Raising a Modern-Day Joseph: A Timeless Strategy for Growing Great Kids

By Larry Fowler

Imagine this scenario for a typical teenager in your church: He's separated from his family and sent to live in a hedonistic, no-holds-barred culture. He's stripped of his spiritual support, left alone, and treated unfairly. Then, at his most vulnerable point, his ego is stoked with power and success. Throughout this rollercoaster ride, would he continue to serve God?

This very test was given to the Old Testament Joseph, whose faith remained rock solid. Yet it seems that our youth are ill-equipped to face the moral vacuum in today's culture. Worse, research shows that when young people leave home, many also leave the church. So how can we forge sons and daughters of faith and fortitude?

The vital answers are found in the story of Joseph. Drawing from this timeless narrative, author Larry Fowler offers a biblical plan for building teens who will love and serve Jesus Christ. Biblically based and up-to-the-minute relevant, Raising a Modern-Day Joseph is an essential guide to raising a generation that can pass life's tests with flying colors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780781406819

Larry Fowler

Larry Fowler is the founder of the Legacy Coalition, a national grandparenting ministry. His 40 years plus of ministry leadership, including experience as youth pastor, missionary, training staff, international director, and senior executive for Awana, have prepared him for this significant new calling. Larry has authored books on children's and family ministry and his most recent book, Overcoming Grandparenting Barriers helps grandparents navigate family relationships when things aren't perfect. In 2012, he was recognized for his lifetime of contribution to Children's Ministry in America by the International Network of Children's Ministry, with their national Legacy Award. Larry and his wife, Diane, live in Riverside, California. They have two children and seven grandchildren.

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NOTES

INTRODUCTION

KNOW, LOVE, SERVE

I am passionate about discipling children to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ.

I’ve become so enamored with those three words. They form a triumvirate that rules over my direction, my choices, and my actions as a father, a grandfather, a children’s ministry worker in my church, and a children’s ministry executive.

I wish I could say that grouping of words was original with me, but Christian leaders have no doubt used them together down through the centuries. My organization, Awana, has adopted the phrase in our Hope and Prayer Statement: that all children and youth will come to know, love, and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Since we’ve adopted the statement, those three words have increasingly driven me, focused me, and motivated me. Here’s how:

First, they keep me balanced. I haven’t always been so balanced in how I disciple children. Sometimes I’ve overemphasized the know component in my ministry, to the neglect of the love component. For many years, I haven’t thought much at all about building in the serve. Now, I try to think regularly about all three.

• Knowing means children’s heads are involved. But that’s not enough.

• Loving means children’s hearts are involved. But that’s not enough either.

• Serving means children’s hands are involved. This, too, is insufficient by itself.

If I, as a growing disciple of Christ, have only two of these elements in combination, my growth is lacking. Think about it. Without knowing, I’m misguided, even if I love and serve. Without loving, I’m empty, even if I serve and know. And without serving, I’m disobedient, even if I know and love.

Beyond keeping me balanced, know, love, and serve provide insight into sequence, helping us keep the cart behind the horse. Here’s what I mean:

To serve rightly, I must love the One I serve.

To love rightly, I must know the One I love.

To know more fully, I will serve the One I know.

Knowing is never the end; neither is loving. In fact, there is no end: The more I know Christ, the more I’ll love Him; the more I love Him, the more I’ll serve Him; the more I serve Him, the more I’ll know Him.

But there is a beginning: It’s really hard to love someone you don’t know, and so know comes first. Of course, in regard to Jesus Christ, know is full of implications. It certainly includes knowing about Jesus Christ, but so much more.

First, it means that one knows Him as his or her Savior. Trusting in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and in His resurrection from the dead to provide power for living changes us radically. We go from having no relationship with Him at all to not only having such a relationship, but having Him live within us!

Since no one truly knows Jesus Christ without a relationship and the relationship comes through faith in the gospel, evangelism comes first in priority. We must share the gospel with our children and young people as our primary mission.

Second, knowing includes an experiential aspect. Obedience and fellowship with Jesus Christ produce a deeper, more satisfying level of knowledge. The apostle John states it this way:

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:3–4)

Yet, how? How do we help children to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ? How do parents do it? How do churches? How do children’s ministries and youth ministries? Are we doing it? Are we doing it well? These are questions I’ll address in this book.

Want to test how effective we are? How about: Take a typical seventeen-year-old from your church, and plant him right in the middle of a godless, pagan, hedonistic culture. Separate him from his family. Strip him of his spiritual support system. Fire several dozen rounds of alluring temptations at him. Treat him unfairly again and again. Then feed his ego with promotions and success. How confident are you that your seventeen-year-old would continually demonstrate that he knows, loves, and serves God through all that?

That was exactly the test given to the Old Testament Joseph. You know the result: He passed with flying colors. This fascinating young man knew God, loved God, and served Him well throughout his whole time in Egypt.

This book includes a look at Joseph, and we’ll also look at today’s young people and how we can disciple them to be Josephs in a culture that’s too much like the Egypt of Joseph’s day.

And don’t be surprised if you, too, become more enamored than ever with those three words: know, love, and serve.

CHAPTER 1

THE MOST DIFFICULT MOMENT IN PARENTING

What would you say is the most difficult moment in parenting?

Parenting in a real sense is the process of letting go. When our little baby comes home from the hospital, we start with complete control of that baby’s life; but we also begin letting go. First, it’s letting them sit up without support. In a few months, it’s letting them walk around the coffee table. It’s like we have this tight, controlling grip at the beginning, and then we gradually start letting go, one finger at a time. For most parents, loosening each finger is difficult.

Sending a child to kindergarten is a difficult moment. You’re controlling with only nine fingers now, or maybe eight. Years later, another big challenge is allowing your child to drive alone for the first time at age sixteen or seventeen. By then your grip is down to three or four fingers, if that.

But when you completely open that last finger, finally releasing your child entirely to his own decisions, his own common sense, his own wisdom—that’s the toughest. It’s what I call the MDM, the Most Difficult Moment:

For most parents, the most difficult moment is when you come face-to-face with the reality that you’ve given up all control.

That moment may come while driving away from the dorm parking lot of a son or daughter’s college. Or the moment of lingering as the military bus disappears into the distance. Or driving home after a daughter’s wedding. Or the last trip carrying a son’s possessions from his room to his car on the day he moves out.

We usually know it’s coming. Our teenage child plans for college, applies, anticipates, and packs. But planning and preparation don’t help when that actual moment comes; they don’t take away the monstrous lump in our throat that nearly chokes us as we realize the one we worked hard to raise is now on his own. Dad thinks, What will he do? Will he make wise choices? Who will he pick for friends? Mom worries, Will he know where to get help if he gets sick? They both wonder, Will he party? Will he do drugs? Christian parents worry, Will he follow God? Will he choose Christian friends? Will he go to church?

My good friend and coworker Dave Pearson has had a passion for ministry to children and youth his whole life. While he ministers effectively as a leader and speaker, his first concern is for his own children. He relates his own MDM as he experienced it on a plane ride from Phoenix to Chicago, after getting his eighteen-year-old daughter settled in for her first year of college in Arizona, two thousand miles from home.

As I got on the plane, it felt like I was losing my little girl. Would she ever come home? Will she be able to make it on her own? Will she follow the Lord in what she does? Will I ever see her again? Now, I knew in my head God had made some promises, but I wasn’t feeling them in my heart. Is God as faithful as He says He is? Would He make good on His promises? Would His protection be enough without my help? I was forced to put my money where my mouth has been most of my life. I’d never before had my faith stretched like this; this was my little girl we were talking about! It was the most difficult plane trip of my life.

My own MDM also had to do with leaving a child at college. Ryan, our youngest, wanted to attend college in Southern California where he grew up, though we’d moved to Illinois. For financial reasons, he decided to attend a junior college near Simi Valley, where he’d graduated from high school.

With a junior college, there’s no orientation, no welcome, and no dorms. You just register and attend.