Ask the Pastors S6 E11: “Talking to Your Kids about Faith, Baptism, Communion, and Church pt.2”

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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 two of two 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 second half of that session.

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The last two are going to be much quicker. Number three, how do I talk to my child about communion, the Lord's Supper? Again, here's how our constitution defines it adapted from the London Baptist Confession. We believe that the Lord's Supper was instituted by Christ for the perpetual remembrance and commemoration of the sacrifice of himself in his death, confirmation of the faith of believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him and with each other. If you want to continue the analogy, I actually use that exact same wording and language to be a bond and pledge, a tangible sign of this covenant relationship. I use that phrase in every wedding I officiate specifically when it's time for the couple to exchange their rings. Rings. Every morning I wake up, one of the first things I do is put on my wedding ring that serves as a perpetual reminder to me, a of my bond and pledge of my relationship with Polly.

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Should a child who has not been baptized take communion? No, that's an easy one. Not anymore than you would wear a wedding ring when you haven't gotten married. How do you talk to your kids about communion? Daddy, why can't I have the cracker and juice? I'm hungry. You take those opportunities, right for discipleship. This isn't just cracker and juice, bud. This represents the body and blood of Jesus, which nourishes his people spiritually. And I'm kind of glad. On a practical note that we use the saw dusty pellets here and the borderline fermenting grape juice. I feel like our grape juice is somehow always just a few days from turning into wine, but it's a good thing that we're not Baptist anymore, just in case. But in all seriousness, I'm glad that maybe this is at least one deterrent from our kids making uncredible professions of faith just to get the snacks.

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  I'll be honest. I mean, I look back and I think a big part of the reason I told my parents I want to go in and talk to the pastor and get baptized is because I was tired of getting passed over for the snacks. And here we get to tell our kids here, look, I promise bud, you are not missing much when it comes to the physical tastiness of these snacks, but spiritually, but spiritually. And then we get to tell 'em about man does not live by bread alone by crackers and grape juice alone, but spiritually, the nourishment that Christ's body and blood gives us and what a chance to disciple. But only if that's, of course that assumes they are watching us take communion. Which leads me to our last point, and again be brief on this one. Number four, how do I talk to my child about church?

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  Our statement of faith states, we believe that the true church comprises all who have been justified by God's grace through faith alone in Christ alone. They're united by the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ, of which he is. The head again, again, gets messy, right? Because we want our children to be intimately a part of the life of the church, and yet they're not. Yet they're not. I mean, at least for time until they are, they're not a part of the true church that is comprised of believers who've been justified by God's grace. And so they have not yet been united by the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ. So how do we talk to 'em about it? Again, it takes us back to the faith thing. That's the most important thing. But it is important, obviously to disciple our kids too about what church is and why it's so important, the body of Christ.

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  Our kids need to understand from a very early age how important the church is to Jesus. As important as your body is to your head, there is no such thing as having a relationship with Jesus without any relationship to his church, his body. You don't marry a head, you marry a person. Jesus and the church are a package deal, and our kids need to know that, not just by what we say on this one in particular. I really like to rephrase the question of how I've asked each of these rather than how do I talk to my child about church instead, how do I show my child about church? Because we all know as parents, actions speak louder than words, but especially when it comes to this and your relationship with the church, you show them about the church by prioritizing over their youth sports.

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  You show them about the church by being a two service family who attends big church together as a family, and then we each go stick around for our age appropriate Sunday school classes for Christian education. That's your answer to the other question, by the way that I teed up in the intro about big church versus kids ministry. The answer is both right? And the best decision we ever made as a church here at West Hills was the day we went to two services so that Abby didn't keep coming up every single week to teach kids and never get to be in church with her family and so that her kids could be in church with her every Sunday and also be in the kids' ministry and get age appropriate. At least here, it's not an either or, and it's the greatest transition we ever made as a church.

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  So you show your kids about church when they see that it's not just a Sunday thing for you. And I'll clarify, I mean that in two ways. First of all, your kids need to see that you are the same person on Monday morning as you are on Sunday morning. The easiest way to make sure your kids never want anything to do with Jesus or the church is hypocrisy being one person publicly in front of your church friends on Sunday mornings and being a very different person behind closed doors when you get home Sunday afternoon in your own home in how you relate to your kids. If things are not nearly as Christian with Dad when we get home, they're not buying the Jesus you're selling. But the second thing, I mean when I say that our kids need to see that church isn't just a Sunday thing for us, is that church is not a building, church is not a service.

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  What is church? It is quite literally the Ecclesia. It is the assembly of God's people. Jesus said, were two more are gathered in my name. I'm with you. And so I'm not saying sleeping on Sunday mornings because your BSF ladies Bible study on Thursdays is your church. If there aren't pastors and elders, if there aren't ordinances in church discipline, it ain't church. There's other stuff that's got to be there for it to be a biblical church. But I am saying that if our kids only see us gathering with fellow believers in Jesus name on Sundays, they're going to think church is a service. They're going to think it's an event. It's something we do for an hour, hour and a half a week, not something, we are not an assembly of a people that we're a part of because if it was something we were, it would permeate every aspect of our lives.

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  Our kids ought to see us praying for the church. Odyssey is texting with the church. Ossey is sharing funny stories with our spouse about other people at church ought to see funny the good way they ought to see us inviting the church over for dinner. The church, our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the other metaphor, the New Testament uses for the churches is a spiritual family. And so you bring it back to kids and parenting again, what kind of family are we trying to cultivate with our kids? Hopefully a loving, connected one, intimately involved in one another's lives. That's the way it should be in the church family with our brothers and sisters in Christ as well. Okay, enough preaching. I'll stop. I know you've probably got questions and we got 10 minutes right on the dot, just like I said. So let's see how many we can get to about this. Raise your hand if you have a question you'd like to ask so I know how long I have to answer each of them if you know you. 10 minutes, 30 seconds. Oh, okay. Only three. All right, we're good. Alright, let's start with a 32nd then.

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  Oh my gosh, I don't know. I'll send it to you. I can't remember off the top of my head. Yeah, sure. I'll send it to anyway. Yeah, sure. Just let me know. Yeah, as long as we know who was in the session, I'll be happy to. Yeah. Others questions, Kelly? So when I grew up my mom, yeah, yeah. Going just back to the big question with baptism and the idea of possibly delaying it so that your kids don't have a false assurance of salvation. Again, I leave that up to parents, and again, I totally respect parents that are convicted of that and that would rather delay baptism. And again, I see the practical wisdom in that. And also I see the biblical wisdom and baptism following salvation. And again, salvation profession of faith is the best, credible profession of faith is really the only thing along with repentance and real life change that we have to go off of, which goes to the credibility for judging that salvation that we're talking about baptism following salvation.

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  How do you really know if they're safe? I mean, the short answer is of course you don't. I mean, you can listen, you can watch, you can catechize, you can pray. But at the end of the day, only God looks on the heart and we can't completely know our kids' hearts. The other thing I will say about it too is I really do think that there's some of our theology about, and this is where a really reform pato Baptist, whatever person is probably going to make this argument. And that I frankly do lean a little bit on that side too, is that some of it gets down to your view of how much your faith in Christ is the determining factor versus his faithfulness to you. And for me, I look back and I think about my baptism at age eight or nine and then how I live for 15 years after that, 20 years after that, and think, well, did I really come to saving faith 20 years after that or was it, and for me, I'll just be honest, I chose not to be baptized again and again.

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  And part of that for me was, I mean, Jesus says if you have even a mustard seed of faith, you can move mountains. So clearly I haven't seen any human being move a mountain anytime lately. So I think part of what he's saying there is you just don't have much faith. But part of what I take away from that is like, okay, so if it's not, I mean, yeah, it's by grace that we're saved through faith. But again, I mean at the end of the day, it's got to be his faith given it's got to be his faithfulness to me. So even if, I mean clearly there was something going on in my heart at eight or nine, and I don't think it was just the snacks. I'm a little bit trusting my pastor and my parents back then and their discernment of that. But anyway, I'm just rambling now.

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  I don't know if I it all, but yeah, relate. I was baptized when I was in seventh grade, you know what I mean? The prodigal son was still a son. He didn't get excommunicated from the family when he wandered. So can I ask? Yeah, please, Casey. I'm not Luther. Our kids go to a Lutheran school though. That's good. Thank you. Yeah, Abby going through that right now or went through it, that's good. Yeah, I mean, when people come to me and say, I was baptized when I was seven, I don't even hardly remember it, and I definitely was not living as a Christian. And then I feel like I really kind of made my faith my own 20 years later I want to be rebaptized. I don't stop him, I'll baptize him, but I would never pressure that person. You need to be baptized if you really, because I just, yeah. Mean, again, a lot of it goes to our theology and to me it's like at what point does it become about your spiritual maturity? I mean, you can have a really bad marriage for many years and it's still a marriage.

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  We're not going to get remarried just because the first couple of years were really bad. It was still a marriage and it's a testimony to God's faithfulness to us through that. So anyway, you had a question, my question about communion, because we haven't had time to baptize 'em yet. They would not be invited to communion the next week because they've had time to get baptized. Oh yeah. I mean, we've had spontaneous baptism services. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe we don't make a practice of it. We counseled, we had 'em come downstairs and meet with our elders and change clothes and yeah, we did it once. I dunno, it's controversial. Yeah. Jill, you might add it at some point. Yes, yep. Absolutely. I'll probably say it this Sunday, just on my mind. Now I, I'm usually I preach too long and then I'm looking at the clock. But yeah, I mean, I would say a lot more every Sunday if I had the time and thought. But yeah, it should be something that I should address quasi regularly. Just, yeah, I mean more so like you said for the parents that the parents should hear me say, if your child hasn't been baptized, they should't be taking communion.

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  And it might also be a regular motivation. It might be a part of how God stirs their heart toward baptism that yeah, they know that this is the step and this is, yeah, it's 10 31. Do we need to, can I ask you a question for you to write down for? Oh, okay. Alright, well I'll give you five minutes to use the bathroom and get to your next one. Thank y'all for being here.

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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.westhillssstl.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and send it to a friend. Thanks so much for listening. We hope to catch you next week.