On Guard

Some books you just don’t want to read, but you sincerely need to. Deepak Reju’s new book on child abuse was such a book for me. On Guard: Preventing and Responding to Child Abuse at Church is a book that few will necessarily want to read or enjoy reading, but one that should be required reading for anyone in any level of ministry in the local church.

Deepak Reju is the Pastor of Biblical Counseling and Family Ministry at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, where Mark Dever serves as the senior pastor. He has been a contributing author to a few books on the topic of biblical counseling, but this is the first book that he has been the sole author of (other than a children’s book on the kings in the Bible). And it is a much needed one.

As you read the book, you will become quickly aware that the church is a very vulnerable place, and child abusers attack that vulnerability. Sadly, but truly, many churches hear about child abuse cases throughout the nation, even in churches, but still think, “It could never happen at my church.” Sadly, it’s just not true. It can. It most certainly can.

“Sexual offenders are not dumb. They are deliberate and calculating. The very thing Christians see as strengths — love for others, a trusting disposition — perpetrators see as weaknesses on which they can prey … Why do you think that sexual offenders try to infiltrate churches? Because many know that most churches don’t even bother checking criminal records. They’re too busy. They’re small enough that they feel they know everyone. They don’t think that convicted sexual offenders will come to their church. Why bother checking criminal records when the person is a nice, respectable guy?” (9).

The Structure

So how is the book structured? There are three sections in the book. In Section 1, Reju lays out the nature of the problem, the incredible responsibility that we as parents, pastors, and leaders have to protect our children, some of the false assumptions we make, etc. In short, the first part is just laying the foundation, showing the reader that this is a problem in our world, and this is a danger for our churches. We must not take this lightly. We must not think it couldn’t happen to us. The minute that we think that is the minute that we are at our most vulnerable.

In Section 2, the author offers 8 strategies for protecting against child abuse. This is the meat of the book, in that it helps churches take concrete, practical steps in making their church a safer place for children. The 8 strategies that Reju offers are:

1. Creating and Implementing a Child Protection Policy
2. A Check-In and Checkout Process
3. Membership
4. Screening and Verification
5. Building Design
6. Training Your Staff and Volunteers
7. Preparing Church Leaders, Parents, Children, and Teens Before Abuse Happens
8. Getting to Know the People and Resources in Your Community

Finally, Part 3 offers the church 3 strategies for responding to child abuse. The simple fact of the matter is that as churches, we can (and should) do absolutely everything that we can to prevent against child abuse; however, with the sinful world that we live in, we will never be able to protect perfectly. So the church needs to know what to do and how to respond if a case a child abuse were to happen. And how does the church counsel and help the congregation as a whole and the victims in particular in the wake of a case of child abuse? All of these things are covered in Part 3.

Then at the very end of the book, the author offers some very helpful appendices with guides and examples related to the 8 strategies offered in part 2. These include a guide to writing a child protection policy and an example of a screening application. These will serve as some helpful, practical tools for a church to begin to implement some of the strategies laid out in the book.

Conclusion

The topic of child abuse is one that disturbs me, as it should. as I was reading this book this last week, I came across the video below, which you may have already seen, that even further brought the need for this book home to me. Now this is not in the context of a church, but it is an illustration of just how easily it is for our kids to be lured away by predators

Honestly, this book disturbed me. It was hard for me to read. But it was incredibly good for me to read. As someone who is about to become a parent here in the next week or two, it terrifies me to think about this sort of abuse potentially happening in my church. I have to admit: I would be among those that would (wrongly) think, “I know it happens … but not in my church.” This book definitely opened my eyes to be a better informed and alert parent and pastor. And for that, I am incredibly thankful for this book. Thankfully, we have quite a few of the strategies that the author recommends in place at our church. But that does not mean we are perfect, and we need to constantly be on guard to make sure that we are protecting our children at our church as we are called to do. And so do you.

I would encourage you, if you are a pastor or ministry leader of any kind, to not only get a copy of this book for yourself, but for your whole pastoral and leadership team. This is a serious matter, and one that we cannot (and should not) put off for one more day. We have been given an incredible and weighty responsibility to protect our children. This book will be a great resource for you as you seek to do just that.

In accordance with FTC regulations, I would like to thank New Growth Press for providing me with a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Theological PhD’s and the Local Church

As I am crossing the halfway point of my seminary career (just 3 more semesters after this one), I am beginning to think more and more about where I want to pursue my PhD and in what field. I entered into seminary with the mindset that I was going to go straight through and pursue my PhD after my MDiv, so whether or not I’m going to pursue it isn’t the question, but where and in what are the issues.

With that said, I came across this very interesting post yesterday about the job market decline for PhD recipients in general, and especially in the field of Theology. The article, “More Bad News in the Ph.D. Job Market,” notes the following points about the Association of Theological Schools:

1. Enrollment at theological schools has declined steadily since 2006
2. Theological schools are hiring half the new faculty they were two years ago

In an article written in response to Cortez, Brian LePort seeks to answer, or pose, the question of whether or not this is good for the local church.

Good points are made on both sides. On the one hand, you will have more educated, disciplined men in the pastorate as a result of less and less full-time teaching jobs coming available. However, a good counter to this point is whether it is a good thing that men are entering into the pastorate as a “back-up plan” because they couldn’t find a teaching job at any institutions.

You can see more in LePort’s article on the specific arguments made for each case, as well as some other insightful points about how this could impact our local churches in the future.

What do you think? Do you think that this declining market in academia will serve to be a good thing for the local church?

Book Review: Shift

Haynes, Brian. Shift: What it takes to finally reach families today. Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2009. 139 pp. $14.99.

Introduction
In this book Brian Haynes has shared his ministry strategy that he has implemented at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, TX, where he is an associate pastor who oversees spiritual formation. The contents of this book have been formulated, tried, and tested over multiple years of ministry in a local church setting. Haynes’ goal, as he states in the book, is not to convince his readers that his plan is the one and only way to reach families today in local churches (42); rather, he is sharing what he has found to work in his local community of believers, hoping to stir the hearts of ministers in all kinds of different contexts to begin thinking of creative, God- honoring, Biblically-based models of reaching the entire family with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Summary
The author begins the book by showing how churches have, throughout the last few decades, shifted into a largely program-driven, age-segregated model of ministry. Rather than simply following the model that seems to be the norm today, Haynes takes the reader back to the Scriptures and seeks to find out what God says about how families are to be structured and taught. He refers repeatedly to Deuteronomy 6:4-9, otherwise known as the Shema. In this passage of Scripture, Haynes points to the father of the household as the primary faith influencer of their children. This does not remove any role of the church whatsoever in the training and teaching of children with the Word of God, but it does question the assumed model where the Church is treated as sort of a “spiritual drop-off” service where parents can drop off their kids and expect to pick up a mature, God-honoring adult at the age of eighteen. Haynes suggests that both the parents and the church need to be taught and challenged on how they are to lead and train children. Parents need biblical teaching from the church, outlining their God-given role to disciple their children, and the church needs to rethink its many programs and events that are mainly numbers driven and strictly age segregated and seek to restore unity within the home, partnering with parents rather than replacing parents.

The model that Brian Haynes has suggested to allow parents and the church to partner together in the discipleship of children is what he calls the path of milestones. Before looking at each of the milestones individually, Haynes finds it necessary to define a few key terms that are associated with his model. These terms include milestone, core competencies, faith talks, god sightings, church events, parent summit conference, parent seminars, family celebrations, take- home Sunday, and generational team. Their definitions, along with a few examples, are given on pages 42-47.

After giving some introduction on why he has implemented this model and defining some terms necessary to be able to understand some of the specifics in his plan, the author moves on to discussing the seven milestones themselves throughout the rest of the book. The purpose of the milestones is to celebrate key, formative events that occur in the lives of every believer, and use those celebrations as things that that child is able to look back on later in life and remember how God has worked in their life through both their parents and their church.

The first milestone is the birth of a baby. This milestone is for the parents since the child is just an infant. In this milestone the church will train the parents on what it means to be a parent, how they are to be the primary faith influencer of their child, and celebrate with the parents as they make a commitment to raise their child in this biblical way. The second milestone is the celebration of a faith commitment. In this milestone the church works together with the parents to train them on how to lead their child to Christ, and both celebrate with the child when he or she decides to make a public profession of faith. The third milestone is preparing for adolescence. Here the church works together with the parents to train them on what to expect as their child enters this age, and the parents spend some quality time with their child on a road trip, where they will teach and guide their child through this formative time. The fourth milestone is a commitment to purity. The parents, together with the church, teach their child what it means to commit to purity and celebrate with a purity ring celebration. The fifth milestone is the passage to adulthood, and this is where parents teach their children what it means biblically to be a man or a woman. The sixth milestone is high school graduation, which is where the parents and the church prepare the child to leave home and enter into the real world as a mature, gospel-centered man or woman. The final milestone is life in Christ. This milestone focuses on adult discipleship and is a continuous teaching and training of adults of what it means to follow and serve Christ throughout their adulthood. Together these milestones serve as key events in the life of any believer and is a structured approach seeking to have both parents and churches partner in the discipleship of their children.

Critical Evaluation
This book consists of many strengths that make it a resourceful book for someone looking to implement a new family ministry model in the context of their local church. One of the strengths of the book is the first section, called “Starting Out,” where the author lays some groundwork for why he developed this model and why he feels it is crucial that churches and families rethink how they are reaching the children of the upcoming generation. He provides statistics relating to the state of families and teens in today’s society (28-29) and contrasts that with what the Scriptures say about the family and what God’s original blueprint was for the development of the spiritual lives of children (33-40). While the author includes many good statistics and Scripture references in comparing and contrasting God’s original plan with the state of the family in today’s society, he does so in a very brief and rushed manner. Indeed, the focus of his book is not to provide numerous statistics to serve as the go-to guide on the state of the modern family, nor is it intended to be a complete biblical theology of family either. However, I do think that a few more Scriptures discussing the role of the parents, especially fathers, in the spiritual development of their children would have been very helpful. He exegeted Deuteronomy 6:4-9 in the section on God’s original blueprint for the family (33-36), but that is the only Scripture that he dealt with. Readers who are serious about learning what the Scriptures as a whole say about the family and the discipleship of children by parents would be greatly served by looking at some other books that go into greater detail and depth. Two such works include the volume edited by Randy Stinson and Timothy Paul Jones titled Trained in the Fear of God or Steve Wright’s, ApParent Privilege.

Another strength of the book was the author’s detailed method of milestones that he uses in his local church. While this exact plan is not meant to be replicated detail for detail in every context (which the author says himself), the detail and reasoning for each of his components in his plan serves as a starting point for other pastors to look at and learn from, identifying what may work in their context and build upon that.

The only major weakness that I saw in this book is something that I have seen in most of the books that I have read on family ministry: where do children without Christian parents fit into this model? A child that has parents that are either unengaged with the church or entirely against Christianity whatsoever will be unable, for instance, to participate in any of the “family celebrations” that each milestone has. The author does recognize this possibility and discusses it towards the end of the book (129-30). He says that these children would experience church just like they would have without this plan being implemented. The fact that the church still has programs and activities for such children is a much better model than the family-integrated model where all age divisions are removed at the entire church is focused around individual families. Unlike the family-integrated model, where it seems that these children would at best feel very uncomfortable, or at worst, be neglected altogether, this model that Brian Haynes is suggesting still has activities and groups for these neglected children to belong to. However, it would be great if somehow there was a plan for fathers of children in the church to “adopt” one of these neglected children and treat them as their own. If this were to happen, the children whose parents are negligent of their children’s spiritual life would have a family in the church to walk through the milestones with them. I do not think that the author would disagree that this would be a great thing to see happen, but he does not address this possibility within his plan of the milestones.

Conclusion
Overall I thought that this book was a good resource that accomplished what its goal was: to give the reader an example of what it looks like to rethink the way current youth ministry is done and shift into a model that involves the family as a whole, with the parents and church partnering together in the discipleship of their children. While I may not agree with or use every single detail in the author’s plan, I think he gives the reader a very good starting point by which ministers can begin to develop a strategy to shift into a model that better and more intentionally reaches the family as a whole.