Every month I try to meet with at least two families and *interview* them. The purpose is to get to know them better as a family and to help them to know the programs here at St. Luke's and get feedback about them. They are always interesting but my favorite questions of my interview are the first two I ask. I call them the *hard* questions. They are:
1. What do you love best about each of your children?
2. What do you hope for in the future for your children?
With these two questions I seek to ground our conversation in what is really important when discussing children's ministry: The children. I love to hear parents talk with joy and pride in who their children are. I love to hear them begin to articulate their dreams for the kid's future.
More than any other questions I ask, these give me a sense into the lives and love of their family, and the famlies of St. Luke's are full of love for each other. Rarely do parents mention their love of a child's curly hair, or that they hope he'll be a rich professional hockey player when they grow up.
They talk instead about their child's creativity, or fearless excitement of the world, or deep love and compassion. The dream about happy and faithful children. Successful yes, but success in the sense of well-being and care for themselves and others.
I cannot claim credit for these questions I ask, because they are merely articulations of what God gives us:
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13
Children's Ministry is in the *business* of teaching faith, but the reality is that it is through the love and hopes for your children that leads us to seek God and ask him to walk with us and our children. This is faith. Faith is not the absencse of doubt, or having all the answers. Faith is seeing love and hope at work in the world and recognizing that it is God who is the source of these things.
As we begin this online journey together to deepen our own faith lives and those of our children I ask you:
1. What do you love best about each of your children?
2. What do you hope for in the future for your children?
In Christ,
Liz
P.S. My hope for this blog is not me talking and you reading, it is for conversation. Please feel free to comment and respond so we may work together as a community of faith making Christ known.
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ReplyDelete1. K (age 4)- Her attempt to use grown-up words and phrases in conversation when they end up in the completely wrong place, but she says them with such determination and confidence that you can't help but smile. It shows me the her high level of observation and her terrific memory, that she can remember these particular collections of words even if she uses them in the wrong time and that she can tell the time is right for some serious words, again, even if her choice isn't quite on the mark. Maybe also her skills at negotiation since she usually gets whatever she wants when this happens since I'm so charmed by it!
W (age 2) - His sense of humor and excitement over the littlest things. His ability to draw others into a situation or conversation with his enthusiasm.
2. For them both - that they will continually discover what they are called to be and do, so they are never just going through the motions, but are always living out of passion and an understanding of who God created them to be.