Stories about Parents Number 1: A Tree for Lunch?

Being a kid's pastor, I get to see parents in all kinds of situations. Bad times: when a child brings home bad grade. Fun times: at a football game when their son scores a winning touchdown. Scary times: sitting with them in the hospital as a surgery is done. All sorts of different moments in kid's lives that I get to share with a family. With this being said, I get to see some pretty glaring moments of both good and bad parenting. Just because a parent has a bad parenting moment doesn't mean they are bad parents. It just means they made a choice that wasn't necessarily wise in the raising of their children. It is okay. We all have bone headed moments in parenting. I promise not to use any names in these stories, so don't worry no one will know except you and me and Margaret and your kids...and anyone else that was there that day. Well here goes the first installment of Stories about parents.

One time, I decided to host a family day at the Zoo with my preschool department at the church we were at. It was early spring. I thought we would have a great time. We got to the church to meet up and I remember being very disappointed at the turn out because only two families arrived to go with us. I didn't mind it just meant I got to go spend some quality time with those two families. This was before Marge and I had kids, so we were still establishing our own thoughts about parenting and how to raise our kids. Well little did we know when we showed up at this zoo day we were going to receive a huge lesson on parenting.

The two families we quickly find out are polar opposites of one another. We walk into the zoo to find family number one walking together, the parents pointing out different things in the welcome plaza like the fountain, and generally laid back. The other family was running, nearly jumping into the fountain and throwing temper tantrums about wanting to go into the gift shop. I was just trying to keep us moving.

We went to the chimp habitat. It was a beautiful. I asked the kids from family one some questions and they would answer me. The dad would look at his son and say, "shouldn't there be a sir on the end of that?" The 4 year old boy would look up at me and say, "sir". I thought, hey I am just a kid myself he doesn't need to call me sir. Now I understand that, his dad wanted him to understand at an early age that he need to show his pastor respect. The other set of kids would hug us and give me 5 but never was calling anyone sir a priority. When it came to their parents, I think they even called them by their first name a few times. Teaching respect was not a priority.

The glaring difference of respect not just for your pastor but for people in general became evident even more when it came lunch time. I remember sitting down outside at a table along a walk way with all the kids and parents starting to eat our sandwiches. Just behind the table was a line of trees that were used as shade. I was blown away, as I sat and talked with kids about their favorite animals we saw that morning. We were laughing and I didn't notice the Dad of the second family was no longer at the table with us. (That was my first mistake in all this, because I never should have let him out of my sight.) This grown man proceeds to climb up in a tree behind where we are eating. My back was to him so I didn't see him. I don't know if the kids were to preoccupied with eating or talking or both to notice that he was doing this. The next thing I know, We have tree branches in the middle of our table with him just cackling up a storm. I turned and really wanted to yell, "Idiot!" I didn't. I just took a deep breath and watched as their son sprinted right up to the tree and tried to do the same thing. He just lost all ability to tell him no he can't do that. He treated all of us and his kids with little respect as we were eating. Was it funny? Maybe to him. It was still pretty annoying to pull leaves out of my cheetohs. This was a true bone headed moment.

This is what I took away from that day. If I treat people my kids need to see in authority without respect then they will not respect their authority. And if you climb in a tree and drop branches into peoples table you look like a... well I'm sure you can insert a word there. Do we have to be like the first family and be so strict that any time someone asks you a question you have to say sir or keep your kids in a single file line from shortest to tallest as you walk? No. Do we need to find a balance of hey if I treat other people with respect myself then maybe my kids will too? That is more like a plan that I like. Parenting, like life, is about balance.

Be Real

But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don't we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it. Romans 3: 31 (Message)

When I was younger, I worked for over 5 years at Office Depot both in the store and at a warehouse. It was a learning time for me. I had a call of God on my life to be doing full time ministry, but I needed to go through this to understand what life outside the walls of a church is like. A lady I worked with who was not a Christian and I were friends and talked regularly about life and struggles. We talked about my beliefs and her struggles with having any beliefs. I remember her telling me she had a hard time with pastors and their appearance of perfection. She would talk to me about how I was the first Christian she knew that she didn't feel threatened to share her own mistakes with. As a young pastor, I found it very interesting that it wasn't a form of perfection that someone in the world was looking for as a pastor. I think many times we think about struggles in our own lives and sins that we commit and we compress them so we don't look like the people we are trying to see saved, or just look like the world at all. She wanted someone that was real. She wanted someone that she could relate to, and not someone that was perfect or trying to appear perfect. I think everyone in the world (including nonbelievers) understands and believes Romans 3:23. Everyone knows that everyone messes up. I think many times we as Christians in our striving to achieve righteousness we forget that we are not righteous beings. I think our striving to pull off a perfect appearance creates a divide between pastors and not just the world but our own people.

I have to remind myself on a regular basis that people think less about me, than I think they think about me. When I begin to worry about what people think about me or what I do then I put up this wall of self righteousness that is neither truthful nor helpful. I think every person I pastor or run into on the street know that I make mistakes. They all know that I am a man. Am I trying each day to get better and become a closer reflection of the Christ that I follow? I hope so. I hope that my decisions show that I am getting closer to that. I have to remember that in the messages I give to kids and adults alike they see this process. I hope I never come off as someone who thinks he is perfect. I know I am not. I will always make mistakes because I am a sinful man. My hope is that by being transparent with my life people will still want to come to know Christ through my example. I know kids can tell the difference between someone who is real and someone who is faking it. Is your focus on worrying about what you do or is your focus on what Jesus did? Is it on what he is doing in your life?