White Sunday

Readings: Luke 18:15-17 and 1 Timothy 4:11-16

Intro: White Sunday

I am incredibly grateful to Malu for saying yes several weeks ago to teaching us about White Sunday and rallying her family to help lead us. (Thank you all - and if I get off track, y'all feel free to hop in and correct me.)

My understanding is that in many Samoan churches, the children and youth would be responsible for giving the message in the service. And they will next year - we're building to that. So for the adults in the room, and the youth among us, let's talk about how we get from here to there.

Lessons from Sunday School

How many of us grew up going to Sunday School?

• What did you learn in Sunday school? What are some of the memories you hold?

  • Bible stuff

  • Songs?

• Lessons I learned:

  • Spray window and door frames with peppermint oil to naturally and safely deter flies and other bugs.

  • How to make spritz cookies.

  • Also things like:

    • The Lord's Prayer

    • What communion means and how to participate

    • The basic outline of the Bible and many cherished stories and verses

    • Many, many ways to pray

Most importantly, what I learned was that I belonged - that there were adults who knew me and cared about me, and that I had a voice that mattered.

Luke 18:15-17

Children don't often appear in the scriptures. I had a professor in seminary who talked about having to be archeologists of the text to dig for their stories. Socially, children were of little value or consequence. They often appear in the stories more as objects than as people with agency. Yet, there are a couple of moments when Jesus lifts up a child or children as examples to teach adults how to be.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that the disciples were scolding people - likely parents - for bringing babies and little children to the great teacher and healer, Jesus. Jesus responds by telling the disciples to knock it off and let the children come. God's kingdom belongs to people like little children. We have to think about the Kingdom like children do.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it."

There is some truth to that, of course, but it's also not that simple. I feel like Jesus is reminding us that part of training up our children is also listening to their wisdom and insights - following their lead sometimes and trusting that we've given them the foundation to build something of their own that will inspire even us.

Leadership & 1 Timothy

The passage that Alexxa read from 1 Timothy 4 has a similar reminder. It is one that was super important as I was starting out in ministry leadership as a teenager. They are words of encouragement to a young leader in ministry: don't let anyone look down upon you because of your age. Set an example. Remember you are gifted for this, and remember the confidence others have in you, having seen your gifts in practice already.

This was a theme text the first year I served on our conference's Council on Youth Ministry - a group of high school youth with a few adult advisors from all over Washington and Northern Idaho who planned regional youth retreats, service projects, and shared resources for youth and youth leaders.

I was serving despite coming from a church without an active youth ministry. The previous youth group had all graduated, and I was, at the time, the only high-school-aged youth around. But it inspired me to ask for help starting one and to ask if we could have some input in shaping worship. I say "we" because it quickly became a "we" thing: not a big group, but a committed handful of youth leading, and a couple handfuls of friends eager to show up. Several of them weren't raised in a church, but came to faith by finding a place of genuine belonging - a group by and for youth that talked about grace, love, and forgiveness, where we genuinely sought to put those things into practice.

I received an email last week from a college student who had occasionally attended here when they were in high school. They were writing to thank us for being the welcoming, inclusive, loving community that they needed at that point in life.

I tell you that, yes, so that you can give yourself a pat on the back and know that the way we embody faith in Jesus Christ can and does make a difference in people's lives. But I also tell you this to continue to encourage you, because we have so much potential and a long way to go.

Part of that is the reality check that we know not every child we raise in the church will stick around. We don't need data on this, but we have it from Pew Research, the Barna Group, Christianity Today, and every study about church participation from the last 40 years: it is unlikely that the majority of the generation of children we are raising will still identify as Christian or participate in any faith community at all as adults. But the thing is, I'm not willing to be statistically average.

Those same studies show us that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are looking for authentic communities that are genuinely welcoming and inclusive. When they find them, those generations are actually participating at higher rates than previous generations. The bigotry that we see in churches large enough to gain media attention, alongside the blasphemy of Christian leaders aligning themselves with political leadership, are some of the most toxic things driving people of all generations - especially younger generations - away from church.

Again, these are things you probably already knew.

There are over two dozen children aged 0 to 18 who are part of our church, half of whom are youth in grades 6 to 12. There are three commitments I'd like to ask us to make, and honestly, these are just more specific versions of the promises we all made when we baptized these children, and of the promise I made when I was ordained to "diligently instruct the children in every place":

1. For all of us who are capable: Commit to volunteering with Sunday School once every 6 weeks or so. We have enough adults whom Lauren has trained that we should have too many adults signing up - enough that we could start to divide into a younger and an older room. I know some of us feel insecure about it, but honestly, ask any of the teachers: you've got great resources, and we could all use a dose of Sunday School from time to time to help in our own faith journey. The lessons don't change - preachers just like to make them more complicated.

2. Our youth leader, Nick, should never need to ask twice for adult volunteers for the youth program.

3. Most importantly, ask the kids what they need. What do they hope for from church? Ask the parents, too! What can we be doing during the week to support, nurture, and encourage children, youth, and our families? What about Sundays? Do we need to rethink Sunday School and programming? What about worship?

I had a lot of opinions about these things when I was 17. I'm guessing every kid aged 5 to 17 has a few good ones, too.

Let's find out.