SEPTEMBER 2014 THE CHANGING FACE OF DISCIPLESHIP

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1 u 6 Practices for a more effective Sunday School Page...2 SEPTEMBER 2014 u Good News about Marriage Page...5 SDMI USA/CANADA REGION Connection SDMI THE CHANGING FACE OF DISCIPLESHIP Bye Daddy u Reaching Children at Risk Page...6 by Larry R. Morris The hours were long and the job challenging. I was on the road more and more, doing the Lord s work. My young son was just over one year old at the time when I came home from another extended time away. I was exhausted but happy to be back with my family. At the door, cradled in my wife s arms, was my son. His smile of recognition brought a smile to my face, and then he looked at me and said, Bye Daddy! Bye Daddy. That was his name for me. Had I abandoned my family so often and for so long that the most recognizable thing about me to him was my departure - my leaving him? What did that say to him about me, about the God I was trying to represent? Captured in my son s naming me Bye Daddy was one of those rare moments in which life s goals and priorities come into focus. I began to think about what success really was as a Christian and what would matter when I came to the end of my life. Would I want to be remembered as the father who was doing Christian ministry everywhere else but home? Would God be pleased with me if I was present for others but not for my own wife and son? Through the years I ve met too many sons and daughters who have turned their backs on the Church because the faith proclaimed by Christians was not lived out in the home. I ve peered into the teary and angry faces of teenagers and young adults who were not following Christ because the people who represented Him were very different at home than they were on the job. I did not want that to happen to my family, so I changed my job. The call of discipleship is a call to holy and holistic living. Every part of our lives is to be shaped by our allegiance to God. Nothing held back. Disciples are not perfect in performance, but they are persistent in their pursuit of Christ. That is what the next generation of disciples is looking for in you and me. In this issue of Connections you will find a series of articles addressing the changing face of discipleship. A changing culture demands that we find new methodologies to communicate the gospel. However, there is one constant that God has chosen you and me to represent His love and grace through our words, actions, and lifestyle. How are we doing? Maybe the best ones to tell us are the children God has entrusted to our care. Larry Morris is the USA/Canada Regional SDMI Coordinator for the Church of the Nazarene.

2 6 PRACTICES FOR A MORE EFFECTIVE SUNDAY SCHOOL by Dr. Garry Pate Sunday School was once called the reaching and teaching arm of the church. It was a system whereby unsaved people were discovered, assimilated, taught, and discipled. It was the largest volunteer army in the world. However, recent attendance records reveal that traditional Sunday morning Sunday School is in decline. I propose six practices to help make your Sunday School classes (or other small groups) more effective. I. Believe in the method and purpose of Sunday School. The first two SDMI bylaws state important purposes: A. To intentionally develop relationships with unreached people until they are Christlike disciples and making Christlike disciples. B. To teach the Word of God until children, youth, and adults are saved, sanctified wholly, and maturing in Christian experience. II. Get organized, prepare well, and use time wisely. Create class officers with meaningful job descriptions. Make sure the classroom is clean, fresh looking, and uncluttered, with the chairs arranged to facilitate interaction. Start on time, and allocate only so much time for small talk, prayer, and discussion. Make sure you give proper time to work through the entire lesson you have planned. III. Present well. The number one variable in predicting the growth of a class is the teaching ability of the teacher. Prepare your lesson well enough that you can present it with confidence and knowledge. Study through the week, and let the Scripture passages work into your thinking. Ask good questions to involve class members, and give your lesson the so what test. Ask, Is this practical? How will this truth bring about genuine change in others lives? Equally important, come to class having prayed for your students. Remember, it takes quality teaching to make quality disciples. If the teacher is unprepared, no amount of outreach will be enough to grow a class, and disciples will not be made. IV. Understand group dynamics. A. The genius of small groups lies in the number of people in attendance. We don t have intimate relationships in large groups. Intimacy is gained in groups of five to fifteen. Larger groups become another lecture/preaching format. B. Start new groups. Starting new groups opens up new possibilities for reaching those not connected already. New groups attract different people and create opportunities for new leadership. V. Use the right curriculum. Using denominational curriculum is wise. Also, make biblical studies the primary curriculum. Topical study books, while sometimes meaningful, should not be used every quarter. VI. Keep the focus on evangelism. The most important task that keeps the Sunday School a viable organization is the task of reaching people for Christ. No matter what else the Sunday School class does, if it fails to reach lost people, it has failed. A class without a vision to grow and bring in new people will soon become lifeless and inwardly focused. (Thom Rainer, Eating the Elephant, p. 60) Garry Pate is the Southwest Indiana District Superintendent. 2

3 CHILDREN ARE PARROTS, TEENS ARE MIRRORS by Justin Pickard What if discipleship is more caught than taught? How does that question strike you? Regardless of how one might side in a caught versus taught debate, most would agree that there is a certain amount of truth to the assertion that lasting discipleship includes more than sharing the gospel verbally or teaching a series of lessons. Discipleship must also include the critical element of modeling the life of a disciple and practicing what you preach over the course of a lifetime. If children are parrots, repeating things they hear other people say, then teens are mirrors, reflecting what they see lived out by the people surrounding them. Although you might sometimes wonder if your teens are paying attention, I assure you they are. Our students watch our every move and determine if we are worth following. They read our cues, attitudes, and responses to people and situations, all the while making delicate judgments about whether or not our words and our lives match. So how can we live as congruent and contagious Christians, inviting teens to follow us as we follow Christ (see 1 Corinthians 11:1)? Our students watch our every move and determine if we are Proximity is important! Sure, teens need their space; but we each must learn the balance between suffocating them and being absent from their lives. We must find ways to remain close enough to our teens to rub off on them, even if it means stepping out of our comfort zones momentarily to engage them in their contexts and environments. Quantity time is another valuable component. We are often told that quality time trumps quantity time, but authentic discipleship requires both. Learning what it means to be a disciple is a process both caught and taught as students observe how we act and react in the heat of a tense situation, cope with unforeseen circumstances, and live out the routine and mundane experiences of daily life. Life is unpredictable, as you well know, and we cannot always know how and when life will present perfect discipleship moments. Quantity time spent with teens creates greater space for these unanticipated and providential relationship-building possibilities and as teaching moments arise, quantity time turns into quality time. Just think of how many lessons the disciples would have missed out on if they had only spent quality time with Jesus! worth following. Bottom line is this: As we disciple students, introducing them to who Jesus is and what it means to be His disciple, let us focus not only on what we teach in structured lessons but also on what is being caught by observation of our lives in Christ. Justin Pickard is the USA/Canada NYI Regional Coordinator.

4 2014 Even with a proliferation of Bibles in homes, biblical illiteracy is at an all time high. A survey of high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. Other surveys reveal Christians are losing basic knowledge about the Bible, which, outside of salvation itself, is one of God s greatest gifts to the world. John Wesley said it best when he wrote, I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God. Engage the Word 2014, Tell Me the Story, is designed to recover part of our lost biblical knowledge by retelling forty essential stories from the Bible - 20 from the Old Testament and 20 from the New Testament. And, for the first time, all the resources are free at engagetheword.nazarene.org. Why should your church participate? Read what other pastors have to say about the program: This program was very helpful...for exposing the congregation to the Bible. Most of the congregants didn t know much about the Bible, and it really helped to engage discussion and deeper glimpses as to how the Bible applies to daily life. KINDNESS TAKES TIME In Come Share the Being, Bob Benson tells of an electrician nicknamed Motormouth because he was such a talker. He always had a smile and a ready answer to any question. But one day Motormouth shot himself. Benson wrote, I d asked him lots of times how he was doing, but I guess I had never asked him in a way that made him want to tell me. Life, in a way, is like those electric bumper cars at the amusement park. We just run at each other and smile and bump and away we go. Kindness is time-consuming. It takes time to visit people, to do small favors, to listen to the heartaches and heart longings of others, to run errands for them, to help them with their work, to write them letters, to give them our time, and to brighten their lives. Kindness requires a sincere interest in others. It is a matter of awareness and sensitivity that is very simple in nature. A smile. A hug. The Old Testament word lovingkindness is derived from a Hebrew word meaning to bend or bow oneself, which indicates a gracious, humble spirit. Someone has said that if you want to express Christianity in SDMI STRIKES BACK AT BIBLICAL ILLITERACY 4 The reaction to this reading plan throughout the congregation was interesting One Korean mother told me she bought an English Bible, and she and her teenage son were reading it together. Couples were reading the Bible together for the first time. Teens were even getting involved! Worship services were richer and more meaningful because our congregation had been spending more time in the Word throughout the week. Engage the Word also created enthusiasm and excitement in our Sunday School and worship times. I led the program for our church; it had an impact on several lives. It helped some to establish a regular pattern of reading their Bible. We even downloaded reading plans so that they could continue after the 40 days! Engage the Word is a powerful tool that helps churches, families, and individuals learn more about the Bible. Join the journey with others around the world who will be reading and studying the Bible together. Go to engagetheword.nazarene.org to learn more about how to take the journey together. It s free, easy, and transformational. by Aletha Hinthorn one English word, you would use the word kindness. In the early centuries, pagans confused the words kindly and Christ because the Greek words were so much alike; but as Tertullian remarked, they were so close in meaning that no harm was done by the confusion. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God...Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other (Ephesians 4:30, 32). Jesus, please help me not to grieve the Holy Spirit by being unkind. Come to the Fire 2014, Embrace the Cross, is a conference on the holy heart. It will be in the Grove City Church of the Nazarene, Grove City, Ohio, October 2-4, Registration is at cometothefire.org. Aletha Hinthorn is an author and the founder/director of Come to the Fire conferences. To receive Aletha s daily journal, go to cometothefire.org/alethasjournal.

5 GOOD NEWS ABOUT MARRIAGE You ve heard some of these oft-repeated facts before: 1) Half of all marriages will end in a divorce. 2) The divorce rate is steadily rising. 3) The rate of divorce is the same in the church as it is in the broader culture. How many times have you heard these pop-culture facts mentioned or quoted in recent days? There s just one small problem Not one of these facts is actually true! Let s look behind the headlines for a moment, digging deeper into what s really going on with marriage. And let s bring in some helpful data from the Barna organization and from the Census Bureau. The idea that half of all marriages will end in divorce is a projection or an assumption about the future based on the fact that in any given year there are about twice as many marriages as divorces. But what happens when you crunch some real data, using actual surveys of today s population? Here s what happens: More than 70 percent of all adults living today who have ever been married are still married to their original spouse. Of the less than 30 percent who are not still married to their original partner, many are widows and widowers who lost a partner to death not divorce. When we base our numbers on reality, we discover that a bit less than 20 percent of adults who have ever been married have lost their spouse due to a divorce. Or, to put that another way, as of right now, about 80 percent of all the marriages experienced by living adults have NOT ended in a divorce. Is anyone telling you that? Let s look at fact 2: The divorce rate is climbing. For the United States, divorce rates peaked in the 1980s and have been stable or declining since that era. Yes, you are reading that correctly: Divorce rates within the USA are actually declining since the 1980 s, not increasing. While our cultural awareness of divorce has increased and divorce seems to be a more common experience, the actual (factual!) rates have declined. And now for fact three, which suggests there is no difference in divorce rates among church attendees and the general population. The truth is, attending church on a regular basis lowers your likelihood of divorce. In fact, if you were in church last Sunday, your chances of divorcing drop by 27%. If you have a pattern of attending church consistently, you are much less likely to end up divorced - from 25-50% less likely! 5 So often the facts we quote are actually based on misused statistics or poorly gathered information. When we dig around behind the headlines, we discover that some of these so-called facts are without foundation. To sum up, the news about marriage is better than you may realize. by Dr. David & Lisa Frisbie If you d like to read more about this, we recommend The Good News about Marriage by Shanti Feldhahn and Tally Whitehead (Multnomah, 2014), with a forward by popular pastor and speaker Andy Stanley. Encourage someone today. Share some good news about marriage! David and Lisa Frisbie serve as executive directors of The Center for Marriage & Family Studies in Southern California. David teaches family studies and gerontology at Southern Nazarene University. Free Marriage and Pre-Marriage Resource Marriage Education is a way to educate young people, couples, and families in how to build strong marriages. There are many different ways to organize these groups, but we recommend a short-term study (four to six weeks) for a group of people, including singles, couples, or a mix. These can be open groups, meaning people could join or leave at any point in the study. This provides flexibility and a way for new couples to integrate into the group quickly. One option for curriculum is the Breakout Curriculum by Les and Leslie Parrot. Go to usacanadaregion.org/sdmi and select Marriage & Family to learn more about the Strategic Marriage Initiative, a collaborative effort between the Board of General Superintendents, SDMI, and the Family Life Ministries. Select Breakout Curriculum for access to an excellent free, small-group resource.

6 REACHING CHILDREN AT RISK by William A. Rolfe The kids I minister to and the challenges they face in their lives are vastly different than when I began ministry 35 years ago. I am a children s pastor in a metropolitan city in the central United States. Our church is located several blocks from the state capitol in the downtown area. Most of our kids are children at risk. So what are the challenges of reaching these children? 1) PATIENCE: You and your church must have patience. Patience when succeeding, knowing there is still more to do; and patience when failing, understanding something didn t work so you will keep on trying. Most importantly, you must have patience to continue contacting and following up each week on the hurting children who desperately need you in their lives. The challenges may seem many and the immediate results few; but eventually the rewards are life changing, both for the people you reach and the life of your church. 2) TIME: One big challenge is time. It takes time to develop a ministry like this. Time to plan and time to prepare. Time to develop a safe environment for the children when they begin to arrive. Time to plan effective outreach tools that will attract families with diverse cultural backgrounds and significant economic challenges. Time to see results, understanding that, in our situation, it took a full year before our first parent or grandparent came with a child to church. 3) COMPASSION: Another challenge is having compassion for the children and families you reach. Compassion to accept and not judge who they are. Most of our kids come from single parent homes, stay with a grandparent or other family member, or live in multiple-family dwellings. Many families are transitional, regularly moving from one place to another, and have fluid home situations for children to deal with. Once you understand where these children come from, who they are, and what they face, a compassionate heart is what drives you to keep going. 4) COMMITMENT: The challenge of reaching children at risk is not easy and requires a commitment from everyone. Children are usually eager to come, but families are more difficult to reach. Starting with two old, 15-passenger church vans we have built a team of committed drivers and riders to pick up kids whenever the church doors are open. The ministry has grown, and a committed church gave generously to purchase a new van. It takes commitment to reach today s children at risk. 5) UNCONDITIONAL LOVE: This requires us to follow the example Jesus set before us. Accept the child and his/her family unconditionally. In doing so, we have fed kids when they come to church hungry. We have provided meals and gifts for families at Christmas. We have worked to repair damaged homes of some of our children. We have worked with families on finances, legal issues, and have even gone to court with them to show our support as a church. Yes, the examples Jesus gave to us are being continued today in our church, where God is working. He is changing lives, and we as a church are growing by overcoming the challenges of reaching children at risk. Bill Rolfe is a WordAction Children s Programming Specialist and children s pastor at Topeka (KS) First Church.

7 FROM CARING FOR WIDOWS TO LADY GAGA? by Rodney Kilgore Cue young adult Bible study. Follow this discussion: Early church > care for widows > charity > modern charity organizations > famous generous pop singer. Lady Gaga. She gives a lot to charities--even has a couple of her own. Do I approve of her? I sat for a second, trying simultaneously to reverse-engineer the question and formulate an appropriate response. But there it is. Now, do I try to get back on task or scuttle the lesson and see where this rabbit trail takes us? I failed to recall the explicit theological construct linking Lady Gaga with the early church s feed-a-widow program. And we had a lot more of Acts 6 to cover. Maybe we should continue on... Our Friday night young adult Bible study was comprised of a rag-tag collection of grown-up neighborhood kids, most having come up loosely through the church. However, life had beat up on them. Several had come from abusive circumstances, none had a dependable father figure in his life, and only one was in college. They seemed more of a kids-at-risk campaign poster than the stereotypical millennial generation. reminded of the importance of the basics of ministry: respect, consistency, and humility. When programming and packaging are stripped away, it s easy to see what really matters. Throughout my admittedly short time working with young adults, I have seen all shapes and sizes of young adult ministries, from simple Bible studies to wellproduced, thousand-person worship services. What stands out about the most effective ones, regardless of size and format, is their dedication to ministry fundamentals: consistently providing a space where the truth of God is presented, each person s voice is respected, and intentional, loving, engaging conversation is promoted. Everything else is, at best, a nicety and, at worst, a distraction. However, it was here that young adult ministry became, and continues to become, increasingly clear. The office in which we meet, which is a no-frills, repurposed auto shop, mirrors our approach. Simplicity is a high priority, as most of the attendees are largely biblically illiterate. Our progress is usually slow and meandering, but in this time I am continually Even if all you have, like us, are a couple of couches and an hour of your time for your young adult ministry, give them to God and see how He manages to multiply your efforts. Rodney Kilgore is in pastoral service on the Southern California district. MINISTERING TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF DISCIPLES by G. Daniel Harris The changing face of discipleship has never been more clearly seen than in the faces of the next generation of children. Since the inception of the annual Kids Reaching Kids (formerly the VBS) children s missions offering in 1987, children from around the world have faithfully contributed to an effort that has touched the lives of millions of children and their families on every world region. On July 10, 2014, Kids Reaching Kids reached $5,000,000 in total offerings received during its 27-year history. Children who have contributed to this offering have been able to impact their world in a number of different ways: 7 1) Mentally through education to children s minds. 2) Physically through compassion to have children s basic needs met. 3) Spiritually through evangelism efforts to reach children for Christ. 4) Socially through discipleship to strengthen children s faith. The current year s offering, Listen, Learn and Let it Out!, is raising money to support orality (storytelling) ministries, including the purchase and distribution of audio Bibles, which will take the Good News of Jesus Christ to children who may not read. To find out more about how Kids Reaching Kids is impacting the lives of children through missions, or to find out how you and your church can get involved, visit Dan Harris is the Kids Reaching Kids ministry coordinator (SDMI USA/Canada).

8 MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Engage the Word 2014 Tell Me the Story A 40-Day Journey Through Scripture September 28-November 9 engagetheword.nazarene.org Come to the Fire 2014 Embrace the Cross October 2-4, 2014 Grove City, Ohio IGNITE UNIFIED October 6-9, 2014 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma SDMI USA/Canada District Leadership Conference February 9-11, 2015 Kansas City, Missouri More information soon at usacanadaregion.org/sdmi M15 Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future Mid-Quadrennial Conference USA/Canada Region February 9-11, 2015 Kansas City, Missouri m15conference.org PRIME TIME ROCKY MOUNTAIN Colorado Springs, Colorado May 5-8, 2015 Learn more at ptrm.nazarene.org SDMI USA/Canada Regional Office CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE Nazarene Global Ministry Center Prairie Star Pkwy Lenexa, KS LIKE US ON FACEBOOK! SDMI USA/Canada FAX: sdmi@nazarene.org Website: sdmi.nazarene.org