“My son has more opportunities to serve through Boy Scouts than he does at our church.”
“My daughter has learned more about building relationships with homeless people through her school’s required community service than she has through our high school ministry.”
As our team has shared about Sticky Faith, we have heard these statements repeatedly from parents across the nation.
Whether it’s through Scouts or a service club at school, kids often have their most meaningful and, dare we say, Sticky service experiences outside of the church.
On the one hand, it’s good for students to grasp that God’s love and grace flow through all sorts of channels.
On the other hand, I believe that the best hope for our world is the church.
I yearn for the day when we as the church are known for what we are
for instead of what we are
against.
I pray that the long list of “what the church is for” includes remarkable Christ-centered care for the least, the last, and the lost.
Of all this guide’s chapters, this one is the hardest for our family to live out.
Our church has many, many strengths, but engaging families in service locally or globally isn’t one of them.
So together with our kids, Dave and I have picked some low-hanging fruit from the family service tree.
Most summers, our kids do a special fundraiser for a ministry we choose.
(One year our kids raised $733
selling brownies and Rice Krispies treats to friends; that’s a lot of sugar exported from our kitchen.)
We sponsor a child in India through a monthly donation.
Every once in a while we take our kids shopping so they can use their own money to fill a Christmas shoebox or participate in a food drive.
But in the fabric of our family’s life, those events feel more like nubs of yarn than like threads that weave their way through our priorities.
Unlike every other area of our research, when I speak at conferences and churches about our Sticky service findings, I usually talk about other families instead of my own.
You might think that makes me a hypocrite.
You are probably right.
There is a degree of hypocrisy in urging families to hop on the service highway when my own family is only about two-thirds down the on-ramp.
But hopefully my disclosure of our family’s slow headway will lift any self-condemnation you may be feeling as you’ve worked through this guide.
As we said in
, we are all in process.
If Sticky Faith is a marathon, there will be some laps that you’ll feel you’re making good time.
But there will be others where you’ll feel you’re frozen at the starting line.
Or even worse, your calf is cramping and you’re not even sure you have the strength to don your running shoes and head for the course.
The good news is that your family isn’t running the faith race alone.
Whether you’re hitting the wall or you’ve gotten a second wind, you can draft off others who are a few steps ahead of you.
In no other area of our research is this truer for me personally.
I’m drafting off a good friend whose desk at Fuller Seminary is about seven feet from mine.
Our associate director at the Fuller Youth Institute, Brad Griffin, and his wife, Missy, help set the pace for our family when it comes to engaging in Sticky service.
When Brad and Missy’s oldest daughter, Anna, was four years old, their church sponsored a Christmas box outreach to impoverished children in Ensenada.
Long after they turned in the box full of toys and toothbrushes, Anna kept reminding Brad and Missy to pray for their recipient, Ariana — both that the gifts would make a difference and that God would remember her (just in case he needed reminding).
But Anna wasn’t satisfied with praying for Ariana.
Anna wanted to meet her.
In many parts of the country, that requires an epic journey involving planes, trains, and automobiles.
But since we live in Southern California, it’s less than a four-hour drive.
So a year later when their church organized a weekend service trip to Ariana’s neighborhood, Brad and Missy decided to pack up their minivan and head across the border.
They told Anna they couldn’t be sure they would meet Ariana, but it turned out that she lived right across the dirt road from the church with which they were partnering.
That was eight years ago, but Anna and Ariana are still friends.
Anna’s family made it a priority to visit once or twice each year, sometimes taking the lead to coordinate trips for their church.
In between visits, Anna and Ariana occasionally write back and forth.
The Griffins keep a picture of Anna and Ariana near their dining room table to prompt conversations about Ariana and other friends in Mexico, as well as people in the Pasadena community who live with poverty or injustice.
During one visit to Ensenada, the Griffins learned how much this relationship means to Ariana.
She showed them a special photo album she keeps in her bedroom with pictures the family has sent her through the years.
The impact of this relationship spills over into the rest of the family as well.
Anna’s younger sister feels a special connection to Ariana, and her little brother treasures a toy car given to him by Ariana’s father, Romero.
Brad notes, “This family has adopted us just as much as we’ve adopted them.”
Brad and Missy would be the first to say they don’t have it all figured out.
Some months they are intentional in the way they serve others, and other months they are hit by the same calendar wave that washes away everyone’s good intentions.
But what I love about Brad and Missy’s service is that they listened to their daughter, took one faithful step at a time, and unleashed a flood of Jesus-centered ministry that continues to change both Ariana and their own family.
Sticky Findings
The Local Congregation Is a Service Springboard
In our interviews with fifty Sticky Faith parents, service was a theme that cut across their answers.
While we had specific questions about service, the topic was also mentioned when parents were asked to describe what they did to stay connected with their kids in the midst of family busyness, what their impetus was for family faith conversations, and what kind of impact family trips and vacations had on their family.
Of all the themes that emerged from the transcripts, volunteering was one of the more pervasive builders of Sticky Faith.
Frequently, a local church was the catalyst for this service.
Some families found that their congregation walked with them hand in hand throughout their service journey.
For other parents, such as Brad and Missy Griffin, their church provided the spark for their family, and then it was up to them to fan those flames in their kids.
Either way, to our research team’s delight, the majority of the parents we interviewed who were engaged with their children in serving others were grateful for their congregation’s role in stoking the fire of family service.
Young People Want to Be Involved in Service and Justice Work
We asked the five hundred youth group graduates in our study what they wished they’d had more of in youth group.
Of the thirteen options we provided, their number one answer was “time for deep conversation.”
Second was “mission trips.”
Third was “service projects.”
Last was “games.”
Admittedly, these were high school seniors.
A survey of seventh-graders may have yielded a different hierarchy.
Nonetheless, God has given your child or teenager a set of skills, gifts, and passions
that can be used to help others and advocate for justice.
At some (maybe subconscious) level, your child senses these inclinations and feels dissatisfied until they live out that divine calling.
What if my kid doesn’t want to serve?
If the only service your son or daughter wants to engage in is to serve themselves another bowl of ice cream before bed, what should you do?
Should you make them serve with your family, or should you abandon the service ship?
Neither of those extremes seems like the winning choice.
Instead try finding a middle ground with your child by doing the following:
Give them choices.
If your church or your kid’s school is heavily involved in service, you might want to ask your child to choose one activity from the service menu over the next few months.
The more choices you can give, the better your child’s attitude is likely to be.
In addition, by exposing them to a variety of experiences over the course of several years, you will increase the likelihood that they will discover a longer-lasting interest in some person or cause.
Tap into their interests.
What does your child seem to care about?
Do they seem passionate about environmental reform?
Or are they more interested in improving the quality of education in your town?
Does your child seem touched when they hear about children who are adopted or abused?
Even if it’s just a tiny spark, what seems to light your child’s fire?
Take into account their personality and talents.
A sociable child might love to interact with patrons at a soup pantry, while a quiet, artistic child might prefer making a card or writing a letter to cheer a homebound senior or missionary.
A computer whiz might like to work on the church website, while a budding teacher might enjoy volunteering to teach Sunday school.
Even if the service “fit” isn’t quite perfect, however, your child will learn valuable information about themselves and the world around them as they serve.
Involve a friend.
As with most activities, teenagers are often more interested in serving if they can bring along a friend.
Even though it may require more driving and schedule juggling to add a buddy to the mix, the payoff is worth it if it will decrease your child’s potential whining and complaining.
Take baby steps.
Maybe the first — and best — step for your child and your family is a small step, like sending an email to a local politician or cleaning out your child’s bedroom and giving an extra batch of clothes to a nearby homeless shelter.
Make it personal.
Perhaps your kids don’t want to serve because they don’t feel personally connected to the cause.
Who could you introduce to your family to give them a face-to-face connection with the people they could impact?
Maybe a tour of a nearby mentoring center or a conversation with someone at your church who was formerly involved in a gang would help the service opportunity hit home.
Service as We’re Currently Doing It Isn’t Sticking Like We Would Hope
More than two million US teens participate in mission trips annually.
While that’s something to cheer, for five out of six of them, the trips don’t make a lasting mark on their lives.
Research indicates that our current service experiences might not be yielding the spiritual bang we would hope for, at least not in the long term.
For example:
• The explosive growth in the number of short-term mission trips among both kids and adults has
not translated into similarly explosive growth in the number of career missionaries.
• It’s not clear whether participation in service trips causes participants to give more money to alleviate poverty once they return to “normal” life.
• Service trips do not seem to reduce participants’ tendencies toward materialism.
To rephrase the
Field of Dreams mantra: If we send them, they will grow.
Perhaps.
Service Is More Likely to Stick When It’s Not an Event but a Process
Motivated by the good news that young people want to serve, and by the bad news that we are falling far short of fostering the fruit that could be yielded from the justice vine, we at the Fuller Youth Institute have examined how families and churches can experience more Sticky service.
Our research, done in collaboration with Dave Livermore of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids
Theological Seminary and Terry Linhart of Bethel College (Indiana), suggests that families and churches need to do a better job of walking with young people before, during, and after their mission experience.
Whether you are involved in a Saturday visit to a local children’s hospital or a ten-day trip to South America, we recommend an experiential education framework for your family, called the Before/During/After Model (see figure).
The Before/During/After Model
Step 1.
Before: Framing.
A lasting service experience starts when we help our children and teenagers frame the sometimes mind-blowing and other times menial experiences that await them.
Step 2.
During: Experience and Reflection.
The primary component of students’ learning during their actual service is the cycle of experience and reflection.
Even if we parents aren’t physically present with our kids during their school or church service work, hopefully their adult leaders are helping them dig past their experiences to unearth deeper emotional and theological insights.
Step 3.
After: Initial Debrief.
The goal of the third step, the initial debriefing that occurs shortly after our sons or daughters return home, is to help them identify the changes they hope will stick long-term.
Step 4.
After: Ongoing Transformation.
In the fourth and final step, ongoing transformation, we parents take the next several weeks to help our kids connect the dots between the public school they painted in Philadelphia and the homeless man they pass every day on their way to school.
As with many areas of family life, less is more.
In view of our research, if this type of process feels overwhelming to you, we suggest you do less volunteering but more reflection and conversation in order to yield a greater harvest.
The Power of Families Serving Together
Much of the service our family experiences comes as the five of us serve individually instead of together.
My husband is the chair of our church’s deacons board.
Our three kids serve through church and school.
I feel called to equip teenagers with the lifelong faith they need, through the Fuller Youth Institute.
When the five of us serve, we are often in separate rooms.
I wish our family would think more about others and less about ourselves.
We get too bogged down with the day-today to think about the world as a whole.
— Bobbi
While those are valid and important ways to impact others, a unique strength comes when family members serve not solo but as a team.
Motivated by her study of thirty-two congregations from diverse denominations and geographical regions in the United States, Diana Garland champions the power of family members serving together instead of separately.
Not only does serving together become a scheduled activity that brings family members into the same car or room; Garland’s research indicates that “serving as a team helps family members stay involved when they might not if they were serving as individuals.”
As one of the moms we interviewed vividly described, “While I wish this wasn’t the case, when I talk with my boys about how I hope they are willing to serve the Lord, they sometimes roll their eyes.
When we actually serve the Lord together as a family, they never roll their eyes.”
Sticky Ideas
Rice and Bean Sunday Dinner
Bryan and Sharla wanted to give their kids a taste of what it’s like to scrimp on food.
Together with their twelve-year-old and their ten-year-old, they came up with the idea of “Rice and Bean Sunday Dinner.”
Every Sunday night, they have white rice and pinto beans.
Our church has partnered with a foundation that’s fighting poverty in Haiti.
As a family, we agreed to make a collective sacrifice to sponsor a Haitian child.
So every Tuesday night, we have eggs and toast for dinner.
Our kids actually love it.
— Dana
Every Sunday.
Sometimes they add the luxury of salsa, cheese, or sour cream.
Regardless of whether they add toppings to the meal, the family donates the money they would have spent on a more elaborate Sunday dinner to a ministry that feeds poor people in their city.
They take time during each Sunday meal to talk about people they know who are struggling financially, as well as current events that revolve around poverty in other countries.
Their favorite method of cooking the beans and rice is to throw them in the crock-pot on Sunday morning.
So not only are they experiencing the way that much of the world eats, and donating money to people in need; they have a more relaxing Sabbath because their dinner is taken care of.
Your Family
• What might happen if one day you modified a meal, or even dessert or drinks at a meal, to give your family a sense of what much of the world experiences?
• What might happen in your family if that one-time experiment turned into a regular practice?
“You’re Fifteen . . . Time to Go on a Short-Term Mission Trip”
Wanting to combine Sticky Faith service with a one-on-one ritual for each of his four kids, Garrett decided that in the year each child turned fifteen, he’d take him or her on a seven- to ten-day short-term mission trip.
Luckily for Garrett, his church was committed to short-term missions and took multiple groups on cross-cultural service adventures.
With one child at a time, Garrett has done father-child short-term trips to Panama, Namibia, Brazil, and Ukraine.
Before each trip, Garrett and his son or daughter researched the cultural context of the country they would be visiting and discussed Scripture passages they hoped would guide their justice work.
After they returned, they tried to hold each other accountable for changes they sensed God wanted them to make in their own lives.
Now that all four kids have graduated from high school, Garrett reflected in our interview with him: “Those trips were an important tradition in our family.
They solidified our kids’ relationships with God and with me.”
Your Family
• How could service become a tradition your kids look forward to?
• If one-on-one trips with each of your kids aren’t feasible, what would be realistic for your family?
Create Your Own Bread Line
Eduardo and Teresa’s church isn’t involved in ministry to the homeless, but that doesn’t mean their family can’t be.
Feeling nudged by God to engage in conversation with homeless folks, Eduardo and Teresa regularly make more than a hundred sandwiches with their second-grader and preschooler.
The four of them create their own kitchen assembly line complete with ham, cheese, and bread.
Then
they head to the downtown rescue mission and stand alongside its staff to distribute the food.
It may be the sight of an adorable five-year-old handing out a sandwich, or it may be the prospect of ham and cheese on sourdough, but for whatever reason, Eduardo and Teresa find that the men, women, and children they meet are open to having short conversations.
Eduardo and Teresa are hoping that these interactions are helping their young children grasp that all people deserve to be nourished and treated with dignity.
Your Family
• How often does your family see homeless people?
• What are you teaching your kids about justice and homelessness by the way you respond to those folks?
Missionary Sleepovers
John and Dena don’t have a huge home, but they have a huge heart for long-term missionaries serving around the world.
They have told their church that if a missionary needs a place to stay — whether it be for one night or one month — they are open to hosting them.
They want their home to be a refuge and a blessing to weary missionaries and their families.
Over breakfasts and dinners, John and Dena’s two elementary-age children hear the adults discussing what God is doing around the world.
Ahead of these meals, John and Dena try to brainstorm with their kids about the questions they could ask their guests so that all generations are part of the conversation.
Admittedly, their kids don’t always love having to share a bedroom so the missionaries can have a room to themselves, but John and Dena feel that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of having people who are involved in God’s work in the world enjoying dessert in their dining room.
Your Family
• How could your home be used by God to refresh people in full-time vocational ministry and simultaneously impact your family?
• Regardless of the size of your home and how you feel about having guests stay overnight, what local ministry or church leader could you invite over who could stimulate an interesting dinner conversation for your family?
Code Word “Salt”
Wanting to give their two teenagers a biblically rooted theology, Jeremy and Janna have explained that their family serves others as a way to live out Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 5:13 that his followers are the salt of the earth.
Sometimes the family chooses to be “salt” by making cookies or buying flowers for someone who is struggling.
Other times the family decides that being “salt” means a greater sacrifice, like cleaning a friend’s car or even cleaning an entire house.
When their kids would rather skip out on these service activities, Jeremy and Janna remind them that “it’s a salt thing.”
Periodically the kids return the favor by reminding Jeremy and Janna that “it’s a salt thing” when their parents would rather opt for what’s convenient than what’s right.
Your Family
• What Scripture verses motivate you to serve others?
• How could you help your kids understand what these verses mean to you, as well as to them?
Missionary Mail
At least once a month, a missionary enters the home of the Bowman family.
Not in the form of a walking and talking human but in the form of prayer letters from missionaries whom the Bowmans support.
Wanting to leverage these letters, Jon and Gina Bowman have decided to do more than scan and recycle them.
They share the letters, and emails from the missionaries as well, with their kids over meals or during car rides, and then they all pray together for the needs the missionaries mention.
Eventually the Bowmans hope to take their kids on an overseas mission trip.
In the meantime, they are grateful for the missionary mail and email that flatten the world and help their family participate in God’s work across several continents.
My stepdaughter knew a girl at school whose dad had lost his job, so our small group decided to anonymously buy her school lunches for a year.
I asked our stepdaughter not to tell anyone what we had done, and she didn’t.
But I’m glad she knows that our family steps in to help others, and even mobilizes others to get involved too.
— Vic
Your Family
• How connected are your kids with the missionaries or ministry leaders whom your family financially supports?
• What could you do to help your kids understand this slice of your family’s financial stewardship and feel more relationally engaged with people you are supporting?
Buy a Christmas Cow
For several Decembers in a row, Billy and Chrissy sat with their three kids at the dining room table, looked through a catalog, and chose Christmas gifts for families around the world.
This was no ordinary catalog; these were gifts provided by a ministry that could forever change the financial situation of folks trapped in poverty.
A cow could give a family in Uganda the chance to sell milk to neighbors; a sheep could provide wool blankets that could be traded for food and education in Kenya.
These gifts were the quintessential “gifts that keep on giving.”
While Billy and Chrissy loved this tradition, they felt their kids weren’t truly owning the experience.
Since it was always Mom and Dad’s money that was being spent, the twenty-minute discussions over the catalog options were quickly forgotten.
So three years ago Billy and Chrissy decided to give their kids a chance to earn the money to buy these unique Christmas gifts.
Their kids can now earn gift money by doing work that goes above and beyond their regular chores, such as washing windows, cleaning out the refrigerator, or power-spraying the back patio.
Billy and Chrissy have found that their kids take the discussion more seriously when it’s their time and sweat that secured the funds needed for that special Christmas cow.
Your Family
• When, if at all, do your kids devote their time and effort to earn money that helps others?
• If not at Christmastime, when is a logical season for you to encourage your kids to earn some extra money to change someone else’s life?
Stacking the Church Chairs
Many of the parents we interviewed find rich opportunities for their family to volunteer together during their congregation’s weekend worship services.
Whether the opportunities involve serving on the tech team that controls lighting and slides or teaching third-grade Sunday school every month, parents relish the chance to work alongside their kids.
And this kind of service doesn’t involve much extra time or hassle.
Ryan and Amberly have made this “serve where we are” ethic part of their family identity.
As they explain, “We’ve told our kids that we all are going to set up and tear down chairs together at church.
This is who we are as a family.
This is what we do.
It’s kind of a joke that we’re always the last ones to leave because we don’t leave until everything is cleaned up and put away.”
Your Family
• What opportunities are there for you to serve with your kids in your church?
• Is it important to you to make serving others part of your family identity?
If so, what changes might you want to make so your kids grasp that this is who you are?
Twenty-Dollar Service Adventure
Greg and Hannah are tight on money, but they are always looking for creative ways to bless others, even if all they have is a few dollars.
Wanting to help their kids develop a vision for service, they put twenty dollars in a handful of envelopes and then stashed those envelopes in their cars, Hannah’s purse, and their living room.
They told their kids, “That twenty dollars is for us to use to help others.
Let’s see how creative we can be with the money.”
When an envelope is empty, Greg and Hannah replenish it with another twenty dollars.
As you might imagine, much of the envelope money has been used to buy meals for homeless folks.
But the family has also lavishly tipped waiters and waitresses at their favorite restaurants who were short on rent money.
The kids have given extra money toward the bicycle their middle school ministry was trying to buy for a missionary in Cambodia.
They even once brought a fruit smoothie to their school principal, knowing he was distraught over pending budget cuts.
Greg and Hannah and their kids discovered that a handful of twenty-dollar bills can make a difference in other people’s lives, as well as in their own family.
Your Family
• How could a little bit of cash be a catalyst for blessing others?
• In addition to some cash, what other resources does your family have that could be used to serve and help others?
• As you bless others, how do you think your own family will be blessed?
Our Family’s Steps toward Sticky Faith
Take a few moments on your own, or with your spouse, your friends, or your small group, to reflect on some potential next steps toward Sticky Faith.
Sticky Findings
On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “we stink at this” and 5 being “we rock at this”), rate your family on the research findings presented in this chapter.
1|
We take advantage of the service opportunities provided by our church.
2|
I can identify my kids’ God-given passions and gifts that can be used to serve others.
3|
We view service not as an event but as a process that we talk about before, during, and after our service experiences.
4|
Our family serves together, not just separately.
Sticky Ideas
1|
In what ways has serving and blessing others already enriched your family’s relationships and faith?
2|
Given your ranking of the findings in the previous section, as well as the ideas you’ve read in this chapter, what one or two changes might you want to make in your family?
3|
What can you do in the next few weeks or month to move toward these changes?
