Competent in the Word

Do I really need to be a Bible scholar?

I often asked this question in college as I was doing the work of youth ministry classes. I didn’t really remember any of my youth leaders knowing a lot about the Bible or about what God’s Word had to say to me or to them.  For the most part I turned out okay in college (I dyed my hair once and played a few harmless pranks…) The pastor at my local church was a student of God’s Word and knew a lot about Scripture, but people who were in leadership were not required to be “competent.”  The definition of competent is “to have the necessary skill, ability, or expertise to do something that is required.”  Being competent in God’s Word means we are equipped for the tasks God brings our way. I would suggest to each of us that the task of parenting requires we have more than a rudimentary knowledge of what God’s Word says about who God is. Parenting requires a growing, vibrant understanding of theology and Scripture to inform our practice in life. Scripture has all sorts of things to say about parenting, but more importantly, Scripture has all sorts of things to say about who the God we say we serve is and how He functions with His creation. Scripture is our guiding light, it is without error and written by God. For us to let it sit on a nightstand and collect dust is to say it is unimportant or not worth our time.

 

So, do I just read or what?

For a long time, I was convinced that being competent in the Word meant that I knew where passages of Scripture were, that I had some of it memorized, and that I was reading it regularly. At some point, I realized that deeper study was required for me to really grapple with the cultural contexts and understandings that are pervasive through all of Scripture. There are things in Scripture I read at face value that didn’t seem to mesh with the way I was experiencing God. For instance, in the Old Testament, God seems to be a God of wrath and anger and a God that punishes mercilessly. As I read these stories at face value, I knew God is “different” in the New Testament. However, as I read Scripture like Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, Psalm 102:26, Malachi 3:6, 2 Timothy 2:13, James 1:17 and others I realized that God is unchanging! How could the God portrayed in the Old Testament be the same God in the New Testament? It took me studying the words of God and examining what I was reading in different places to understand that the same characteristics God displays in the Old Testament are the ones that require Him to have a perfect sacrifice of His Son. In fact, in some ways, the more we understand God’s wrath, the more we see His “anger” at the cross.  His wrath is poured out on Jesus who became a substitute for some of the Old Testament requirements (2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13) and therefore demonstrates some of God’s unchanging characteristics (that are hard for me to understand, admittedly) throughout Scripture. Competency in God’s Word requires we dig deeply into the text. Examining the whole of Scripture and being willing to ask hard questions of the text allow us to grow in our understanding when it comes to this perfect book written by God.

 

Theology informs our practice in parenting

Most of you have a lot of experience parenting your kids to this point. When we first had Isaiah, I began to live out a lot of the things I knew about God. I had always seen God as a “father” but had never experienced being a father. I didn’t understand the sadness, anger, or discipline of God until I had kids. Had I not been a student of God’s Word, I would have never been even able to make those connections and grow in those areas. The way we view God informs our practice in all areas of life, but in this area of parenting, I think there are strong ties between how God parents His kids and how we are to parent ours. Obviously, we will make mistakes and God won’t, but the principles and values God gives are coming from some expertise and wisdom found in His character.

 

Dad/Mom…should I….?

One of the most direct applications I can think of as an impetus to being competent in the Word is when one of our kids comes to us and ask us a question about what God says about sex, alcohol, friends, family, siblings, pornography, cheating, shame, guilt, depression, sadness, change, etc. When that happens, sometimes we find ourselves reeling trying to understand where such a question might come from. We want to know who told them about the issue at hand. We want to know if they are having sex or if they are depressed.  Teenagers often ask these questions because they are gleaning information as they shape their worldview. They are asking people closest to them (even though they may not let on to you that you are) what God’s Word says. It’s in these moments that, if you are competent in the Word, you’ll be able to answer the questions “in season and out of season” or you will have the tools to study and find what you need to really grow in this area. I am not suggesting you give your teenager a list of verses to go and read, rather I am suggesting that in these moments a dialogue can take place rooted deeply in your understanding and competency of Scripture.

 

Our teenagers must also be competent in God’s Word.

Competency in any area comes through three things.

1. Teaching/Learning

2. Experience

3. Giftedness

It is imperative we give our teenagers opportunities to grow in all three of these areas.

 

In the area of teaching/learning, we need to be the primary teachers and they are the learners. From an early age you taught your kids how to walk, talk, eat, play, and how to go to the bathroom.  However, at some point the needs turned to things much more complex. Instead of teaching kids how to share, you found yourself trying to teach social skills so your teenager could make friends.  Instead of teaching them to go to the bathroom, you were trying to teach them to shave in the bathroom because their body was doing strange things to them. It’s the same way with teaching Scripture to your kids/teenagers. At an early age they are geared for simple memorization, learning basic concepts about who God is, and practicing basic principles found in Scripture. As they get older, the learning becomes more complex and it is necessary to begin to answer some of the “bigger” questions of life through Scripture. This is the spot where many of us find ourselves unprepared.  If we had the tools and were competent in studying God’s Word, I think our teenagers would have a more solid foundation to turn to for answers to their questions in moments of turmoil or misunderstanding.

 

In the area of experience, we need to show our teenagers what it means to study Scripture  give them opportunities to use a Strong’s Concordance or other commentaries, or get them a book called How to Study the Bible for All It’s Worth and go through it with them. Have them teach you a section of Scripture. Let them experience what it means and feels like to be competent in God’s Word from a young age. Part of this experience is building confidence in God’s Word and in their ability to study it. When I was a cubby in AWANA, there was incredible affirmation I was doing something right. I may have only memorized words on a page at that point, but there was affirmation and feedback. When kids become teenagers that affirmation and feedback often stops and it is left completely up to the teenager to figure out how they are supposed to interact with God’s Word. Do you know that any “good” Jewish teenager has to have the first five books of our Old Testament memorized by the age of 13? Talk about a way to develop confidence in their lives! I’m sure there is feedback and a movement forward in the area of experience for the Jewish teen in that environment, and I think it is time we learn something from that and begin to move towards an experiential model of teaching our teenagers how to study God’s Word.

 

Giftedness is a buzzword in some sense. As you teach and lead experience with your teenagers, many of you will find a giftedness to learn the word of God within your teenager. The trick is being able to cultivate that. I see so many students who have the capacity to be future teachers/preachers in our local churches if only their parents would be able to draw out some of the learning capacities at their current age.  I also see many potential young evangelists who, if grounded in God’s Word, would be a powerful force in the kingdom of God. However, there are many young leaders who will disqualify themselves from leadership because their competency in God’s Word is rudimentary at best.

 

Let’s get serious about this idea of competency in God’s Word so we can let our theology inform our practice both in our parenting and in our teenagers’ lives.

 

Letting God’s Word “transform” you

If competency in God’s Word is having Scripture “inform” and “transform” our lives, then we must discuss a little bit about transformation. (2 Corinthians 3:18 is clear about this transformation.) I think one of the clear marks of being competent  in the Word is that your life is changed because you are studying, internalizing, gathering data about what God’s Word says and then living it out. If your entire view of the world you live in was shaped by Scripture, that might qualify as transformation. Early in my college career I discovered  I was getting headaches when I sat in the back of the room and tried watching the white board or the projector screen. I began to have intense migraines, so I looked into what was causing these. I found my vision had deteriorated enough that I needed to have corrective lenses so I could see clearly at a distance. I remember putting my glasses on for the first time and thinking I had a whole new lease on life. I could see clearly! When God’s Word becomes the lens we look at everything through, we have a new lease on life. We can now view the world through the lens of what God has for us and what He has for our world. We can see people as God sees them; we can make decisions how God would and we can lead our families how God would want us to lead. There was transformation in what I could see with my “new eyes,” and when we are competent in the Word, there should be transformation for what we can see through those lenses. For many of us, there will be different levels of studying God’s Word and, therefore, different levels of living out God’s Word. The strength of prescription may be different for everyone, but there is still a lens to look through as we become competent in this area.

 

Confessions of a Youth Pastor on Parenting and Studying Scripture

I honestly believe we have a great Sunday School program here at West Free. There are good teachers, there is an intentional plan of teaching, there seems to be consistent attendance from our students (at least the younger ones that are required to come) and there seems to be momentum in the classrooms. In the recent past, I have been deceived into believing that the Sunday School hour of teaching is the most important hour in our students’ lives. Somehow, I told myself, if we could get our students to really dive into God’s Word for that hour, it would spark some sort of studying on a regular basis on their own or with others. But as I have zoomed out of that hour and observed teenagers at our church, I quickly realized the most brilliant students of God’s Word have simply been taught the basics of studying God’s Word in their home. They are taught to ask questions, given allowance to ask those hard questions, and pushed to seek answers. It has nothing to do with Sunday School.  Sunday School is only the place where these “brilliant” minds are identified. It happens in our homes. It happens through modeling. It really happens through teaching, experience, and giftedness. When we, as parents, are willing to cultivate all three of those things in our students’ lives, we will begin to see the competency grow in our families and our teenagers.

 

I don’t think this area is an area to take lightly. While all of the rest of the characteristics may flow out of communion with God, being competent in the Word is crucial to have “right thinking” in the area of theology and practice. If we don’t have “right thinking” we can end up in a place that is incredibly dangerous. Being competent in the Word is how we know what all of the rest of the characteristics are and how they should manifest themselves in our lives.