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Last Sunday, our church did its annual multilingual service, with three congregations—Mandarin-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and English-speaking—all coming together for worship. We had readings in multiple languages, and a sermon was given in Spanish with an English translator. There was no Sunday school this week, so kids joined their parents in adult church.

When we informed our kids Sunday morning of what would be happening, there was a collective and passionate, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (Honestly, I should have typed more o’s to reflect the true level of protest.)

“PLEASE, let us stay home! We can do home church! Please not THAT service! It’s SO BORING!”

Apparently, they remembered it well from the prior year. We dragged them into the car in spite of the whining and endured their pleas all the way there.

I’d be lying if I said this was a rare occurrence of my kids not wanting to go to church. The nature of this service perhaps made them complain more loudly than normal, but there are plenty of typical Sundays when our kids ask, “Do we have to go?” I’d bet a lot of money that you’ve been asked the same.

The question of what to do when kids don’t want to go to church has been one of the most frequent ones I’ve received over the years from readers, and it’s one of the most commonly discussed questions in various Christian parenting forums (you can join my own Christian parenting group on Facebook by clicking here).

The running theme of kids’ complaints is usually that church is boring and they don’t want to go because of it. Parents tend to assume it’s their job to convince their kids that church isn’t boring and are looking for ways to do so.

But that’s a really bad assumption.

I think there are actually quite a few legitimate reasons why so many kids are bored by church and/or Sunday school. In other words, kids aren’t always just making up random excuses to not go; a lot of times, their avoidance reflects a genuine problem.

Here are several “legit” reasons for boredom at church that parents should consider.

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News broke yesterday that popular Christian comedian and YouTuber John Crist has come forth with an admission of ongoing “sexual sin and addiction struggles” after multiple women exposed years of his sexually immoral behavior.

Honestly, my heart sank when I saw this. I love Crist’s videos. We watch them with our kids. In fact, our family had just watched one of his most popular ones, “Church Hunters,” this week! If you’re not familiar with Crist, he pokes fun at evangelical culture through his videos, and in a way that you can typically nod along with because they (unfortunately and humorously) hit close to home. Church Hunters, for example, is a parody that features a couple searching for a new church, but they’re considering all the wrong criteria…something all too common today. The video actually made for great discussion with our kids about how people DO look at the wrong things, and what is most important when considering a church home.

You can read a detailed article with the accusations and Crist’s own statement here. In that article and some common responses I’ve seen to it on social media, I’ve noticed three areas of serious confusion that both Christians and nonbelievers sometimes have about this kind of news:

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As Christians, we have all kinds of pithy sayings that make their way through churches and establish themselves as generally accepted truths. Some end up on bumper stickers, some on wall decals, and some just get repeated so many times that people think they’re actually in the Bible.

There’s a popular one among parents that I keep hearing lately, and each time I hear it I cringe. Not only is it false, but it’s particularly damaging to the discipleship of the next generation.

It’s the idea that “Faith is caught, not taught.”

When people say this, they’re usually trying to emphasize that faith is a matter of the heart, not a cold belief in a set of facts that someone has taught them. And of course there’s truth to that sentiment. But nine times out of ten that someone relays this saying to me, there’s an implication that our kids’ spiritual development has little to do with the “intellectual stuff” of apologetics, but rather everything to do with how well we live our faith in front of them (apologetics is the study of why there’s good reason to believe Christianity is true).

This belief is desperately wrong. At best, it results in a passive approach to discipleship. At worst, it’s an excuse for intellectual laziness.

Let’s look at why.

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The highlight of my summer was a family RV vacation to Kings Canyon National Park. Behind our campground flowed a gorgeous river that I returned to multiple times over the course of our trip. Each time I went, I sat and pondered the “big questions” of life. There’s something about the majesty of creation that bubbles up a deep sense of awe about who God is, what he has done, who we are, and the meaning of life. 

But this sense of awe also led me to reflect on how so many kids are apathetic about their worldview. A common thread I hear from parents is that their kids just don’t care about their spiritual beliefs, or just don’t care about Christianity specifically. There are certainly many kids who explicitly reject Christianity today, but I just as often hear about kids who are ambivalent.

How does ambivalence happen? As I sat by a river contemplating that question, a thought struck me:

Kids are being bored out of Christianity.

And they’ve been bored out of it by the Christians around them. Since parents are the primary spiritual influencers in the lives of kids, I want to suggest four ways we sometimes let this happen.

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Christianity Today recently featured an article titled, “The Biggest Hindrance to Your Kids’ Faith Isn’t Doubt. It’s Silence.”

The article summarized the findings of researchers Kara Powell and Steven Argue on the faith of youth group graduates. They found that:

• 70 percent of churchgoing high schoolers report having serious doubts about faith.
• Less than half of those with doubt shared their struggle with an adult or friend.
• Opportunities to express and explore doubts were correlated with greater faith maturity.

Powell and Argue concluded that, “It’s not doubt that’s toxic to faith; it’s silence.” They go on to explain how important it is for parents to regularly have conversations about faith with their kids, and I couldn’t agree more.

I saw this article shared a lot on social media, with people rightly encouraging one another to have more faith conversations with their kids. But each time I saw it, an underlying question glared at me:

If Christianity is true, why is there so much doubt to be addressed in the first place?

Quite frankly, if I were a skeptic, that’s the question I would be asking after reading this research.

Skeptics often claim that Christians believe what we do in the face of serious cognitive dissonance; that is, they say we have to hold contradictory beliefs in tension because the evidence is against us. This article at least seemed to support the idea that if there is so much doubt, it should make us think twice about the validity of our views.

I’m always happy to think twice, so let’s do it. This is such an important subject for parents to understand today, but I rarely see it addressed.

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Last year, for various reasons, our family had the opportunity to attend a few different churches. Each time, we debriefed on what happened in Sunday school and what the kids learned. As they recounted their experiences, I was struck by how similar they were to the stories I’ve heard from so many parents in the last few years while speaking at churches and conferences.

Parents who take the discipleship of their kids seriously are typically disappointed by the quality of their kids’ Sunday school program.

For example, I asked people on my blog’s Facebook page a few weeks ago how they felt about the kids’ program at their church. The typical response was, “It’s OK. Standard stuff. Bible stories. Snack. Some songs. Maybe a video. Nothing very deep.”

It’s well known that at least 60% of kids are leaving Christianity by their early 20s today, most turning to a secular worldview. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but today I want to talk about how Sunday school programs fail to be more influential. More specifically, I want to talk about how their failure to be more influential results in kids becoming a particular kind of secularist: the secular humanist (secular humanists are those who reject a belief in God but believe they have a responsibility to be “good” people).

To understand why this happens, we have to first understand the role of culture in influencing our kids’ beliefs.

Cultural Influence is Stronger Than You Think

I recently read Dr. John Marriott’s new book, A Recipe for Disaster: Four Ways Churches and Parents Prepare Individuals to Lose Their Faith and How they Can Instill a Faith That Endures. Marriott has spent a large portion of his academic career researching factors behind deconversions from Christianity to atheism. In his book, he describes how churches and parents inadvertently set kids up for faith crises by “over-preparing, under-preparing, ill-preparing, and painfully-preparing” them for the world.Continue reading

I’ve recently had a lot of people asking for recommendations for Christmas gift ideas, for both kids and adults, so I’ve put together this detailed list of my top picks! They are almost all books, but there are a few other ideas as well. Gift ideas for kids come first (mostly for the under 12 crowd, since that’s where my own kids are), followed by gift ideas for adults. Enjoy!

 

30 Christmas Gift Ideas for Christian Kids

 

Children’s Bibles and Bible Reading Tools

For kids not ready to read a complete Bible, children’s Bibles are a great starting point. They feature selected Bible accounts, a simplified narrative, and engaging pictures. The problem with many children’s Bibles, however, is that they include too little of the Bible (you’ll always get Noah’s Ark, but how about Nehemiah or Job?) and have overly simplified narratives that leave out important points. I’ve looked at lots and lots of Bibles in this category and the following is my favorite by far:

The Complete Illustrated Children’s Bible includes a much greater breadth of biblical accounts than most other children’s Bibles. I love that. The narratives themselves are simple and direct, so they are very accessible. At the same time, you won’t find them watered down in kiddie language as in many books. The illustrations are beautiful. This is almost 300 pages, and there’s nothing I’ve seen that even comes close to the quality here for younger kids. The website says this is targeted at 5- to 8-year-olds. (If you have a child 9+, don’t get a children’s Bible. It’s time to move up to learning to read a full Bible!)

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Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids isn’t a children’s Bible, but rather a Bible reading plan. Kids won’t read every word of the Bible using this, but it’s a solid selection that takes you beginning to end. Each day there are verses to read with a small box for them to answer a basic question about the reading. For kids who enjoy writing, this makes it more engaging than simply a list of passages to read. I’ll be honest and say I got this for my 9-year-old twins last Christmas and they didn’t get too far with it despite liking the concept and presentation. But I am recommending it because it’s a unique book that would work really well if the parent is committed to focusing on using it as the primary Bible reading tool for the year.

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Bible Infographics for Kids is a 50-page book with beautifully designed spreads that present the Bible in infographic form! My 10-year-old son read through this in a day and loved it. Periodically he comes up with some kind of Bible fact that he learned from reading this, so it really stuck with him. It’s an engaging presentation for any kid, but I especially want to highlight this for parents who may have a child who really resists Bible reading. You certainly aren’t reading the actual Bible with this book, but it can be a stepping stone with it’s appealing visual design to get your less-than-focused elementary age boy to sit down and look at the biblical story through different eyes. I think this book is seriously undermarketed, as I have never heard anyone talk about it. I would never have heard of it myself had the publisher not sent me a copy. It would make an excellent gift and is very unique!Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I just wanted to write a quick personal note today and let you know that I haven’t been able to write much on the blog the last two months because I’ve been working on my next book, Talking with Your Kids about Jesus. If that title sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the next in the series after Talking with Your Kids about God! Yes, Jesus IS God, but Talking with Your Kids about God is focused on the “big picture” questions kids need to understand today about the evidence for God’s existence, the relationship between science and God, the nature of God, and the differences between an atheistic and theistic worldview (click here for the full table of contents if you’re new to my blog). Talking with Your Kids about Jesus will walk you through 30 of the most important questions kids need to understand today specifically about Jesus–questions about the identity of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and the difference Jesus makes in a person’s worldview. It won’t be out until Spring 2020, but I just wanted to let you know that if there are stretches of time between now and May (the due date to my publisher) when I haven’t blogged much, it’s because I’m working hard on this next book…not because I’m not planning to blog anymore! Thanks for your patience.

I also wanted to share today my first appearance as a guest on a TV show. The show, Digging for Truth, is focused on biblical archaeology, but they also have guests on other apologetics-related topics. I was honored to be interviewed for two episodes, which you can watch below. On Episode 33, I talk about the need for Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity. On Episode 34, I talk about the five kinds of skeptics who want to shame your kids for being Christians (this is based on an earlier blog post). I hope you enjoy these episodes!

A few last notes:

• If you’re looking for a meaningful and inexpensive Christmas gift for your husband, wife, or Christian parent friends, consider giving Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side and/or Talking with Your Kids about God! Or, put them on your own wish list and prepare to help your kids develop a deeper faith in 2019. They are less than $12 on Amazon.

• I’ll be traveling to Colorado Springs Monday to record an interview for the Focus on the Family radio show! I’m excited and grateful for the opportunity to share with their many listeners on the importance of apologetics. Please join me in praying that I’ll be a clear and compelling communicator. I believe the show will air in February. I’ll post here when it’s available.

• If you’re on Facebook, I want to be sure you know about the Facebook group I started a few months ago, called The Christian Parenting Lounge. It’s a closed group (only those in the group can see posts) where you can discuss anything you’d like with like-minded Christian parents. There are over 1,500 parents there already and it’s become a great discussion group. If you’d like to join us, just click the button on the group page to request to join. Unless you have a shady Facebook profile, I’ll approve you. 🙂

• If you happened to find and subscribe to my blog while I’m in this slow blogging period, you can check out some of my most popular posts here. I haven’t updated that page since earlier this year, so you can also look back over some of my most recent posts for weekend reading material. 🙂

OK, that’s all for now! Enjoy these episodes of Digging for Truth and have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!

EPISODE 33

 

EPISODE 34