Fearing God

Not too long ago, I was reading through Matthew 10 to my older two children. When we got to verse 28, I asked them who Jesus is talking about that we should fear. They thought it was Satan. I explained that it's God alone who can destroy the body and soul; therefore we should fear Him. Elijah (always trying to rationalize) said, "Oh. I thought I was supposed to love God and fear Satan. I guess I'm supposed to fear God and love Satan." Right then, I knew I had my work cut out for me!

I tried to explain that loving God and fearing God actually go together. (They both gave me puzzled looks.) First, we turned to Proverbs 1:7, to see that fearing God is the key to wise living. Second, we discussed how none of us deserve to have eternal life, that we all deserve to receive eternal punishment in hell. (See last week's post on how God chooses some.) And without God's initiative, we can't even believe in and follow Him. So, we need to fear Him, knowing that from the beginning of time, our salvation has been completely in His hands.

I know I could not fully explain this concept of fearing God, and they don't have a full understanding of why it's a good thing to fear God. But then again, I'm not sure if I completely understand it either.

-- Joey Espinosa

Our Adventure

As explained over the last few days, our Adventure is to equip the next generation through serving and exhortation, in our family, our church, our culture, and our world. I want to be clear that we are trying hard to make sure that this is not just some “good deeds” that we are doing for our own desire. Rather, we feel that this adventure has already been set in motion by our Lord, and we just want to join His plan and do our part. This is all about the gospel of Jesus Christ; we want our lives to be a reflection of the grace and mercy that He has shown us. In our adventure, we want to grow in our trust in Him, and to spread the message of His gospel.

Does your family have a central and driving vision? What is your adventure about?

-- Joey Espinosa

Adventure: Our Culture & Our World

I’ve already discussed how we want to equip the next generation in our family and our church, as part of the adventure that God has for us. Now I’ll discuss two other areas.

3.  Our Culture. Not only should we pour into the children in our family and our church, but we feel that God has given us tools and experiences that we can share with others. From a staff perspective, we want to help other churches’ children’s ministries. We have had a significant increase in the number of questions and contacts from other churches (across the country and even from other countries!) over the past year. With regards to our own family engaging the culture, we are trying to prayerfully discern how we can make our resources (time, money, “stuff”) available, such as by mentoring young singles and couples, giving, opening our home, and possibly fostering and/or adoption.

4.  Our World.  How can we impact and disciple children of the world? This is more challenging logistically than the other three areas, and is an area that we’re still trying to figure out how to be involved in. Mission trips through Grace Church have been a great opportunity; I have been to Nicaragua (March 2003) and Kenya (November 2007), and Joanna is about to go to the Bahamas in May. We have also supported overseas missionaries, given money (as a family activity) to organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, and have supported a child through Compassion International for over 10 years.

I’ll summarize all these thoughts tomorrow.

--  Joey Espinosa

Adventure: Our Family & Our Church

The Adventure for our family involves children.  Yesterday I laid out the overview of what this looks like, and over a series of posts, I want to go into more detail on the different arenas that we can equip the next generation for a life in Christ, namely our Family, Church, Culture, and World.

1. Our Family.  God has called us to disciple and shepherd our own children. We want to equip them to become mature followers of Jesus Christ. Of course, this is ultimately a work of the Holy Spirit, but we have a responsibility to share with them the grace of God, and to teach and model to them what a spiritual life looks like. God has given that call primarily to parents, not to the church, school, or anything else. One day, if God wills it, we desire to come alongside our own children as they disciple their own children (our grandchildren). What a joy and reward it would be to have a godly lineage!
2. Our Church. There are two main ways that we want to reach the hearts of children at Grace Church: through equipping parents and through our weekend programming. (You can read about our church’s tension between these areas here.) We can help equip parents through our personal relationships, and through leadership over and participation in equipping events and conferences. As for our weekend programming, Joanna and I have been serving with children at Grace Church since even before we dated. Then we served together for years, and after a while, we were asked to take on more and more leadership roles. And by January 2007, I joined the church staff as the Pastor of Children & Families. We have been continually passionate about how our church can reach the next generation through Children’s Ministry programming and volunteers.

Tomorrow, we will look at the other two areas through which we want to equip the next generation.

--  Joey Espinosa

Our Philosophy of Learning

We've been in a current series on this blog about our curriculum. We've already discussed our mission (on Feb 15-17), and our values (Feb 22 & 24). From the post that prompted this series, the next topic to discuss is "What's our philosophy of learning? What elements should be incorporated in our programming?"

To be honest, this is a difficult area for us as a staff. We are far from being experts in childhood development and curriculum. That's why we are so glad to have had talented volunteers who have contributed so much to our curriculum writing process over the years. We could not be where we are without them!

For Camp Grace (1st - 4th grade), here are the main elements that we use:

• Big Group skits that teach the principle of the lesson mostly use "camp"-type characters (lifeguard, lunch lady, janitor, etc) 
• Occasionally, we have videos of the skits, depending on how well the skit can be performed live
• Big Group music with a live band (sometimes we may just have a guitar player, based on our volunteer availability; at times we have just had everyone sing with tracks)
• Big Group competitions, just to have a little fun!
• Small Group lessons that are Bible-centered (see an outline and a sample lesson on our website)
• Small Group crafts and activities that reinforce the Bible lesson
• Take-home activities (Smore card and ROAD Bookmark) to help parents engage their children in what they learned, and to help children apply what they are learning

For Preschool (2 years old - 5k), the main elements are very similiar:

• Big Group skits or puppet shows, that either re-enact the Bible story or show a real-life application of the principle
• Big Group music that involves singing with tracks and using hand-motions and dancing
• Sometimes we will use things like shakers or scarves during the music
• Small Group lessons that are Bible-centered (see an outline and a sample lesson on our website)
• Small Group crafts, songs, and activities
• A Bible memory verse card sent home on the first week of every series; we also can provide magnetic holders for these cards so that parents can put the verses on their refrigerators
• A take-home Parent Page to give parents tools to engage their child in the lesson we taught

(Note: During the past few summers, we've used a curriculum called KIDMO for our preschoolers.  This curriculum uses a DVD teaching for Big Group time, and has provided a nice change-of-pace for our children and volunteers during the summer months.)

As you can see, we try to incorporate visual, audio, and hands-on elements. Not only that, we want to help families apply what they are learning.

For those of you who are educators or have experience in childhood development, we would love to hear what you think are important elements in learning for each age-group. More specifically, what would you consider crucial and what would you consider good options and ideas?

Summary of the Holy Spirit

For quick reference, here is a summary on the series of posts about the Holy Spirit, from “Big Truths for Young Hearts.”

1. The Spirit in the Old Testament
2. Jesus and the Holy Spirit
3. Jesus’ Followers and the Holy Spirit
4. The Spirit Gives New Life
5. The Spirit Gives Unity
6. The Spirit-Filled Life

Adventure

Last fall at Grace Church, we had a teaching series called "One."  A key focus of this series was for marriage relationships, but the principles are definitely applicable for whatever season of life you are in. The areas taught were: singleness, oneness, uniqueness, redemption, adventure, and intimacy. (See our website for the audio and notes. If you are interested in purchasing the series as DVD's, email us at info@gracechurchsc.org.)

Personally, the most powerful and life-changing topic was that of Adventure. I wouldn't consider myself a nature "visionary" leader by most standards, but this concept resonated with me as something that can help give direction and purpose to our lives.

Joanna and I began talking about what we think is the Adventure that God has for us. This is requiring multiple conversations, prayer, lots of introspection, and reflecting on our experiences. Earlier this year, on a 2-night retreat / get-away, we came up with what we believe our adventure is: children. We are not parenting our child-development experts by far! But God has given us experiences, tools, and a passion to equip the next generation through serving and exhortation. We're not exactly sure what all the specifics look like, but here are the arenas that we think God wants to use us in:

1. Our Family
2. Our Church
3. Our Culture
4. Our World

I'll go into more detail about these over a series of posts. In this, I hope to help you see our thought process to encourage you to think about what your adventure is.

--  Joey Espinosa