Ask the Pastors S6 E10: “Talking to Your Kids about Faith, Baptism, Communion, and Church pt.1”

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Welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian, I'm your host and one of the pastors on staff and this week's special episode will be part one of two that was recorded at a breakout session at our recent foundation's parenting conference. This breakout was led by our lead pastor Will and was titled, talking to Your Kids about Faith, baptism, communion and Church. Here's the first half of that session.

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Alright, so let's dive in. How do I explain the gospel to my blank year old child? My child professes faith in Jesus, but how do I know if he or she is really ready for baptism? Shall I let my child take communion if she or he professes faith but hasn't been baptized yet? Is it better for my child to receive age appropriate teaching in kids' ministry or attend big church with mom and dad? That's kind of the setup how I tried to teaser pitch this breakout. So I do intend and hope to make good on my promise to answer each of those questions eventually, hopefully, and maybe even a few others related to them that are on your minds. But at a high level, my goal over the next 50 minutes is to help us think through or at least tee up a conversation to discuss through as my title suggests, how to talk to our kids about four things, faith, baptism, communion, i a, the Lord's Supper and church and I'm going to go very fast through each of 'em.

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Normally I'd say interrupt me. I do miss one of the worst things about preaching is I don't get to teach anymore in small group settings more like this. I wish that I had structured this to pause and take questions as we go. I didn't, I'm just used to writing sermons now, so I'm just going to monologue for probably 40 ish minutes of this. I'm going to try and keep it on average less than 10 minutes, a piece on each of those four topics. Save at least 10 minutes for q and a at the end, so that's my hope. I'm going to see if we can keep it moving quickly. That is most important to me is that you all get your actual real questions answered. I try of course to anticipate and answer a few of the big recurring ones that I get often as a pastor, but want to hear your actual questions as well.

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So we'll try and save time if we don't, obviously I'll hang around for a minute after the breakout. Email me, set up a meeting, whatever. I'm happy to always discuss that. Love that. So four big categories to cover with each of 'em. I'm going to try and address two things. What we believe here as a church and how to explain what we believe to your child should note two important things about what I just said and my outline, my objective. First, I do not intend to address why we believe what we believe. Just simply don't time too many big topics. We could spend way more than 50 minutes on each one of these. Just don't have time to give you the whole sort of biblical explanation. The short answer is we believe all the things that we believe because the Bible says so and so we're going to just mainly cut straight to our statement of faith as a church and give you that and then try and just simply unpack and apply it together from a parenting perspective in particular.

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Second thing to note, as I said, I'm just name it, I'm coming at this from a perspective of what we believe here as a church looking around again, couple of y'all I know are not here at West Stills. If this conference was hosted by one of my buddies, Presbyterian churches down the road, they might have very different take on at least number two there. Baptism, we'll talk about that. So just keep that in mind. If you're not a west tillian, if you are churchless, we'd love to have you come worship with us tomorrow. Quick plug for that. So let's dive in. Number one, how do I talk to my child about faith? And we're going to begin there because it is most important. Every Christian parent's greatest prayer, most persistent, urgent prayer for each one of our kids of course must be that they would come to true, genuine, lasting life-changing eternity, defining, saving faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

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  And so here's how our statement of faith here at West Tills puts it, the gospel, we believe that Jesus Christ as our representative and substitute shed his blood on the cross as the perfect all sufficient sacrifice for our sins. His atoning death and victorious resurrection constitute the only ground for salvation and we believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's a lot there and frankly, depending on your kids', various ages and intelligence and spiritual maturity, a lot that could probably go right over their heads. How do you explain substitutionary atonement to your seven or 8-year-old, much less your two or 3-year-old? But I would argue that the gospel, the good news of Jesus, that according to Romans one 16 is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes it.

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  And I truly believe that everyone, that everyone there in Romans one 16, everyone who believes it can include, does include even some toddlers that's maybe but an minority opinion. I believe it truly can. Some of you maybe that's your testimony, like I three years old prayed a prayer to receive Christ in my life, to paraphrase the old Geico commercials, I believe the gospel is so simple, a caveman, a toddler can truly understand it, maybe not at the depth, hopefully not at the depth that you or I and that they one day God willing will as an adult, as a spiritually mature believer. But you do not have to be super mature to be saved. You've just got to be born again. Spiritual babies can and do still enjoy saving faith. And I believe the gospel really can be properly and biblically boiled down to the ABCs of salvation.

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  Some of you are introduced to them like me, when you're a toddler in kids' ministry, A, B, C, A, admit you're a sinner. B, believe Jesus died and rose again to forgive you of your sins. And c, call upon Jesus for salvation by confessing him is Lord. If your child can grasp that there is a God that they are not God, that the real God like any good parent does, has rules, has expectations for how his children ought to live, that he or she, your child has broken said rules, which the Bible calls sin and that sin separates us from a holy God, but that God nevertheless loves us and wants to forgive us and cleanse us of our sins. So much so that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross in our place. The death that we deserve is a fair punishment for our sins.

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  Jesus died for us to pay that punishment for us and then he rose from the dead to give us new life, free from sin in him and all we have to do to get it is a, B, C, admit our sin. Believe in him, he died and rose for me and confess him as Lord Jesus, I believe you are God that I am not. And so I want to live for you now Jesus, not for myself, you are my Lord. If your child can grasp those three simple truths and believe them mean them in their heart, Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That is Paul's summary of the ABCs of salvation in Romans 10. Confess and believe and I believe that that can be true of even a toddler.

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  Now what that's going to look like for your 10-year-old or your 15-year-old is going to be very different than what it looks like for your toddler. And so we're not going to walk through every age and stage of maturity. I'll just use my kids as a quick example. I've got three kids, nine, almost five and two. And the way that I would have and have had personal gospel conversations with each one of them is going to be different. Elle my nine-year old, most of y'all know is about as precocious as they come, she can frankly handle our statement of faith as is Now, if we were going to catechize and walk through and unpack that as a family and with her, she would have to stop me as we go when we got to certain words, okay, all sufficient. What does that mean? Atonement? Make sure I know I've heard that, but right now we are talking about the ERs.

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  Did family worship last night? Right now for us, we are walking through the Bible in a year together as a family and we just pause and explain as needed. We are going through Leviticus and all the different sacrifices and why this and that and we just explain as we need it and she's ready for that. Elijah, our five-year-old needs the gospel simplified More than that I would say that he is probably more on the ABCs of salvation that we just unpacked together on that kind of a very basic wavelength. Beau, our 2-year-old I think I want to believe I pray, is finally starting to understand the concept of rules and of violating rules and of who's really in charge authority and that's all the context that is going to be essential for him later understanding the gospel. So again, more we can say about that to under 10 minutes for this one, lemme just end this first topic with two points of emphasis.

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  The first is I think we need to give our children the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what they're capable of understanding. I mean we know that we say that often as parents we're struck by that they're listening more than we think they're picking up on more than we think. And what does every child want anyway? Every child wants to be grown up. So I say use it when it comes to discussing matters of faith. Don't baby them and infantalize 'em. Don't be afraid to introduce your kids to new words and concepts. We had a candidate for our director of children's ministry job opening last fall who came in and taught our third grade class on Sunday and the lesson for the day in our gospel project curriculum was Genesis 22 and Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and she was asking a bunch of questions real hesitant.

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  She sort of danced around the topic of what is sacrifice and death and guess what? She didn't get the job, not here, not the church for you. If your third grader does not yet know about death, we had to put our dog to sleep just last week and we didn't talk about her crossing the rainbow bridge or euphemized or whatever. We talked about death. We use that opportunity to talk to our kids, all of them nine, five and two about death. If you're not going to do that, you are missing a ready-made opportunity for discipleship with your kids as a parent, certainly as a Christian parent because there's no gospel without death, without Christ's sacrifice. Don't sugarcoat it. Give 'em the gospel. And the second and last point that I'll make about discussing faith with our kids is this more important than how you talk about faith is that you talk about it and that you talk about it often.

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  God exhorted Israel and Deuteronomy six, seven concerning his law, concerning his commandments, you shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit down in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise, in other words all the time, it's like a long Hebrew idiom for all the time talk about this law is so good. Talk about it all the time now if that was true for Israel with God's law, how much more so is it true for us? The church of God's gospel, the infinitely better news of God's grace for sinners? So that's faith. We're going to keep moving. If you got questions, write 'em down, whatever. I think you got space in your books and we'll come back. Number two, how do I talk to my child about baptism? We'll spend disproportionate time here because it's where I always get the most questions.

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  Here is how our church constitution as a part of our core convictions defines baptism. We adapted this from the 1689 London Baptist Confession. We believe Christian baptism is a sign of the believers fellowship with Christ in Christ's death and resurrection of the believers being engrafted into Christ of remission, of sins, and of giving oneself up into God through Jesus Christ to live and walk in newness of life as best expressed by the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the triune God, I'll be honest, I would probably not use this as my template for teaching my kids about baptism. That's just some clunky old language. Really good, really good. I mean we could stop and unpack, but again, I'm going to go right to the application. As I said, I'm less interested in spending our time proving, debating that understanding of baptism, the bap understanding of baptism than I am and helping us apply it for our kids, for those of us who most of us hopefully already agree on that.

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  So we'll go right to the question from the advertisement. How do I know if when my child is ready for baptism? And before I dive into an answer, I think we need to pause and just first recognize that different credo bap churches, credo Baptist means that we administer baptism on the basis of one's faith credo in Latin as opposed to Pedo Baptist who administered the sign of baptism to babies Pedos Latin. But Credo Baptist will differ in our understanding of when it is best to baptize. I'll just quickly name, I believe the whole baptism thing is pretty squarely like a second tier issue, not a gospel heaven and hell first tier issue. Something we can disagree with maybe even, yeah, should maybe be at different churches about. But certainly when it comes to age of baptism, I would put that even less so. I think my hope would be that if you walk away from this and you have a different conviction about age of baptism than I do after walking through this that you wouldn't leave West Hills, that this is more of a third tier issue.

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  Like we're going to stay in the same church and we can just disagree on this and you can wait as long as you want to bring your kid for bap. That's your decision as a parent. Some churches withhold baptism until a later age, often the age of 18 when a child, a minor legally becomes an adult independent, no longer under his or her parents' authority, these churches will argue that the inherent pressure of wanting to please one's parents to fit in within your family of origin to fit in with your church, your kids' ministry is just too great. Fortunately, unfortunately, we don't have that kind of culture in our kids' ministry right now. Kids getting baptized left and right, maybe that's a good thing. But they would say that pressure, peer pressure, whatever, just too great. And they'll argue that it is just too difficult also to discern the genuineness of a child's faith.

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  The key phrase that you're going to hear that we use in Credo Baptist circles is credible profession of faith. Credible profession of faith because we believe that baptism is a sign of one's faith, the external visible symbol of one's internal, invisible faith in Christ. And because we believe Christ gave this sign to his church to administer to believers on the basis of that faith. Acts eight, when they believed Philip as he preached the gospel, then they were baptized Roman six, all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were buried with them by baptism into death in order that justice Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. We too might walk in newness of life that is only true of believers. And so those of us who have been saved, buried and raised with Christ spiritually, we are then called to bear witness to that symbolically through baptism.

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  Alright, that's our credo Baptist understanding of baptism. So we're, we're baptized on the basis of our faith, but because the church is responsible for administering this sign of baptism, it is our responsibility then as a church to prayerfully discern the credibility of a person's profession of faith. Baptism is essentially the church's stamp of approval on a person's testimony. We are saying, yes, this person's a believer and one of the very worst things we could do then as a church is to baptize an unbeliever and to give them a false sense of eternal security such that they look back the rest of their life, well I got baptized, I must be saved. And so some churches therefore will conclude, well, better safe than sorry. Then let's just wait. Let's delay baptism and give ourselves more data points for gauging the genuineness, the credibility of this child's profession of faith and make sure it is truly their own faith, not just ours, not just the parents.

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  And you can see hopefully as I make, I think hopefully the charitably the case for that position, why that would kind of make sense. The only problem with that position is that there's really no biblical precedent for it at all. That is after all us credo Baptist. Biggest problem with Pao Baptist is that it's not biblical. We don't find anywhere in scripture babies getting dunked because they wouldn't because babies aren't yet saved. But likewise, we don't find any young people getting saved and then waiting to be baptized. Let's wait and just see if it sticks. Actually, we don't find anyone waiting to get baptized. The very first thing that people did when they got saved every time in scripture. The Ethiopian euch is obviously the probably biggest example of that in Acts chapter eight gets saved immediately ask Philip, what prevents me from being and Philip's answer is water.

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  That is the only thing keeping you not water and spiritual maturity, not water And time again, let's give this some time, see if this conversion really takes, see if it's genuine. See, gauge your repentance and have you really changed not water and distance from your family of origin? You got to get out from under their authority. Just water. That's it. Water. We got to find the nearest river. We got to fill up the baptistry as soon as possible, as the only thing stopping you from getting baptized right now. And when it comes to kids in particular, I think different contexts, different context, but I think there maybe is some relevancy here. When Jesus says in Mark 10 14, let the little children come to me, do not hinder them. And I think especially if baptism is something that Jesus has commanded of all his followers, go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them, then who are we to hinder children, adults, followers of Jesus from coming to him in obedience in baptism.

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  Now this same line of biblical reasoning would apply to other churches' positions who would impose other lower, frankly somewhat arbitrary minimum ages upon baptism for children, sometimes you'll hear ages 12 or 13 maybe, and they might appeal to some so-called age of accountability that is frankly arbitrary. You're not going to find talk about or very implicit, very thin specious case for age of accountability and scripture. You won't find any set age anywhere before which children are not held accountable for understanding their sin and their need for a savior that age would have to be at the very least, would've to say would have to be relative based on a person's both cognitive abilities and exposure to the gospel. I mean that is something that's clear, is that the more gospel you were exposed to and understood the harsher, the punishment for rejecting it. But back to the Unix question again, what prevents me from being baptized water?

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  Well really two things. Water and a credible profession of faith. Philip has heard the credible profession of faith. So now we just need the water, but water and credible profession. So now let's talk about what is your role as a parent in helping to discern the credibility of your child's profession of faith? And I'll give you the short answer is huge. Your role is huge. I may be the one to baptize them or not, but your role is far bigger than mine in that process because I'm going to sit with your kid, interview them, baptism interview for maybe 20, 30 minutes. You're spending what, six 70 hours waking hours a week with them, not counting the thousands of hours you have spent with them put in for the first six or eight or 10 years of their life leading up to this point, this conversation.

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  And so you're seeing the difference the before, the after hopefully. So when it comes to discerning the credibility, the genuineness of their conversion from death to life, lost to found, center to saint, you have so many more data points than I do for that conversation. At least that is what I'm planning to tell God when I stand before him one day in heaven. And he ask, why did you baptize little Johnny? He wasn't really a believer. I'm throwing y'all under the bus. I'm saying because Johnny's parents told me that he was a believer they should have known better. And so let me just suggest a few practical words of wisdom then for you when it comes to answering this question of how do I know if when that my child is ready for baptism? Four brief ex expectations here. Number one, listen, I know that we are called as parents to instruct our kids to shepherd our kids in the way they should go train them up, including following Christ's command to be baptized.

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  We have instruction to do, but we are also called all over the place in scripture to listen, be quick to listen. And I think that includes with our kids too. Listen to your kids. Why is this not recording? Whatever. Hopefully y'all get it. I think it includes our kids and especially when it comes to baptism. Who is driving the conversation? Who's driving this decision? Is it you or your child? I get it. I mean we all want our kids to be saved and to celebrate that as much as anybody. But I would say I'm much more likely to say yes, to get excited about baptizing your child when he or she comes and personally approaches me and says, pastor will, can we find a time for me and my parents to come in and talk to you about baptism as opposed to you coming up to me after church and asking about it?

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  And that's after they have bugged you for it about it for weeks and months and they keep bringing it up and they keep bugging you and bringing it up because the Holy Spirit keeps bugging them about it and bringing it up on their heart. Now that is a different story for me, but a parent who clearly has coaxed their child into meeting with me and then is coaching that child through the meeting that child is not ready. Let your child do the talking. Let your child do the initiating. You keep sharing the gospel, you keep praying, you keep trusting the Holy Spirit to prompt your child to respond when God's timing is ready and when it, with this regard to baptism, and here's the great news, baptism doesn't save 'em anyway, right? So let's just all take the pressure off a little bit. If we wait a little too long, eternity is not at stake.

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  If you have that position of we'd rather wait until they're 18 or whatever, that's fine. And if we do it a little prematurely, you know what? At least we waited longer than the Pato Baptist. But listen, listen is the number one. Number two is watch, watch for repentance. Jonathan Parnell wrote a helpful article for desiring God on the topic. And he says, because the child's life experience is so short, we shouldn't expect the testimony to be a dramatic Damascus road page Turner. Rather, we're looking for the child to have a sense of the wrongs he has done. White lies, harsh words with siblings, refusal to share toys and the like. This is where the presence of the child's parents in the pastoral interview can be especially helpful. While some might think involving a parent provides a crutch for the child's profession, it actually becomes a line of deeper accountability.

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  I like this. He says in questions related to repentance and obedience. Imagine having the same interview with an adult candidate for baptism in the presence of someone who has basically observed the candidate's entire life, your spouse has to sit in on your baptism interview to confirm like, yeah, I have seen a real death to life. Tangible change. We don't need children to act like adults, he says, but to manifest genuine faith as children, and again as their parent, you ought to be able to testify as to whether or not you have seen that kind of, again, maybe not dramatic, but demonstrable, demonstrable change in your child's behavior since conversion. Is he more patient? Is she more kind? Is she more loving? It's the fruit of the spirit. Is it evident now at work in their heart because the holy spirit's there? Not perfectly. So we're all works in progress, but noticeably so, noticeably so and so watch for it.

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  Number three would be catechize. Systematically teach your kids, prepare them for baptism. This starts long before of course they are actually ready to be baptized before they are even saved. We ought to be already explaining to our kids not only the gospel, but how the gospel is illustrated through symbolically, through baptism. And that's why we love to here at West Hills, bring the kids up from the kids' wing on Sundays when we're doing baptisms so they can see them and so they can ask questions so they can learn about it. And once your child tells you, mom, dad, I prayed last night to receive Jesus as my savior, praise God. And after that and she starts asking about baptism, then you begin, I would say catechizing even more systematically at that point. And I've got a great little resource that I like to use and recommend and share with parents.

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  I didn't create it, but it's really good. It's called Preparing your Child for baptism, about 30 pages. You could take your time walking through it carefully together with your child, two pages a night before bed, cover it in two weeks and you'll work through all the most important passages, not only biblically on the gospel and faith, most importantly to make sure that they truly do understand and have come to saving faith. But also on baptism specifically, what is baptism? Who's it for? Why is it so important according to the Bible? And that's important. You want a child to know if you're going to take this step, not just the salvation that they're symbolized, but the act itself and baptism why it's so significant.

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  That is another reason why some people I think parents would say, let's delay is you want 'em to remember. You want this to be you only get baptized once. Let's make this a big deal, a memorable experience because it is. And also of course working through that together with your child as parents is going to give you a much better idea by day three, day seven, day 10 of that discussion with them of whether or not they're truly ready by the questions they're asking and answering. And okay, so finally most importantly on this with baptism. So listen, watch, catechize and pray. The only way to truly know whether or not your child has been saved and is therefore ready to be baptized is that God has to reveal it to you. One Corinthians two says, spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. But then he says, but we have the mind of Christ.

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  We have the mind of Christ. We can spiritually discern it. So we ask Jesus, would you help me discern whether my child has truly now been born of the spirit or whether or not he or she is still living in the flesh for now? And so pray and listen to God. Now, one more thing I want to say before we move on, lest some of you who might be here who might still not be convinced, still believe it's best to withhold baptism and you think I'm being too reckless and two freewheeling about it, I want to be clear that faith, real genuine faith is not just a decision you make as much as it is a relationship you enjoy. Faith is about a relationship with Christ. And so I sometimes like to use this analogy when it comes to baptism, especially with kids. A marriage is when a man and a woman make a covenant a promise of lifelong relationship to one another.

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  And how do they do it publicly, symbolically, how do they announce that covenant commitment they've made to everyone else, to the world? They have a wedding, they have a wedding, right? Baptism is that kind of a public declaration of the covenant relationship that you have entered into with Christ. And so sometimes I will wait and will, I will use that analogy when I've been interviewing a kid for 10 or 15 minutes and it just has already become very clear to me within probably 30 seconds that they are not ready for baptism. And I want to sort of graciously let them off the hook. I'll share that analogy with them and I'll say, Hey, look, baptism's kind of like a wedding. So obviously marriage is a really big decision, right? Lifelong decision. Do you think you'd be ready to make that decision at this point in your life?

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  And the kid laughs, the parent laughs. And then I'll say, well, a relationship with Jesus is a way bigger deal than that because it's not lifelong. It is for all eternity. Then I'll back up and I'll try and really carefully clarify for them that I'm not saying that to try and in any way scare them off from relationship with Christ because it is of course we know, we know the best decision they could or would hopefully will ever make. And again, Jesus said, let the little children come to me. And also it is still a very weighty thing to surrender your life, to die to yourself, to live for Jesus. To say, I'm living for this other person for the rest of my life now is committed to. I'll be honest, I do. I struggle with that. Hopefully you hear the tension. What I'm saying, it sounds like I'm arguing both sides of it.

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  I am. But I struggle with that when it comes to baptizing young kids, prepubescent kids. Are they really ready to say, Jesus, I choose you over everything in this world when they don't even know. I mean, you take a boy who has not yet discovered girls and boobs and sex and he's going to say, yeah, I want Jesus instead. So you see the tension. Let the little children come to me. Don't hinder them. Unless you have faith like a child, you can't inherit the kingdom of heaven. And yet also this relationship, a committed relationship for not just life but eternity. You only get married once. You only get baptized once. You want it to be genuine. You want it to be the real thing. You want to get it right. And so Trevon Wax suggests if your child still believes in Santa, he's probably too young to know exactly what it believes about Jesus.

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  Yet likewise, if we consider a kindergartner too young to vote in a church business meeting because, sorry, perhaps we ought to hold off on baptism until all the rights and responsibilities of the covenant community can be fulfilled. And that's a whole nother valid point that needs to be made here. Baptism is not only a person's public yes to Jesus. It is also their rite of passage into the church, into the faith community. And speaking of weddings, they're officially joining the bride of Christ. And so a child who is not yet ready to be a member of the church with all that that entails voting and church discipline and everything is not yet ready to be baptized. Plain and simple, except it's not plain and simple. Is that everybody okay? Water is thoroughly muddied now. Alright,

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  Well that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by asking them online through our website at www dot West Hills stl. And if you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend, and join us next week for the second half of this breakout session. Thanks so much for listening, and we hope to catch you next week.