The gentleman sitting beside me, Charles, just
as you finished said, what are the odds?
Lady behind me said, I wish you were a horse.
That is the most creative introduction that I
have ever heard.
Can you give that introduction an applause, huh? Unbelievable.
I should have known that it would come from the
creativity of Charles Trevathan.
I've sat and listened to him.
In the college debate, you probably know that
there is a first constructive speech, then
there's a first negative that gets up and
rebutes and rebuts everything that the first
one has said.
There is a second constructive and then a
second negative, and then they reverse as
they go into final argument.
Well, I listened as a lower classman to an
upper classman.
I listened to Charles Trevathan on numerous
occasions, knowing that he had only taken
about 30 or 40 minutes to prepare, totally wipe
out Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, Chicago,
and every other major debate team in our
country, because the guy simply is so creative.
He is a major, major creative person.
Bob Scott, let the record show that I put
Brother Trevathan on the floor, please.
Well some of you who were not here yesterday,
and I want you to know this, Charles Trevathan
was one of the most outstanding attorneys in
the city of Louisville for many years.
Mr. Pearl, his father, was with us yesterday.
I don't know in this crowded room if he happens
to be here today, but also a very formidable
attorney in the city of Louisville, both great
criminal attorneys as well as civil attorneys.
And they, in the case of Charles and Phyllis,
gave up an outstanding career in law to come
to be one of the attorneys for Abilene
Christian University.
And they've only been here two years.
This is a very recent decision and one that
everyone in the ACU family has applauded.
And this being the final day of class, I would
like for us to again thank, very seriously,
Charles and Phyllis Trevathan for coming to
Abilene, Texas, from Louisville, Kentucky,
to help be a part of running this great institution.
There is a chair right by this delightful young
lady in a blue sweater right here.
And I'd like for any of the ladies that are
seated, there are ladies seated all along
these aisles, and there's a very comfortable
chair here.
I wish someone would take that chair and not
feel at all forward about doing it because
it is present and it is available.
Isn't this great?
On the last day of lectureship to have this
overflow audience again in this room, we are
concerned about children and under the title of
Saving Your Child's Life, I want to give
you three reasons again, and I'm giving you
different reasons every day, three reasons
why we must save our children's lives.
Charlie, could you move this away, they tell me
up here it's going to be in the way of
the projection.
Just push it, yeah, just push it out completely
out of the way, thank you.
Let me begin with a reason that all of us are
concerned with, and I will start narrow
and then work to a larger reason.
Number one, I'm going to start with our own
brotherhood, just those of us in churches
of Christ.
We must save our children's lives, number one,
because the churches of Christ are only
as strong as our families.
Now the Bible makes that clear through all of
its pages.
The Bible is nothing more than God's account of
His dealings with families.
Where would you like to begin?
Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his sons,
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
Jesus and His own family.
And then when you come to the establishment of
the church, you find that the Word of God
even says, here are the men I want to be
elders, and here are the men that I want to be deacons,
and they all have to have families, and they
all have to have children, and even shepherds
have to have what?
Believing children.
This is called now being in the dark in a very
real way.
Bob Scott, let it be noted, we were talking
about the church of Christ when we went into
the dark at that point.
Some of you didn't laugh quite as hard as that
as I thought it would elicit, but we'll
go on anyway.
If you look at a local congregation on Sunday
morning at 11:00, as we sometimes say,
the single people and the married people are
the folks that make that up.
There isn't anybody else.
And you see, there are no Sunday morning
miracles that take place in our brotherhood
where self-centered,
ugly-minded, criticizing families become
loving, kind, generous churches.
See, ugly-spirited families make up
ugly-spirited churches.
Loving-kind, compassionate, generous families
make loving-kind, generous churches.
Just write it down.
It's all over the New Testament that the
leaders of the church have to come from families.
And we've got to save our children for the sake
of our brotherhood.
We've got to be concerned about family life,
number two.
We have to save our children's lives because
our children are facing unique problems today.
Now, part of my background is as a historian.
That happened to be my minor on the Ph.D. level
at the University of Illinois.
And I only say that because history would say
to all of us, be careful about using the
word unique when describing any event in
history or any cycle of events.
And I'm aware of that school of history that
says, be careful about describing today's
generation of young people as being unique.
But they are facing, in a way that they've
never faced before, drug traffic.
Now, quite honestly, when I was growing up a
few years ago in Nashville, Tennessee, and
you said drugs, I thought of the drug store.
Some of you know what I'm talking about there?
It never occurred to...
Cocaine was not in my vocabulary at the age of 18.
Cocaine was not a part of my words at the age
of 16.
And I think I speak for a number of us out of
that generation.
That isn't true today for today's young people.
There are fourth graders that know very well in
Dallas, Texas, how to locate drugs, how
to purchase them, and how to resell them.
One narcotics agent said that he found a sixth
grader who knew more about drugs in his metropolitan
city than he did.
Our children are facing drugs.
Our children are facing a second problem unique
today, assault and rape.
I don't think a lot of us were concerned with that.
How many of us grew up in a time in which we
had security systems in our home?
We're closing on a house day after tomorrow in Dallas.
We spent about 18 months looking for a home,
one that we could afford on the one hand,
one that we felt like would meet our
requirements on the other hand.
It's got a $3,500 security system in it.
It's got motion detectors in the hallway to the
extent that the people we bought the
home from had a little girl 13, and on her
birthday just the other day, we went over
to just walk through the house again, and
during the night while they were all asleep,
from her birthday party, one of the balloons
fell from the ceiling, set off the entire
alarm system.
Dallas police were called immediately because
the balloon fell.
Now my youngest daughter and child is with us today.
She's a sophomore, and when I told her this
story, she said, oh no, I won't even be able
to go in the bathroom during the middle of the
night, you know.
Set off the entire security system.
I was in New York City recently ago, just a few
weeks ago, recently, and there if you
live in downtown New York, you're concerned
about the security and the well-being of your children.
Some of them may be killed.
Some of them may be raped.
Who would have thought that a person just
running through Central Park would be attacked
and raped and almost murdered?
Over and over again, our children are facing
unique problems they did not face.
Now I won't take more time, I'll just give you
those two.
You can add to that list though.
For example, I would add quickly the third one
of loneliness.
At UCLA, the number one problem according to a
Daily Bruin, that's their newspaper
at UCLA, the Daily Bruin took a major poll when
I was teaching there.
And the number one problem on the UCLA campus
is loneliness.
It's also the number one problem at a lot of
other universities.
Students are sometimes known by their social
security number.
When you would get a class list at UCLA, this
is also true at the University of Washington
in Seattle, you didn't see the name first.
You know what was over here on this first column?
Their number.
And we live in a time in which a lot of young
people feel like nobody knows them.
You can be among 1,000 people or 30,000 people,
but if somebody doesn't call me by name, I'm
just a number to them.
Loneliness, according to the Wall Street
Journal, is now epidemic in the United States.
You might want to note that down.
Those are the words of the journal.
They're facing unique problems.
We've got to save their life.
Thirdly, we must save our children's lives
because our children are the creation of God
and have an eternity.
Our children cannot be confused with computers
and calculators.
They are not things.
They are precious in the sight of God.
They are living souls before God and we are
simply stewards of them for a very brief moment.
As I said yesterday, I am not the real father
of my children any more than you are the real
father of your children.
We have them for a while to train and lead them
to the real father who is God.
And one of the greatest experiences I've ever
had is the experience three different times
with those children to baptize each child into
Jesus Christ.
Have some of the rest of you had that experience?
Some of you?
Oh, a number of you have.
Baptizing your own?
Isn't that great?
Isn't that just unspeakable?
Because you guided them enough and you led them
and you taught them your faith and then
it became their faith and they made that decision.
I remember Mark, who was the first one of our
children to be baptized, saying to me
on a Thursday, he said, Dad, this is what I now believe.
And he said, tonight I want to go over to the
South National Building and I want you
to baptize me and I don't want you to ask me
any more questions about it.
I'm ready to do it, I believe it, and so you
will know it, I wrote it down on a notebook
sheet of paper.
And the other day I was looking through some
stuff as we're preparing again to move and
I found that notebook sheet of paper where Mark
had written down his faith.
He'd written it down and he said, Dad, I
believe it.
Well I did to him earlier what my dad did to me
and maybe some of you had your dad do
to you or your mother and that is when I said
first I wanted to be baptized, they began
to ask questions about it.
Are you sure you want to do it now?
Anybody identify with this?
Or they kind of just, and then dad said, well
if I could talk you out of it, then I just
kind of figured that it was still my faith and
not your faith yet.
And so when your children accept their faith in
God and in Christ Jesus, it's a wonderful
moment and we've got to save our children's
lives because they're either going to go to
Heaven or hell.
That's the bottom line.
They're going to be in one of those two destinations.
They're either going to be with God or away
from God, in relationship with God or out
of relationship with God and we have got to
save their lives.
And so a number of years ago, in fact about
three years ago, we were approached by a number
of brethren to provide a parenting tool for
parents of all ages of children and there
have been in these three days overflowing
crowds just like this.
There have been elders.
How many of you are elders of churches?
Look at there.
How many of you preach?
That's where my hand would go up.
How many of you are deacons in the Lord's church?
Several there.
There are single people.
How many singles are in this?
There are students here.
There are a lot of singles.
Some of you must be ashamed of being a single.
The hand went down behind the podium or something.
Up is this direction.
You know, I failed to say that before.
Some of you are planning to be married.
Some of you are single parent.
Some of you may be divorced.
And I am finding people everywhere are looking
for ways to strengthen their family.
Ladies and gentlemen, write this citation down.
Fortune magazine.
I'm going to do this from memory.
It's January the 29th, and I think the page is
41, but I put a question mark by the page number.
It is the January 29th, 1990 issue of Fortune magazine.
It is a prediction of the American people in
the 90s.
And in the last column, there is a statement
from futurist Arnold Brown, whom Fortune went
to as one of their experts.
Arnold Brown says that in the 1990s, Americans
will be looking, and now I quote him, for
eternal verities, absolute values.
Americans will be looking for what is right
from what is wrong, and they will particularly
be interested in the earth, community, family,
and faith.
And that's the end of the article.
Family and faith.
You see, when you are strengthening the
families of your congregation, your dead center black
target as to what God wanted you to be doing
and wanted me to be doing.
You're not somewhere out here on the edge.
Because you see, as you strengthen men and
women and children, as the faith of Christ
is passed from generation to generation, that's
God's plan.
And we may have to do, therefore, a lot of
thinking and Bible study in our churches on
a more basic and practical way about how to
rear our children and how to rear them in
such a way that they can leave us.
So we come to part number four, and this is the
fourth video today.
It is on the subject of responsibility, helping
your child grow wings is the title of it.
I think one of the most difficult things for
families today to do, both in and out of the
church, is for us to develop our children and
help them to grow up so they can live
without us.
That's hard for me to say, but there'll be some
day in which my three children will get
a phone call wherever they're living, today one
of them is living in Arkansas and she
and her husband live in Fort Smith, they'll get
a phone call, Kimberly will get one, Mark
and Shelly will get one wherever they're
living, and Barbara will have passed away.
I will have passed away.
There'll be a funeral.
There'll be a moment of memory.
We want those children to be able to stand on
their own two feet.
We don't want them falling apart because we
made all their decisions, told them how
to use all their money, decided on their
careers for them, decided what they would believe
and told them that if they didn't believe what
we told them to believe, didn't dress
like we wanted them to dress, didn't act like
we wanted them to act, that they would
always be a disappointment to us.
We want our children to be independent of us
and that is difficult.
And so we wrote this script and went to an NBC
affiliate, it's a two camera shot as
you'll see, and I hope you will appreciate and
take notes on the five practical suggestions
on how to rear your children, whatever their
age, so that they can grow wings.
Shortly after the video, we'll discuss this
among ourselves as we have for the last two days.
But now let's see it.
And now, Dr. Minters.
This massive study measured their educational
performance, moral character, and physical health.
The results were published in Business Week and
the facts are simply devastating.
In the last 20 years, the scholastic aptitude
test scores of college bound high school seniors
has declined steeply.
At the same time, the high school dropout rate
has increased along with delinquency
rates, drug use, childbirth, and abortion
rates, and deaths from automobile accidents, as well
as suicide rates.
The study shows that economic factors do not
appear to be the primary reasons for the state
of American teens, rich or poor, all have been affected.
The author writes, spending more money to
improve the environments of children has not
brought about an improvement in their well-being.
The authors conclude a terribly relevant thing
as far as we parents.
They contend that a significant cause of the
declining well-being of adolescents is an
erosion of the bond between parent and child,
one characterized by parental commitment and
willingness to sacrifice self-interest.
The facts of this study demand that we
recognize that our children face treacherous waters
as they grow into maturity.
In so many areas of contemporary life, our
children see irresponsibility.
They really live in the most blessed nation in
the world, but more and more of them are
turning into irresponsible people who care very
little for themselves, their country,
and other people.
At times, I begin to sense a kind of
turnaround, because I do know some young people
who are
turning in to responsible citizens as well as
very authentic Christian people.
That indeed is very encouraging, and we hope
that the pendulum will swing.
So we now come to the fourth method of saving
your child's life.
Let's state it this way, instill responsibility
in your child.
In this series, we have devoted quite a bit of
time and space to how to develop roots
for our children.
They don't need that if they're to be
successful, but now it's time that we turn to
the subject
of wings.
As parents, we want our children to develop
strength of character and independence of
Spirit so they can live healthy, happy lives
for themselves.
One of the most unfortunate phenomenon of our
own time is that more and more children
in their twenties are returning to live with
their parents and depending upon their parents
for their own well-being.
In contrast to that, we want all of our
children to live their lives without us.
That's difficult to say, it's difficult to do.
We want them to be able to develop their own
goals and know the reasons for what they believe
and develop an inner character to do what is
right when we're not present.
One of the most difficult tasks I think a
parent faces is to love his child enough to
leave him alone, to let him become what he is
capable of becoming.
One of my own favorite American poets went to
pick up his first-grade daughter and saw
her taking one of her friends aside and talking
to her.
He didn't know this then.
It was then that it occurred to him for the
first time that his child had created a world
of which he was not a part.
If our children are to grow into the kind of
responsible, mature people that we really
want them to, we must let them have their world
and we must honor their secrets.
We must allow them to make certain choices so
they can live without us.
Dan Greenberg has written one of my favorite
little books, it's entitled How to Be a Jewish Mother.
He describes the basic theory of Jewish
motherhood as an art, a complex network of
subtle and
highly sophisticated techniques.
He says, failing to master these techniques,
you hasten the black day that you discover
that your children can get along without you.
Underlying all techniques of Jewish motherhood,
he writes, is the ability to plant, cultivate,
and harvest guilt.
Control guilt and you control the child.
He continues, an old Folksaw says, beat a child
every day.
If you don't know what he's done to deserve the
beating, he will.
He gives us, he says, the Jewish mother's
cardinal rule.
Let your children hear you sigh every day.
If you don't know what he has done to make you
suffer, he will.
Greenberg continues with tongue in cheek by
saying that sooner or later, one of your
children will eventually leave home and when
you pay him that first visit, you ought to
do the following, bring him some food, he
probably is hungry, take everything off his
shelves and out of his drawers and line them
with a wall cloth, just like home.
Wash his floor just like you would do at home
and then rearrange his furniture like you'd
want it to be.
Buy him a warm sweater and a pair of gloves
even though he may not need it and change
his dinner plates to the kind you would like
and at last, call his new employer, introduce
yourself and tell him how tired your son looked
the last time you saw him and make your point
regarding guilt.
In contrast to the techniques of Jewish
motherhood, which can be practiced by anyone,
is the special
way that God relates to man.
If you'll notice it in the Old and New
Testaments, he never programs us, he never
pulls our strings,
he never manipulates us into what he wants us
to become.
Instead, he gives us free choice.
He made us that way and he gives us the power
to make our own decisions to allow us the
opportunity to become what he would hope that
we might be.
So consider the following very practical steps
for developing responsibility in your own child.
Remember that each of these steps is to aid
your child in a life that he or she can live
without you.
First, teach decision making to your children.
You say your children make lots of decisions,
that's really true and in the course of the
week they may make many of them but very few of
them may be very significant decisions.
For example, think about the decisions they
make when they just order a hamburger, plain
or sesame bun, mustard or mayonnaise, pickle or
onion, with or without cheese, with or
without bacon.
You see, none of those choices are really very important.
A child who has never been allowed the
opportunity to make significant choices grows
into a very
dependent adult who is not really able to live
alone from his parents.
This is complicated by the fact that we don't
really teach decision making as a formal course
in our public schools.
Furthermore, we're also rearing our children in
a very impulsive culture where self-discipline
is not really highly valued.
Yet our children will make some very important
decisions in their life, won't they?
Some of them will make the decision as to
whether or not to become Christians.
Others will decide who to marry, whether or not
to have children, what kind of life occupation
to follow, and they'll make many other crucial decisions.
What are the requirements for a good decision?
Let's look at some questions that can be asked.
First, do I have a lot of facts or is it purely emotional?
Have I consulted others, including wise advisors?
Have I listed the advantages and disadvantages?
Have I prayed for God's will in this particular decision?
Number five, is this decision made with courage
and not following the path of this resistance?
Six, have I set a date to make this decision?
And last, having made the decision, am I
willing not to look back upon it?
Decisions are the pegs upon which we hang our life.
So let's prepare our children for responsible
living by teaching them the art of decision making.
Secondly, instill attitudes of responsible
living in your own children.
Not long ago, I had the opportunity of hearing
John Noe, who has climbed many of the world's
highest mountains,
including the Matterhorn and Mount Kilimanjaro.
He challenged us in the audience to have the
attitudes of high achievers,
which he said can be cultivated by any individual.
Those attitudes include make no small plans, be
willing to do what you fear, be willing to prepare,
be willing to risk failure, be teachable, and
have hearts.
You know, whether it's climbing a mountain or
becoming a responsible adult,
attitudes like these can really prepare our
children to be strong, independent, and
productive people.
Thirdly, spend time with your children.
You may ask what difference it really makes if
both parents do not spend time with their children.
Can a child become responsible without both
parents spending quality and quantity time?
But Armand Nicole of Harvard University writes,
what has been shown to contribute most to the
emotional development of a child is a close,
warm, sustained relationship with both parents.
You might say that takes time, and you're right.
That point was well made by an eight-year-old
who gave this answer to the question, what is a grandmother?
James Dobson printed this in one of his books.
I've seen it reproduced in other books.
The eight-year-old said, a grandmother is a
lady who has no little children of her own.
She likes other people's. A grandfather is a
man grandmother.
Grandmothers don't have to do anything except
just be there.
They're old, so they shouldn't play hard or run.
It's enough if they drive us to the pretend
horses at the market and have lots of dimes ready.
And when they take us for walks, they slow down
past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars.
They never say, hurry up.
Usually grandmothers are fat, but not too fat
to tie your shoes.
They wear glasses and funny underwear.
They can take their teeth and gums out.
Grandmothers don't have to be smart to only
answer questions like, why isn't God married?
And how come dogs chase cats?
When we read to us, they don't skip or mind if
we ask for the same story over again.
Everybody should have a grandmother, especially
if they don't have television.
Because they are the only grown-ups who have time.
Remember, time and spending it with our
children is critical to developing them into
responsible people.
It takes only a night to grow a mushroom, but
it takes years to grow a sequoia.
Fourth, encourage your children to serve other people.
Cheri Ehrlich of Selection Research in Lincoln,
Nebraska studied a large number of children
ages 9-14.
She found that children who are learning
responsible habits spend a lot of time thinking
about others and how to help them.
She further concluded that parents who want
their children to become high achievers and
responsible adults
can encourage them by a number of actions, such
as showing affection, or recognizing
achievements with something tangible,
maybe a ribbon, or allowing children scheduling
choices to develop responsibility,
or discussing right and wrong even when
children haven't done anything wrong.
Christian parents hold up the model of Jesus to
their children.
Of all people who ever live, he is noted for
his service to others.
And in doing so, he teaches both adults and
children a meaning of responsible living.
Fifth, help your children set goals for their lives.
A friend of mine tells me that a goal is a
dream with a deadline.
When we as parents set high goals for our own
lives, it becomes contagious for our own children.
Our parents have taught me that great plans and
high goals demand courage, perseverance,
character, even commitment.
They've often said that great goals attract big
people, while small plans attract small people.
It is still true that you never get anywhere in
life with little things.
After all, God did not create us to think
small, to have weak energy, no dream.
If we and our children want to accomplish what
he wants for us in our lives, there will always
be exciting living ahead for us.
God had lots of plans for us, but none of them
were small.
So let's review the five ways of teaching
responsibility to your children.
First, teach decision making to them.
Second, we can still add to you the responsible
living to them.
And third, spend time with your children.
Fourth, encourage your children to serve others.
And last, help your children set goals for
their lives.
This series is about saving your child's life.
And so now we summarize what this series is
really all about.
Let's consider one more time the ways in which
to save your child's life.
Build a strong self-image in your child.
Guide your children with firm loving support. Motivate.
Don't manipulate.
Instill responsibility in your child.
We really hope this series will help you to be
a better parent or teacher or friend to children.
Know that in our hands are the tools to help
them become a blessing to the world.
That's not disappointing.
Now as we have done on previous days in this
particular class in order to begin to apply
some of this to our own families
and even to get some other things that aren't
in these videotapes, I'd like to just now dialogue.
I don't have any lecture notes that I've
prepared to lecture to you after this.
But I would like for us to dialogue a bit about
this subject of responsibility, helping your
child grow wings.
So let me just ask some questions, and I won't
call on any particular person.
So don't worry if I know your name and you're
wondering, am I going to call it and give you a
heart attack?
I don't plan to do that.
But do help me with this and just speak up as
we run through some important questions
regarding responsibility.
I think we've got to be very realistic.
I think we've got to begin with the fact that
we live in a culture, and maybe even in a
subculture depending on where you live,
that surrounds our children with irresponsibility.
So my first question is, how does our culture
teach our children to be irresponsible?
Because I really think if you're teaching your
children today decision-making, how to handle money,
setting goals, being at work on time, doing a
good job, whether anybody's looking at not,
you're going against the grain.
You're going right against the culture because
the culture today is not teaching responsibility.
It is teaching things like don't get involved.
You may get sued.
Don't be a sucker. Don't give people money and
feed them and help them.
After all, you're number one.
Well, those may be a couple of ways, but how do
you see the culture today teaching our children
to be irresponsible?
What would you say? Any of you? Grandmothers? Granddaddies?
Okay, do your own thing. Our culture says do
your own thing, doesn't it?
Do what? Throw money at our children. Throw
money at them.
Okay, and you deserve certain things that are
coming that are really the best.
I think one of the problems I'm hearing from
those young people that I'm performing their marriages,
and I'm doing four marriages real soon, and I'm
sitting down and doing the premarital counseling,
and one of the things that's kind of seeping
through their conversations to me is at least
an appearance
that many of them truly expect to start right
where they stepped off with mother and dad.
They truly expect all of the material
blessings, all of the emotional blessings,
all of the things that it took mother and dad
35 years to build in a home and in a family,
and they're kind of expecting to start there,
you see.
And they kind of feel like they're jipped if
they don't.
And they kind of feel like they're jilted if
they don't start with all of the things that
mother and dad have.
How else do you think our culture?
Avoiding accountability.
Couldn't hear you.
Avoiding accountability.
Avoiding accountability. They see that all over
our culture.
We are the culture that has had tremendous
problems with accountability
in politics, in business, and if we're really
honest, in many times, in the church
where we've not been accountable and we've not
said to our young people you need to be accountable.
You need to be accountable for the consequences
of your actions and your decisions.
You think of any other way that our culture may
have even subtly or indirectly taught
irresponsibility to our children.
I couldn't hear you.
Parental attitude for little white lives.
All right, parental attitude in our culture
toward what we call little white lives.
Yes, Sir.
Our society ignores the fact that our decisions
are a consequence of our lives.
Okay, our culture ignores the consequences of
our decisions,
particularly as they pertain to other people.
Blame somebody else.
Blame someone else.
I think this about television, personally, I
think certainly that can always be blamed.
I think we have to be realistic enough to say
that television can be a vice or it could be a virtue.
I think of the way Aristotle took a knife and
he said a surgeon can take a knife
and he can heal a man.
A murderer can take it and he can kill a man.
Television could be taken and made, you know,
with some parameters around it.
I think what I'm hearing you say is that a lot
of people have no parameters around television.
The latest Nielsen rating that I have read says
that the average American family is now listening
or at least has the television on about seven
hours and 38 minutes a day.
A day.
And you start in the morning, you just kind of
leave it on, you come in the room.
First thing you do is you go to the TV, you
turn it on.
I guess we can always beat up on television is
what I'm saying.
So it depends on who the family is and how they
use it.
It could be a virtue.
It could be a vice.
Why is it crucial?
Let's go secondly.
Why is it crucial for our children to learn to
be accountable for their own actions?
Why is that critical?
Eventually, well, she just went to the bottom
line, didn't she?
This went right all the way to the end of it.
Maybe I ought to go to question three now.
Going to have to be accountable to God, certainly.
But good, good.
Did you hear this?
That when you learn to be accountable for your
own actions,
it is the kind of thing that brings you peace
of mind. Excellent.
Can you hear that?
It gives them self-worth, importance, and significance.
Here's the decision.
You're accountable for that.
You must accept the consequences.
And you see the upside of that is that it can
really make a person feel valuable
and important because they made a good decision.
They solved that problem well.
It helps their ego.
And that isn't all bad according to the Word of God.
You must love God first.
You must love your neighbor as you love whom? Yourself.
You see, pride is the abuse of that.
But the proper self-worth and self-value is the
appropriate love of self
which God certainly wants for each of us to have
and especially for us to teach our children.
How do we teach our children thirdly to make decisions?
Let's talk about that just for a moment.
Let me ask somebody that I know is really into
this whole area of decision making
and has done a lot of thinking about it, and he
could teach this whole area to you.
But Bob Scott, say a word to us just a little
bit about how you think we as parents
can teach better the art of decision making to
our children,
whether they're six or whether they are 16 or 18.
Say a word to us about it.
I think the first thing that we've done is
we're not calling. Good.
Can you hear, Bob?
Okay, good.
We're always in a learning mode.
And consequently, if they were to call our
hands, we would say,
well, tell me more about it.
We would make a learning experience.
And so we, in fact, are being taught or
directed by them,
hopefully in the proper manner,
which would then make them more nearly
responsive to our instruction.
Secondly, I think there has to be a way in
which at an early age,
there has to be opportunities for dialogue
about alternatives.
May I do so and so?
I don't know.
Tell me about it.
What would you do?
Who would be involved?
Who would think about that?
If you were to decide, what would you do?
And then they began to make choices based upon
their values
that they were picking up on.
And if you can reinforce them saying,
well, I have confidence in you.
They will begin to do that.
And the more a person is set free to exercise
his or her own initiative,
the more nearly responsible they will be.
But the more we hold control over them,
the more polarized the legion becomes,
and the less willing they are to accept responsibility.
Oh, but what you're talking about is going to
take some time.
Well, I'm talking about 15, 20 years.
Not only in terms of the linear amount of time
it's going to take.
Do you hear Bob saying that when a child comes
at age five and says,
can I do this?
And then you begin to say, well, what are the possibilities?
What are the things you could do that to do
that may take 10 or 15 minutes?
Whereas if you said yes or no, you're on your way.
And I think, this is just a theory I've held
for some time,
I think because Americans are the most
time-conscious nation currently in the world.
We have more words in the English language, the
American English language,
that are time-oriented than any currently
spoken language in the world.
Far more.
And it indicates our values.
We value time.
Time is, to a lot of us it is, you see.
It's a critical thing that is very crucial to a person.
So, because time is valuable, I don't have much
time to do this.
I immediately think on the list of priorities today,
talking with a five-year-old about their
decision, I can do that quickly.
And so I say no.
And then I get on with the next thing I've got
to do,
because it's going to take too much time.
What Bob Scott is talking about is not only
going to take linear time,
which you may take 15 or 20 years in which to
invest in it,
but every little event along the way is going
to take time.
Yeah, and the other thing about what Bob just
outlined is that it's certainly vulnerable to mistake.
It's certainly vulnerable.
Boy, that's hard, isn't it?
When you see that if they decide that and it
goes right down here
and it's just filled with potholes and they're
going to fall right in it,
but you see when you allow them to do it and
you then are there to help them through it,
you are training those children at that point
to live without you in the future.
You're giving them a sense of real responsibility.
Now, funny thing is happening to me right now.
And one of my children is in the room, and I'm
terribly proud of her,
and I'm going to greatly embarrass her.
She hopes to be an attorney one of these days
and hopes to graduate from ACU,
and she's gorgeous and beautiful, looks just
like her mother.
Charles Trevathan came to me the other day when
he saw her and he says,
she looks just like Barbara.
I said, you say everything that Nashville says.
When we go back, they all come to Barbara and
say, you're gorgeous.
Prentice, you've been working hard.
But having said all of that, I'm going to ask
her to stand up.
Kimberly, why don't you stand up?
Donna Kimberly, love Kimberly.
Funny thing is happening right to me right now
is dad,
and it happened today with Kimberly.
We tried to let our kids make a lot of decisions.
Maybe we didn't let them make all they should
have made,
but we tried to let them make an awful lot of decisions,
like cleaning up their room.
I don't know how many family times, Kimberly
can tell you,
but I don't know how many family times I said
to the children,
please keep your room.
Now, my son will be in here after his 2:00 class,
if it gets out early enough, and I would tell
this audience,
if he were present, he's heard me do it.
But I went in Mark's room when he was like a
junior or senior
playing football at Kickapoo quarterback over there,
and dating and doing all this and so forth.
And I looked in that room, you would not believe.
Stuff was piled, there was dead stuff on the floor.
I mean stuff had been eaten and left.
So I went out in the garage and I got a shovel
and a rake,
and I just put it right in his room, right there.
So he'd get the message when he came in, put a
great big notice,
Missouri Health Department condemns this room.
I put it right on the door so when he got home,
he came home and laughed and cleaned up his room.
You let them make a lot of their decision.
You know what I'm finding out now?
We're in the empty nest syndrome.
You know what that means?
Where your kids have left.
You know what I'm finding?
That rather than them never talking to us,
they are calling all the time to say,
what do you think about this?
I've got this decision to make.
I'm going to check this week.
My theory is that if we had been hard and fast
and decided
everything they wear and everybody they date
and everything
they do, that once they leave home, we wouldn't
hear from them.
That's my theory.
I don't know if it's right.
Check in in about 50 years and I'll tell you
whether it worked or not.
But I'm just saying that I really think that if
we can,
let's use Charlie's analogy, if we can take the thoroughbred
and let them have a little reign, give them a
little responsibility,
they'll run like a thoroughbred.
Even when they are under the reigns, they'll
run like a thoroughbred.
And so it's really crucial to let them make
some decisions.
Let them handle some money.
Let them even make some mistakes.
How do you think that overprotectedness takes
place in Christian families?
Let's just come down and talk about our
families here as we end this.
In what ways do we overprotect our children?
I'm not talking about if you've been with us
all three days,
you know what I'm talking about and what I'm
not talking about.
I'm not talking about not giving them worth and
value and protecting them,
but I'm talking about overprotecting them.
How do we do that in our Christian families? Charlie?
I think particularly for you and all these
preachers up here,
it must be very hard to bring your children
without hearing them to pay
in order to be skeptical of the church as
opposed to being,
in their own estimation, a skeptical God.
And I think it is, isn't it?
I think it really is.
I think just very realistically and quite frankly,
there are some churches that have extraordinary expectations
of the preacher's children.
We have some young ministers in here, and I
don't know that I did it the right way.
I'll tell you the way I did it.
The first sermon I preached at South National
16 years ago was about this problem,
first Sunday morning, and then I simply said,
hey, my children are like your children.
They're no different.
They're no better.
They're no worse.
They're going to play golf.
They're going to play ball.
They're going to play with dolls.
They're going to run through the building.
There were little at that time.
They're going to do all this.
They're going to fall down.
They're going to have bad colds.
They're going to wear what your kids wear.
And so don't expect any more of them than you
do of any other child in the group.
I also extended that to Barbara.
Now, that was a personal thing because that was
really important to her,
that I let that church know right from the
First Sermon
that they were hiring me and not her.
Am I communicating here with some people?
That we are human beings.
But you see, every time I say that,
I always think of what Garrison Keeler said in
that beautiful Lake Wobegon piece
in which he talked about Pastor Inkvest, and I
told you this on Monday,
in which Pastor Inkvest always wanted to go
before the Lutheran church.
Of course, all of this is mythical, as you
know, and say, I am a human being.
But he always thought two things.
He said, if I ever get up and say I'm human,
they'll think,
first, I've committed adultery.
Number two, secondly, they'll think who with
and how often, you know.
We've got to let our preachers and their
children and their wives
and our elders and their families and people
who are in the public eye in the church,
we've got to let them be human because they are.
They simply are.
And so as we address saving your child's life,
we end today on the subject of responsibility.
We end today as we've ended each day by just
simply telling you
that we produce this for congregations, for
school systems.
It's shown on the air in several parts of the
United States.
If this afternoon you are interested in this series,
I'm going to put the remaining little packets
about it out here on the table.
If you are interested in it, you will find a
brochure describing this four-part series,
an order blank, and a letter.
Let me urge you if you get a packet, and I'd
just like to suggest one per congregation,
right across it, ACU Lectureship.
If you order this from Memphis, Tennessee, from
Array Communications,
because the retail price of this is about $150,
but for this particular lectureship, they are
giving a price of $99.
So if you did order it for your church as a
parenting tool,
you want to get that good price on it.
I will say that I think the kind of thing that
Barry Packer,
Barry, hold your hand up just a second.
I think the kind of thing they're doing or
planning in San Diego County
is an interesting use of this, and I'll just
end our time in a moment with a prayer,
which I'm going to ask Bob Scott to lead,
but let me just ask Barry to take 30 seconds to
tell you,
even though it's in the planning stage,
what they're planning to do as an outreach in
San Diego County.
Just stand up, Barry, where you are, and say a
word as one of the evangelists from San Diego.
In San Diego, there's an annual countywide lectureship.
Different churches in the county are
responsible for this year.
One of the nicest churches is hosting that
lectureship in September.
We have asked Primus to come out on Saturday.
We spent the entire morning, we're looking at
exploring the possibility of using this series
and not only helping our people and the other
Christians in San Diego County,
but to expose it to other churches.
We haven't finalized it yet.
I really think when we in Churches of Christ
are perceived by the unchurched
that we're interested in our families and your families,
and we're wanting you to come to our church
building or to our community center to
strengthen families.
We're not going to take up a contribution.
We're not going to put the hard arm on you.
We're interested genuinely in strengthening the
families of this nation
because this nation is only as strong as the
families that compose it,
and the same is true of the Lord's Church, and
the same is true of a community.
This has been wonderful to be with you these
three days and to have this huge audience attending.
Is there a question in the back? Yes, Sir.
I think it's really important to understand how
they're a balanced community
because in terms of New Age philosophy, things
like form and other things that are on the end
of this area,
I'm sure I'm going to have to understand what a
balance is because they need public responsibility.
Good. Sure. Good.
Good. That's a good point about balance, too.
Great to see you and to have you in this class,
and it's just been excellent.
I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in
other parts of the United States
and perhaps with this series.
I would love to stay and talk to every one of
you this afternoon,
but we're going to look at and discuss in
Dallas at 715 this last tape.
We are finishing it up at Prestoncrest,
so you don't have to be a math giant to figure
out that I'm going to have to get in a car
and start driving to Dallas in order to be
there for worship at 715.
Great to have you. Let's all stand and end with
a prayer.
Scott, come down here at the microphone, if you
would, so you can be heard
and lead us in a closing prayer for our
families, please.
Shall we bow?
Father, we thank you that we have been adopted
into your family,
that you've given us life and hope.
We confess to you the inadequacy of our own resources,
the often failed relationships that we experience.
And rather than to sink into despair, we
respond in hope today,
knowing that in our imperfections and in the
very depths of our own weakness,
your grace is sufficient for us and that we are
empowered by you
at those times we sense that we need you most.
We pray for every family, for every parent,
for all those who are members of families,
to the end that your will may be worked in our lives,
that we may see that there is an unending
process in which we are participants.
Help us to be encouraged by experiences like
this today and this week.
May the things that have been shared here
enrich us and challenge us
and call us to become more nearly all you had
in mind for us to be all along.
We pray in Jesus name.