Jones: Equipping Families to Do Discipleship

May 4, 2009 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments

Children Desiring God Breakout Session 2
Equipping Families to Do Discipleship
Timothy Paul Jones

Download the slides for this presentation.
We have a responsibility for being the primary disciple-makers in our homes.
God wants families to engage in cosmic warfare.  Our families are not equipped to do so.

The testimony of Scripture:
(1) God has called parents to serve as primary disciple makers of their children (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:18-21; Psalm 78:5; Proverbs 1:8-9; Ephesians 6:4)
(2)    The church is responsible to look after “spiritual orphans” while passionately seeking to disciple their parents (On God’s compassion for the fatherless, see James 1:27; Isaiah 1:17).
(3)    Where God’s kingdom is present, generations are drawn together, not driven apart (Malachi 4:6; Luke 1:17; cf. Isaiah 3:5)
(4)    What you do for God beyond your home will typically never be greater than what you practice with God within your home (1 Timothy 3:4-5; 5:1, 8).

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Michael: Mobilizing Men for Ministry to Children

May 4, 2009 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments

Children Desiring God Break-out Session 1
Mobilizing Men for Ministry to Children
David Michael

One of my passions is to see men involved in children’s ministry.

Bethlehem Baptist statistics:
Our congregation is 30% male and 60% female.  Our nursery has 18% male workers.  Our kindergarten—2nd grade group has 34% male workers.  By 5th grade, our classes are approximately 50/50.  43% of our teachers are male.  23% of our team leaders are male.  This is more of an administrative role, and men seem to be less detail oriented.  Of our male staff, 19% are single, 69% are married, and 57% have children of their own.

Why mobilize men?
(1)    Because men need to obey the Word as much as women do.

(2)    Because our sons and daughters need the benefit of seeing biblical masculinity up close.
“The most important institutions of moral instruction—the family, the church, and the school, are failing to turn out responsible young men”—Al Mohler

Our boys are missing the incentives that they once had to rise up and be like men.

Our boys are missing training. Our men do not fully understand what it means to be a biblical man and pass this on to their children.

Our boys are missing a biblical vision of true masculinity. “As young men, sometimes all we need is a picture of what we could become”—Eric Ludy

Effective ministry to children and youth is effective ministry to men. Continue Reading…

Ware: “There Is None Besides Me”

May 4, 2009 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

bwareChildren Desiring God Plenary Session 2
“There is None Besides Me”: Biblical Foundations for the Centrality of God
Bruce Ware

Q.  Are there more gods than one?  No.  There is only one true God.

This is one of the most comprehensive claims of Scripture.
Exodus 8:10—“there is no one like the LORD our God.”
Exodus 15:11—“Who is like you?”
Deuteronomy 4:35, 39—“There is no other besides him.”
2 Samuel 7:22—“There is none like You, and there is no God besides You.”
Psalm 86:8-10—“There is no one like You among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.”
Jeremiah 10:6-7—“There is none like You.”
Isaiah 40:18:25—“To whom will you liken me?”
Isaiah 43:10-11—“Before me there was no God formed and there will be none after me.”
Isaiah 44:6-8—“Who is like Me?  Is there any other Rock?”
Isaiah 45:5-7—“From the rising to the setting of the sun… there is no one besides Me.”
Isaiah 45:18-19—“I am the LORD, and there is none else.”
Isaiah 45:21-22—“There is none except Me.”
Isaiah 46:5—“To whom would you liken Me?”
Isaiah 46:9-10—“I am God, and there is no other.”

3 Themes at the heart of the Scriptures and their declaration of God’s exclusivity and incomparability.
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John Piper: The God Centeredness of God

April 30, 2009 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

piperChildren Desiring God Plenary Session 1
The God-Centeredness of God
John Piper

First caution regarding indoctrination: We must be careful not to simply indoctrinate children without a due concern that they should also have a good reason for believing them.  Indoctrination tries to preserve a viewpoint from group to group or generation to generation without also helping them to “test all things and hold fast to what is good.”  You shouldn’t just be passing on blocks of information.  You should also be thinking about the process of how they learn to think about those truths.

Second caution regarding contextualization: It is amazingly helpful to think about how we do things with children first.  Then, this helps us understand something about how to do ministry and missions. Contextualization is a hot buzzword today.  Our task in contextualizing for kids is not merely contextualization as typically understood but concept creation (and with adults concept destruction).

When I say, for example, a ministry needs to be “God-centered,” everyone agrees.  But when I talk about the God-centeredness of God, people shake their heads “No.”  Do you feel more loved by God when he makes much of you or when he helps you make much of him forever?

Why is it so wrong for us to be self-exalting and so right for God to be self-exalting?  We find examples of God exalting himself throughout the Bible:  Ephesians 1:5; Psalm 19:1; Jeremiah 13:11; Psalm 106:7; Ezekiel 20:14; 1 Samuel 12:20; Romans 15:8; 2 Corinthians 5:15; Philippians 2:9; 1 Peter 4:11; Acts 12:23; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Habakkuk 2:14; Revelation 21:23

So, this creates a crisis in people’s lives.  The idea of self-adulation is a huge moral hindrance to people believing in the God of the Bible.

John 11:1-4 (ESV):
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

He lets Lazarus die, because he loves them.  How can this be love?

The main way that God loves us is not by making much of us or by sparing us trouble, but by making much of himself.  Love does whatever it has to do to provide the beloved with the deepest and longest satisfaction.  God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving thing.

We’re not into indoctrinating.  We don’t merely do contextualization but create categories.  All of life should be God-centered.  A good litmus test of whether or not you are God centered is whether or not you can exalt in the God centeredness of God.

David and Sally Michael: Nurturing the Faith of the Next Generation

April 30, 2009 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

Children Desiring God  Pre-Conference, Session 3
Nurturing the Faith of the Next Generation: A Heart Response Centered on the Gospel
David and Sally Michael

Our goal is to reach a child’s heart through the instruction of his word (Colossians 1:9-10).
“It is your job to make clear how the truth you are teaching is practiced experientially.”—Lou Priollo

5 Levels of Learning—Lawrence O. Richards, Creative Bible Teaching, (Moody Press).
(1)    ROTE—Ability to repeat without thought of meaning
(2)    RECOGNITION—Ability to recognize Biblical concepts; comprehension; can answer a multiple-choice question.  Often this is as far as we get, but we must go beyond facts to meaning and application.
(3)    RESTATEMENT—Ability to express or relate concepts to biblical system of thought.  Can answer “why” questions about the story.
(4)    RELATION—Ability to relate biblical truth to life and see what a biblical response would be.  Can make a connection to one’s own life.  Can answer the question, “What difference does this make in my life?”
(5)    REALIZATION/RESPONSE—Actualizing response: to apply biblical truths in daily life.  Application can best be done by questioning.  This is the way that they learn to think and understand.  Share from your own life experience.  Know your children, and it will help you guide them.  Children need to know what they need to do in response to what you have heard today.  This is a knowing that possesses us.

We must be faithful with the truth—beginning with the truth—then affecting the heart and emotions, and then moving the will.

Parents Seizing Opportunities
Parents are in the best position to help children apply to truth to the trials of life, that is, the homework that God gives them.  God gives parents a unique position of influence in the lives of children.  Parents must be clear on what their children are being taught so that they are in a position to apply these things to their lives.  Parents who love God and his word seek to bring God into every situation.  Take home sheets can be the difference between life and death for a child, because these are words of life for the child to believe and live or disbelieve and experience judgment.  One of the best ways to bring a child to the point of response is to respond to it myself.  This may require humbling myself, admitting my need, etc.  One of the privileges we have when we teach children is that the Scriptures grip us.

Teach In Such a Way that Children Understand What Proper Responses Are
It is so much better for a child to learn a heart lesson though it cause her temporary pain than to experience eternal pain.  Experience is a good teacher—both bad and good experiences.  God brings these life experiences in order to teach our children that He is good.

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