Teaching your child about God and what your student pastor wants you to know (Interview)

“Command and teach these things. ¹² Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. ¹³ Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. ¹⁴ Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. ¹⁵ Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.“ —1 Timothy 4:11-15

About Jonny Mac

Jon McCallon’s a 20-year veteran of youth ministry. He has spent the last 15 years at Southeast Christian Church as the middle school pastor. He’s now is the Echo Pastor at Southeast. He’s been married to Dustye for 20 years and has three girls. He’s also the director of HubStudent.com and lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Teaching your child about God (Interview).

So, the challenge becomes what do we keep the score of in our own lives.

I’d love for you to notice this scripture in First Timothy 4:15. Paul’s talking to Timothy and giving him a lot of commandments. Paul gives a ton of things for Timothy to do and how to act. He writes in verse 11 “Command and teach these things.” The verses go on and in verse 14 he says, “do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.” Then, notice in verse 15 he says: Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.

Isn’t that interesting? Paul says, Timothy, you’re growth should be observable outsiders. What do you think about growth and keeping score?

Kent: I think one of the things God hardwired into our hearts as men is this idea of growth and progress. I mean if you go back, we’re told to keep good condition of our flocks and herds—be mindful of how things are going in our enterprise or our family. But, what we often do is we keep score of the wrong things.

Jonny Mac: That happens all the time and—if you’re a dad like us—it happens really fast. We start keeping score of our bank accounts, what our family looks like, our successes or jobs—even our sex life with our wives! There are so many things we judge our lives by—instead of the right things—the things that God wants us to measure our progress on.

Kent: If you’re a dad and you have this idea that your life is all about this giant scoreboard and you’ve got to keep score of all these things—what you have to realize is when you do that—you tend to map that onto your family. So, Jon has a lot of experience having been a youth pastor for a couple of decades. What are some things you’ve seen parents keep score of that end up in the lives up of their children?

Jonny Mac: Man, the biggest pressure cooker I see all the time—their grades. When we go to school—and listen—I wasn’t a great student. So, therefore, we passed that onto our kids and—here’s the thing—when I go to parent-teacher conferences and that’s all that gets talked about. I mean, you can always tell the students in the classroom who—grades are what their parents keep score of at home—because when grades get passed out—their body language changes and they tense up. I know the parents who keep score of their kids’ grades. Those parents also seem to be the ones where their kids end up on 14,000 teams—just because—this is what they’re measuring their life by. It’s a pressure cooker on them and that’s crazy.

Kent: I think it’s one of the reasons why men tend to put more of their heart energy into their jobs than their families. It’s because, man, the job is easy to keep score of:

1. Did I get promoted?
2. Do I make certain money?

But, man—family, sometimes, that can be really hard. I want to share a story with you about a time when this came to life for me.

Two of my five boys were about age 10 and age 8 at the time. And, my 8-year-old decided to do something brilliant. He wanted to jump off a stool and land on this bean bag in our basement. But, he missed it.

So, head first—right into the floor. Yes, it was carpeted. But, it was also concrete underneath—knocked out cold. And, my wife, of course, was panicked and concern. She called EMS. They came. It turns out he just knocked himself out—no big deal.

Later, I come home and she’s retelling the story and she says to my 10-year-old, Alex, “Wait a minute. When Jeremy dove off the stool you were downstairs—but when EMS got here you were no longer downstairs—where’d you go?” He said, “Well, I went upstairs.” and she said, “Why?” He said, “To pray for Jeremy.”

As dads, we’ve gotta recognize that’s a major victory. It’s not that I did it or that April did it. But, it’s that our son had learned in times of trouble—go pray.

And, you gave me this analogy earlier. That’s like, to use a football metaphor, it’s like a pick-six against the enemy. That’s a major victory—but don’t we miss those in the midst of our busy lives? Don’t we miss the spiritual victories?

Jonny Mac: Dude, we miss it all the time. And, the thing is, we have to shift gears and start celebrating what we want them to continue. Because, if emphasize that, then they’ll start saying, “Oh, this is what really gets my dad excited—is when I serve my friends. Or, when I’m reading my Bible or when I’m praying in this moment.”

So, whatever we celebrate is what they’re going to continue. And that’s how we can live this score and progress keeping out in a healthier way.

Kent: That leads us right into this week’s mission for you.