A Little Child Shall Lead Them

“A Little Child Shall Lead Them”

Deuteronomy 6:4-12

In Honor of Kathy Piscadlo

The Rev. Dr. Douglas C. Hoglund

The Woodside ChurchJune 26, 2016

Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) How do little children see God?

Dear God,

My father should be a minister. Every day he gives us a sermon about something.

Dear God,

I think a lot more people would come to church if you moved it to Disneyland.

Dear God,

We read Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday School they said you did it. I bet he stole your idea.

Dear God,

I bet it is very hard for you to love everybody in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family and I can never do it.

Dear God,

Thank you for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy.

Today, we honor Kathy Piscadlo who has lovingly and faithfully served as the Founder and Director of Woodside Christian Preschool for twenty-seven years. So today is a great time to talk about how to pass on faith in Jesus to your family. It’s an important question these days when faith seems to be causing more friction among families.“I don’t want to go to Sunday school,” whine your kids. “I’m not going to youth group,” mumbles your teen, “None of those kids are my friends.” Perhaps your spouse doesn’t want to worship with you or go to a Growth Group. If the topic of faith comes up at family gatherings or holiday dinners usually the temperature and tension suddenly rise in the room. Friction in your engine is caused by two metal pieces rubbing against each other without a layer of lubricating oil. Heat builds up and parts breakdown. Friction in the family results when two or more people rub each other the wrong way until the conversation heats up and the relationship breaks down. Faith in Jesus should be the oil that keeps relationships running smoothly. But often, it feels more like sand thrown in the gears. How can faith and family produce spiritual fruit not friction? How do we share God’s story with our children and teens?

The first principle is Don’t Force, Overflow. Don’t force your faith on your family member. Let it overflow from your life to theirs. I mentioned a few weeks ago I attended President Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School lesson in his church in Plains, Georgia. The Bible passage was about Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritanwoman at the well. She was divorced five times! This lady could probably tell hundreds of stories of family friction. Yet Jesus said if she put her faith in Him, He would place within her a fountain.

Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14).

We can use our faith like a fire hose which knocks everything down in its path. Or we can let Jesus’ living water in us overflow to our families. When Martin Sheen’s acting career was on the rise, he led a wild life and walked away from practicing his faith. After he returned to Christ he regretted the poor influence he gave his children during those years, especially his son Charlie Sheen who also went wild. Martin Sheen recalls,

I never lost my faith. But I felt for a time that I had outgrown the church. Now it is a bone of contention in my soul that I did not share my faith with my kids, as my parents did with me. It was a source of grace when I needed it. I have been greatly nurtured and inspired by my faith.[1]

If we want our loved ones to love God we must love Him first.

Jesus grew up in a home where these words of Moses were repeated every day.

This is called the Shema. It is the basic creed of the Jewish faith. Later, Jesus would call it the first and greatest commandment.

When you love God with your whole being, Jesus’ spring of living water overflows from you and touches those around you. Your kids and teens can spot superficial religion. But genuine, heartfelt faith is a different matter. They need to see it and hear it. They won’t pray if you don’t pray. They won’t read Scripture, if it’s not a part of your life each day. They won’t talk about Jesus if you don’t talk about Jesus. They won’t put their faith into practice, if you place your faith on a shelf and only bring it down on Sunday. If you don’t worship on Sunday, if you stop worshiping over the summer, they will think it’s optional. And when you hit a family crisis they will be watching to see how you, as a follower of Jesus, meet the challenge.

For this reason I say to every parent who is about to have a child baptized, the best thing you can do to help your child love Jesus is to first love Him yourself. The best way to encourage your child to grow in the faith is to keep growing yourself. The more you love God in worship, grow in grace in a Growth Group and share with others in mission, the more they will. In thirty years of ministry I’ve seen that parents who do this have a much better chance of passing on their faith to their families than those who don’t.

I once attended the funeral of the mother of one of our Woodside members.The parents raised their children with faith in Jesus. I was especially moved when the pastor said the children often went to bed hearing their parents read and discuss the Bible and pray. The faith of these parents overflowed and blessed their children.

The second step to reducing friction in the family is Don’t Outsource, Resource.The Barna Research group did a survey of parents and found that

85 percent believe they have the primary responsibility for teaching their children about religious beliefs and spiritual issues. However, the survey of 1,010 adults found that parents have no plan for the spiritual development of their children, do not consider it a priority, have little or no training in how to nurture a child's faith…most are willing to let their church provide all of their youngsters' spiritual training.[2]

These days we can outsource everything – housecleaning, lawn care, laundry, food preparation. One of the greatest mistakes the church made was telling parents they could outsource sharing the faith with their children. Until the 20th century, parents taught the Bible to their children in the home. They didn’t outsource. They were the resource. The Preschool, Sunday School, Adventure Club, VBS and Youth Group are supposed to support what parents do in the home. This practice goes all the way back to Moses. Right after Moses gives the Israelites the Shema, the basic creed of Judaism, he follows up with these instructions.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Moses gets very practical here. He gives you specific suggestions for how to make a spiritual impression on your children. Lisa and I visited the boyhood home and the tomb of Martin Luther King, Jr. Nearby was the Civil Rights Walk of Fame. They set in the cement sidewalk the feet of famous Civil Rights leaders who walked their talk. Someone said children are like wet cement; whatever falls on them leaves a lasting impression. Criticism, disapproval and rejection will leave a mark. So do faith, hope and love. Talk about the Lord when you sit down to dinner and when you go out for a walk, when you climb under the covers before you shut your eyes and when you wake to the morning alarm. God’s Word is so essential for life that Moses goes so far as to say, ‘Write it on hands, on your forehead and on your heart.’ If you ever visit the house of a Jewish friend you will notice a little metal box on the doorframe called a Mezuzah. It’s not a good luck charm. Inside that box is a scroll containing these words of Moses. When you go out into the world and when you come home at the end of the day, remember to love God with all you’ve got.

When we walked in the door of Billy Graham’s boyhood home the first thing we met was the open Bible which his parents used for daily devotions. I challenge every family to do the same: read the Bible and pray together.This fall we will do BELIEVE – the follow up to The Story. You will learn how to think, act and be like Jesus. Like the Story, you will be able to read this with your family. My faith in Christ began when my motherdecided to read a small portion of the Gospels every day at breakfast. At first, the only difference it made is that in Sunday School I became the Babe Ruth of Bible Baseball. Yet not long after that I gave my heart to the Lord. Lisa and I decided to do the same for our children. We read the Bible to them every night before bed. Their Sunday School teachers at Woodside thought we were quizzing them at home with Bible flashcards. But all we did was read it to them and with them. They often fell asleep hearing God’s Word.

Pray with your family as well. At dinner time when I was a child we used to bow our heads and say, “God is great, God is good and we thank you for our food.” It always used to bother me that it didn’t really rhyme. But as we grew closer to Jesus we stopped praying nursery rhymes and started simply talking to Jesus as one of the family. We make it a regular practice not only to give thanks for our meal at home but also in restaurants, not only when we go to bed but when we go off on trips. There’s no better way to begin the day than with Jesus in a quiet time of Scripture and prayer.

Third principle, Don’t Drag, Teach Them to Drive. I’m convinced that one reason kids and adults find church boring is we don’t let them do the cool stuff. They come and sit here and just listen. If you say to your sixteen-year-old, “Come on, we’re going to Grandma’s so she can show us her collection of antique spoons,” what will they do? Roll their eyes and say, “Boring.” But if you add, “And you can drive” you’d have to jump to avoid the blue streak of lightning racing toward the driver’s seat. I think we baby people in church. I think we spoon feed them the faith when we should be teaching them to cook for themselves. I am so thrilled that at Woodside teens don’t just sit in the seats, they actually lead worship every week at Higher Ground. I praise God we don’t just have a “pastor’s Bible study” where you are spoon fed by the “expert” but we have sixty Growth Groups led by people from all walks of life. I am in awe of the people of this church who visit hospital bedsides, nursing homes and prisons in the name of Jesus Christ. Today we commission many servants who will go on summer mission trips. Christianity is not about sitting and listening. It’s about going and doing. It’s not about dragging people to a building. It’s about driving to where you get to do the cool stuff. The Apostle Paul said,

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:9).

In other words: “Just Do It.”

Finally, Don’t Push, Pray and Be Patient. Paul writes to the Ephesians,

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:2-3).

I know that there are a number of you who have a child, a parent, a sibling, a spouse who does not believe in Jesus Christ. You’ve tried to share your faith and it always turns from friction into a fight. Let me tell you first that nobody is beyond hope and nobody is beyond the reach of God. I have been blessed to see dramatic transformations in the lives of people who once refused to believe in God. Yet, because of the nature of your relationship with that person, you may not be the one who will bring him or her to Christ. So my counsel is: Don’t Push, Just Pray and Be Patient. Be humble, gentle and loving. Ask the Spirit to help you keep the peace in this relationship. Don’t stop praying. It may take years but it will be worth every minute on your knees.Keep planting the seed of faith.

The seed of faith has been planted in the hearts and minds of thousands of children here at Woodside all because of the vision of one believer: Kathy Piscadlo. Joe and Kathy joined Woodside soon after they were married in 1979. For several years she was a teacher in the Neshaminy School district. In those years, an outside group ran a preschool in our building. While serving on the Christian Education committee Kathy thought the church could do a better job. She partnered with Pastor Steve Janssen to develop a Christ-centered preschool. Steve wrote his Doctor of Ministry dissertation on the preschool while Kathy got to work finding chairs, shelves, playground equipment and teachers. In September 1989, they cut the ribbon and the first ninety children poured through the doors. Back then, therewere just two classrooms and an office and it all fit into our current office hallway.

Through successive building expansions the Preschool has grown to 24 teachers and staff. In twenty-seven yearsthousands of students have passed through these hallways. Over the years, in addition to a flood of children they’ve raised baby chicks, ducks and butterflies, learned about computers, enjoyed music lessons, jumped for joy, created meals for Aid for Friends, raised funds through walkathons, heard many Bible lessons, and were exceptionally prepared to go to kindergarten and beyond.

Kathy, of course, gives credit to her teaching staff. “God’s been really good in sending us people who are creative and who love the kids.” What’s more, the Preschool proves the truth of the Bible verse: “And a little child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). Many of you are members of Woodside today because you were led here when your children attended the preschool.

Kathy will tell you she always wants to make two impressions on the children: fun and faith. She succeeded in the lives of children too numerous to name. But here is one story of the impact of Woodside Christian Preschool. MaryLyn McCloskey writes,

My granddaughter goes to preschool at your church. A month or so ago she went to the doctor for a checkup and he listened to her heart with the stethoscope. She asked the doctor, "Can you hear Him in there?" The doctor asked who she was talking about. My granddaughter replied, “Jesus! He's in my heart!”

Thank you Kathy for planting the seed of faith in many, many hearts.

Let’s all go out and do the same.

[1]Excerpt from Electronic Telegraph's interview.

[2]"Parents Do Little About Kids' Faith Training," The Southeast Outlook (5-22-03).