Yesterday I had a great conversation as I was riding in the car with a dear friend.  The result of the conversation led me to post the following on the Jacob’s Well Facebook page:

When we overprotect our children by withdrawing them from the world, not only are we failing to disciple them, but we are telling Jesus that we don’t believe that he loves them as much as we do.

As you might imagine this elicited some interesting responses, which forced me into more thought on the subject, I want to share some of those thoughts with you here.  It all began with a conversation that I had with a dear friend who is going with his whole family, including his two children ages 5 and 3, to a country in the Middle East for the summer.  This is a country that our government would consider too dangerous for travel, a place where kidnapping is not uncommon. My friend has lived in this country before and knew some Christian workers who were kidnapped there a couple of years ago.  These friends of his have never been found, but their children, who were kidnapped with them, were recently discovered in another part of that country being raised as Muslims.  As we talked, he shared some of the fear he had that something could happen to his kids.

Over the years he has had to come to terms with the fact that what God has called him to do with his life could place him and his family in dangerous situations. As we continued talking we both expressed a desire to protect our kids from harm but we also recognized that sometimes Jesus calls us to take big risks, even with our children.  What we  have to remember in those situations is that Jesus loves our kids even more than we do.

This made me think about some of the ways that we as Christians overprotect our children.  I even know of some parents who won’t allow their children play with their own cousins because they go to public school. They believe that in public school these cousins will be exposed to things from which they want to protect their children and that makes them a “bad influence.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is important for parents to set boundaries in order to protect their kids, like not letting them watch certain TV shows or movies.  As Christ followers we are called to protect our children IN the world, but I do not believe we are called to withdraw them FROM the world. When we withdraw our children from the world I believe we fail to really disciple them, because we send them the wrong message.  By our actions we teach them that knowledge and morality are our highest goals and that people who don’t share our worldview really aren’t  all that important.  We may give lip service to evangelism, but it really doesn’t matter what we say, because our actions essentially teach them that God prefers people who think and act like us because we are better than those who know less or who are less moral.

The more I think about it the more I wonder if some of the reasons that we overprotect our children are rooted in a lack of trust in God to protect them.  I understand that there are real dangers out there, but does that mean that we should withdraw from those who desperately need Jesus? If we as Christ followers don’t allow our kids to engage with kids that come from broken and hurting families then who will? Are Christians called to abandon kids who come from bad or immoral families?  I think that maybe it is just easier for us to disengage our kids from relationships with kids who desperately need Jesus than it is to have some uncomfortable conversations with our own kids because they have been exposed to things we wish they hadn’t been.  I think that all to often Christians find it easier to disengage from real discipleship and the great commission than to trust that Jesus will protect us and our families in a world that is fraught with danger.

In Matthew 16:26 Jesus says that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Does this apply to our children too?  I don’t have all the answers.  However, I do think that we need to ask some of these hard questions.  How can I be salt and light in the lives of messed up people, who have real problems, if I won’t even let my kids play with their kids or if I label their kids as a “bad influence.”

At what point do I just need to do everything I can to teach my children what is right and true and good and then simply let go and trust God?  Trust God, knowing that I’m going to have to be more involved in my kids lives to protect them IN the world than I would have to be to withdraw them from the wold, knowing that somewhere along the road I am going to have to have some difficult conversations because they have been exposed to things that I wish they hadn’t been exposed to, believing that in the end, Jesus loves them even more than I do and trusting that He will protect them in the midst of a world fraught with danger.

Last Sunday at Jacob’s Well Church we introduced our new sermon series on the book of Acts. In doing so we expressed our desire to reevaluate the way we do church on Sunday mornings. We want to be willing to defy the conventional wisdom and to think biblicaly rather than conventionally.

We no longer want to be satisfied with simply doing things because our church culture tells us that’s what we’re supposed to do or because that’s the way its always been done. Our hope is to become a community that is not satisfied with simply listening to someone teach the Bible, we want to be saturated in God’s Word, we want to wrestle with it and discuss the difficult implications for us as individuals and as a community. So to that end we are making two changes beginning this week, changes that I hope will make us better followers of Jesus.

The first change is that we are asking everyone at Jacob’s Well to read four chapters of Acts each and every day for the duration of our series on Acts (which could be awhile). Because acts is 28 chapters long, reading 4 chapters a day for 7 days will enable people to read through the entire book each week. Our hope in doing this is that we will really get to know the book of acts. So often we are satisfied with just getting through our Bible reading obligation that we don’t allow the word to sink in and penetrate our hearts. I’m excited about the prospect of our church digging deep in God’s Word together and I can’t wait to see how this is going to transform us both as individuals and as a community. For too long we have allowed our expectations of what God will do through our church gatherings to be much too low. By really digging into God’s word together over an extended period of time we will raise these expectations.

The Second change we are making is that beginning with this Sunday’s message we will have a discussion time at the end of the sermon each week to talk about the implications of the text for us as individuals and as a community. We want to model our belief in the priesthood of the believer, acknowledging that we all have something to add to the discussion. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul tells the Corinthian Church that when they gather each one should bring a hymn, a lesson, or a revelation for the building up of the body. Our great hope is that through the strength and wisdom of the entire body we will better learn to put God’s word into practice.

As a new church we are committed to obeying what God tells us in James 1:22-25 where it says “be doers of the word, and not just hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

- Andy Ramos