58 - Vacation Bible School, Kitchen Chore Rotations, Navigating Mixed-Values Friendships

0:00SPEAKER_00:Welcome to another episode of Raising Them Up, our Christian parenting QA podcast, and we're your hosts.

0:07SPEAKER_02:I'm Israel Wayne.

0:08SPEAKER_00:And I'm Brooke Wayne.

0:26SPEAKER_02:Welcome to another episode of the Raising Them Up Parenting QA podcast, where we answer your parenting questions. We have some great questions lined up for this episode, but we would like to hear from you. If you have questions that you'd like to submit for a future episode, you can do that a couple of different ways. One is by going to the website for this podcast, raisingthemup.org, and you can leave your question there or call 1-800-223-6567. 1-800-223-6567.

0:54SPEAKER_02:Leave a voicemail, and we will seek to answer your question on an upcoming episode. All right, let's dive in. What parenting questions do we have today?

1:02SPEAKER_00:Okay, it has related to do with vacation Bible school. So I'll call it VBS after this. So it says, What is your opinion on VBS? My children are all going to be school-aged this summer, and I'm wondering, should I send them to our church's VBS? Should I send them to VBS's at other churches in the area whose doctrines we agree with? What things am I not considering that I should be taking into account as we make our decision?

1:26SPEAKER_02:Okay, so you and I both grew up in evangelical church culture. Uh so what are some of your memories of VBS when you were little?

1:34SPEAKER_00:I don't actually have a whole lot. Really? Um, you know, I don't know if I went too many years. So I think that plays into it, but I remember the candy and the games. Um, I do remember in our Sunday school when I was growing up, so similar idea, a lot of Bible work uh memory. And somehow I figured out how to read it, maybe a little similar to what you did at an early age, read it and go to the teacher and be able to say it. Because it didn't really require a whole lot of, you know, memorize it through the week and then say it at the end of the week or something.

2:05SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I was also involved helping coordinate a few uh CEF or child evangelism fellowship meetings in our neighborhood when I was probably around 13. Um, I helped clean for the lady who hosted those. And I think I knocked on doors to see if anybody would come. Anyways, I don't have a whole lot of actual memories as being a student.

2:27SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I went, um, went to quite a few, actually. What I remember mostly is Kool-Aid. Um, cookies, Kool-Aid, um, candy, singing some goofy songs. Right. Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I I don't think that it really impacted me as a Christian young person in any significant way. Uh, I think the idea behind VBS is sort of twofold. Um, the intended purpose of the churches, for the most part, traditionally historically, has been an outreach to children in the community to hopefully share the gospel with them so they'll get saved, and then maybe that will attract their families in.

3:08SPEAKER_02:Right. So reach the family through reaching the children. Um, I think if we study the history of that and we were to look at that from a kind of research standpoint, I think we would find that there has not been a lot of effectiveness to that approach. Not gonna say there hasn't been any, uh, but in terms of it resulting in uh lasting uh fruit in terms of uh conversions with children who who remain in the faith and are long-term church members and then families that join the church.

3:38SPEAKER_02:I mean, uh it happens, but it's it's very, very low numbers. And so uh I don't know. I'm a little um I'm not real, you know, I'm not real bullish on the idea, I guess. Um I think then from the parent standpoint, the way that most parents look at it is it's free babysitting. And so anything that gets my kid out of the house in the summertime, uh particularly when school's out and they're just underfoot, you know, it's like, hey, if some church will take them, uh, that's great.

4:09SPEAKER_02:Right. And it kind of is the way that bus ministry usually worked with neighborhoods uh that had Sunday school ministries where they would drive around the neighborhood, pick up neighborhood children. And um, you know, and I was part of that too, right? Because um, you know, my mom wasn't a Christian when I was young. And so I used to get on the bus and go to church uh on the church bus. And it was the only way I could get there, you know. Um and then again, I I just it's it's hard because I don't remember like in Sunday school, most of my experiences with Sunday school from a theological standpoint, I would say were negative.

4:42SPEAKER_02:Okay. Like I was actually taught more bad theology than good. Right. And then later, you know, as I was trying to really understand the scripture, like I actually had to throw out a lot of baggage that I had accumulated from uh inept and unqualified Sunday school teachers that taught me a lot of garbage. And so, yeah, I'm not a big fan of it myself. Um, I think a lot of it has to do with people's experiences, right? Right. If it's good or bad, so some some people remember very fondly having fun at VBS as a child, and uh, and so they're very keen to kind of send their children there.

5:19SPEAKER_02:Um we don't send our children, you know. I don't I don't particularly see a lot of value in in doing it. Like as a church leader, I personally wouldn't really be all about that. Um does it do harm? I I don't know. Barna's research tends to indicate that a lot of that stuff when they introduce children to very trivial aspects of Christianity that aren't from a church home where they're not getting any other kind of discipleship, then it kind of inoculates them a little bit against church where, you know, they just feel like this is silly and frivolous and they they don't really take it seriously.

5:55SPEAKER_00:It's just childhood story time kind of concept.

5:58SPEAKER_02:Exactly. And so they kind of throw all these children's stories of David and Goliath and Noah and the Ark and Samson and all these things, they sort of throw it into the myths and fables uh category when they get older and go to school and they're taught science and rationalism and all this kind of thing, um, that it it kind of softens them towards actually wanting to have anything do with church because they're like, Yeah, I think I know what church is, and it's kind of a bunch of fairy tales.

6:24SPEAKER_01:Right.

6:24SPEAKER_02:So I don't know. I'm probably the wrong person to ask on this. There's lots of people who love VBS and love Sunday schools, and um I'm I'm not a big fan of it. Um I I mean to me, I don't look at it with my children and feel like my children are gonna learn anything there, other than maybe some bad habits from neighbor kids. I don't think they're gonna learn any theology there that they don't already know. Uh, and I'm not just a big fan of them getting all sugared and hyped up.

6:50SPEAKER_02:So to me, there's not really any take home. So for me, I'm not, I'm just not motivated. Like, oh, I want my kid to go do this, and I don't just want a free babysitter. Like I want to engage with my own children and spend time with my own children. So uh so yeah, I'm kind of sour on the whole thing. Uh, what about you? What about you? What do you have, do you have thoughts on that?

7:08SPEAKER_00:Um, yeah, no, I think my little tendency would be like I can input into my children that same amount of time in a more strategic way than the stories and all that. I and I know sometimes there's like musicals and all that that help it drill home a lesson, or there's there's certain things that a child may pick up in a bigger way just because of the presentation and so forth. I I probably wouldn't myself, but um, even if you do, I think that you just need to be careful, realizing the peer influence is always the biggest teacher in those settings.

7:43SPEAKER_00:And uh even if it's well conducted and controlled and so forth, it's probably going to be likely that the youngsters are coming back with new words that they learned from the other children and new habits and so forth, new attitudes.

7:55SPEAKER_02:Well, for example, like um I was just uh speaking at a conference in another state. I can leave the state unnamed, um, but there was an event that was they rented a building. Okay. So this was not the host church. Uh the event had nothing to do with the building where it was meeting, but it was a very liberal Presbyterian church that where this event was being held. And uh, as I was walking around the building looking, they had all this LGBTQ, rainbow flag, uh Love Mother Earth, and you know, it's just this leftist progressive, you know, church that looked to me like a bunch of old white Democrats was kind of the demographics of it.

8:34SPEAKER_02:But then I noticed they had a VBS. And I thought to myself, you know, in some ways, it seems like these are the kinds of churches that really seem to be wanting to draw kids in.

8:43SPEAKER_01:Oh.

8:43SPEAKER_02:And so, you know, that's another thing is you see a lot of United Methodists and PCUSA and ELCA and, you know, a lot of these liberal denominations that are doing these VBS programs. Uh, a lot of the cults do them.

8:57SPEAKER_00:Right.

8:58SPEAKER_02:Um, and so uh it seems to me like they've really figured out they want to try to get your kids. Right. And so that's another thing I think when she's asking, like, what about other churches? I would be really nervous about what kind of an influence they're wanting to have on my child. Right. And you're not there. So I I'm just not a fan of I go send my children off to something where I'm not there. Um, the only thing that we really do along that line is that some of our older children, and talking about like 12 and up, uh, are in Bible quizzing, right?

9:28SPEAKER_02:But they have oversight from some of their older siblings who are coaches. Um, so there went there's some accountability, and we've gotten to know the staff pretty well. Uh, so we know the other quizzers and we know the staff and we know what happens there, we know the influences, and so that helps some. You know, they they go practice once a week or whatever with that. And uh we don't go along and sit in on those sessions, but it's pretty controlled and you know, we we're pretty familiar with that situation.

9:53SPEAKER_02:And it's not like six-year-olds that are going off to some PC USA church that has a rainbow flag, and we're just like, have fun.

10:02SPEAKER_00:So I think a lot of our perspective though goes back to we want to prepare our children to be the future church. And so we've had this longstanding position where we keep our children with us in the services for the sermon time.

10:18SPEAKER_01:Right.

10:18SPEAKER_00:Because, you know, I realize they're not gonna get a whole lot, especially as two and four-year-olds. But surprisingly, about five and six, they start saying a couple things about the sermon and taming a little bit.

10:30SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I like to be able to talk with my children after the service and ask them questions about the sermon and what they learned or what they heard. And so we discuss it. And so I I like the opportunity for them to be able to sit in big people church and be able to hear the scriptures.

10:45SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so taking them into age segregated like VBS, um, you know, at least it's all young people, all children, elementary usually, uh, you know, it just takes it to Age segregation, age segregated socialization is not something that we value. Right. And so I and especially within the church, I want to see them uh feel like going and being part of the adult sermon time is normal. Yeah. And so um, so I think that colors a lot, even though this is just a a designated week or something.

11:16SPEAKER_02:Yeah.

11:17SPEAKER_00:Um so we're not saying it's a sin.

11:19SPEAKER_02:We're not saying it's a mortal crime. Um, maybe it's okay. I don't know your church, maybe it's fine. Um, I'm I'm soft on the idea. Uh, you're not gonna probably find a fanboy in me for for that kind of thing. But I give a little bit of the explanation, rationale for it in my book, uh Answers for Homeschooling. I have a chapter in there on socialization, uh, education. Does God have an opinion? I have a chapter there on socialization. I talk about the power of uh peer influence and how that can be much more negative than we think, even in church context, in my book Raising Them Up, Parenting for Christians.

11:51SPEAKER_02:So you can get all those books at uh generations.org if you go to their web store and you uh type in my name, Israel Wayne. It'll pull up all the books that I've written. I would encourage you to grab those books and kind of it'll help you understand the background, because we're not just coming at this from a void, but we don't see anything in scripture that supports age segregation of children. Um we see that they're supposed to be integrated into the entire church, um, and that the most effective means of discipleship is not setting them away from you to other people to have your other people who are strangers, you know, disciple your kids, but for you to disciple your own children.

12:28SPEAKER_02:And so understanding some of the background of that, the scriptural support to that, some of the historic context of that will probably be helpful for you. So, once again, the website for this podcast is raisingthemup.org. Hopefully, you have subscribed. So we would like for you to subscribe to the podcast. Make sure that you get on the email list for this podcast, which you can do at raisingthemup.org, and then you will be notified when new episodes come out.

13:02SPEAKER_02:All right, what is our next question?

13:04SPEAKER_00:So this one is actually a follow-up to the kitchen chore um episode we did. And I don't remember what number that was, but it was a little bit back. And uh someone wrote in and asked some questions about like, well, okay, so how often do you do rotations? What does that look like? Um, what do the children accomplish? And I have a bad memory sometimes remembering, okay, at age five, we do this. We always do the sweeping at five. I know that part, but like some things I'm like, well, what age did they start?

13:34SPEAKER_00:So maybe I'll just put it in terms of where we're at right now. And um then, you know, different we've had many different renditions of this. So I like to keep our kitchen chores the same for a very long time. I know a lot of families that can manage the rotation and have on Tuesdays the oldest child does the dishes and the youngest does this or that. And so we have, you know, considerations like that for us too, where we've got something that only the little children can do.

14:07SPEAKER_00:But I cannot handle rotating it very often just because it inevitably feels like somebody is like, no, no, that's not my day. And there's this constant correction, and somebody forgot what day it was and and did their chore from yesterday, but now is the other kid feels like, well, and do I get free because I don't have to do my thing someone else did it, and they have to do double? You know, it's just too many questions. Plus, I feel like they become better at it when they do it every day.

14:38SPEAKER_02:Routine helps tremendously. Speeds up the process so much.

14:42SPEAKER_00:Who I need to call on for anything. Uh so like I'm thinking of dishwasher.

14:46SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It really has gotten to the point where it's so fast because everybody does one thing.

14:50SPEAKER_00:Right.

14:51SPEAKER_02:So, like our five-year-old does silverware. Yep. And putting away this is she sorry, yes, putting away the silverware when it comes out of the dishwasher. And she's gotten really fast at that.

15:00SPEAKER_00:Yep.

15:00SPEAKER_02:And then I don't know what the other two do. You have two other ones, our uh seven-year-old and our two.

15:05SPEAKER_00:The 10-year-old puts the high things up, which is like the glasses and the plates. Um, we still use regular plates, not paper plates, every meal. That's a lot of dishes. But the seven-year-old are located, he puts them away in like cupboards that are down below. Sometimes if he has something that's a little unusual, he'll get a little stool out and put it away.

15:25SPEAKER_02:And then you have two older ones who are like 12 and 17 that rotate on filling it.

15:31SPEAKER_00:Yes. And that helps so much on that particular one because if say the 17-year-old's gone, it just makes it really challenging of who else can fill the dishwasher. So having a couple people on like the the things that bog down a kitchen like dirty dishes, I feel is helpful because that's just very much of a routine. Now it's hard because our 18-year-old handled hand washing the pots and pans, and she's gotten much more busy lately. So I need to figure that out.

15:59SPEAKER_00:But that was a bit a piece that was.

16:01SPEAKER_02:She's working full-time now.

16:03SPEAKER_00:That was already like slotted out how I had that. Now I'm going, oh. So I do have like two people that handle the cleaning up the table afterwards. And our 10-year-old hasn't quite caught on that. That's part of her routine. So I do keep this all on paper, and I have it laminated and stuck up on the refrigerator. And it's meant to be kind of uh all in one, all of their chores together. And I have made the mistake of saying, you have zone one, and that was a certain part of the house.

16:32SPEAKER_00:This is outside of kitchen, obviously, but I was at like zone one. And I had an other detailed list that said, you know, you straighten the couches and you uh vacuum the rug, and nobody does the zone one or zone two because they don't know what that means. So lesson learned. But on the other things, I have it very detailed out who does what in the kitchen because I am not changing it very often. So we also have now designated everybody uh from the seven-year-old up, has a night to cook, and that's just tremendously helpful.

17:05SPEAKER_00:Soon as they're about seven or eight, I start to getting them involved more cooking alongside me. But even our 10-year-old, she's able to handle most of a meal by herself. Sometimes it's the same meal every week, but you know, uh-huh, we're getting there. And I've outlined like a whole schedule menu because I don't like to think about more decisions than I need to. So I've outlined here are the four options you have for your night of the week. And we pretty much always keep that stuff in stock so that they can go in, use some creativity, but not like just we're having ice cream floats or something for dinner every night that they get to cook.

17:41SPEAKER_00:They don't have full autonomy on that.

19:54SPEAKER_02:So one of the things I've noticed that you do over the years is you try to have children do what they're capable of doing.

19:59SPEAKER_00:Right.

19:59SPEAKER_02:So when somebody becomes capable of doing a difficult task, you bump them up to that task. So, what is sort of your thought process behind maxing out a child's capacity or capability?

20:11SPEAKER_00:Well, for on the upper end, when they're older, they need to be doing much larger things. Uh, they don't need to do the smallest things like folding the washcloths or the the dish towels that the five-year-old can be doing. And I've noticed in large families a lot of times that the older one grows into each responsibility, never lets go of the small tasks uh that somebody else could do. And yes, I understand like when they're grown, they're going to probably need to do all those little things again at a point in their home.

20:39SPEAKER_00:But it's better for them to take on more creativity, uh, more demanding tasks. And of course, then they they grow up and have their own homes pretty soon too.

20:48SPEAKER_02:So if the 18-year-old can change the oil in the car, don't have them folding the washcloth.

20:52SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Because, you know, they need to have space to do other things in their life besides the chores as well. But for the little ones, this is what I have found. A five-year-old wants so badly to wash dishes. And I think it's delightful to watch them because they'll get in there just as they've seen you do a hundred times and they'll swish around the little washcloth thingy and the soap suds fly. And they're just doing it so fast. Um, you know, stack it in the dish rack, soapy and all, because they don't know the full process.

21:24SPEAKER_00:But their heart is in it. And I think that's the part that I just love watching. And I think, you know, when they're asking you a five years old mommy, can I please wash the dishes? It's always like, oh.

21:36SPEAKER_02:Isn't that annoying?

21:37SPEAKER_00:It's annoying because it's like, no, not today.

21:39SPEAKER_02:And they make a mess. And you don't want water all over the sink and yeah, before and right all over them.

21:47SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's just like, and it takes so much time, and you have to usually go back and you know.

21:51SPEAKER_02:But you're saying there's a way in which you need to facilitate that.

21:54SPEAKER_00:I think you do, even though it takes time because when they're 15, if they would say to you, Mommy, could I please wash the dishes? That'd be that you would go give them hugs and you'd go, Yes.

22:06SPEAKER_02:You need to do a parenting podcast if you have a 15-year-old doing that. Yeah.

22:10SPEAKER_00:So um I don't want to ruin that lovely attitude by saying, No, no, no, you know, you're too young. Children need to be needed in their homes. And this is with a enthusiasm. Right. Keep that enthusiasm. And, you know, it does wear off a little too fast, actually. So that is the thing, you know, keeping it within a reasonable amount of time limit for a youngster, uh, but also being present with them and giving them lots of praise and saying, wow, I just, you know, I see how you're gonna do such a good job taking care of your own home when you're grown up, or whatever the case is, or like you you did that great job getting that stack of dish towels folded and put away just the way I like it, or if it's not the way you like it, they got it in the drawer that it goes in and you're like, way to go.

22:54SPEAKER_00:You know, you just you move on and you go to the next thing. And there's always opportunities. I mean, this is just an ongoing process. There's always opportunities to just apply to your children to doing it a little bit better and showing them. But for the most part, they're gonna get catch that as they keep doing it. So give them a lot of praise.

23:13SPEAKER_02:So, again, some of the big pictures of parenting and how we approach raising our children are in the book Raising Them Up, Parenting for Christians, that I wrote. And uh, you actually contributed to it as well. I think so. And so uh you can get that through generations.org. Okay, and now it's time for our final question of the podcast.

23:40SPEAKER_00:So it starts like this. I would like to follow up on the social challenges within a shared community, such as a church. And I think this reflects back to a different podcast we did a while back. Even though we are under the same umbrella of faith, the specific family values and parenting standards vary significantly. I understand the importance of seeking out a community with shared values for my children, and I am actively working on that. However, I am wrestling with the following.

24:05SPEAKER_00:How do we define the boundaries of love? I don't want my children to become isolated or developed. Sense of self-righteousness. Yet I'm genuinely concerned that bad company corrupts good character. In the face of these conflicting values, should I limit my children's deep social engagement with these peers?

24:25SPEAKER_02:Well, one of the things I like to comment about first is this is something I've been noticing and commenting on recently is that we meet with people in our churches weekly because we tend to agree with them on the secondary doctrines. So in my uh Foundations in Faith Bible doctrine curriculum, I talk about the primary doctrines and the secondary doctrines. Primary doctrines are those that have to do with salvation and really defining the Christian faith.

24:52SPEAKER_02:Secondary doctrines tend to be the ones where all the denominations split, you know, on differences in baptism, uh gifts of the spirit, are they for today or not? Um, what the church ecclesiastical structure is, the governing structure of the church. Is it a solo pastor? Is it a elder board? You know, a lot of those kinds of things, um, the type of worship that we have, traditional, contemporary, you know, all these things are secondary issues, right?

25:20SPEAKER_02:And so it's the secondary issues that we tend to clump around in our local churches. What's interesting to me is that for conservative homeschooling families, they often find that their like-minded fellowship, where they agree on the tertiary issues, which are third layer, uh, and I define a lot of those as being lifestyle issues, um, they find commonality in their homeschool groups.

25:44SPEAKER_00:Right.

25:44SPEAKER_02:Even though everyone in the homeschool group may come from a completely different denominational and theological background. Yes. But like oftentimes they get along far better with the families in their homeschool group than they do the families in their local church, because the families in their local church, they often disagree on entertainment. They disagree on the kinds of movies and books and video games that the other children are trying to expose their children to.

26:10SPEAKER_02:Uh frequently, they're just a lot more uh foul language or, you know, just things from kind of the world, if you will, right that are kind of being introduced. And this is this goes back to even our our discussion earlier in this podcast about VBS for churches that are outreach-oriented, bringing in young people from the neighborhood, yeah, not necessarily from Christian families. They're just bringing everything with them, including their smartphones, with showing kids videos.

26:35SPEAKER_02:Hey, look at this, right? Uh, and so there's all kinds of things that children are introduced to in church that are not consistent with their values. And so um, it's just ironic to me that a lot of people say, like, we really don't have a lot of close friends at our local church, even though we agree on all these secondary doctrines. Right. Uh, but then we go to the homeschool group where we don't even know what people believe about the secondary doctrines.

26:58SPEAKER_02:We don't talk about it, it doesn't come up. And we just have a great time and they're like our best friends. Uh, they're the ones that our children really connect with and have friends with uh through the homeschool co-op or or group. So anyway, that's just some background. But what are your thoughts on her perpetrators?

27:12SPEAKER_00:There's so much to say, right? Uh, you know, when we were involved in a larger church, I think there was just that more tendency to each one would find uh maybe of our children would find a friend that was closer to the age and and want to have that conversation. And some of those were really helpful uh in conversations and friendships, but there's always that peer influence. And so our goal's always been a little bit to be a little bit more involved as parents and um not just having our family go in the doors and split up or actually be together.

27:44SPEAKER_00:And this is not in a in a weird or stuffy way, like our children aren't allowed to move out of uh the little family boundary, but to be able to have like more family conversations, several siblings talking to somebody, or maybe a parent and a couple of the children talking to even a little friend that there's their age. But we really sought to have just instill in our children a heart of not just uh making those alliances with their little friends be way up here and and parents are down here.

28:15SPEAKER_00:Right now we're in a very, very small church. And so there's kind of not that same dynamic of little children's friendships that happen quite as much. And so one way that that enables our children to be like involved in saying really loving others is through service. It's like tonight uh is our ladies' Bible study night. So our girls are gonna go with me and set up the chairs and um set out the desserts that we're doing, and and it's all women that are older than them, there's nobody their age.

28:46SPEAKER_00:And like it's often very good to have friendships that are our children's ages, but I think in our culture, we've kind of placed it on our children won't make it or won't be um fully satisfied and happy unless they have always through every stage of life these friendships that are just really deep that are right there. I think there's seasons where that's not always available and you still teach them how to reach out and and bless others around them.

29:15SPEAKER_02:There's an assumption that children won't be well developed, that they're not going to be well-rounded, they won't know how to relate to people in the real world if they don't have lots of friends their own age. That's a that's a social sociological myth uh perpetuated by people who don't have good intentions. And again, read my book like Education, Does God Have an Opinion? I go into that quite a bit. Uh, we have an audio at our family renewal site uh called Socialization that I would encourage you to listen to.

29:39SPEAKER_02:Um, so our thought is what we encourage our children to do is to be friendly, to be kind, uh go over and say hello and you know, make somebody feel welcome and all of that. But at the same point, they're trying to show you videos on their phone. They're trying to, you know, encourage you to go do things that you know you're not allowed to do, leave the building, go run around in the parking lot. Yeah, it's all kinds of things, you know, repeat bad words.

30:02SPEAKER_02:That that's not something that you need to engage in. So we try to teach them to be leaders rather than followers. And it's a complex uh situation. It's hard to do that. And you have some children who uh you have to work with more than others. But again, I'd encourage you back to our raisingthemup.org website. Um, we have uh a podcast there that you can uh subscribe to, this podcast. And so uh also the book Raising Them Up, uh Parenting for Christians, which you can purchase from generations.org.

30:31SPEAKER_02:And then our ministry is familyrenewal.org. We would love to have you sign up on our email list there, and we'd love to have you connect with us on social media. You can just look up Israel Wayne or Family Renewal, wherever you hang out on social media. Until next time, we appreciate you. God bless, and uh, we'll catch you on the next episode. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org/slash media.