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When Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith came out in March, I announced a private Facebook read-along group, where those who joined could read the book in community and engage in weekly author-led discussions.

Over 400 people joined the group! We had a fantastic 10 weeks together and enjoyed some great online discussions. Several group members told me it led to some life-changing conversations with their kids.

If you missed this opportunity, weren’t able to join at the time, or are just new to my blog, I have some great news: I’m opening a new read-along group!

Let’s face it—Fall is often when parents feel most motivated to turn over a new leaf (did you get that amazing seasonal pun?). It’s a fresh new school year, with a fresh new opportunity to really take the spiritual development in your home more seriously. If you’re ready to get inspired with other parents, get better equipped to prepare your kids for a secular world, and start having some really important conversations at home, here’s your chance!

And a special note to those of you who are thinking, “That would be cool, I just wish we weren’t so busy with soccer/music/baseball/art/basket weaving/etc…” I would gently suggest that you especially need to join the group to help you keep focused on the most important thing of all: your kids’ spiritual development.

Here’s how it will work.

 

1. Join the Facebook group by this Friday, September 9. All you have to do is click the button that says “Join Group” after you click the link). If you join TODAY, September 6, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a signed copy of the book (only those who weren’t part of the first read along group will be entered in the drawing). I’m giving away one copy for every 20 people who join by midnight PST (winners chosen randomly). Those are good odds!

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The other day, I received the following comment on an old blog post about hell:

 

The belief in hell is sown into the hearts of many children which this blog advocates and this belief can reap major consequences. Children grow into adults. Millions of adults are on the edge of a belief in [G]od [and] needlessly suffer with the shadow of hell.  They live [in] fear…What a waste…a tragedy. 

Hell is one of the bedrocks of the Christian faith. I absolutely reject Christ.  I work and pay taxes. I am charitable. I am [a] good father and husband. I am kind, forgiving. I like looking at the stars. Yet, without a doubt under the rules of Christianity I am doomed to be tortured for millions…billions of years. In fact, trillion[s of] years of endless agonizing pain wrap[ped] around for trillions of more years.  What is my misstep?  I reasoned that earth was old and books suggesting otherwise unfounded.

 

There are a lot of misunderstandings about Christianity and hell embedded in this comment—and those misunderstandings are quite common. Because there are so many wrong ideas about hell floating around, we as Christian parents must proactively ensure that our kids gain an accurate understanding of this difficult topic. When young people lack that understanding, they’re often quick to dismiss hell based on simple “gut reaction.” But hell is too serious a topic to leave to the discretion of our kids’ feelings. We need to guide their understanding from a biblical perspective.

In chapter 4 of my book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith, I explain that people often unknowingly roll three layers of questions into one big objection about hell. We can help our kids understand hell much more meaningfully when we address those questions individually and sequentially:

 

1. Why does God need to punish anyone?

2. Who should be punished?

3. What should the nature of punishment be?

 

Like many people, the commenter above implicitly has objections to hell from each of these categories. In this post, we’ll look at answers to the questions using his concerns. For anonymity, we’ll call him Mr. C.

 

Why Does God Need to Punish Anyone?

When Mr. C says, “Millions of adults are on the edge of a belief in God and needlessly suffer with the shadow of hell,” he is assuming that Christianity isn’t true. If Christianity is true, then people should be warned about the reality of hell and have an appropriate level of concern about it. But Mr. C seems to believe that the whole idea of hell can’t possibly make sense.Continue reading

A blog reader sent me some information recently on an atheist summer camp (thanks DD!). I was fascinated to read all that they are doing to promote an atheistic worldview with their young campers. It immediately made me wonder how Christian camps stack up. After all, about 40 percent of all U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 have been a camper at least once at a religious summer camp—making camp a perfect opportunity to give large numbers of kids an understanding of why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is true and how to defend their faith in a secular world.

So are Christian summer camps imparting this critical knowledge? To find out, I Googled “Christian summer camps” and visited the websites of 100 camps across the country. I spent hours going through these sites to see what they offer so I could share the findings with you.

I wish I could say I had a positive report.

Before we look at what I found, however, I want to first give you a glimpse of an atheist summer camp for comparison.

 

What Happens at Atheist Summer Camps?

The largest atheist summer camp is called Camp Quest. Camp Quest started 20 years ago and has grown to 14 locations throughout the United States. According to its website, “The idea to offer a summer camp program designed for children from atheist, agnostic, humanist, and other freethinking families originated partially in response to the Boy Scouts of America’s increasing enforcement of their policy requiring boys to profess a belief in God.  It became clear that children from nontheistic families needed their own place to belong and enjoy the summer camp experience.”Continue reading

Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith has been out almost 6 months now! During this time, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from many wonderful parents who wanted to share all they learned from the book with friends…so they formed small groups to read and discuss it (some have even taught whole church classes on it!). I’ve been so encouraged to hear how inspired and motivated parents have been to share their knowledge.

Along the way, many people have also emailed me to ask how to best use the material in my book in a small group or church setting. With fall around the corner, and many new small groups/classes forming, I thought it was a great time to offer a guide on how to do this—and hopefully get you thinking about how YOU can make an important difference in the spiritual lives of the families you know.

Whether you’re:

• part of an existing small group looking for new material to discuss;
• interested in forming a brand new group or class to encourage fellow parents to get better equipped for Christian parenting in a secular world;
• a youth minister in need of discussion ideas for youth nights;
• or a pastor wanting to form small groups around this critical subject…

…Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side is a great resource for getting your group talking! Here’s how you can use it.

 

1. Reach out to some parents you’d like to study with (if you’re already in a group, skip this step).

Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side is appropriate for parents with kids of any age, so invite anyone you would enjoy learning with! The book is written for both moms and dads, so you could form a group of couples, a group of moms, or a group of dads—whatever you feel most comfortable with. The ideal size of a small group is 6-15 committed participants.

If you’d like a note you can put into an email for your invitations, you can work with this:

“Hey! I’m interested in starting a small group of parents this fall to read and discuss a new book called Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith. The book is all about the fact that our culture is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity, and how that will challenge our kids’ faith. Each of the 40 chapters explains a specific challenge that our kids will hear from skeptics and offers an easy-to-understand answer from a Christian perspective that you can discuss with your kids (chapters are only about 5 pages each). For example, some of the chapter titles are: What evidence is there for God’s existence? How could a good God allow evil and suffering? Do all religions point to the same truth? Did Jesus really claim to be God? How can Christians believe miracles are even possible? Does the Bible have errors and contradictions? How do we know the Bible we have today says what the authors originally wrote? There are also several chapters that discuss what kids should understand about age of the Earth and evolution questions. You can see the full table of contents and read Amazon reviews here: https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Your-Kids-Gods-Side/dp/0736965084/.”

End your note with information on when you’d like to start, how many weeks you’d like to meet, and how much reading will be required (see below).Continue reading

I haven’t blogged in the last couple of weeks because my family and I were on vacation. We went on a wonderful trip to the island of Grand Cayman! I successfully managed to avoid email while I was there, but that made for quite a backlog by the time I returned. As I started going through the emails to my blog address, I was struck by the nature of comment after comment left by atheists on various old blog posts while I was gone: one emotional attack after another and not a single discussion of evidence for/against the truth of Christianity.

I actually get such emails all the time and am very used to it. But seeing them all piled together made me realize how often the objective of skeptics is to shame Christians rather than to engage in fair-minded discussions about evidence—something highly ironic given how much skeptics talk in theory about how important evidence is.

Shaming can have an especially negative impact on kids, who are very susceptible to believing emotion-laden statements. But this, too, is something we can (and should) prepare them for. While shaming comes in all kinds of forms, I can roll 90 percent of skeptics’ comments into some version of three general claims.

Here is what your kids are most likely to hear…and what you can do about it.

 

1. “You’ve been indoctrinated.”

The Implied Shame Claim: You’re just parroting what your parents have drilled into your head throughout your childhood. You’ve been brainwashed and can’t even think for yourself. If you’re brave enough to look at [evidence/science/common sense] instead, you’ll see how crazy Christianity is.Continue reading

America is changing fast, and not in the direction we’d like.

In light of recent events, I don’t think I need to detail all the signs that point to an imploding society. We see it. We feel it. We fear it.

Instead, I want to focus on our role as Christian parents within a society at such a point as this. In particular, I’m concerned about some very harmful beliefs—both conscious and subconscious—that I’ve noticed some Christian parents have.

Today I want to highlight five of the worst beliefs we can have when our society is spiraling downward.

1. I’m doing my part to make society a better place by raising kids with good values.

I’ve heard some variation on this way too many times. Let me make this very clear: Raising kids with good values is not the same as raising kids who love Jesus. And there are two important reasons why focusing on good values rather than on Jesus will never fundamentally alter society.Continue reading

A couple of weeks ago, I started teaching a 5-week “Introduction to Apologetics” class to adults at a local church. In the first session, we talked about the evidence for the existence of God in nature—the origin of the universe, the design of life, and our innate moral knowledge.

During the question time at the end of the first session, one of the men raised his Bible in the air and said, “This was empowering! It gave me even more appreciation for God’s Word!” Other people had similar positive comments. I left feeling like things went great.

A couple of days later, my husband ran into someone from the class and asked what he thought of the first session. The man hesitated, then said, “Honestly? It really shook me. I know others said it was empowering, but it really made me start thinking about things—like all the atheist claims she talked about.”

My husband relayed this conversation to me…and I subsequently went into a funk for several days.

I felt like I totally failed. So many thoughts ran through my head:

How did I mess this up?

What could I have said to better demonstrate how powerful the evidence for God is?

How could one person say this was empowering and another person say it shook his faith to the core?

I must not be a very good apologetics teacher if my class had a negative impact on someone’s faith.

What if my class ultimately becomes the trigger that sends him away from the Lord?

Then, one morning, I woke up and realized something very important: I was having the same fears about apologetics causing a person to question his faith as many parents have about it causing their kids to question their faith. And I always tell those parents they need to promptly conquer their fears and forge ahead for the long-term spiritual benefit of their children.

It was time for me to take my own advice.Continue reading

It’s now officially summer!

For many families, that means a (slightly) less hectic schedule for a few glorious weeks. At the same time, it can mean small-scale panic at what to actually do with the extra time your kids have.

Solution: Take the opportunity to get more creative with engaging together spiritually as a family. Here are 30 ideas to get you started!

 

1. Choose a gospel to read as a family (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John). Decide on a timeframe (days or weeks) and divide the chapters accordingly.

 

2. Pick two chapters per week from my book to discuss as a family. You probably have about 10 weeks of summer vacation. That means you can cover about half of the 40 critical conversations from Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side in that time! It’s a perfect opportunity before another hectic school year.

 

3. Watch the “What’s in the Bible?” DVD series together. This 13-DVD series takes kids all the way the way through the Bible. It’s perfect for kids who need entertainment combined with their learning in order to pay attention. My 7-year-old son, for example, thinks it’s hilarious AND learns from it. However, kids who learn better from a more A-to-B approach will likely find it too chaotic. My 7-year-old daughter (my son’s twin) hates it because she has “no idea what’s going on.” I end up pausing it every 5-10 minutes (in a 25-minute episode) to explain. Nonetheless, it’s meaty WHILE being crazy, so it’s a great option for kids with certain personalities and learning styles.

 

4. Schedule a “questions night”—a time for your family to get together and discuss any questions your kids have about God. Here’s how we do that in our family. Don’t just do it once! Do it throughout the summer, and hopefully beyond.

 

5. Have your kids interview a nonbeliever. This could be a family member or friend. Help them come up with some questions, then discuss the responses later.

 

6. Choose a news story with a faith angle to talk about. The sky’s the limit here. The Christian Post has a ton of material to consider.

 

7. Find a way to serve others together as a family. Then discuss what the Bible says about serving others, so your kids have a meaningful understanding of how their beliefs tie to their actions.

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This week, I had the honor of guest posting on the site Raising Godly Children. Below is the introduction to my post. Click the link at the end to read the rest on their site!

In the last couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at several Christian conferences and churches on the importance of parents teaching their kids apologetics (how to make a case for and defend the truth of the Christian faith). When I speak, I often begin by asking the following two questions.

First, I ask parents, “How many of you have come here already knowing that our world is becoming very secular and that your child’s faith is likely to be challenged in some way because of it?”

One hundred percent of the hands go up…every time.

Second, I ask parents, “How many of you would go to the next step of saying you’re confident that you know specifically what those big faith challenges are, how to effectively address them with your kids, and how that translates into parenting responsibilities on a day-to-day basis?”

Zero percent of the hands go up…every time.

As I’ve blogged about Christian parenting for the last four years, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from hundreds of parents. This gap between 1) knowing our secular world will influence our kids’ faith and 2) understanding what exactly that means for parents, is nearly universal. And it often leads to fear and frustration—parents know there’s a problem but they don’t know the solution.

It’s that gap that led me to write Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith . I wanted to help parents identify and understand 40 of the most important faith challenges they need to discuss with their kids so those challenges no longer feel ambiguous and unmanageable. But even once parents gain this critical understanding, the question remains: How does this translate into parental responsibilities?Continue reading