God’s Okay With Questions
I will never forget my undergraduate theology professor telling our class the story of how he decided to follow Jesus. He was thirteen years old and didn’t know what to believe about God. One day he decided if God was real and if God was as big and powerful and all-knowing as Christians said God was, then he could ask God any question and God would be big enough to handle it. He asked God all of his hardest questions and eventually decided to follow Jesus.
As a Pastor to Kids, I regularly tell our kids, “Church should be a place where you can ask all your hardest questions. We might not always find answers to every question, but we’ll do our best to search God’s Word, pray, and look back to what Christians in the past have said about it to figure it out!”
Wednesday Nights at our church are called Discovery for Kids. We intentionally chose the name “Discovery” because we wanted kids to know we are coming together to explore our faith, theology, and God’s Word in order to discover the God who loves and created us. We intentionally structured our Wednesday night program upon a rotation based model. The kids break up into their grade level groups and then rotate through a Message, Game, and an Experiential Activity before we come back together for a wrap up time.
God’s Real Love
Last Wednesday, we started a new series on the Fruits of the Spirit. We talked about Galatians 5:22-23 and how when someone decides to follow Jesus, not only are they forgiven and freed from sin, but they become part of the family of God. They also receive the Holy Spirit, who begins to transform them from the inside out: producing fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
As we started talking about the first fruit in the list, love, we looked at 1 John 4:10-11, which says: This is real love — not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other (NLT). I asked the 3rd grade group: “What do you think John means when he says ‘This is real love’?”
One of the kids raised their hand and said, “It’s real. It’s not fake. God really loves us.”
Another kid then raised their hand. “Pastor Shaun, some people are fake about loving people. And loving God.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, like influencers sometimes use God just for clout.” (I am not joking. This is exactly what the kid said!)
The other kids started nodding and chiming in: “Yeah! So many influencers only use God for clout, not for real.”
“Yeah!” one kid said, sitting up straight. “I watched this one YouTube video on YouTube Kids where they said at the end: ‘Like and Subscribe if you love God,’ but they didn’t even talk about God. They were only saying it for clout. People shouldn’t use God that way. That’s fake because God doesn’t use people like that.”
“Why not?” I asked.
One girl’s eyes went wide. “Because! God really loves us. Like really.”
God’s Name in Emptiness
At the end of the night, I couldn’t help reflecting on the conversation we had had. Sometimes in teaching Scripture to kids we can get lost in making it through all of our points instead of stopping to listen to what the Holy Spirit has already been up to in the lives of the kids in our ministries. I had to stop and pause and listen to where this Wednesday Night conversation was going. I asked them questions about what they were thinking and started to see how the Holy Spirit had been working in their lives.
Several kids at the end of the Message time came up to talk with me afterwards and ask questions or tell me something else about what we had talked about. We’ve been intentionally building this kind of atmosphere on Wednesday nights that allows for kids to ask questions, talk about things that are impacting them in their daily lives, and to tell us as adults what they are discovering about God.
I couldn’t help but think of Moses after that conversation. Exodus 20:7 says: “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name” (NLT). So often we think about this verse as telling us not to use God’s name flippantly or as a curse, but there is a top layer application here that these kids nailed perfectly: Misusing God’s name can also be about using God for clout.
How often do people use God for clout? How often do people flippantly say, “Like and subscribe if you love God,” using God like a prop instead of seeing God as personal and real?
This is what kids are teaching me this week: Don’t use God for clout. God is real. God’s love is real.
What are kids teaching you this week? How are you opening up space for kids to speak back into the lives of the adults in your church?