I once mentioned to our daughter Emily while planning a family road trip, that she might enjoy the trip more if she invited a friend to go along with her. She appreciated the gesture, but her negative reaction surprised me. She said, “Dad, none of my friends ever do car trips with their family. They say they could not stand to be cooped up together in the car for so long at one time!”
My surprise has been reinforced many times since then with parents who won’t fly with their children “because the kids could never sit still that long,” or parents who won’t disrupt their children’s schedules for . . . well, for almost any reason.
Believe me, I do know the hassle of packing for a family of five, the challenge of driving thousands of miles with three kids in the back of a Volkswagon Golf, of dealing with jetlag with a baby that can’t tell time, so I’m not oblivious to what it takes.
On the other hand, how will we ever teach our children to have a heart for missions, if we as their parents are not willing to do whatever it takes to expose them to the life of one who lives within the mission of God?
We will approach this same question from many angles, but today I want to talk about instilling in your children an essential trait for everyone who loves the mission of God—flexibility!
I don’t know where Sherrylee and I got this idea, but very early in our marriage, we decided that our children would learn flexibility from the very beginning of their lives. This was a conscious decision on our part, not just a necessary reaction to our lifestyle.
But what did this mean in practice? At their earliest ages, it meant the following:
- Wherever we went, they went! At three weeks, baby Philip traveled to Cologne with us where he got stuck in his Kinderwagon in the revolving doors of the Cologne cathedral! Ben flew back to the States with Sherrylee and Philip (2 ½ ) at six weeks, and Emily had four Atlantic crossings by the time she was six months old. LST started in 1980 when our children were 6, 4, and 2, and we all spent 6-10 weeks traveling together by plane, train, and car for the next ten years.
- We never reinforced “structured requirements” like sleeping in my own bed, special blankets or dollies that they couldn’t do without, or even “shhhh, no noise while the baby is sleeping!” If this sounds draconian to you, let me just defend myself a bit by saying that we were not compulsively structure busters, but we just did not want our kids to require these things in order to be decent human beings!
- We did not really ever find the words “I’m bored” to be appropriate. Our kids road in our back seat for literally thousands of miles each summer as we traveled between LST mission points. This is where they learned to do without television, to read, to listen to all kinds of music, to beat their parents in games like the ABC game or Bible Twenty Questions (Ben stumped us all once with “the white knight”! We said, Ben, there is no white knight in the Bible. He replied, Yes, there is—in the book of Revelation—and he was right! Read Revelation 6.)
- The children never heard their parents use their needs as an excuse for avoiding something important! I will admit that sometimes we were so tired that while staying in other people’s homes, we fought over who got to go in and put the kids to bed—and we usually fell asleep as well! In fact, what I see not only in our own family, but in the families that take their children on missions is that the children become the reason FOR going, never an excuse for NOT going. What is the message any child at any age gets when he/she hears their parents say, “Well, maybe when the kids are older!” or “The kids are too busy with their summer activities!” or “It’s too much hassle with the kids. Maybe when we are empty-nesters!!”?
If you want your children to have a heart for the mission of God, then teach them from the first days of their lives to put the needs of others before their own—including things as basic as their own creature comforts.
We recently had a family stay with us that has spent well over a decade in Africa as missionaries. This family has two wonderful children, ages 10 and 12. We heard from them after they arrived back in Africa and had been there a couple of days, the younger child said, “Dad, it’s so good to be home. I love Africa. I love to sweat. I really missed that in America! “ Children have a great capacity for flexibility—usually greater than the parents.
Teach your children to become all things to all people so that by all means some can be saved!
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