Transcript

 

Dr. Smith:  
Welcome to Peculiar People podcast, where we examine what it means to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ in the times in which we find ourselves. Our anchor scripture is in first Peter, where Peter says we are peculiar people, a holy nation, a chosen generation, that we should show forth the praises of him who has brought us from darkness into the marvelous light. And we do that through a series of conversations with believers who find themselves in all different kinds of situations in life. And we just ask them, and we talk about ways in which we seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ. Today we are blessed to have Dr. Kevin Jones, who is the Dean of the department of education at Cedarville university in Cedarville, Ohio. But beyond that, he is a brother beloved.

We have lived together in the same Christian congregation, the same Baptist congregation. We have served together in many avenues of ministry. And so I’m excited to have him on the podcast today. As we think about what it means to be an effective witness to students, and when I say students, I mean, K through 12 and collegiate ministry, obviously undergraduates, what does it mean to be an effective Christian witness to men and women in those types of environments and obviously boys and girls in the earliest level. So Dr. Jones, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Welcome to you and how you all doing in the wonderful state of Ohio?

Dr. Jones:
Thank you for having me. It’s a joy and a pleasure to join you this morning and see you face to face. Even though I think most of this will be just audio as it goes out but things in Ohio are good. Took till now to check the weather here. We have a high of 66 degrees today in sunny, Cedarville. So I am excited about that. Having moved just a few hours north and experienced more snow in the last 60 some odd days than I have in a long time, the Lord has been kind.

Dr. Smith:     
Amen. Amen. Well, we were thanking the Lord because you all had a good semester in the fall and now we’re in the spring semester and we trust things are going well.

Dr. Jones:    
Things are excellent. We have wise, thoughtful leadership here, and it relates to the trustees as well too, they’ve just done a phenomenal job at long range planning and thinking through. And I remember reading months ago, reading through the Chronicle of higher education, how many universities were closing because they had been financially and morally irresponsible in some ways. And I thank God for a wise leadership here, and then him keeping us through the tumult of COVID this year. And so we are pressing on through the end of our second semester and we thankful for that. Been face to face the entire time. We did give students an opportunity to learn virtually if they wanted to do that, but our students wanting to be on campus because they understand fellowship, they understand unity, and just what that time together can bring. So I’m thankful for leadership, thankful for our responsible students here and then for parents for entrusting us with our students here at Cedarville. So things are well here.

Dr. Smith:     
Amen. Amen. Well on Peculiar People, we think we are peculiar because we have been changed by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that distinctly sets us apart as we are seeking to be his holy followers or that new Testament words, saints, the holy ones. And so I generally start by asking brothers or sisters just kind of briefly share your testimony, how you became a follower of Jesus and in your case also, maybe some things that you’ve done in ministry.

Dr. Jones:   
Yeah. So, to my call to ministry, I just reflect back all my teen years. This sort of save us time and to give people an understanding of where I was. I reflect on Paul, where he says in first Timothy, I was in insolent, haughty, boastful, opponent of Jesus Christ. So whatever you can think about a young man growing up in west Louisville as a teenager doing, I probably did or tried to do. So I was saved from that. Okay, saved, literally riding on a church van. One of the deacons David Williams was driving the church and he just constantly shared the gospel with us. And then one day lo and behold, my eyes were open. So it says Satan has blinded our eyes through veils. Although I had heard him say the same words countless times, the veil was finally removed and I accepted the gospel.

They’re sitting on a church van. I can see it blue and gray, little flag plastered on the side of it, and that’s how I came to know Christ. And I found that significant. That’s significant in my life because I’ve always tried to find a way to drive church vans for students. You may remember that when we were together, we can trace our time. My time before that I consolidated Baptist church. Not that I was trying to relive those moments, vicariously do that, but I just understood the significance of picking up some little kids, driving in the church. Like I was saved on the second roll on a church van. The Lord called me there, served as what I would consider a bi-vocational pastors since about 2005. I came to know the Lord sitting again at consolidated missionary Baptist church in Lexington, Kentucky where Richard Gaines is still the lead pastor there and sitting in the back, he was like, “Man, I think the Lord is calling you.”

I’ve been wrestling sleepless nights for months. And when he says that, I’m like calling me where? And so we ended up having pizza. I think it was at Denatos on New Circle in Lexington. And he’s like, “Man, I think the Lord may be calling you.” And in the ministry. So I went through a year training with him. Like I had gone through a year training for my Sunday school teacher training in Little Flock, and since then, I’ve been both serving, I was considered second, third, fourth along side faithful pastors trying to be faithful in the public square. As an elementary school teacher, I worked in post-secondary administration too. So hopefully that gives a quick overview of my calling and just a little bit of my work.

Dr. Smith:        
No, no, I think that is all helpful. And there’s some things that are very similar. Sometimes people don’t realize why I rear up against them anytime they trying to dog Deacon ministry, but so many people have the role of some faithful deacon and their testimony, sharing the gospel, investing time, serving people, serving young people, picking up young people, hanging around young people. I’m thankful for the deacons that used to whoop me at church camp when I was acting like a nut. And so all those kinds of things, I thank the Lord for the Deacon ministry. And then like you, people say, how are you called to ministry? I generally say from being a ninth, 10th grade Sunday school teacher, first place where you begin to consistently teach the word, where you began to study and prepare. And then also where you begin to desire to have the word engage your students in such a way that you see fruit.

So I want to talk about students and collegiate, both high school, middle school, elementary and collegiate. So let’s just stretch from 10 years old to 22 years old. And I want to go into the conversation like this, demographically or I should say research would say that Bible believing Christianity in the US sometimes has a hole between 18 and 25 and a hole in general, but then also a hole, particularly regarding young males. And I would always tell people if there’s a hole at 18 to 25, then you’ve heard me say, [inaudible] The hole doesn’t start at 18 to 25. The hole is from 12 to 17.

And so I want to kind of get into the conversation, thinking like that. But I’m just wondering from your experience in a State university, from your experience in public schools, at all kinds of levels, middle school, elementary, high school, and you’re engaging with coaches and athletes, all those kinds of things. So what is someone 13 through 17 even thinking when they observe “Christianity in the US” and I’m really kind of curious about a young person’s take on it because I’m in my 50s and I don’t have the greatest take on it. So I wonder what do they think when they look over into American Christianity?

Dr. Jones:   
Great question, doc. So I think many young people are looking for authenticity and the assumption is, many of them look in the wrong place and don’t even understand authenticity. So many of them, this is no knock on the 13 to 18 or 18 to 25 year old. But I think that they don’t fully understand or even as I’m growing, what it is to call [inaudible] what it means to live after the Lord, what it means to be godly, what it means to be called into a particular area. And since many of the mainstream media platforms have their eyes and have their ears, and their ears are clogged to many other things that the church is saying, they’re looking to what I would consider just the loudest voice talking to them. I do, I think very gently with the 13 to 18 year old, or the five to 25-year-olds, because I think by way of what I see in systems and programs and love and affinity from a parental perspective is lost.

And so I look at the appearance before I look at the students and the kids, and I say, “What are you doing?” So I think what may be going on in the student’s mind is, I see some idolatry, maybe they don’t use those words. For my mom or dad as it relates to their extracurricular activity. Maybe it’s Facebook, maybe it’s golf, maybe it’s basketball. And I don’t see any authenticity around our table. You’re telling me that this God is sovereign and that I should follow him, that I should adore him and yet you do none of that.

So when I’m thinking about the Christian home, those are some of the things that I think students are thinking through and working through, and we do see that in research. Some of the research that Jana Magruder was able to do out of Lifeway, a Christian, thinking through, she spent time engaging parents and engaging students and saying, “Hey, what is it that you have done in order to keep your student, your adolescent, your young adolescent, tied to Christianity once they’ve been launched out.” So when I think through what are the 13 to 25-year-olds thinking, I think they’re thinking, what are my parents do? And is their life matching up with the scripture?

Dr. Smith: 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think when I was full-time on campus at Southern, and even now when I engaged people at Southern or Anderson university in a teaching role, if a guy’s interested in students, mom always like, ah. Make sure you understand that half of that job is not about students. It’s about the students’ parents. And it’s a certain way “a student or a youth minister” is also a catalyst and a coach for parents that the parents might bring forward fruit because I’m not trying to throw any shade or hate, but I think the present generation kind of makes sense.

If you would look at Donald Whitney in his book called Spiritual Disciplines, if you look at the spiritual habits and the spiritual lifestyles of their parents, it makes sense. Their parents have not given priority to the things of God, the assembly. I was in a Southern state recently preaching and I said, we couldn’t have got the whole shift to sports dominating Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights unless Christians in the south went along with that. And so in strong ways, Christians in the Bible belt just went along with that and hobbies and achievement and things. And so what we call in confessions honoring the Lord’s day and those kinds of things, there’s just not been a part of Christian…

Dr. Smith:        
The Lord’s day and those kinds of things, has just not been a part of Christian discipleship. And I know you and your family, I saw a training video you did for your local congregation on family devotions, and I know as you said, you mentioned the dinner table. Sometimes conversations in the home about the Lord, sometimes scripture reading in the home, just has not been some strong things. You’ve been in a variety of settings. You’ve been in a state university, you’ve been in a Bible college setting, in a Bible-believing part of Protestantism. So in your observations, is there any distinct difference discipline-wise or habit-wise between the Christian 15 to 22-year-old and the one who’s not Christian? Because I’m just wondering, did the nominal Christianity that their parents passed on even make any difference in how they show up on campus as a freshman student?

Dr. Jones: 
Yeah, I go back to the breakfast, the dinner table, and I think through parents just instilling right thinking in their children. Even now, we’re going through Timothy and Kathy Keller’s book on Proverbs, so we’re walking through that. Last year we did their book on Psalms. And so before that, can’t even remember what we did time before that. But the intentionality that is set between zero and that launching out at 18 or 19 or gap year 20, whatever that may be, that launching out, is significant. So I think through works, I think it’s Andrew Root, The End of Youth Ministry; and Andrew, he works through, in that book that I’ll recommend for guys trying to lead and serve in those areas, that the significance of what you just hinted at, parents not driving home the idea of Christianity and the disciplines, Dr. Whitney, and the disciplines that are important.

And then parents not thinking through. I think of Russ Moore’s book, The Storm-Tossed Family, not being able to brace themselves for what’s going to happen when they’re launched out. We look at Paul’s words to the church of Thessalonica, and he says, “Hey, prepare for storms. They’re going to come.” But we spend time feeding our kids cupcakes and then wonder why all they want is cupcakes when they leave the home. Sadly, when I’m out, I can’t see sometimes a distinct difference between the student who’s been raised in a “Christian home” and the student who has not. Who has not. The character is no different. Again, I’m thinking globally, we’re talking about united.

Dr. Smith:      
Yes.

Dr. Jones:       
And I really don’t want a student at Cedarville to say, “Hey, whoa, what do you mean by that? Don’t I have your class? And I’m fighting to do these things.” So my Cedarville University students, those of you all, I’m thinking specifically about you as much as it is, this conversation is globally. And our crowd, when I’m engaging people, it’s not like, “That’s a characteristic of somebody who has an affinity towards scripture.” No, I think we must do a better job at that. We think through works like, Are My Kids on Track and Wild Things, those two books that I would commend to folks and say, “Hey, pick those up.” That gives us paradigms in order to think through how we are rightly training our students.

Sadly, a kid who grows up in a Christian home that’s really not all that Christian, is going to respond outside of that home the same way a student who’s growing up in a non-Christian home. And then even more sad than that, sometimes some students who grew up in non-Christian home still have a morality that is lacking, even from some Christians that I see. The moral right thing to do is even lacking in some areas. I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but I do want to press parents, grandparents, those who are shepherding young souls into right discipleship in the home. And here’s the deal. Charles Spurgeon, I believe he said, “Every command of scripture bears today’s date.” And it’s often we’re like, “Oh yeah, just the culture today is pressing in on us.” Man, I don’t care about the culture pressing in on us. I don’t care.

Our kids play basketball in Frankfort, Kentucky. Yes, it was in elementary. And people are like, “Oh yeah, when they get a little older, you don’t know what you’re going to do.” I have two examples. But first, we basically told the coach, “Our kids are not going to practice twice a week after school with you for an hour and a half. That just ain’t happening, because that’s our family time.” That’s our discipleship time and we’re not going to start a habit of a fourth grader and a fifth grader staying at the school two days a week from 5:00 to 6:30, then they come home too tired to even engage us around conversation. So we said, “Coach, if they make the team, they can only come to practice once a week. And we understand if you don’t want to have them on the team, we’ll trust the Lord to protect.” And the coach really accepted them and they played, Kennedy and Kevin both play well. But that’s just me pushing back as a Christian and saying, “These are our values. We value family time around the table more than we value basketball. Period.”

Dr. Smith:        
Yes. Yes. No, I think many parents, again as I said, the culture could not have gone the way it had without Christian parents being complicit. And we’ve done club volleyball, we’ve done high school stuff, and obviously you all have been essential in my daughter’s life and it was always like, “Hey, she’s not going to be at this volleyball game at 10:00 on Sunday morning. She’ll come to the 7:00 one, but then I’m going to leave at 9:15 because we got to get to Sunday school at 9:30. And if you all win the second game, I’ll bring her back for the third one at 1:00 after church.” Now mind you, my grandmother would have fainted about that. Me bringing my daughter to Sunday school sweaty in a sweatsuit. Even in that, I feel like obviously we’ve just done some things to adjust. But I think many times parents don’t realize that you’re still the parent and you don’t yield that parental authority to a coach unless you yield it, so I’m glad that you didn’t yield that.

Now you mentioned even some unbelieving students and how they think about morality and something. And I want to remind us as we try to engage the gospel, to engage any kind of person with the gospel, just remember for example in Romans two, Paul says, “If the Gentiles who don’t have the law by nature do the things that the law demands, it shows that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this, their competing thoughts either accuse or excuse them.” And that’s Romans 2:15. So, conscience is a reality. Thank the Lord that the church is not the only means of people understanding the law of God, because sometimes the church has been weak and pathetic. But God himself has written his law upon the hearts of people, which is why they have conscience, which is why they do so many things to dull their conscience.

“Let me get high, let me get drunk, let me consume myself with sex or with my career, or do all these things so I can dull the conviction of my conscience that I feel because of the sinful ways I’m rejecting God.” And so, I think it’s very important that we remember that. Now let me ask you a community outreach mission type question, for Acts 1:8 says we ought to be his witnesses close and far. Many Christians, particularly in my tribe, the Baptist tribe, we say we’re about the great commission, go into all the world and make the disciples. So you’ve been involved in public school settings and a variety of cities, you’ve consulted with public schools in a variety of settings. Have you found that Christian congregations around local public schools even know that those schools are there? And I mean know that they’re there in the sense of Jesus saying, “The field is white for the harvest.” Do they see those places as a place of Christian witness and loving missiological outreach?

Dr. Jones:    
Yeah, sadly we have some churches that are in neighborhoods and they pay little to no attention to the neighborhood or the neighborhood schools. And I’m not going to go back too far, but when we think about Brown vs Board of Education, when we think about the churches and busing and schooling and separate but equals, when we begin to think of those things from an educational perspective, I think those things, some of them are intimately tied to the church, the whole influx of Christian schools. When integration was made legal, I think that for some of us, there’s always been this separation. And then some don’t even have a desire to go in. So first, I think there’s layers here. Some is, “No, let’s just be separate because of our identity, our ethnic posture. We want to be separate.” I think some are separate because they think, “Church, state, separate.”

We go back to the books like, Worldly Saints, and the church has a right and a responsibility to plow and to make its way in to the public square. So I think we have that hump to get over, first the racial hump to get over. And then the, “Is it even our place to go in,” hump to get over. That’s why some aren’t engaged. And then some just don’t make it a budgetary and, whether you’re budgeting time, human resource, our finances, they don’t make it a responsibility in order to do that. Now, some people are thinking through that. Again, I’m thinking nationally as we’re thinking through this. And some churches do a phenomenal job of being intimately involved with the church.

So when I think about the church’s responsibility to schools, we go to Matthew chapter 25, verse 36. So he says, “Look, for when I was hungry and you gave me food. When I was hungry, you gave me food.” So I think, okay, there are hungry kids at school. How about we go and feed them? “When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink.” Well, there’s thirsty kids. Let’s go give them something to drink. “When I was naked, you clothed me. When I was sick,” so kids need clothes, they need medical attention and medical care. Let’s go and care for them. “When I was in prison,” we have the juvenile detention system. I understand prison mentioned here is not equivalent to our juvenile detention system, but we actually have kids who are behind bars right now who need the gospel. And so I do think it is the church’s responsibility to be intimately involved in schools and in nonprofits in their area.

I’ll say this. My wife, who you know, is a praying woman. And I remember when we first started teaching in Lexington, Kentucky, and she just always had a desire to pray, man. It’s just much, much stronger than mine. I’ve always been younger, just more dependent upon my own skillset. And I’m like, “Yeah, I know I need God.” But she has just always brought me closer to the Lord through her prayers. She’s like, “Listen,” she’s asking people how to pray for them in the local school. See my wife, to those who are listening, we went to KSU together, we did degrees in elementary education together. So she is an elementary school teacher saying, “Hey, how can I pray for you?”

And it goes from how can I pray for one person to full-blown prayer meetings on Friday morning in the public school system. And I just mimic that. So wherever we’ve gone, I begin to say, “Hey, Principal, how can I pray for you? You know, unapologetically, I am a pastor over at this church. Whether it’s Consolidated or Watson or Buck Run, I’m a pastor at that local church. I believe that Jesus Christ saved us, mercy. I want to pray for you because I think it’s my spiritual responsibility to do that.”

And it goes from one prayer engagement to these prayer services that are held in the teacher’s lounge in the morning. So churches should be more engaged, they should make it their budgetary responsibility, time and push any resources they have towards local schools. And then I’ll say this, then I’ll be done. You know I love talking about schools and their engagement. So school, when I think about the calendar for those that are in school, it’s 160 to 180 days nationally. Now, excluding the COVID season. And you do 160 to 180 days average where the deacons, the pastor, every member of that church knows that that kid is going to be in that class. It’s not like you got to go find them. I remember you and I, in the truck riding around looking for church members.

Dr. Smith:    
Yes.

Dr. Jones:    
“Hey, hold up, let’s get the list out. Where has so and so been?” Right?

Dr. Smith:   
Yeah.

Dr. Jones: 
And so, you come pick me up and we go ride to their house and knock on their door. No public school teacher has to do that. They are arriving at them, the nations are pouring into the school system today and we ought to be pouring into the school system just as fast as the nations are arriving in the public space. 160 to 180 days, five to seven hours a day, we know where we can find any kid every single day. And here’s the thing, because of delinquency laws, most states are going to go and arrest a parent or take them to jail if their kids don’t show up to school. So it’s just like, “What?!”

Dr. Smith:   
They are there.

Dr. Jones: 
There’s none of that. They are going to be there. Social services will engage if the kid is not at school. So, hey, the hard

Dr. Jones: 
Age of the kid who’s not at school. So hey, the harvest is there for us. We just have to go. And I commend you, and some of the things you’ve done in going and doing something as simple as greeting kids coming off of a school bus. All those things are something that, you would go to the school there in Jefferson County, whose name I won’t disclose, but you would just be there as an image of godly man greeting young men and women coming off the school bus. Okay, that’s my school soap box go. I’ll be quiet now.

Dr. Smith:     
No, I think it ties into that deacon who took the time to drive the van. You mentioned young people looking for authenticity, and then you also mentioned young people listening to the loudest voice. Many times, Christians don’t realize the value of presence. You can not influence where you are not, and so I wanted to be a smiling face at 6:45, 7 in the morning, because many of these kids were coming from homes where they may not have eaten last night, and they may not have eaten this morning. They’re going to go in the cafeteria and eat a school breakfast, which is wonderful, it’s food, but it ain’t Cracker Barrel. And so they’re going to be going there, then I’d walk around the cafeteria, just trying to say, “Good morning.” Some of those kids, no one has said, “Good morning,” to them in a pleasant way.

And it’s amazing the way they express neediness without saying, “I’m needy.” And I think many times you can meet some Christians, you talk about that separation, especially Christianity has the public school culture, the homeschool culture, that I pastored a church that had a K-12 school, and you can meet Christians that are like, “Well, those are the government schools. Those are the Devil’s schools.” And they had just kind of like written them off. And I’m just amazed that they would read the Gospels; hear how Jesus talks about sheep without a shepherd; quoting the Prophet; hear how Jesus talks about being salt and light in the world; hear how Jesus prays in John 17, that the father would not take us out of the world, but protect us from the evil in the world and not have a strong impulse to engage in these settings.

And I would encourage every pastor, know the principal of the high school, the middle school, the elementary school closest to you. Now measure up the capacity and the ability of your congregation. You might just engage one. And also just examine the geography. I pastored a church that sat between two big high schools. And so we knew that was our sweet spot right there, these two big high schools. But brothers and sisters, if you want to be peculiar people, Jesus said we ought to be his witnesses. And I want to encourage you to see the public schools around you.

Now you need to get over some things. Dr. Jones mentioned that the nations are coming to our schools. And so we have to admit there’s some homeschooling and some private schooling and Christian schooling. Some of those things have to do with us not wanting to be around certain people or have our kids around certain people. Many public schools, there’s ethnic and linguistic diversity. There’s certainly socioeconomic diversity. And there’s just all kinds of people. And you need to really have an understanding that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all kinds of people, “For God so loved the world, every kindred, tribe, tongue and nation, every ethos, that he gave his only begotten son.” And so I just want to encourage you, Christian leader, congregational leader, pastor, see the public schools around you.

You cannot address the 18 to 25-year-old gap without digging into 13 to 17. So that is really, that is middle school and high school. You cannot address that gap without digging into that. And I also you, pastor, ask yourself, “What kind of 18 year older leaves my congregation and goes away to college, goes into the work place?” Do you have a discipleship plan so that a young man or a young woman who had graduated from high school, as a member of your congregation with a certain type of discipleship apparatus and equipping that will prepare them for some of the things ahead of them?

And I want to highlight just one last thing that Dr. Jones says, he mentioned going in and asking a principal how you can pray for them. Just personality wise, sometimes Christians are pushy and we’re used to running things. I want to encourage you, Christians, go into the public school system, you going into that principal’s school. That principal runs that school, not you. And we need to really come in with the attitude of, “How may I serve you? How may our congregation serve you?” We have painted rooms. We have redone, remodeled faculty lounges and loved the faculty and shared gifts and prayer requests. Public school faculty members are often overworked, overtaxed using some of their own financial resources to buy things that their students don’t have. So, “How may we serve you?”

And we want to be witnesses in multiple ways, certainly in sharing the Gospel, but we also want to be witnesses in the simple fact of obeying the great commandment of love your neighbor. We’re not loving these public schools so that we might, “I’m going to invest five hours of love into the public schools, so I want to see five members, five strangers visit our church.” No, it’s not like a utilitarian exercise. It is a love exercise of loving our neighbor, period. And the second command is like unto the first, “Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself,” period. And so I just want to encourage you to think about these things that Dr. Jones has raised for us.

Okay, I’m going to get off my public school soap box, but I think it’s ironic. Let me just say it’s ironic. I won’t say it doesn’t make sense. It’s ironic to bemoan the lack of presence of young people and not have relationships with your local public schools.

Dr. Jones:  
Pastor, can I say one thing in closing?

Dr. Smith:   
Please.

Dr. Jones:
I think what I’ve often heard, both in research and writing, teaching students in these areas and just talking with pastors is the idea that they don’t want us there. And that’s a lie.

Dr. Smith:
That’s wrong.

Dr. Jones:   
What they don’t want is for you to be flaky. There’s a difference. They don’t want you to promise to show up every Tuesday at 10 o’clock for that little kid’s reading group and then two weeks in something more important comes up, not death, then it shouldn’t be more important that comes up. So it’s not that they don’t want churches involved. They just don’t want churches to be involved and then not to show up and to be flaky.

And I know maybe some of the listeners don’t fully understand my family’s posture, our kids have been in public school. I know you would say, “Oh yeah. What are you doing with COVID?” We’re homeschooling this year and we’ve used myriad of methods for our kids. But again, when COVID hit last year, they were in public school, and we value and we cherish. Now our students were in the public school and I went on field trips with the kids and my wife volunteered to teach reading groups and math groups. I understand everyone can’t do that, but where you do and where you do have an opportunity to volunteer, that I would just encourage you all to do that.

Something as simple as sitting in your living room and while you watch your favorite TV show or sports game and you sharpen 100 pencils and then you drop them off to a local kindergarten teacher and say, in a little note, “I love you. Church is praying for you. Here’s a hundred sharpened pencils.” For classroom management purpose, what that does for a teacher teaching five-year-olds who chew pencils and lose them for a living, that is a blessing and it doesn’t cost us, but you can sharpen the pencils during a commercial break where you playing with your cell phone. So I think it’s a way, all of those ways we can serve, go in the cafeteria and wipe tables down, whatever, pick up trash around the school. Again, look at our skillset. Look at our giftings, Romans:12, 1Corinthians:12, “How has the Lord gifted me?” Utilize that gift in order to go and to serve the local schools.

Dr. Smith:   
Amen. So pastor or congregational leader, let me encourage you to think in two different blocks, what are some things we can commit to do from August until the Christmas break and do it consistently from August until the Christmas break? And then what are some things we can do from January until May? Schools don’t use the term semester, but if you think in those two blocks, what can I do in the August to Christmas break block? And then what can I do in the January to May block? And as brother Jones has said, “Let your ‘yay’ be yay and your ‘nay’ be nay.” If you make the commitment it brings shame to the name of your local congregation and ultimately to the name of Christ when we do not hold on to our commitments.

Let me ask you a question. What kind of words would you give for congregational leaders, Sunday school teachers, youth workers, as they’re trying to do faithful ministry? Because of the demographics in the U.S. and family breakdown and things, many of our congregations sometimes I find that they struggle. The places you and I have been, we didn’t really struggle with it, but they’ve struggled to integrate student ministry between the students of their church-going families that we would consider from Christian families and the students that are either their friends or the students that just kind of wander in from our outreach in a neighborhood. And I’ll say that with the disclaimer that I’ve pastored a church where the VBS was for our kids, and then I pastored a church, and you and I go to church where the VBS was largely outreach-oriented.

Would you have any words for church leaders that are thinking through the dynamics of ministering to children from their own congregational families and ministering to children from the surrounding neighborhood? And should that even be a concern that Christians have? I never wanted my kids to live in ‘Christian bubble,’ but I find some people are a little more guarded about who their kids interact with. In your experience and your thoughts about these, what would you say regarding those matters?

Dr. Jones: 
Yeah, so I would say first of all, understanding and training, changing the culture and the church to think, “It ain’t clean.” First I think sometimes we go in with these expectations that, “Oh yeah, this is going to be a clean process.” It’s not going to be clean as much as it is as you’re whipping up, and I don’t whip up nothing, but as much as you may be whipping up a Thanksgiving Day meal, the beauty of that meal and the beautiful of the place setting happens in the messiness of the kitchen, happens in the flour on the floor and whatever may be taking place in the kitchen. It’s not clean.

And I think there’s no clean cut method in order to make the integration of these things happen. We can look at the beginning of the church in Acts. What’s happening when people were bringing these people together from different ethnic postures? The deacons are called, right? It is the messiness of people coming together and now we need to kind of clear up to make sure that we’re not under serving any particular groups there. That was ethnic posture there. But as we raise to socioeconomic status and those who are churched and unchurched, there’s just another difference. So first, it ain’t clean.

Second thing, we need to train the leaders in order to rightly have an outreach way of thinking about things. I think we’ve been in a situation where most of the members at Watson were working in non-Christian settings. And so I think we had a mind of what we do is outward-thinking. Well, I’ve been in some congregations where the majority of people are homeschoolers and the majority of people are seminary students or work at a seminary or work for a particular Christian organization, and I think the way, the thought process there, is a little bit different in the training.

So we need to train the leaders to think outward. We also need to train them to be ready for what it is they’re going to receive. So pastors, ministry leaders, they need to understand what is taking place in the public square. They need to understand the reality of what’s taking place on social media, the reality of what’s taking place with suicide and molestation and hunger and homelessness. I think Jefferson County has thousands of homeless students. And so when somebody says they don’t want to deal with students, I’m thinking, “Do you understand some of these people don’t even have a place to lay their head?”

So train the leaders is one thing, reminding them that it’s not clean. And I mean formal training, not one-offs. I mean, sit your behind down, let’s go through this six week process for forever. As we get new leaders in, we’re working through three weeks here, six weeks here, a couple of hours of reminding the leaders of, “Here is the outreach frame of mind that we’re having.” And then training our students, those who will be intimately involved with the population that’s coming in under, reminding them, “You’re dust too.” 1Corinthians, chapter one, you’re not.

 

Dr. Jones: 
You’re dust too. 1 Corinthians 1, you’re not wise. You ain’t come from no real past [inaudible]. You know, Paul is like, Hey, not many of you all are wise. We have no reason to boast. So training our students, as we outreach to say, you have no reason to boast. You ain’t done nothing. We tell our kids that all the time. Me and your mom finished college. We’ve done nothing. You’ve done nothing. You know? And then I remind them, I’ve done nothing. I’m simply as a result of the Lord’s grace and mercy to me. But I think sometimes we drop the ball in parents not rightly training their students on what it means to have an outreach frame of mind, and they put themselves on this pedestal. So I think reminding ourselves, pastors, it’s not clean having a system of training leaders to think outward and to understand what the cultural heartbeat is.

We want to know the culture in order to engage the culture. Right? Carl F.H. Henry and everything he’s written, and now Russ Moore pressing in there flames album forward. You know? How do we rightly engage these things? So thinking through that and in not embracing the culture, but engaging the culture at Ross Moore without losing the gospel. That’s a quote from us. How do we engage the culture without losing it? But that takes training. We do [crosstalk] training in many ways. You get hired at whatever place of employment, where they do? Sit you down. Read the handbook. That button is for this. This manual is for that. Go there for that. And then we think we can just haphazardly engage a wayward culture and do it successfully. No. Have a system of training leaders. Have parents training their students to embrace teaching people how to engage the culture and taking them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Smith:     
Amen. You mentioned the reality. I think a good way to wind down thinking about students, particularly maybe in a public high school, middle school, elementary setting. The Bible says that Jesus looked on Jerusalem and had compassion on the people and wept for them. His command is to love the Lord, God with everything you have. And the second is like it, love your neighbors yourself. I think many believers couldn’t understand the reality of some of our young people around us. One of the opportunities we had at a church I served was just a high school, but you know, the other one was a combined high school and middle school. And so for an example, because of things like sexual assault, because of things like fatherlessness, because of things like neglect, because of things like an unstable place to sleep or food insecurity, I was amazed at how bitter some middle school girls were.

And so if you are a sister and you’re listening and you have a outreaching love your neighbor type heart, you could spend time just saying, you know what? I’m sister whoever in my congregation. And I work at wherever and I’m just going to love middle school girls, because some of them are just bruised in some ways. And perhaps Christian love from a brother or sister or assistant in our congregation could make the difference. And I call the transition from middle school to high school a fork in the road. And you may remember from Watson, we tried to focus on people that were going to fail from eighth grade to ninth grade or people that are going to fail from first grade to second grade, we tried to hit those key reading and math points. And so just describe, and you’ve been in different cities, you’ve been at different levels, elementary, middle, and high, describe the lostness and the brokenness for our listeners that we can engage if we desire to be outreaching in some of our public school settings.

Dr. Jones:   
Yeah. That’s good. I do want to echo one thing you said, and I simply learned this from you. So it is the process of reading through the one-year Bible. And then as we read through the Bible, understanding that reading through all of the horrific things that take place in scripture, so that nothing surprises us. So I’m in the second Samuel right now. My Bible reading this morning was, and this is when we know, I mean, many of us know the sin that David committed against Uriah. So for us not to understand what’s taking place in our current school systems, as believer, I think, shows a detachment from reading the scripture and all the horrible things that mankind has done that’s recorded in the work of God, in the Word of God and then say, oh yeah, we are totally depraved. So there should be no blind spots, whether it’s, and I say this with the greatest sensitivity, a mass shooting in Georgia or Colorado, those things have taken place in the last 48 hours, maybe 72 hours. I’m losing track of time.

Those things as grievous as they are, I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised because I read the scripture how women can rise up in the scripture and take 2,000 lives to think nothing about it. How David can send a man to the front line after taking his wife and have a man after God’s own heart. Right? So to say that we don’t understand things that are going on, I would challenge the pastors and readers and listeners to say, how was what I’m reading in the scripture, because I’m trusting we’re reading the scripture, how then, and then I’m reading the scripture connect to what I’m seeing two places, one in my own life and my own home and then what I see outside of my home. So the loss and the brokenness that is taking place and the opportunities there for us are simply, I would just say, you gave a great challenge.

Hey, young sisters, young men make it your life’s work to engage someone. And I say some one, maybe, sometimes people feel burdened by I don’t have time to launch a new program. I don’t have time to do this. I’m saying one on one discipleship for a long time. Here’s the deal, listeners. I think discipleship is significant, so significant that the young men I had in Sunday school in 2008, I still discipled today. I had them as public school students. Some of them went to our local church. Some of them did not go to our local church. I still have here, the deal calendar reminders in my own to reach out to them today. We’re not invited into the brokenness and the lostness until we are trusted. We know this as adults. We don’t just open up immediately the moment we meet someone. Now, maybe sometimes the Lord just gives us some one.

We say, okay, I can just be totally naked and transparent with this person. You’ve discerned. They’ve discerned. You feel an immediate sense of connectiveness, but no 12 year old’s going just open up their life to you. Most of them are going to do that. They’re going to feed you a little bit at a time to say, are you going to be with me for forever? But I think about the lostness and brokenness, it is as depraved as all as what we see in the scripture.

And even thinking historically, culturally kids, you know, cultures sacrificing babies, mutilating babies, sex trade, sex slaves, all of those things, beating them, not feeding them. The things that make it to the local news with the parent chaining their kid up in a basement. Those things happen far too often, but we don’t know that unless we’re intimately engaged. So I ask the listener, read through the scripture and say, could it be that these things that I’m reading in scripture could be happening in my own life and at the school right around the corner from my house. And how can I with skillset that I had engage the brothers and sisters in those places?

Dr. Smith:    
Amen. Brothers and sisters, I am so encouraged. We’ve been blessed with Dr. Kevin Jones who leads the Department of Education at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. As we’ve thought about a hole in many Christian congregations people, 18 to 25, and how to think about engaging that by engaging students 13 to 17. Dr. Jones, thank you so much for your time and may God richly, richly bless your ministry.

Dr. Jones:  
Thank you, brother. I appreciate the time and the opportunity to engage you all today. Thank you, brothers.

Dr. Smith: 
Amen.

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