Chuck Stecker

(re-post from Saturday, August 30, 2008)

This past week I received the latest email from Promise Keepers. In the recent months PK has been sending PK Man Rules with articles by Steve Sonderman and David Murrow. Both of these guys are friends and doing Kingdom work.

Steve’s article was on Developing Leaders and is certainly worth a read. http://www.promisekeepers.org/home/email/pkmanrules-archive/0808_1

David Murrow wrote the second article titled, How Sunday School is Failing Our Boys. http://www.promisekeepers.org/home/email/pkmanrules-archive/0808_2

David made several good points about the need for our guys to win and spoke clearly to the issue that guys learn differently that our daughters. As a result teaching guys should be different than the techniques we use to teach our gals.

What was failed to be recognized in David’s article is that we are really dealing with young men not boys.

Everything David stated was true. David has always done good research and continues to do so. This is not meant to shoot at a Christian brother or demean his writing and assessment. There is enough of that nonsense going on in the Christian community without me adding to it.

It is simply to say that there is more to to the issue. Churches and parents must consider who is defining “manhood” for our sons (womanhood for our daughters)?

If we leave this critical issue to the world, public schools and the marketing geniuses who are trying to reach our kids at earlier and earlier ages, we will lose them from more than Sunday School.

Davids’ article nails the age perfectly– “When does this winnowing start? In Sunday school. By age 13 we’ve already convinced a certain kind of boy that church is not for him.”

At Age thirteen, we have a young man —– not a boy.

Included in any conversation about the loss of our young men (and women) should be the issue of Rites of Passage into Godly adulthood. Without Rites of Passage, our sons are not leaving their faith or church—–they are just walking away from their parents’ church and faith trying to find their own.

A faith of a child is the faith of their parents. An adult faith is their own. They cannot have an adult faith while still living in their parents home unless their adulthood is confirmed by their parents and the adult community of believers.

It was also great fun for me to read Davids’ article because of the story of Burke Community Church. My family and I were members of BCC from 1989 to 1992. A wonderful church where we served, taught Sunday School and launched and ministry to the most unbelievable group of then 5th and 6th graders, called Children of Light.

Hats off to Steve and David for their articles this month.

for more information on Rites of Passage see A Chosen Generation at http://www.achosengeneration.org/