Recently I was fortunate to receive a copy of the book One Million Arrows, by Julie Ferwerda, for review. It is well-written and surprisingly packed for 156 pages. She does an excellent job of combining illustrative narrative with relevant information, and manages to tell her stories with uncanny authenticity and passion. Her illustrations aren’t just overworked sentimental nods to the narrative-oriented reader; they’re personal experiences that comes across as compelling without being sappy. No small feat in the “Christian Living” category of publishing.
What I liked best was how Ferwerda cuts to the heart of the issue: are we as parents just walking our kids through life as usual, or are we raising them up to impact the world for the Kingdom? There’s an important quote on page 43 that punctuates the urgency of that question:
One concerned educator and youth ministry expert, Alvin Reid [...] shares his observation: “For the past three decades youth ministry…has exploded across America accompanied by a rise in the number of degrees in youth ministry granted by colleges and seminaries, and abundance of books and other resources, and a network of cottage industries devoted solely to youth ministry. Yet those same three decades have failed to produce a generation of young people who graduate from high school or leave youth groups ready to change the world for Christ.” Add to that Reid notes, that our churches are starting to show a startling decline of youth ministry effectiveness.”
Julie points out that when she was growing up it was the youth pastors job to educate Christian kids and lead them to have an impact on the world for the gospel. But now she realizes that this job is far bigger than local churches and fundamentally belongs to Christian parents.
I couldn’t agree more.
Christian parents must see themselves as their child’s spiritual teacher first and foremost, with the rest of the community of faith playing a supporting role (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Perhaps the best part of the book is that Ferwerda doesn’t allow it to descend into a simplistic formula for raising Christian kids. It’s full of excellent tips and contextual examples, but mostly drives home the message that parenting is a task of discipleship, and leaves the reader to freely work out how that might look in their own home.
I only have one minor concern: the tone is highly triumphalistic. Throughout, Ferwerda’s emphasis is on immersing your children in scripture, prayer, and what I would call a vision for missions, all as a means of ensuring your child’s commitment to the Kingdom. It might seem strange that as a pastor I would find this concerning, so let me explain.
As a minister for more than 15 years (10 as a youth pastor) I’ve observed that those households who were the most spiritually fervent tended to produce two kinds of kids: equally spiritually fervent or religiously rebellious – and more often the latter. In my opinion the reason for this was that many Christian parents take the scriptural admonition to “raise up a child in the way they should go” as a mandate to indoctrinate their children rather than disciple them, and in my experience most youth will, sooner or later, resist the process of indoctrination.
Nowhere in this book does Ferwerda recommend the simple-minded indoctrination of kids. However, neither is there any dialogue with how the typically-simplistic approach to bible-teaching common in Sunday school often leads those kids to an adolescent rejection of those very answers on the grounds that they simply don’t match up neatly with the actual experiences of life. Most youth go through a fatalistic “Ecclesiastes” phase, and it’s tempting to combat that with biblical certainty. Yet, what is needed most is to heed Solomon’s own advice – to not be too religious (Ecc 7:16) – and instead offer youth the freedom to question, explore, and even to be skeptical and fatalistic at times. Teenagers especially must be brought into an open and safe dialogue with the mystery and skeptical self-critique found in scripture, particularly through the alternative wisdom writings, the prophets, and, of course, Christ himself. When we gloss over the biting critique of these writings in an effort to counter the moody skepticism of adolescence, we rob youth of the raw honesty adolescence craves and invalidate their natural and necessary doubts.
In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with the Evangelical Youth Ministry approach, and I worry that if parents read One Million Arrows that way, they’ll simply duplicate a kind of dishonest certainty in their home, and thereby suffer the same rate of failure as Modern Youth Ministry.
But to be fair, Ferwerda never denies any of this scriptural complexity, and addressing it isn’t her project. Her goal is to affirm the centrality of the home as the place of discipleship, and she does an excellent job with that task. She tends to express the faithful optimism characteristic of Evangelical faith, and those who aren’t Evangelical might find this a bit off-putting – which would be a shame because One Million Arrows brings an important perspective to a critical issue facing the American church at this very moment. I recommend it for any Christian parent looking to engage their kids intentionally with the gospel.
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Recently a friend on facebook linked to this article (Prime Time TV ‘Objectifies and Fetishizes’ Underage Girls, Study Says) and asked the question:
