What Harvard Discovered About Kids and Church

by | Mar 16, 2022 | Featured, Headlines | 2 comments

Getting kids to church can be a challenge — at any age. When they are infants it’s because it just takes so much work to pack them up. Kids at that age require so much gear! Later as toddlers, separation anxiety can make dropping them off at the Children’s Ministries area challenging to say the least. With elementary-age kids, sports and other activities can easily compete with and crowd out opportunities for kids to participate in church events. Then as pre-teens and teens, a normal and healthy burgeoning sense of autonomy can be challenging to parental suggestions or expectations for church involvement. 

So as a parent — at any stage — the question on any given weekend can understandably be Is it worth the effort and energy to help get my kids to church this week? 

Now I am a pastor so I know you’re probably not going to be shocked if I say, Yes! It’s worth it. (It feels a little like asking a personal trainer if working out is worth it. Of course they are going to say yes.) So I’m going to let someone else answer the question. 

Recently, Christianity Today magazine published a summary of findings about children’s health from researchers at Harvard’s (yes, that Harvard) T. H. Chan School of Public Health (i.e. not pastors). 

The researchers led by Tyler VanderWeele “…examined a large swath of data, collected over more than a decade, which tracked the development of 12,000 nurses’ children into their young adulthood. The longitudinal study surveyed social, physical, and mental health trends across the group—like substance abuse, anxiety/depression, community engagement, and sexual activity.”

The team was curious about how schooling choices and religious service attendance correlated to health outcomes. Here’s what they found:

In comparing key health indicators, the researchers found little difference between the long-term well-being of adolescents who attended public school and those who went to private school. (All of the kids who participated were between the ages of 9-14 when the study began.)  

So parents you can breathe a little sigh of relief there. But what about religious service attendance? How much does that matter? 

“What we found was that religious service attendance makes a bigger difference than religious schooling,” [VanderWeele] said. “Religious service attendance has beneficial effects across the different school types and has stronger effects than religious schooling.”

 

In other words, the kids who grew up attending church regularly rated far higher in overall well-being as young adults than those who went to a religious school but did not go to religious services during their formative years.

Did you catch that? If you take two kids — one who attends church once a week regularly and another who goes to a religious school five days a week but attends church only sporadically — it is the regular church attendee who fares better. The researchers concluded that “…religious service attendance in youth was clearly the more dominant force in shaping health and well-being, at least as this pertains to the data and experiences 20 years ago.” 

Here’s the bottom line from the Christianity Today summary: 

Furthermore, “regular service attendance helps shield children from the ‘big three’ dangers of adolescence: depression, substance abuse, and premature sexual activity,” VanderWeele writes in his latest article for Christianity Today. “People who attended church as children are also more likely to grow up happy, to be forgiving, to have a sense of mission and purpose, and to volunteer.”

 

“So regardless of school type,” VanderWeele says, “it’s beneficial to go to religious services, both as an adolescent and as an adult.”

These findings highlight the beauty and wisdom of God’s design for the local church. When parents dedicate their children at Christ Community, one of the questions they are asked is: Do you promise, before God and this congregation, that you will be faithful in worship, both in the home and in the church?

Those two spaces —the home and church — are vital to human health and flourishing. This is why Christ Community’s Children’s Ministries and Student Ministries staff and volunteers put so much effort into equipping parents. Parents play an outsized role in their children’s faith development. However, what the Harvard analysis shows  is clear. It isn’t enough to simply be faithful in worship at home if we want our children to truly flourish. It also requires being faithful in a worshiping community; a local church.

Five Practical Reminders for Financial Fitness

Five Practical Reminders for Financial Fitness

by | Feb 16, 2022 | Featured, Headlines | 0 comments

A number of years ago Forbes Magazine compiled their “Top 100 Money Quotes of All Time.” Here are a few of my favorites:

 
  • Too many people spend money they earned…to buy things they don’t want…to impress people that they don’t like. –Will Rogers
  • I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. –Steve Martin
  • Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. –Charles Dickens
  • I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died. –Malcolm Forbes
  • We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. –Winston Churchill
  • My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike oil. –JP Getty

However, lasting financial fitness requires more than pithy humor and insightful inspiration; it also requires a few consistent habits practiced over a lifetime. Every year in our Church for Monday class, we share these five practical reminders for financial fitness.

 

1 – Make a Plan

Whether you call it a spending plan or a budget, use cash envelopes or build your own custom, macro-laden spreadsheet, you will never experience consistent financial fitness without a plan.

A good plan will allocate money for regularly occurring expenses (groceries, gas, utilities, rent/mortgage, insurance) as well as periodic expenses (property taxes, vacations, Christmas presents, car replacement).

Identifying and then regularly allocating (read: saving) money for those periodic expenses is the real game-changer. Christmas comes on Dec 25 every year. It should never sneak up on us from a spending standpoint. Yet, how often do we rack up credit card debt in November and December buying Christmas gifts? If you spend $600 on Christmas presents each year, you can set aside $50 each month and have the money ready.

There are some great digital tools to help you manage a budget/spending plan including EveryDollar, Mint, and my favorite, YNAB. 

 

2 – Minimize Debt

While Christians have a variety of perspectives on what it is appropriate to use debt for — from nothing at all ever to only a mortgage to maybe a car or always for education or a business startup — biblical wisdom always favors keeping debt to a minimum. A general rule of thumb might go something like this: Avoid debt whenever possible. Only take on the minimum amount of debt when necessary. Pay back debt as quickly as possible.

For the best teaching on debt under 3 minutes, click here.

3 – Create Margin

Margin is the key to eliminating misery in your money. That’s Charles Dickens’s point in the quote from the Forbes list above. If you make $50,000/year and spend/save/invest $49,500, you feel great. If you make $50,000/year and spend $50,500, you always feel miserable and behind. 

It is that margin, that little bit of wiggle room in our finances that enables us to care for others, to be generous when unexpected needs arise. Creating margin is the key to having the capacity to help others in need. As Pastor Tom Nelson puts so powerfully in The Economics of Neighborly Love: 

“If we have compassion without capacity, we have human frustration. If we have capacity without compassion, we have human alienation. If we have compassion and capacity, we have human transformation. We have neighborly love.” (p. 16)

 

When we are moved to help and we have the margin to help, we get to experience a joy we would otherwise miss.  

 

4 – Monitor Lifestyle Creep 

Lifestyle creep is what happens when we always increase our standard of living whenever we gain a new level of income. Sometimes when we get a better paying job, a raise, or simply a cost-of-living adjustment, every new dollar is absolutely necessary to meet basic expenses or pay back debt. But other times our current income is meeting our needs and the additional income puts a choice before us: Do we increase our standard of living? Do we buy a new car, a bigger house, nicer clothes, upgrade from only Aldi to only WholeFoods?

Increases in our standard of living are not necessarily bad. It’s good to celebrate and enjoy the good gifts we’ve been given. But we need to be aware of two things when increasing our standard of living. 

First, we should do it intentionally, not accidentally. It is so easy to just start spending more. If you’re going to increase your standard of living, do it on purpose. Think about it. Pray about it. Ask close friends for wisdom. Make sure you won’t end up making choices that make you marginless and miserable, just at a higher standard of living. 

Second, we have to recognize once you step up your standard of living it is really hard to step down. It’s harder to go back to driving an older car or living in a smaller house or taking less elaborate vacations, once you’ve upgraded. So be careful about going too big. 

 

5 – Start Giving, Increase Giving

​​Jesus said, “It is better to give than receive.” (Acts 20:35) A generous life according to Jesus is the best life. But how much should we give?  C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: 

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusement, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our giving does not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say it is too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our commitment to giving excludes them.”

A good rule of thumb rooted in the Scriptures and Christian tradition and practice is 10%. But what if you feel like there is no way you could give 10% and still make ends meet? Start somewhere? Could you give 6%? 3%? 1%? Start somewhere and then seek to increase. Likewise, we shouldn’t let 10% be a speed limit on our giving either. There’s no verse that says, “Thou shalt not give away more than 10%.” The goal is cultivating generosity and joy not fixating on percentages. 

—

If you feel stuck in your finances, reach out to one of your pastors. We would love to pray with you and connect you with resources that can help you experience greater satisfaction and freedom in managing, sharing, and enjoying the financial resources God has entrusted to you.

A Liturgy Against Shame Before Creating

A Liturgy Against Shame Before Creating

by | Nov 17, 2021 | Featured, Headlines | 1 comment

The greatest enemy to creativity isn’t lack of time, money, tools, or training. The greatest enemy of creativity and productivity is shame. More than distraction or busyness, shame steals the energy and courage required to create. And even more disastrously, shame disrupts the relationships that are necessary for creating and producing together. Even creative tasks that are undertaken alone are always done in dialogue with other minds, in conversation with other image-bearers. Shame disrupts creativity and productivity causing us to hide from one another. Shame breathes lies. Shame lies and says:

You’re an idiot. You have no business doing this work. You’re going to fail. You always fail. You’re never good enough. You never will be good enough. You’re a fraud. This is so derivative, so unoriginal. Nobody will care about this work. Nobody should care about this work. It’s trash. People will laugh at you. People will steal your work. People will think what you are doing is dumb. 

The louder the voice of shame, the more energy it takes to overcome it and create something good and beautiful. It robs us of energy we could otherwise use to create. This is a major theme in Curt Thompson’s work. Curt is a Christian psychologist and author who writes on the themes of shame and creativity, andt Christ Community recently had the privilege of hosting him for an evening conversation. You can watch his talk HERE and read more in his books The Soul of Shame and The Soul of Desire.

All of us are creating even if we aren’t professional graphic artists or creative writers. Making dinner is a creative act. Building a presentation slide deck and building a deck on your house are creative acts. Putting together spreadsheets and spreading fresh sheets on the bed are creative acts. 

And wherever there is the potential for creativity and ushering goodness and beauty into the world, shame is lurking — seeking at all costs to choke and strangle that creativity. I want to offer you a practice for combating shame when you’re preparing to create. This is a liturgy, a prayer, for combating shame that you can use when you begin a creative endeavor. 

Liturgy Against Shame Before Creating 

All:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
You are the Creator and Sustainer
of everyone and everything,
You uphold the universe by the Word of Your Power.

Leader:
You have made us creative collaborators in your image;
Male and female you have created us. 

Created us to be creative.
Created us to draw out all the fulness and beauty
of the world you have lovingly formed and fashioned.

Yet now as we stand on the precipice of this creative endeavor,
the threshold of this good work,
this good work, O Lord, which you have prepared for us to do,
we find ourselves haunted by shame.

In the face of this shame,
we shrink back, we hide;
we grow suspicious of others,
contemptuous of ourselves.

King Jesus, who for the joy set before You despised the shame of the cross,
teach us now to despise this shame.
Against the lie of shame which says, I am worthless.
We speak the truth of Your voice:

We are fearfully and
wonderfully made.

Against the lie of shame which says, I have nothing to offer.
We speak the truth of Your voice:

We are God’s handiwork,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which You prepared in advance for us to do.

Against the lie of shame which says, They can’t be trusted, they will hurt you.
We speak the truth of your voice:

We are all baptized by one Spirit into one body,
we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, defend us now
from all the assaults of shame.
And shepherd us into the green pastures of your goodness and beauty.

Amen.

Vocational Discipleship in a Bulletproof Vest

Vocational Discipleship in a Bulletproof Vest

by | Oct 27, 2021 | Featured, Headlines | 3 comments

At least once a month I do something I never imagined myself doing as a pastor: I put on a bulletproof vest. The vest is part of the uniform I wear as a chaplain for the Kansas City Missouri Police Department (KCPD). 

As a local church pastor, one of my primary responsibilities is to equip the people of God for “works of service”—and for most people the place where they do the majority of their serving is in their workplace, through their occupation. 

So when the Kansas City Missouri Police Department approached me about joining their chaplain team, I eagerly accepted the role. 

First, it was an incredible opportunity to extend the local church’s mission of vocational discipleship into a dangerous, difficult, and draining vocational field. Second, because as the child of a police officer—my dad served as an officer for 25 years — I’ve experienced firsthand the joys and challenges that come from being part of a law enforcement family.  

So what does a police chaplaincy involve? That was a question I asked a lot during the extended background check and vetting process that took place before I was officially “sworn in” and joined the team in November of 2018. What I’ve learned serving in this role is that there are three main aspects. 

First, chaplains serve in a ceremonial role—performing invocations (prayers) at formal department events and meetings (e.g., police academy graduations, board of police commissioners meetings, award ceremonies). 

Second, chaplains are available to serve officers for weddings, funerals, and pastoral care in times of need. 

Third, chaplains are a faithful presence with the officers as they do their work—cue the bulletproof vest. This faithful, persistent presence is the heart of the chaplain role and where most of the time is spent. During regular ride-alongs with KCPD officers, I get the chance to hear their stories, see what they see, and experience firsthand the realities of law enforcement work.

I’ve been on ride-alongs where hardly a single call came in, and on others when the radio didn’t stop the whole time, and the officers went from missing person calls to liquor store brawls to domestic violence situations. 

But it’s the moments in between calls— talking while patrolling a lonely street or pausing for a quick bite to eat—where the real work of friendship, listening, care, and vocational discipleship occur. 

In an interview Matt Rusten, the executive director of Made to Flourish did with David Kinnaman, president of Barna Research Group, David explained “vocational discipleship” like this:

Vocational discipleship is a means of helping people understand what they’re called to do, made to do. A sense of how their work matters….[It] is the process by which we would help someone understand they are made in the image of God to do things in the world…to bring God glory and to do good, and to push back the broken parts of creation in doing your work and doing it well.

In every interaction with a member of KCPD, that is the goal I’m working toward—helping them to have a deeper understanding of what they are made to do and how their work is pushing back the broken parts of creation as they accomplish their work well. 

So whether it’s in the pulpit on Sunday morning or in a patrol car on Monday night, vocational discipleship is at the heart of my role as local church pastor.

The (Forgotten) Story of the Holy Spirit

The (Forgotten) Story of the Holy Spirit

by | Aug 11, 2021 | Featured, Headlines | 1 comment

As a church family we just wrapped up our summer teaching series Forgotten Family highlighting some lesser known characters in the biblical story. We studied men and women like Uzziah and Deborah, Lydia and Philemon. 

There is another character in the biblical story that is often overlooked. Someone who is mentioned on the very first page and the very last page of the Bible who is often overlooked or misunderstood. It is the Holy Spirit! There is even a book about the Holy Spirit titled The Forgotten God. 

One of the most central, defining truths of Christianity is the belief in a Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God. Three Persons. But Christians often functionally binitarian — speaking, teaching, and living primarily as if God were only Father and Son. Or we operate with a different Trinity; the Father, Son, and Holy Scriptures.  

In our teaching series The Story of the Holy Spirit we want to get to know the Spirit better. We want to follow His story through the pages of Scripture. We want to discover His work in creation, in giving new life, in giving gifts and empowering us for works for service and love on Sunday and Monday.  

The only Christian life is a life that has been made new by the Holy Spirit, baptized by the Holy Spirit, gifted by the Holy Spirit, and filled by the Holy Spirit. If you have placed your faith and hope in Jesus, all of these things are true of you! 

It is a bit like doing genealogical research and discovering that you are descended from royalty. That was always true of you even before you knew it or understood it. But now that you know it, it can change everything about how you view yourself and your story. 

Together we want to know the Spirit more deeply and learn to live more fully in the life the Spirit gives. The Spirit’s story bookends the biblical story. But where is He in our story? Join us as we follow the Spirit’s story through the Bible and into our lives.