Compelled for the Next Generation

We have every week an average of 102 kids from birth to fifth grade check in to our children's ministry. Our mission is to partner with parents to make disciples of their children for the glory of God and the joy of all people. And so that looks like specific classes for kids on Sunday mornings where we are intentionally teaching them scripture and who God is and what community looks like.

and then coming alongside parents and supporting them as they disciple their children. They are amazing. They are energetic. They're fun. They're curious. They have amazing questions, and that has been one of my favorite parts. I am compelled to continue to invest in Redemption Parker because of the impact I've already seen it make in the lives of its members and also children specifically. Investing in the next generation,

by different means such as a building will help us meet the needs of children more specifically. Things like having appropriately sized chairs for them to sit in, things that we can't do now in the space that we have, we will be able to really help children belong in a new building.

spiritually significant moment within the youth. We just had our youth retreat and it was wonderful. We spent so much time together. It was freezing outside, but we still played games outside. We worshipped. We had multiple leaders who spoke. We had lots of breakout time. Probably the most moving piece of that is before we dismissed everyone to go home.

We had everyone wait in the chapel and we called each kid out one by one and a leader would just ask them, how are you doing? How can I pray for you? And then we just spent probably about an hour praying for kids as they came out. There is so much spiritual hunger and there are gonna be a lot of voices telling them which way that they should take that spiritual hunger and so I'm excited to, with the rest of the leaders, point them back to truth and to the Lord. What excites me about the future of RP and this compel specifically for our youth is that

You can point to pretty much any person who is a believer and say that at some point someone decided to invest in them. This is a place where you can be seen, known, and loved, and at the same time we're pointing them back to the truth and the goodness of the gospel.

So we've had seasons where we're the recipients of other people's mentoring and prayer and support and counsel, and then seasons that we're able to offer that. And that is a culture that's really promoted at redemption. And there's something really powerful about just sitting down and asking questions and hearing the pain points, the difficulties, the struggles and the sufferings of those around us as they try to raise kids or as they try to...

deal with the blocks that are between them and their marriage. In the time that we've been at RP, there is a depth of community, which is a gift to a world that is just drowning in loneliness and drowning in disconnection. And so the thought that that community impact could be greater with possibly a building that we can use seven days a week and just more impact and more events that we can reach people. I think we have this treasure of community and everywhere I go.

In our town, I see lonely, disconnected people and kind of feel like I'm eating at a feast and there's all these hungry people and so we have a feast of community that excites me the most about our culture at Redemption. I'm compelled and driven by the need to build a Christian kingdom and community that the next generation can be excited.

Deuteronomy 6 page 58. In this series, our hope is, as we are at this crossroads moment in the life of our church, is we're pressing on to what God is calling us to. We are pressing on, fueled by, compelled by the love of Christ. And so that the aim and the goal is that everyone that would in any way, shape or form call Redemption Park or their church home, or that's the church I go to, that there would be

100 % engagement that you would lean in into this moment and be a part of what God is calling this church too. So that's our main goal. Our secondary goal is to move forward in faith and in providing to go deeper, wider and forward to build a building. Our goal is $4.5 million for that. I just wanted to say that last week on Sunday night when the weather was much, much better than this, we had our

Advanced Commitment Night. And so about a hundred of you went out there and we prayed at the land, we worshiped, we thanked God for what He was doing. And then just in an incredible way, those that went first really went first sacrificially. I just want to say, because we want 100 % engagement, we're not telling any numbers yet, because that'll be on March 29th when all of us can make our commitments. But those that led out first...

have led out in a tremendous way. You should be encouraged as you think about making your engagement on March 29th. So, yeah, just wanted to give you a quick update on that. We know that in the Bible that Jesus loves the little children. He has a particular affection for the youngest image bearers. You can read about this in Matthew 18, Matthew 25, and other places.

And as we looked at this compelled initiative, we looked at this particular week and this particular message and the reason for this week that we are compelled for the next generation as probably the major catalyst for what we feel God is calling us to do, to be a church that is compelled to reach one more, one more generation. When I was in seminary, I studied in addition just the general pastoral ministry, I studied

missiology. That's just the theology of mission. How does the gospel spread across language and culture and nations and generations? And so when you do that, you kind of, you go into a place and you try to figure out what are the idols of that culture and then also what are the pathways or keys that unlock the gospel in that culture. So,

First went overseas to Japan, but I was working with American military, and so I had to learn military language. It really is their own language, their own culture, their own values, and then I could begin to do ministry among the military. When we moved to the Czech Republic, I had to learn Czech culture and language and history and learn what are the pathways to bring the gospel there. For example, as a man trying to reach other men in the Czech Republic, I learned

that I needed to learn how to enjoy having a good beer. So I would hang out at the pub and that's where Czechs will talk about spiritual things. For the youth, it might be at a dodgeball game, but for Czechs, it's at the pub. When we moved back here to Parker, Colorado, the idea was we would probably be moving overseas again soon, but it didn't take long to realize that...

Actually, from a missiological perspective, there was a massive need in our community that 67 % of our neighbors marked on the census that they have no religion whatsoever, that less than 5 % of our neighbors are connected in any way to a gospel preaching church. And then you start to think, okay, well, what is the pathway to unlock the gospel here? And this question...

came to my mind as I was preparing this week and it was this, what if the most important thing about our lives and about our church is not what we do, but who we raise? I'll say it again, what if the most important thing we do in our lives and our church is not what we do or let me say that again, what if the most important thing about our lives and about our church is not what we do, but who we raise? I do think it is

pathway to the gospel for so many of our neighbors. People love their children here. They might love their children out of order and when you have disordered loves, when you love your children out of order, then they become idols and you crush them or they crush you. They make terrible gods, but they love their children. So how do we come alongside them and help them? How do we come alongside one another and help one another? See, there is a promise

and there is a curse in our community. And the promise of Parker, Colorado is come to Parker and you and your family, especially your kids, can have it all. There's all sorts of sports. You can play baseball and soccer and basketball. There's all sorts of travel teams and there's all sorts of other clubs and dance and gymnastics and chess clubs and mathletes and private schools and good public schools and charter schools.

And homeschools, you can do it all. You can send them to early college. You can do it all here. And that seems like a promise, but it turns into a curse because the curse is not only can you do it all, there's a cultural pressure on our neighbors and on ourselves because we breathe the same air. There's a cultural pressure that says this, make sure you do do it all. Make sure you provide everything for your kids.

Make sure that they get every opportunity. And then there's just pressure upon pressure and pressure because there's so much. And what we find in this disordered love kind of culture we live in, that that kids are being worshiped instead of discipled. We give it all. We lay down our lives. We're constantly moving across town like taxi drivers to get them from one place to the other. I love this quote. I've been saying this quote a lot.

people during this compelled initiative. One of my favorite philosophers and theologians, an Irish guy by the name of Oz Guinness, he says this, the trouble is that as modern people we have too much to live with and too little to live for. And I thought that captures Parker Colorado. We have too much to live with. There's so much and not enough to live for.

We feel like we're juggling all the balls. Juggle the balls, juggle the sports and the activities and the academics and make sure you go to the right school so you can get the right job and make the right money and marry the right people and do the right sports and travel to the right things. And you're juggling all these balls. And again, this is the cultural air we breathe. So we feel this pressure as well. But maybe there's even more because in our mindset, maybe you come in here, you're juggling the balls and you're like, we got to make...

because we got to make sure we get our kids fully complete. We got to throw one more ball in there. Make sure they have the God ball so you can throw God and sports and academics and all the activities and play dates and all that stuff. And it just is overwhelming. And eventually you feel like you're just going to drop the ball. The good news is that God is not just another ball to juggle today. Today's passage is

It's going to be challenging, but I hope ultimately freeing. It's challenging because it resets a whole paradigm for our church. It's going to say, stop juggling the balls. Stop going after all the things. And it's going to be freeing because ultimately if we can arrive to what God's Word has us today, we'll feel like, there's some pressure that's off. That's my hope. My hope is that you would be encouraged today, especially

if you feel that pressure, if you feel like you can't keep the balls all in the air. Well, if you have your Bible, it's Deuteronomy chapter six, one of the most famous passages in all of the Old Testament. In it, it has a prayer that observant Jews today will still pray twice a day. Some say it's the most prayed prayer in the history of humanity. We'll pick it up in verse one. It says,

These are the commands decrees and laws the lord your god directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you're crossing the jordan to possess. So let me give you some context. This is deuteronomy the deuteronomy that's that that means twice or or second law. It's the second giving of the law. So after israel comes out of egypt and they wander that they get the the law given to him the ten commandments and others in in exodus 20

They are faithless and so God does not let them go into the promised land and that generation now has passed away and now they are standing on the edge of the promised land the land that we'll see is flowing with milk and honey this land of blessing and opportunity of promise from God as they're standing on the the precipice of that land God has Moses give a second law that's Deuteronomy the second law to give it to the new generation

So that's the context. then it says in verse two, so that so observe these so that you your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you may may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you and so that you may enjoy long life. He gives them these

these laws not to oppress them or to hold them back with but he gives them this command from one generation to the next generation to the next generation. You see that in the text. So again I said this thought this this week faith is not something that just happens to you. Faith is something that should happen through you. Okay so again faith is not something that just happens to you but should happen through you.

Now we get this in almost every area, but in our ultra postmodern or even post postmodern world, sometimes you'll hear people say, well, I'm not going to force my faith on any of my kids. I'm just going to let them grow up and choose for themselves, which is dumb because here's why it's dumb. You wouldn't do that with any other area of your life. like, well, I'm not going to force math on my daughter. I'm going to grow up and when she's older, she can decide what math is for her. I'm not going to...

I'm not going to teach my kids how to read because I don't want to force my privilege on them. No, of course not. If it's true, you are meant to be a conduit, not a cul-de-sac of faith, just like we talked about a few weeks ago. Love should not stop with us, but flow through us, and it flows to our children. So, says, make sure you pass this on. Make sure you prioritize the next generation as you go from one.

to the next, to the next with these laws. And he says, here Israel, and be careful to obey. Why? So that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors promised you. Again, this is the whole point of the law. The law is not to

constrict our joy and our flourishing but to lay out a pathway from God for our joy and for our flourishing. You have to stop thinking that God doesn't have your best in mind. He designed us and He designed us to flourish and His law was meant to lay out for them flourishing so that they go well with you, that you may flourish and increase greatly in the land flowing with milk and honey. And then He comes to

most famous prayer in the Old Testament at least, says this, hear, O Israel. That word hear there doesn't just mean listen up. It has this implication hear and obey. Apply this to your life. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Now that phrase there is not merely a proof text for monotheism. That's not all it's doing there.

there's one God. We know that there is one God, but what it actually translates to is the Lord. Yahweh, our God, the Yahweh is one. What is he saying? He's saying that the Lord is not just one of many things that you should add to your life, one of the balls. It's not even just saying that the Lord is one as if the Lord should be the number one priority in your life. That's not what it's saying. It's saying the Lord is total, complete, comprehensive.

The Lord is the paper that your priorities go on. It is all encompassing. When you understand this, now you can begin to understand how to reorder your lives. This passage, this message is not so much a parenting message as much as a priorities message. Is the Lord one? Is He all encompassing? Is it the filter by which you judge and decide everything else in your life and your

If that sounds familiar, because Jesus quotes it in all of the Gospels. He says the entire law is summed up in this, that you love

Lord your guard with all your heart soul mind and strength and then he quotes Leviticus 19 and your neighbor as yourself if you do these things you are walking rightly before the Lord Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength but then he says impress them on your children or the ESV says teach them diligently again we are commanded to pass on the faith to be a

conduit of the faith to the next generation. This is impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk on the road. He says there's there's only two places where you need to really talk to your kids about the Lord inside the house and outside the house. So wherever you're at there if you're in one of those two places this is a moment for you to impress

upon your children the truth of God. And then he says there's only two times where you need to do this as well. When you lie down and when you get up when it's daylight and when it's dark outside check yourself and be like oh now is the time. Is it light outside? Yes. Then impress these things about your kids. Is it dark? Yes. Now is the time. Do you see it's supposed to be the the air of your of the culture of your home is one that you talk about and celebrate.

the things of God, the truth of God, who God is. You have conversations and those conversations look different depending on the age of your kids. But there is an intentionality here. And that again looks different at different seasons, but there's a constancy, an intentionality that goes with this. says, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Today, all Orthodox Jews will have the teflon on their wrists and on their foreheads. But you can think of it more like, well, remember the book of Revelation, the mark on the hand and the mark on the head. What did it teach? what you do and what you think about. The law of the Lord should be worked out in our lives and what we do and how we think. Just this constant kind of focus. Again, the Lord once...

his people to flourish in the land flowing with milk and honey and to do so with so much cultural pressure from all the Canaanite gods that surround them that they would have to be ultra focused and shouldn't we as well? It says write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. It is not easy passing on the faith of the next generation.

And by the way, your kids are not saved by your faith, but God delights to use means for ends. And one of the means that God delights to use across time and space is the faith of the family passing on from one generation to the next. God wants our faith to be like setting up kindling around their hearts so that when the Holy Spirit comes and sparks a flame, it lights on fire. This is

our role. So, compelled by Christ's love, how should we, as a church and as parents, make disciples of the next generation? I think this passage calls us to consider the priorities of our home. Is God the one thing? Is a relationship with God the one thing, the paper where all the other priorities go on? Or

is God the one thing until something cooler comes along. God's the one thing, but what really matters is that you do really, really well in school.

See, I think we can betray ourselves by our actions and betray our words. We can tell our kids, hey, you God's the most important, but you know what's really important is that you become a professional baseball player. And so we're going to reorganize our whole lives around that. And so let's just talk about that for a moment. Your son's not becoming a professional baseball player. Rick tells me this all the time, and he coaches baseball and he was almost one.

but only 0.03 % of high school athletes will become professionals. But let's just say you do all the things, you travel to all the places. He's awesome. He does become, in fact, becomes an all-star, becomes the greatest of all time.

But you have not made the one thing the one thing. And Jesus says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? That would be a tragedy. To have your son in the Hall of Fame, but not in heaven with you. Again, we don't control the faith and there are plenty of believing Christian athletes. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it would be very, very difficult if the priorities of our home are not the one thing. It's hard.

There's no joy and no pain like raising children. So the second thing are you, you know, as we consider the priorities, are we partnering with the church to reach the next generation? We need to partner with the church, our student, our student volunteers and our youth leaders and the Sunday school teachers, they can speak into your children's hearts in ways that you can't.

Some of you are like, no, no, my kid will tell me everything and anything. Like, no, they won't. Let me ask you this. Did you tell your parents anything and everything? Well, no, because they were dorks. I'm like, well, you're the dork now. And they don't want to talk to you about these things. But we have people that love them and will talk to them. So the first one is priorities. Second one is the rhythms of your home. Are the rhythms of your home such that that that

The things of God are talked about that Jesus is celebrated. And again, that can look different for all sorts of different people. There are useful and helpful tools out there for some people like devotions and stuff like that that you could read. I never did that. I was a terrible devotion guy for several reasons. I was like, these are poorly written in my opinion. I have too much theology classes in from seminary. I'm like, no, that's heresy or

My kid will say something like that's heretical. We have a heretic in our home, Jennifer. Can we deal with this? But we but we did make it a rhythm, just a conversation of our home. Like it was a constant. What do you think about that? What do you know about that? And of course, as they get older, it becomes less didactic and more just like, let me ask you a question. and then biting your tongue when they say something crazy, that's OK. That's OK, because there's just

conversation that is flowing in the home. It said in our text, it says, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk on the road. We don't spend a lot of time walking on the road now, but you probably do spend a lot of time in your car. Is that a place where the Lord can begin to work and have conversation? My wife loved to drive my daughters to school in high school before they got their license because she loved to talk to them and to...

And I was like, should ride their bike to school. And they're like, no one rides their bike to school. I was like, I rode my bike to school. You can ride your bike to school. But Jennifer took advantage of that and talked to them and prayed with them in the road. You spend a lot of time with your kid in the road. We actually, one time we did a road trip and we were driving down to Florida and all the whole East Coast. And we had on repeat Shyland's lyrical theology.

Christian rap and and if you don't know the album, it's great because it's systematic theology in each song be like, okay kids Let me talk to you about the active obedience of Christ and what that means and how that is credited to your account And they learned systematic theology in the car. I'm just giving you some ideas here It says when you lie down and when you get up when my kids were little I a lot of my ministry was on base in Japan and

But they were homeschooled so they could stay up late and I'd come home and I would put them down probably the greatest for me the greatest time with my children and discipleship was just reading to them and I took advantage of their selfish little hearts that are like we don't want to go to sleep so read more theology to us dad let me ask you a thousand questions like it was just it would flow into these conversations and it started with like the Jesus storybook Bible or

or another age appropriate. went through Narnia and the Wingfeather series and we went through The Hobbit. So many books. I read Harry Potter to them. So some of you can leave now if you like. But we had conversations like, what do you think about this witchcraft? And then we talked about that and what was the worldview of that? And there was just conversations that came out of that. remember

There are age-appropriate systematic theologies. I remember going through one and just teaching about God's omnipresence, that God is everywhere. And then my three-year-old Zoe is like, you mean like God's in this room? I'm like, yeah, he's in this room. God's in our whole house? I'm like, yeah, he's in the whole house. And she goes.

He's a big boy. That's right. He is a big boy. That's right. That was the age appropriate. Right. Like it was just trying to pass on from one generation to the next generation to the next generation. Lastly, I would just say this. says this here. Israel doesn't say here. parents with kids ages zero to 18. This was an all play for the people of God. We all have a role, whether you're an empty nester.

You're single. You're a single mom. You don't have kids. You can be an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent. Like you have a role for the people of God to pass on faith to the next generation. This is not, oh, I went to Sunday and there was some sermon about kids and I don't have kids so I don't have to deal with it. No, this is you have a role to play. You can pray for the next generation. You can serve the next generation. You can...

join the youth or student ministry and help build up the next generation. So, RP, let's commit because we're compelled by the love of Christ to do whatever it takes to reach the next generation. And again, the most effective way to make disciples, study after study shows, is to reach the next generation. I read this week 72 % of Christians come to faith

before the age of 18. 72%. We should probably leverage 72 % of our energy and effort towards that just because it bears the most fruit. Here's another thing, parents. I read 95 % of the time that you will spend with your kids will be before the age of 18. That's where parents are like, know that the days are long, but the years are short.

The days are long, but the years are short. You have a window of opportunity to speak these truths into them. Matthew 18, Jesus says, brings children before him and he says, this is what it's like to enter the kingdom of heaven. If anyone will become like one of these little ones with faith like these little ones, they can enter the kingdom of heaven. But then he says this in verse six, he says, if anyone

causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. That's serious. She's like, do not cause the little ones to stumble. So she would ask, we should ask, how do we cause them to stumble? How do we cause the little ones in our homes to stumble? Again, part of it may be the priorities of our homes.

How do we cause little ones to stumble in our church? Well, for example, if we don't have enough strategic servants, we don't have enough space, we don't have the right facilities to disciple the kids God has brought to us to entrust to us. In the Christmas story, we read about there's no room for the inn, and that's a quaint little story. But when you tell a mama

who's coming to find God, hey, there's no room in the kids ministry. And we are very, close to that just because of safety and security. We're going to have to start turning parents away. Then we're causing little ones to stumble. We should do whatever it takes, compelled by the love of Christ to reach the next generation. This is why compelled is so important to us. This is why there's

urgency here. This is why we're asking you, would you please pray about your role on March 29th on our Commitment Sunday? Because what if the most important thing about our lives and about our church is not what we do, but who we raise? Amen. Let me pray for us to that end.