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A little night theology
Okay, so as you may be aware we are working at this moment on our first Hillsong Kids Curriculum. So that has me up late writing content and messages and scripts and stuff.
The one site I visit regularly is Desiring God which is the teaching ministry of John Piper whenever I need a shot of Theology. He pretty much has everything he has ever written, thought about writing, or even thought about thought about writing online which makes it a fantastic resource to check out some theology points. Another I will check is Koinonia House (Chuck and Nancy Missler).
So I was over there searching Desiring God for some insight on Adam and Eve. Trying to figure out how to express what happened in the garden to kids.
And I came across quite simply a mind expanding little article that has given me a perspective on what we are doing for our kids as we seek to raise them to follow Jesus.
Preaching As Concept Creation, Not Just Contextualization
As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.We must pray and preach so that a new mental framework is created for seeing the world. Ultimately, this is not our doing. God must do it. The categories that make the biblical message look foolish are deeply rooted in sinful human nature. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he cheep generic viagra is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned†(1Corinthians 2:14)….
That uses some serious big word with many syllables, but here’s what I got from it.
I strive to present everything to kids in context… like explaining how life differs from the time of Jesus, who would be a modern day tax collector, stuff like that. But what Piper suggests is that (if you read the entire article), is that we need to create structure in the minds of our kids to support that context.
The cool thing is we get to work with kids, the easiest humans on earth to create new paradigms simply because they don’t have to unlearn anything, they are completely open to new ideas.
Piper goes on to say that it is the work of the Holy Spirit, which is also a good thing because I wouldn’t have a clue how to start.
If you haven’t fallen asleep reading this post yet 
you might just be wired like me! So go read the article and if you’re brave, post a comment below with an example of concepts our kids need to know!
Romans 8:35-39.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
I’ve always felt that in a culture of abandonment and divorce; that it is imperative that my kids know that NOTHING could make God stop loving them. This is easy to say, but not backed up by anything they’ll ever see in their lifetime.
Jonathan, unconditional love should be given to the children firstly by their parents, but it’s very hard to show love when the child doesn’t please you. And this is why many children don’t receive it from their parents.
Note that I said “show love”, and not love, since all parents love their children, but only few know how to effectively show their love to them.
Lack of unconditional love makes it hard for the children to understand and experience God’s love, and also makes it hard for them to deal with anger.
One concept that I have been trying to get through to the children, is exactly how big the universe is. Or rather, that it is so big, that we cannot know how big it is. I have found that quite a few concepts can really be grasped once they have got that there is a more to the universe than we can ever know.
1/ There is an attitude that all struggle with at some point, that we are the center of it all. When really, we are only a tiny part of a tiny part.
2/ Once they grasp the concept of the scale of the universe, the idea that God loves me more than i can imagine.. well the bigger we teach them to imagine, the bigger they’ll see God’s love as!
3/ Something that seem like a massive devide to us, say the Grand canyon… well when you look at it from Gods perspective, it’s not even a scratch, in fact you need a magnifying glass to see it!
The big concept at the moment that is challenging a number of our very churched kids is that it doesn’t matter what you know but who you know. Knowing all Jesus parables is great but it doesn’t count if you don’t know Jesus! This is a big foundation that is fun to convey and challenging even to our kids.