more pressing than women preachers

Once again the internet has been abuzz with discussions of whether women should preach in the local church gathering. Whenever the issue is raised, those who oppose it are quick to explain that the role is not withheld from women because they are less valuable than men. And that “equal value” assertion always shifts my eyes from the pulpit to a more pressing concern. As some continue to debate the presence of women in the pulpit, we must not miss this immediate problem: the marked absence of women in areas of church leadership that are open to them.

The women e-mailing me regularly are not worried about winning the pulpit. They're still facing opposition over teaching the Bible to other women. They are fighting to be seen as necessary beyond children’s ministry and women’s ministry. They are fighting to contribute more than hospitality or a soft voice on the praise team. They are looking for leadership trajectories for women in the local church and finding virtually nothing. They watch their brothers receive advocacy and wonder who will invite them and equip them to lead well. If the contributions of women are equally valued in the church, shouldn’t we see some indication in the way we staff? In who we groom for leadership, both lay and vocational?

Because we don’t see that. Not even close. And we must not ignore this problem. 

This concern over women in the pulpit draws our attention because we regard the role of pastor highly, as we should (1 Tim. 3:1). But we must be careful that our high regard doesn’t morph into idolatry. The blogosphere overflows with articles addressed specifically to pastors: how to study more effectively, how to counsel, how to mentor, how to balance work and rest, how to lead. More often than not I wonder why the author limited his audience to pastors. Why not speak to the priesthood of all believers? Much of this counsel applies equally to the roles of teacher, counselor, minister, lay leader—roles that can be filled by both men and women. Roles that, if we focused on equipping, could make lighter work for the role of pastor in a way that is, well, biblical (Eph. 4:12). It’s no wonder serious, thoughtful Christians—men as well as women—think they need to be pastors when we represent that role as “the one for people with spiritual gifts” and devote comparatively little attention to other places of service. If we're worried about women in the pulpit, maybe the best thing we could do is to equip the entire congregation to do the work of ministry, to speak of everyone’s contributions as indispensible. Better yet, we could just do that out of obedience to God’s Word (1 Cor. 12).

I have no desire to minimize the role of pastor. It’s vitally important. But I don’t think it’s good for Christians to fixate on it at the expense of other roles. We need some hands and feet to go with all these heads, and many of them are female. The sisters among us are wondering when we’ll be able to tangibly demonstrate equal value in the local church, not just affirm this value with our words. Think of the problem this way: If a young man of obvious ministry ability and gifting showed up on the doorstep of your church, who would you put him in contact with? How would you help him find his place in ministry? What opportunities would you seek out for him to cultivate his gifts and gain ministry experience? What hopes would you have for him as a leader? Now, ask yourself the same questions for a woman. If the fact that she will never fill the pulpit means you cannot imagine a ministry trajectory for her, something is wrong. What ministry might she build and run? What place on your executive staff might she fill? What committee needs her leadership? What role in the Sunday gathering needs her voice and example? Where can her teaching gift be leveraged? What blind spot or planning dilemma can she speak into? What mission effort can she spearhead?

I am not interested in the pulpit. But I cherish the hope it will one day yield up a sermon on the priesthood of all believers: “Brothers, We Are Not All Brothers.” Treasure the brotherhood of the pastorate, but for the love of the church, invite your sisters to take a seat at the ministry table, a seat you may reflexively want to fill with a man. Debate the question of women preaching until Jesus returns if you must. But when he does, may he be greeted by a church whose practice affirms its belief that the equal value of men and women was never open to debate.

the church needs men and women to be friends

Recently a friend started a discussion thread by asking the question, “Can men and women be friends?” She was asking, essentially, if sexual attraction is a deal-breaker when it comes to male-female friendships. Immediately the thread filled with horror stories about male-female relationships that started as friendships and ended as train wrecks.

I know these stories as well. I’ve had a front row seat to several of them - in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in churches - so I’m not insensitive to the cautionary tale they have to tell. They remind me, though, of the labor-and-delivery stories I heard when I was pregnant with my first child. As soon as the bump became visible, women began freely volunteering their uterovaginal horror stories, everyone from friends to total strangers in the grocery store. I’m sure these stories were true, but do you know what stories I never heard? The positive ones. My perception of the risk became skewed by my fear. Four positive delivery experiences later I viewed those stories differently.

red flags and risk

Part of the problem with asking the question, “Can men and women be friends?” is nailing down which men and which women (married? single?) and what kind of friendship is in view. The question often leads us to assume intimate friendship is what is being suggested – hanging out alone together, sharing your deepest hopes and fears. And no, that’s not a good idea. If you’re single it leads to a lot of weirdness about where the relationship is headed, and if you’re married, you should reserve intimate friendship for your spouse. But we need not rule out male-female friendship built on mutual respect and affinity, cultivated within appropriate boundaries. If we do, we set a course charted by fear rather than by trust.

Sexual attraction is a valid red flag to raise when we consider male-female friendships, and it should never be dismissed lightly. But it does not justify declaring all such friendships impossible. All relationships involve risk of hurt, loss or sin, but we still enter into them because we believe what will be gained is greater than what we might risk. 

Marriage is risky – your spouse might prove unfaithful or cruel.

Parenthood is risky – your child might grow up to hate you or harm others.

Same-gender friendship is risky – your friend might betray you or let you down.

Work relationships are risky – your subordinate might embezzle from the company.

Business relationships are risky – your auto mechanic might overcharge you.

Church relationships are risky – your pastor might turn out to be an abuser, or just a jerk.

Yet we still enter into these relationships. We do not remove them wholesale from the list of possibilities because they involve risk. We enter in because we believe the rewards of the relationship outweigh the risk. We decide to go with trust instead of fear.

serving side by side

Like labor and delivery stories, the lust and infidelity stories of men and women who crossed a friendship boundary play and replay in our consciousness. But we seldom hear repeated the stories of male-female friendships that worked. I don’t think that’s because they don’t exist. In the church, even telling someone that you have a friend of the other gender can raise eyebrows. We have grown positively phobic about friendship between men and women, and this is bad for the church. It implies that we can only see each other as potential sex partners rather than as people. But the consequences of this phobic thinking are the most tragic part: When we fear each other we will avoid interacting with one another. Discussions that desperately need the perspectives of both men and women cease to occur. (Hint: most discussions desperately need the perspectives of both men and women, particularly in the church.)

Yet almost no one in the church is bold enough to say these friendships matter. We fear the age-old problem of "If I say X, will I unintentionally encourage Y?" So in the church we rarely tell divorced parents that they can still be good parents because we're afraid we'll encourage divorce. We rarely tell young people that loss of sexual purity is something that can be overcome because we're afraid we'll encourage promiscuity. We rarely tell moms who work outside the home we value them because we're afraid we’ll communicate we don’t value the home. And so on. We are so concerned that people will misunderstand what we mean by “appropriate male-female friendships” that we do not speak of them at all.  Just as divorced parents and young people and working moms pay a price for our fearful silence, there is a price for our fearful silence on male-female friendships as well: The church is robbed of the beauty of men and women serving side by side as they were intended.

not can but must

What bothers me most about the question, “Can men and women be friends?” is that even if I answer it in the affirmative I have not done justice to the issue. Yes, they can be friends, but more than that, they must be friends. Appropriate forms of friendship – those in which we see each other as people rather than potential sex partners – must exist between men and women, especially in the church. How else can we truly refer to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ? Jesus extended deep, personal friendship to both men and women. We are not him, so following his example requires wisdom and discernment about our own propensity to sin as well as that of others. But his example is worth following, brothers and sisters, even if it involves risk.

"For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother." - Mark 3:35

choose hospitality

On November 6, 2010 I tweeted the Most Regrettable Tweet of my mediocre social media career. In anticipation of the holiday season, I decided to weigh in on hospitality. The tweet was a flawless blend of selective memory and self-righteousness, designed to heap condemnation on the heads of my followers under the guise of offering wise counsel. It was a verbal “selfie” snapped from my best angle, positioned to make me look very, very good. Let’s have a look at it, shall we?

Note the double-whammy: if your house isn’t orderly on a daily basis, you will withhold hospitality from others and set a bad example for your children. Moms everywhere, be encouraged!

Three years later, I still cringe remembering that tweet, mainly because I have failed to live up to it repeatedly ever since. I presume my house was clean on November 6, 2010, but it has rarely been so in recent months. Even as I type, I am looking out across a disordered landscape of scattered laundry, schoolbooks, dusty baseboards and chipped paint. That tweet neglected to mention what my house looked like when my children were small, how I would hide clutter in the dryer when guests came, how hard I found it just to get dinner on the table for my own family, much less for someone else’s. So I regret that I proposed to moms a standard to which I could not hold myself.

But more importantly, I regret that tweet because I have come to recognize that the standard it proposed is flawed. It revealed my own lack of understanding about the nature and purpose of hospitality. In my self-righteous desire to offer advice, I had confused hospitality with its evil twin, entertaining. The two ideas could not be more different.

entertaining versus hospitality: what’s the difference?

Entertaining involves setting the perfect tablescape after an exhaustive search on Pinterest. It chooses a menu that will impress, and then frets its way through each stage of preparation. It requires every throw pillow to be in place, every cobweb to be eradicated, every child to be neat and orderly. It plans extra time to don the perfect outfit before the first guest touches the doorbell on the seasonally decorated doorstep. And should any element of the plan fall short, entertaining perceives the entire evening to have been tainted. Entertaining focuses attention on self.

Hospitality involves setting a table that makes everyone feel comfortable. It chooses a menu that allows face time with guests instead of being chained to the cook top. It picks up the house to make things pleasant, but doesn’t feel the need to conceal evidences of everyday life. It sometimes sits down to dinner with flour in its hair. It allows the gathering to be shaped by the quality of the conversation rather than the cuisine. Hospitality shows interest in the thoughts, feelings, pursuits and preferences of its guests. It is good at asking questions and listening intently to answers. Hospitality focuses attention on others.

Entertaining is always thinking about the next course. Hospitality burns the rolls because it was listening to a story.

Entertaining obsesses over what went wrong. Hospitality savors what was shared.

Entertaining, exhausted, says “It was nothing, really!” Hospitality thinks it was nothing. Really.

Entertaining seeks to impress. Hospitality seeks to bless.

But the two practices can look so similar. Two people can set the same beautiful tablescape and serve the same gourmet meal, one with a motive to impress, the other with a motive to bless. How can we know the difference? Only the second of the two would invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind to pull up a chair and sip from the stemware. Our motives are revealed not just in how we set our tables, but in who we invite to join us at the feast. Entertaining invites those whom it will enjoy. Hospitality takes all comers.

why be hospitable?

Hospitality is about many things, but it is not about keeping a perpetually orderly home. So, forgive me, Twitterverse, for my deplorable tweet. I could not have been more wrong. And may I have a do-over?

Orderly house or not, hospitality throws wide the doors. It offers itself expecting nothing in return. It keeps no record of its service, counts no cost, craves no thanks. It is nothing less than the joyous, habitual offering of those who recall a gracious table set before them in the presence of their enemies, of those who look forward to a glorious table yet to come.

It is a means by which we imitate our infinitely hospitable God.

So, three years later, here is my advice to myself as the holiday season begins: Forgo the empty pleasure of entertaining. Serve instead the high-heaped feast of hospitality, even as it has been served to you.

take a lesson from the stock pot

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"Good broth will resurrect the dead” - South American proverb

I am the Queen of Soup. I earned my title as growing grocery bills for my family of six caused me to probe the limits of left-over options. Happily, I have learned that the application of a little effort can turn one meal into many - just about anything can be boiled into savory submission.

The holidays are a productive time for the Queen of Soup, and she is equal to the challenge. There was a time when I thought the turkey carcass belonged in the trash after the holiday meal. I now know that that ruined shell, pillaged of its choicest offerings, is the secret repository of all that makes soup wonderful. Sure, it looks like something out of a horror movie, but it is culinary gold to those who will mine for it. And the Queen of Soup is just the gold-digger for the job.

Anyone who has ever made homemade turkey soup can tell you that it is a labor of love.  First, the carcass must be boiled to render the marrow. Then the broth must be strained and refrigerated so the excess fat can be removed. Then all remaining meat must be picked off of the bones to be added back into the soup. Absolute mess. Finally, after much chopping, simmering and tasting, the Queen of Soup is ready to ascend her throne and receive her accolades.

Sometimes the process takes days, so it’s not surprising that most of us are willing to part with the turkey after its headliner appearance. But long after the china and crystal have been returned to their cabinet, our family dines on a broth-laden memorial of the big meal. The Queen of Soup has a few subjects who perhaps do not value her work as they should. They have heard rumblings that other families feast on pizza the day after a big holiday meal. Yet they eat soup for a fortnight. What gives, O Queen?

I will tell you, Grumbling Subjects.  First, soup is free and pizza is not. Second, soup is healthy and pizza is not. Third (and the point of this little paean to soup-making), soup has deep spiritual truths to teach us, if only we will listen – truths that could alter the way we think about our pursuit of God. Yes, Grumbling Subjects, soup-making is a metaphysical experience. Let me tell you why.

A loaves-and-fishes thing happens when I make soup. Soup-making has taught me that time and patience render an unforeseen yield. Every turkey has way more to give than meets the eye. Each time I debone a carcass, the amount of meat still left on it astounds me. I realize now that for years I threw away two pounds of meat and two gallons of stock with every carcass that went to the landfill. That’s a couple of meals, and this Queen is on a limited budget. 

I realize I can be guilty of a similar wastefulness in the way I handle God’s Word. Sometimes I only seek to be nourished by it in ways that require little effort on my part. I seat myself at the Big Meal once a week and enjoy a generous serving of teaching. But if I take time during the week to do a little metaphorical "deboning" – by studying and meditating on a passage, by allowing it time to render its hidden treasures - the benefit to my spiritual life increases in a loaves-and-fishes way. Studying and meditating on the Word is meticulous and time-consuming work, but it renders up a feast and leaves nothing wasted.

I want to be a person who moves slowly enough to savor every morsel. I want to be a person who is methodical enough not to miss one precious bite.

You don’t have to become the Queen of Soup - I get that not everyone loves it. But be the Queen of Quiet Time. Love the Word enough to patiently and methodically render every bit of goodness it has to offer. Linger over it. Labor over it. Study and meditate. Therein is good meat that will turn spiritual beggars into royalty. Therein is good broth that will resurrect the dead.

Psalm 63:5-6

My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.

Looking for guidance on how to gain more from your Bible study? I talk here about an approach that can help.

a table of forgetful remembrance

About a week ago we gathered some “foodie” friends for what is becoming an annual tradition: Mock Thanksgiving. It’s like a dry run for a Thanksgiving that we would never actually serve to our families, an excuse to experiment with a menu that, for most of us, is set in stone for the actual day.

Mock Thanksgiving is a meal of which my mother would not approve, one in which creativity trumps tradition. The standard turkey gives way to an herb-roasted bird stuffed with onions and lemons. Ordinary mashed potatoes are usurped by garlic smashed new potatoes. In place of green beans almandine, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries and goat cheese.  And the ultimate desecration (by my mother’s East Coast reckoning): In place of bread stuffing, cornbread chorizo dressing that has never seen the inside of a bird. We dine al fresco on these foods offered to the idols of our culinary creativity, savoring every minute of this forbidden meal, this work of holiday fiction.

As much as I love Mock Thanksgiving, I have to admit that I, too, want Thanksgiving Day to follow its time-honored script. I associate certain dishes with that day and that day alone.  They may not win awards for culinary achievement, but that’s hardly the point - they taste like a homecoming. They are a remembrance of Thanksgivings past, an assembly of recipes faithfully prepared just as some dear relative made them for decades. On this day of remembrance, the very food itself is a remembrance of those who have shaped who we are.

The Bible is full of this idea of meals of remembrance, of sacred repetitions, of significant repasts. It permeates the Passover meal instituted to remind God’s people of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Roast lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread – reminders to thankfulness and watchfulness and freedom.  It permeates the Lord’s Supper – wine and broken bread – a gathering of the family of believers in which the very food itself is a remembrance of Him who has shaped who we are. Reminders to thankfulness and watchfulness and freedom.

On some level, every gathering of family around a table is a shadow of this idea of remembrance, a time when we recall our collective history, making days like Thanksgiving ones we anticipate with a mix of joy and dread, depending on who will pull up a chair to the feast. Why? Because our collective history is often dotted with land mines – difficult personalities, past hurts, broken relationships. For many of us, our Thanksgiving table will be populated by more than just our current incarnations. We will dine with a host of our past selves, clinging to the hope that familiar recipes will preserve the ties of family until the pie has been served and the door has closed behind the last guest.

Which is why days like Thanksgiving are not merely calls to remembrance but also calls to forgetfulness – no, not the forgetfulness of lost car keys or misplaced TV remotes, but the intentional forgetting of what has gone before, the setting aside of past offenses, the laying down of our claims to restitution for old wounds. We are called to a forgetful forgiveness of others – the kind our Heavenly Father practices toward us – in which we decide not to remember. Though the record of our hurts may never fade from our consciousness, we consciously set it aside. It is a deliberate forgetfulness of the offenses of others and a studied forgetfulness of the sins of our own past – a refusal to let them continue to dictate the course of our decisions and reactions.

This is hard for us. We tend to remember what should be forgotten and forget what should be remembered. We tend to make sacred repetition of the ways we have been harmed, of the ways we have harmed others. Unbelievably, we choose to dine on food sacrificed to the idols of our hurts and failures rather than on the bread of redemption and the wine of forgiveness. Mock Thanksgiving.  And yet, every table where family gathers is an invitation to dine on the forgetful remembrance that has been shown to us in Christ, a chance to embrace and to demonstrate the ministry of remembering what matters and forgetting what does not.

So if your Thanksgiving table threatens not to mirror Rockwellian bliss, consider this recipe of forgetful remembrance as part of your annual gathering:

Remember your Egypt. Remember your bondage to sin. Remember your path to freedom. Remember the deeds of the Lord, ponder his works, meditate on his mighty deeds. Like your Heavenly Father, remember mercy and set aside wrath. Not all at your table have tasted freedom.

Forget your Egypt. Forget the sins you loved more than your freedom. Forget the offenses of others against you. Forget to be angry, defensive, hurt, crippled by that which has come before. Forget as your sins have been forgotten. Not all at your table are capable of asking for mercy. Ladle it with liberality anyway.

What gratitude would flow from this exercise? What thanksgiving?  For those who have dined on the sacred, the Thanksgiving table becomes a feast of forgetful remembrance.  For forgetful remembrance is grace - the taste of a homecoming remembered, the foretaste of a homecoming yet to come. On Thanksgiving years from now when our grandchildren gather to serve this most familiar of meals, may the table still be laid with the flavors of homecoming – may we still be serving the very grace that was served for us, in which all true thankfulness finds its source. 

a lesser communion

"Thou preparest a table before me...my cup runneth over." Psalm 23:5

If you were to visit my home, you would see this sign hanging above the cook top in my kitchen:

It started off as a joke - a little irony directed at the Martha Stewart mindset that anything less than the perfect pork roast could potentially unhinge the cosmos - but as time has passed it has become less of a witticism and more of a manifesto.

When the kids were small I remember thinking that family dinners were a tool to bind us together as a family for the time we lived under the same roof. They would help Jeff and me to raise our children to adulthood with good dialogue and good nutrition. Check, and check. Family dinners were a snap back then. Now, four adolescents and their accompanying schoolwork and schedules have made shared meals more of a challenge than I ever anticipated, even with our notoriously stingy approach to activities.

But I’ll continue to fight for family dinner around our table. It is where little heads learned to bow in prayer, little hands learned to serve one another, little voices learned “please” and “thank you” and how to take turns in a conversation. It is where we learned to read the Word as a family and to talk about how it changes us. More and more, it is a place where we are all learning that we would rather be together than apart.

Friendships may wax and wane – this year’s best friend may be next year’s acquaintance because of a schedule change or a falling out, or anything that severs the fragile thread of our overlapping experience. But the people who remain constant in our lives, the relationships worthy of our deepest investments, are our family. With family, overlapping experience is not a fragile thread but a strong cord, binding us together and lending us the strength we need to navigate the years ahead.

And that’s why much depends on dinner. Though work, school and activities may pull us in different directions, nightly dinner is our chance to sit down together and strengthen the cords of family. Dinner is the time we gather to share not just a meal, but the stories of our day, our victories and losses, our observations and questions. Though it may happen at other times as well, dinner is the time of day when biblical community consistently happens in our home.

I hope that we are building at our kitchen table a bond that holds not just for the eighteen or so years we will share the same roof, but for the 60 years after those – years during which our children will navigate marriage, having children of their own, job successes and failures, moves, the decline of their parents, and their own aging as well. Whether we like them or not, our family travel the length and breadth of life with us. How much better, then, to like them? To welcome their company on that path? Yes, much depends on dinner because dinner deepens our dependence on each other. It binds us together for the long haul. And we will need each other for the years ahead.

Here is what I am coming to realize: there is only one shared table in this life more holy than that table in my kitchen. This lesser communion we gather for each night whispers of that other table: the breaking of bread, the sharing of truth, a nightly remembrance of what matters most. No, not a sacramental meal, but certainly a sacred one. This lesser communion we gather for each night differs from that other table: its gaze is fixed not backward but forward. Tonight we gather as parents and children, but one day we will gather as brothers and sisters. Tonight we hunger and thirst for food that will fill us for a time, but one day our hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. Tonight we give thanks together around a simple kitchen table, but God willing, one day we will give thanks together around a banquet table in the presence of the Lord.

I want my children there. I want my children’s children there. So, yes, much depends on dinner. No coach or choir director or church program or career gets to supersede this ritual. Whether we dine on chateaubriand or cereal, this nightly intersection of our lives means strength for today and hope for tomorrow. We will not grow weary of meeting together. A table is prepared for us. This is the place where we are fed.

Related posts:
Guarding Sabbath for our Children
Worship Together

guarding sabbath for our children

My oldest son started high school this fall. At his orientation the counselors took a portion of the program to speak to parents about the greatest challenge they see students face in school. I expected to hear about poor study habits or substance abuse, but to my initial surprise, these were not at the top of the list. Apparently, the greatest challenge presenting itself in the office of the high school guidance counselor is a growing number of kids struggling with anxiety and depression. Can you guess why? A combination of over-scheduling and sleep deprivation, linked to two main contributors: electronics use and extracurricular activities. We were encouraged as parents to go home and talk to our teenagers about setting boundaries in both these areas. Parents across the auditorium scribbled notes furiously as the counselors outlined some suggestions: limit texting, monitor bedtimes, cut back on team practices. I couldn’t help but think to myself: tonight there will be many demonstrations of teenage angst when mom shows up with her new list of suggestions.

What is unfolding at my son’s high school is a clear illustration of a spiritual truth: the need for regular periods of rest in our lives. From the earliest pages of the bible we find God instituting patterns of activity and rest – not just any kind of rest, but rest with the intent to engage in worship and community. The concept of Sabbath weaves its way through the Old Testament and the New, occupying a prominent place among the Ten Commandments and informing our understanding of Heaven. Despite its prevalence, few Christians understand or practice Sabbath as a regular part of life, and consequently, neither do their children. Christian parents bear the responsibility of teaching our children the value of rest, through our words and through our actions. Children don’t set the calendar in our homes – if they are overscheduled or sleep-deprived, the fault lies with us. How can we better discharge our duty of raising children to seek Sabbath? To value down-time to reconnect with God and family?

While I admire the high school guidance counselors’ optimism, fourteen is probably too late to start imposing boundaries on our child’s rest habits and schedule. We need a plan, and we need it early. How will we safeguard for our families the key Sabbath concepts of rest, worship, and community? Here are a few suggestions that have helped our family to honor God in our rest.

Electronics
Late-night texting and TV watching, online chatting, surfing the web – all can rob a child of rest. Children between the ages of 7 and12 require a whopping 10-11 hours of sleep each night, an age range during which most acquire the electronics to rob them of it. Parents can guard their children’s rest simply by keeping electronics in sight. We made a rule in our home that no electronics are allowed upstairs: no TV’s, computers, phones, or games in bedrooms or rooms where their use cannot be monitored. Each night, those of us who have phones leave them in a spot on the kitchen counter. These measures give us accountability to each other, keep electronics as a shared rather than an individual privilege, and force our electronics to obey our family’s Sabbath priorities of rest, worship, community. Well-rested kids bypass many of the unsavory habits of their tired counterparts: fits, backtalk, forgetfulness, drama, isolation, and yes – anxiety and depression. Guarding your child’s rest actually gives them a running start at Christlike behavior, even during adolescence.

Activities
So many to pursue, so little time. Don’t be fooled: the proliferation of activity options for children is a reflection of our cultural affluence, not of a child’s need to be well-rounded or socialized. Gobs of money are being made off of our misplaced desire to expose our kids to every possible talent path. How can we choose activities for our family in a way that doesn’t compromise Sabbath principles?

Because the four Wilkin kids are extremely close in age, our schedule and our finances forced us to limit activities to “one or none” for each child. Not all families need to impose a limit this low, but it has taught us something our grandparents probably knew: children who participate in no organized activities at all still lead lives full of activity and joy. To many parents the idea of a child on no sports team, in no music lessons, at no club meetings is completely foreign and a little frightening: Won’t they get bored? Won’t they drive me crazy lurking around the house? Won’t they miss out on an NFL career and blame me? Or, my personal favorite: Won’t other parents think I’m a bad parent? I would answer all of these questions with “Maybe, but who cares?” As is often lamented, parenting is not a popularity contest. With that in mind, here are some good (and highly unpopular) questions to ask when evaluating which activity to pursue:

1. Does it sabotage weekend down-time or worship?
2. Does it sabotage family dinners?
3. Does it sabotage bedtime?
4. Does it pull our family apart or push us together?
5. Is it an activity my child can enjoy/benefit from into adulthood?
6. Can we afford it?

Notice that “Does my child enjoy it?” is not on the list. So often I hear parents justify keeping a child in a time-sucking activity because “He loves it so much”. Kids love Skittles and Mario Kart so much, but they don’t get to decide if, when and how much to consume. Because children possess a limited range of life experience, it is difficult for them to conceive of happiness outside their current circumstance. It is our job to help them learn.

Why do we have such a hard time as parents placing limits on electronics and activities? Both electronics and activities can appeal to parents for less-than-admirable reasons. Both can serve as a babysitter or a diversion. But the appeal of activities extends even further, to our very identity as parents. We actually want to be labeled “soccer mom”, on rhinestone-studded tee shirts and coffee mugs. We carefully arrange our car decals so that every identity-marker is announced. The thought of removing or withholding our child from an activity threatens the very way we view ourselves. Maybe our view needs to adjust to something a bit higher. Families that prioritize Sabbath fix their eyes on and find their identity in Christ, recognizing that their greatest potential for missed opportunity lies not in neglecting activities but in neglecting time - lots of it - spent together as a family in worship, rest, and community with each other.

God forbid we value the discipline of a sport more than the discipline of Christian living. Both require great application of time and effort, but one is worth far more than the other. Because time is our most limited resource, how we allocate it reveals much about our hearts. Our time usage should look radically different than that of the unbelieving family. We must leave time for slow afternoons, for evening meals where we pray together and share our faith and struggles, for Sunday mornings of shared worship. God ordains Sabbath for our good and for His glory. May our homes be places where Sabbath rest is jealously guarded, that in all things God might have preeminence – even our schedules.

Ephesians 5:15-17 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
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