This is a guest post by my hero and mentor, Jim Wideman, author of Tweetable Leadership. (Jim also wrote the forward for Truth in the Tinsel!)
Back in November of 1978, Julie and I began our lives together. It was a wonderful day; all the kids in our children’s church were so excited about attending our wedding. I’ll never forget one little fellow named Zack who asked us if he could go on our “moon ride” with us. I told him he couldn’t, and one day he would have his own “moon ride.” (He thought when his parents said we were going on a honeymoon, they said we were going on a moon ride.)
I had no idea all of the work involved in the two becoming one. You see, although Julie and I both love Jesus, our families, rock and roll, and each other; we soon found out we had come from two completely different parenting styles. As we began to talk about all of our differences, the big desire of our hearts was to train our children based on God’s Word more than our own family and cultural traditions.
I believe that just like the church needs a biblical vision for reaching children, so does the family. Have you ever asked God for what He wants for your family? God designed the family to put His Word into future generations. If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. So if God gives you the desires of your heart, what are your desires and goals for your children? For me, I wanted our family to be close. I wanted them to love the Lord and the Word with all their hearts. In fact, I wanted them to love the Bible so much that it would be what they base every choice in their lives on.
Julie and I believe the Bible was and still is the benchmark of how we should view the world and how we should live. The Bible tells us we are in the world, but we are not of the world. The Bible also tells us to come out of the world and be separate, yet we are told to be salt and light to the world. Over the years, I have studied families and the different ways they parent. I’ve also studied churches and the different ways they do church. To me, the families and churches who have the greatest successes are the ones who have teamed together to join forces and develop in individuals a biblical view of how to live 24/7.
I have had the wonderful honor of raising two wonderful daughters. They are both successful, not only in business but also in their spiritual walks. My girls are as different as night and day: if I had not been in the delivery room with both of them, I would not believe they were kin. I have had to discipline them differently; I have to communicate and instruct them differently. But when it comes down to making choices and how to live, it was the same for them as it was for their mother and me—simply, what does the Bible say?
There are lots of voices that speak into our lives and challenge a biblical worldview. As a parent and as a pastor, I cannot block out every voice that speaks to my family and to my congregation, nor should I; but I have spent my life pointing out that God’s Word contains truth, and the truth of the Word is what will set us free. God’s Word is the filter we should view the world through. Years ago, I learned that a stronghold is just believing wrong information. When we take captive every thought and make it obedient to the Word of God, it produces right thinking that creates right actions.
Our actions come from our thinking; that’s why we have to be intentional about the voices we listen to and the actions we do, regardless of our age. When my children were small, we limited the voices and the traditions we planted in our children. Just because a movie or TV show was animated or geared for children didn’t mean we allowed our children to feed on it.
This led us to the big question: what were we going to do about mythical traditions?
Julie and I both grew up in Christian households. Both of our families attended church on a regular basis. Our parents also told us about the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus. We also both grew up watching all the Disney™ fairytale movies and reading traditional children’s books. When Julie and I found out that our parents were really Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and the tooth fairy; it affected us differently. Julie just kind of went along as long as her parents wanted to play the game. I felt betrayed. It also made me question if Jesus was real, too, or made up?
One thing Julie and I knew was we wanted to do whatever we could to help our kids know the difference between fiction and truth. We decided to do something that might not have been popular, but we felt it was right for us as a family. We chose to not tell them there was a tooth fairy; daddy bought their teeth. Oh, we still to this day give our kids Easter baskets, but they don’t come from Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail; they come from mom and dad.
But the most controversial decision we ever made was to no to “Ho Ho Ho!”
We never told our girls their Christmas presents came from the North Pole or that they where made by elves. We told them the stories as stories, not as truth. The truth was their presents came from mom and dad with love bought with money Father God provided to us because He loves His kids and wants us to love ours. We told our children that Father God started the whole gift-giving tradition by giving the first Christmas present—His one and only Son.
I don’t think our girls could have been more excited about Christmas than they were growing up. They went to bed wondering what mom and dad were going to give them in the same way other kids were excited about presents from Santa. A funny thing that happened was when adults would ask Yancy what Santa was going to bring her, she would answer, “Nothing.” Those adults would look at us like we were the worst parents in the world. I’ll be honest with you; at first, I was guilty of being somewhat of a Santa basher. Some of you might have heard a song I wrote for an early Puppet Trax tape that says, “Santa Claus never died for anybody’s sin, and the Easter bunny never rose again.”
I remember walking through the mall around Christmas time and seeing a mall Santa. I remember saying something about there he is, the god of this world; and I remember Yancy as a very little girl saying, “Dad, it’s just a man in a suit like your gorilla suits.” After that, I just took a chill pill. We had done what we had wanted to do: we had taught our girls the difference between truth and fantasy.
My kids loved Disney™. They were big Snow White fans and big Little Mermaid fans. They loved puppets, all my full-bodied costumes, and clowns. They even have had their picture made with Santa. But more than anything, my girls love Jesus. They love their parents and are very close to us. Although we are not perfect parents, we have never told them a half-truth, a white lie, or a fantasy story as a true story.
Because of this, my children believed me about Jesus. When I told them about the hurt and pain from living contrary to God’s Word, they believed me. They didn’t need to experience the pain themselves; they learned from my mistakes and believed me because I have always told them the truth. I learned when I first started working with kids in church to always keep your promises to them. I never made a promise in children’s church that I couldn’t keep. If I did that at church, I needed to do that at home.
I have no regrets for telling my kids the truth. They still look forward to Christmas and seeing what they are going to get from mom and dad, but greater than that, they know the reason for the season is that God’s Son became a man and dwelt among us.
Jim Wideman is considered as an innovator, pioneer, and one of the fathers of the modern children ministry movement. He has trained hundreds of thousands of children’s and student ministry leaders from across the U.S. and around the world over the past thirty-five years. He has built strong ministries for families in five great churches. Jim and his wife, Julie, have two fabulous daughters and the cutest grandson ever born!
This article is reprinted with permission. ©2013 Jim Wideman Ministries, Inc.
