10 minute read
From One Generation to the Next
KEN BRUCE KEMPER, PhD
IT REALLY IS AMAZING TO SEE SOMEONE and think, “Oh my! That person looks (or sounds) so much like his father!” Personally, I heard that for years as I began ministry and returned to the places where my father had ministered. Our two sons also affirm that they have heard it! I always took it as a compliment from people who appreciated my father, and I sure hope our sons do as well!
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I have viewed and listened to both Franklin Graham and Anne Graham Lotz, and marveled at how they look and sound like their father when they speak. Sometimes, when young parents talk to their children they stop, and realize: “I sound just like my mom!”
Even more important than the physical features passed on from generation to generation are the characteristics and values which are enculturated and modeled in how we are brought up and taught. My wife and I were recently comparing notes and realized we both were brought up in families that comforted sick kids with a nice hot cup or bowl of chicken bouillon. We did the same for our kids and still do it when we feel a bit under the weather. Other families had other (I’m sure much less effective and comforting) remedies or treatments.
THE ISRAELITES WERE TO INSTRUCT THE NEXT GENERATION
Moses reiterated the Law to the children of Israel as they neared the Promised Land as recorded in Deuteronomy 5, and then immediately following in chapter 6, we read of his instructions to this new generation. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:5-8).
These strong instructions were given to make sure the next generation understood and learned about the only true God who had brought their parents and grandparents out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and the wilderness to the Promised Land. Specific instructions were given to clearly display within their homes symbols of their heritage of faith and to pass on the legacy to trust in God and speak about it clearly in their daily routine. Jewish parents were held responsible for passing on genuine faith to the next generation.
Joshua, who shouldered the mantle of leadership left by Moses, took this seriously and intentionally challenged all Israel to serve God as well saying, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). He included his children and spouse in this bold statement of allegiance to the only true God. The biblical record goes on to read, “The people served the Lord through the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel” (Judges 2:7).
The Book of Judges is evidence that Israel failed to follow the instruction of Moses and Joshua: “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them” (Judges 2:10-12). These are some of the saddest verses of the entire Bible! They simply narrate the reality of the failure of one generation to teach and instruct the next generation to follow the Lord and serve Him only. Astonishingly, it only took one generation!
THE WISDOM LITERATURE HIGHLIGHTS GENERATIONAL INSTRUCTION
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrote, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6). As a wise saying, we would like to claim this as a promise for each child’s future, but it simply is not a guarantee. Rather, it is an admonition to train and instruct the next generation in how to live and it will be a guide for their future and more likely to keep them from wandering off. To fail to instruct and train certainly diminishes the likelihood of a child holding on to the faith of their parents.
That’s how critical cross-generational teaching and training really is to each generation! The power of this example should motivate us today to prioritize our investment in the next generation. Yet closer to home, most of us are aware of strong Christian parents who have grown children who have left the church and do not practice their faith in any way today. This is not a judgment or criticism of those parents (for all the circumstances or reasons cannot be fully known), but rather an example of this same reality which is taking place today.
Elsewhere Solomon instructs his son, “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck” (Proverbs 1:8, 9). The value of following parental instruction is likened to a valued adornment which would bring admiration of others rather than the shame mentioned in the following verses from being swayed by evil men. The experience of adults and their discernment is to be a guide for the young and learning who lack the wisdom and discretion which come from growing up. Proverbs gives warnings to the young and foolish to help them gain wisdom from their elders.
President Kemper praying with sons Pastor Zach Kemper and Pastor Kaleb Kemper
I was recently reading a devotional, and the Lord impressed me with a similar passage in the Psalms. “Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds” (Psalm 71:17). I contemplated how blessed I have been to grow up from birth, along with my three siblings, in a family which gave diligent biblical instruction in the home. My mother and father lived their faith, ministered in churches, and always took time to teach their children the truths of God’s Word and challenge us to live a life of faith and dependence upon God. I never thought about it as a child, and did not realize until much later that many others did not have this generational heritage of faith.
Contrary to those children who resented their parents being in full time ministry, each one of us grew up with a disposition to minister to others and value the church and other ministers. My wife and I felt called to ministry and have brought up our own three children to love ministry and enjoy the reality of leading others in their faith journey while nurturing our own families to live out their faith, even under the eyes of others, rather than regret the pressure of this reality. I recall working with my amazing wife to excite our children about an upcoming ministry trip to see others, meet new people, and stay in their homes. All our kids remember this fondly and now enjoy family ministry trips as they pass on these values to a new generation!
In the next verse it states, “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come” (Psalm 71:18). Last year, when we were blessed to visit my daughter and her family in Tanzania, she told me at least two times that I was old. What!? I certainly do have gray hair and repeatedly heard kind greetings from the gracious people in Tanzania which were respectful of older people rather than their greeting for contemporaries in age. But I just figured that was my vast experience and gray hair, not my actual age! I’m not even sixty years old yet, nor am I planning my retirement! So, I suppose I’ll be the last one to admit that I cannot do everything I used to be able to do, and I am aging. This means I need to get busy fulfilling this powerful verse by regularly declaring the power of God to the next generation! During that visit last December, my wife and I were very humbled to sit in a church service and have a couple of the national church leaders talk about all the ministry initiatives we were involved with over twenty-five years ago, and how God had used us and blessed our efforts. My response to all those listening was, “God did this work, and we were simply usable vessels who served in obedience.”
PAULINE SCRIPTURES INSTRUCT GENERATIONS TO BUILD AND MULTIPLY THE WORK OF GOD
Let us not fail to understand that intentional generational instruction is not merely for the “preservation of the faith,” but is also important for the expansion and multiplication of the faith. The Apostle Paul had a son in the faith, Timothy (2 Timothy 1:2; Philippians 2:22), whom he instructed and encouraged to not only hold fast to the faith and imitate the example of those from whom he learned it (2 Timothy 3:10, 14), but also to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6). Paul recognizes that Timothy is the hope of the next generation, and he, Epaphroditus, and other younger men were God’s gifted servants who would take the faith to a new generation, requiring new methods and addressing new problems.
While in Tanzania, my wife and I were overwhelmed with an opportunity to meet and encourage five young couples who were children of parents we had taught and ministered to in the past. Our son-in-law, John Caprari, has been preparing these young couples to be missionaries to reach the unreached people still present in Tanzania. The paradigm shift for the church of Tanzania to see themselves as not receiving missionaries, but sending missionaries was an incredible blessing to behold. The commitment to leave the comforts of a job, their homes, their own tribe, and local languages to go to difficult areas and seek to bring salvation was an enormous expansion and multiplication on the last generation’s work and ministry! Praise the Lord, the next generation is adapting their ministry methods to reach the changing world of their generation.
A NEW GENERATION BEING PREPARED AT GRACE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
The students on campus and online at Grace continue to be instructed and built up in the faith as the institution has done for over eighty years! But, the methods of instruction and the application of the teaching are adjusting to each and every generation. The world continues to change but the need for Bible-centered instruction will never go away. This generation looks and thinks differently than the last, yet, we must declare the power of God to this new generation and implore them to seeGod’s faithfulness from generation to generation and His powerful message of Grace for our world today. We teach online and we teach in the classroom, we teach by internships and by practical assignments. Many of those serving as instructors and staff also graduated from Grace, and have a desire to invest in the coming generation. We need their input and value their commitment. Are you investing in the next generation?It is never too late to begin. Let us all pray and intentionally invest in the next generation in our families, churches, and ministries.
