Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
This Week on Seminary Dropout…
Natalie Frisk is the curriculum pastor at The Meeting House Church in Toronto, Canada, where she and a team create kids’ and youth curricula for ages 0–18 used by churches worldwide. Frisk is a sought-after speaker on topics of youth and children’s ministry, spiritual formation, and discipleship, and her work has been published in Canadian Youth Workers Magazine and at the ReKnew and Pangea blogs. Frisk has a master’s degree in theological studies from McMaster Divinity College and serves on the board of Be in Christ Church of Canada. She is married to Sam, mom to Erin, and child of God. She loves Jesus, coffee, and samosas.
Children and youth will just “catch” the faith of their parents, right?
Not necessarily. Talking with kids about Jesus no longer comes naturally to many Christian parents. In Raising Disciples, pastor Natalie Frisk helps us reconnect faith and parenting, equipping parents to model what following Jesus looks like in daily life. Filled with authenticity, flexibility, humor, and prayer, Frisk outlines how parents can make openings for their children to experience God in their daily lives.
As curriculum pastor at The Meeting House, one of the largest churches in Canada, Frisk calls parents who follow Christ to ask the big questions about the spiritual formation of children and teens. In practical and thoughtful ways, she equips parents to disciple their kids in various stages of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Raising Disciples will awaken parents to the possibly of Jesus-centered parenting and encourage us to engage in the lost art of discipling our own kids. – From the Publisher
Hey Shane, I tune into your podcast now and again. It’s always thought provoking. So…thanks!
I’ve got two young kids, and my wife and I are trying to learn how to disciple them well, so this episode piqued my interest immediately. I found it encouraging and helpful. That said, there was one moment, about halfway through, when you shared a charming story about your daughter. When she was 2 or 3, she asked you why God made sharks. In essence, you interpreted her question to be one about evil. “Why would God create these things that can hurt us!?” It’s a great question, and a great example of a challenging parenting moment. But, in all honesty, I was disappointed to hear your response, particularly as a thoughtful, faithful, seminary-educated follower of Jesus (and influential podcaster extraordinaire!). You said, “No-one…no theologian has a really great, cut and dry answer for that. My theological education is moot in that situation except to say God is good, he is with us, and is not complicit with evil.” The reason why I found that answer so disappointing – and unhelpful for our kids – is that there IS a simple answer: the reason why people sometime die in a seemingly mysterious and sad event like a shark attack is Sin. (I capitalize it simply as a way to differentiate between our personal, individual sin – little ‘s’ – and the overarching reality of evil and darkness in our world – big ‘S’ Sin) Now, sin is not a particularly easy subject to talk about with our 3 year olds! But as you and Natalie mentioned later in the podcast, our kids are far more attuned to spiritual realities than we give them credit for! And hear me out…I’m not trying to be holy-rolling legalist here. I’m simply pointing out that the reason there is death (by shark attack and other variety of reasons!), the reason that the world is broken, the reason that your daughter – just like you and me – will one day grow up to do things that are not part of God’s design for shalom is because Sin has broken our world. The distinction between “sin” and “Sin” here is crucial: you wouldn’t want your daughter to believe that a shark attacked a swimmer because that swimmer was sinful. But we do need our kids to understand that God made the world perfect; a place where humans and animals thrived together (there were no shark attacks originally!). But our rebellion was so serious that it broke not just our relationship with God, but also our relationship with each other and with God’s perfectly created world. Yes, we sin individually, when we do not live up to our image-bearing potential by disobeying God – but the catastrophe of sin is bigger than our individual disobedience. The entire creation groans for God to make all things new because Sin, on a universal scale, has screwed things up. But thankfully, as you well know, that is not the end of the story. God has, and is, making things right in and through Jesus. I look forward to more of the content you provide, and just wanted to chime in here on something I think is important for all of us to remember. There is a simple (though not easy to digest) answer to your daughter’s question, and many theologians and lay-people alike are clear on it. And we all need to be. Why would God send Jesus to save us – and why would he want and need to renew his creation – if there was not an epic cause for it’s sideways-ness? Without an understanding of our rebellion and it’s wide-ranging impact, our kids won’t understand that Jesus is way more than a very, very moral dude who we should model our behavior after. We need him desperately – personally and corporately – to remedy the sin problem that has impacted everything. Hopefully we can be bold enough to speak truthfully and lovingly about the unpopular word (sin!) with our children and one another. Your daughter’s question was indeed a tough one, and it is important for parents to be able to say “I don’t know”. But in this case, we do know the answer. And it will only help them understand their world and Jesus’s role in it if we answer it honestly and correctly.
Chris
Hey Chris, thanks for listening and thanks for thinking on this so deeply.
I agree with you on the whole about sin. I’d frame it in creation itself being corrupted in the fall. My only pushback would be to say that while you feel like the answer is simple it took you a long paragraph to explain, and my daughter was 2 or 3 yrs old at the time of that story. As she gets older she’ll be able to fill in the details and the nuances of those concepts but now I feel like knowing the goodness of God is a good start and foundation.
Thanks again for interacting!