Rite to Life Celebrating Our Children’s Journey to Maturity An interview with Brian Molitor BY DAVID ZIMMERMAN
“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” Malachi 4:6
Molitor and his wife, Kathleen, had long anticipated the need to signal for their children a change of status at age 13 as a means of fostering maturity, but neither had their own childhood rites to draw on. “I had good parents and grandparents and coaches and so on who spoke into my life and helped me with transitions,” explained Molitor,“but the lack of an event left a void in me that I didn’t understand until I actually began to do this for my son. I tried to fill that gap with all kinds of things that a young man might get into.” Molitor imagined an experience for his eldest son, Christopher, that could be tailored specifically to Christopher’s personality and developmental needs. But once his plane touched down in Benin, Molitor did some research and was surprised to discover how closely his son’s ceremony lined up with the ceremonies practiced by cultures and communities around the world and throughout history. “The Masais have a marvelous circumcision ceremony that helps young guys transition into manhood. Some Native American tribes practice vision quests; the ancient Romans
rian Molitor likes to think big. He works as an international business consultant, helping, for example, the president of the African nation of Benin not only build an infrastructure and stabilize an economy but “tangibly show the love of God to 5.5 million people.” And that’s just his day job. Ask Molitor what he’s most excited about these days, and he’ll talk at length about changing the way Americans parent their children. Molitor has taken the brainstorming he did about his son’s 13th birthday party (during a 30-hour plane ride) into two books and a wide-ranging ministry to institute rites of passages and intentionally shepherd children as they grow up. “In our ‘modern’ society we have absolutely ignored the concept of a transitional event or rite of passage into adulthood,” Molitor told PRISM. “That missing ingredient is perhaps the cause of some of the problems our young people and—since this abandonment stretches back several generations—some of our older people as well are having with issues of identity and purpose in life.”
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had the toga virilus; the Jews maintain the bar and bat mitzvahs. All of these transitional events contain some common elements: Respected elders declare and decree that a child has become an adult; the event has a spiritual air to it; the event is marked with celebration; and following the transition there is a very clear difference in how the celebrants are treated by those around them. I was thrilled to discover that our celebration with Christopher had tapped into these same elements.” But really, what’s so important about a ceremony? Kids know they’re a year older when their birthdays come, and they’re trained by society to see their entry into the teenage years as somehow significant. Even how we designate those years—each one punctuated with a teen—suggests a certain gravitas. Still, just because we recognize that something is significant doesn’t mean we recognize what it signifies. A transitional event addresses that ambiguity. As Molitor explains, his book Boy’s Passage, Man’s Journey, released earlier this year,“places rites of passage in a context.We’re providing for parents a strategic plan for raising the next generation, a plan that involves not only the rite of passage but also lifelong mentoring and intentional blessing.” “Lifelong mentoring” sounds intimidating, but it’s being done by parents no matter how attentive they are to it. Children learn patterns of behavior in part through what they observe in their parents; they form their concept of how the world works and how best to engage the world by the model their parents present to them. So the concept of lifelong mentoring is not what is novel to Molitor’s program; what’s novel is the idea that you give some attention to it. “You get married, and you’re anticipating children:That’s when raising children should start. Mom and Dad ask themselves,‘What are the qualities we want to see in our sons and daughters?’ Pick the qualities: spiritually strong, morally straight, academically solid, industrious, kind—there’s a whole host of things that a given set of parents want to see in their children. Without a plan a child develops by default, not by design. “Lifelong mentoring involves speaking of these qualities to your child, creating opportunities for the child to practice these qualities, correcting them when they fall short, applauding when they hit the mark.All mentoring in those early years points toward a special day of transition when a boy becomes a man, when a girl becomes a woman. “Leading up to the transitional event, we prepare our kids by laying out for them the things that mature men do, that mature women do, so that each child knows that the transitional event marks their passage into manhood or womanhood. The mentoring process leads up to, through, and beyond the transitional event; parents or trustworthy mentors continue to teach and counsel and advise and, when
necessary, correct. But these things are offered from a different posture:We have received these young people as adults, so now we talk with them rather than dictate to them.” It’s one thing to teach a child to live well, but it’s quite another to help a child to establish his or her identity. The former is fixed: “This is the way; walk in it.” The latter, intentional blessing, is a moving target that requires intimate familiarity and explicit fondness. Neither is easy for many modern parents. “We read right over the first mention of blessing in the Bible,” Molitor says. “Genesis 1:28 slips it by us—‘God blessed them and said…’—but in the original language the word for blessing means ‘to kneel and to adore.’ God the Father kneels and adores his newborns as his first act toward them. Adoring isn’t worship, of course, but God absolutely did not stay aloof worrying about looking weak or getting overemotional. That’s the posture we’re to have toward our children. “Intentional blessing comes in two forms: words and meaningful touch. In the New Testament we read that Jesus ‘took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them’ (Mark 10:16). I’ve always pictured this as a photo op, little more than Jesus tousling a kid’s hair and saying, ‘Way to go.’ But the original words for ‘put his hands on them’ carries the meaning of imparting something. Something very important was happening when this elder touched these half-grown children. The blessing that’s happening here indicates an affirming of the good things in each child’s life. “What we can take from that is that our kids need to hear from very early on confirming and affirming words about who they are—their identity and their destiny. We don’t withhold words of correction, but words of blessing need to be present.What happens all too often is that parents bypass words of blessing but slip into words of cursing when they’re angry—“Why can’t you be more like your brother?” or “You’ll never amount to anything”—that sort of thing.We need to bless our young people with our words—not only their accomplishments but their efforts and their identity.” Thankfully there’s more to mentoring and blessing than talking, but, in an era where touch has become for many a traumatic experience, particularly at the hands of people with authority over them, meaningful touch seems like a lost art. That’s unfortunate, because meaningful touch, as modeled by Jesus, plays a key role in securing a young person’s identity and preparing the way of maturity for them. “There’s some amazing research being done at the University of Miami’s Touch Research Institute,” Molitor points out.“The physical touch of a hand can help to reduce stress and help alleviate pain from disease.There’s something
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about the touch of an elder—whether a hug or a pat on the back or a high five—that I believe can strengthen what’s on the inside of a young person.” Keep in mind, of course, that this program for parenting is set against a backdrop of a culture essentially divorced from ritual. Transitional events are vulnerable to the ironic, cynical sense of humor applied regularly to other such important rituals as graduating, voting, and marrying. Similarly, most parents can’t draw on their own experiences of intentional blessing or purposeful mentoring as they enter into such practices with their children. Starting from scratch, as Molitor recognizes, can be intimidating. Nevertheless, with a workable plan in front of them, parents tell Molitor they can’t wait to get started. “I’ve done quite a few retreats where I’ve presented this material,” he says,“and the response is,‘Thank God I finally have something I can implement.’We’re in this situation where we’re running ourselves to the point of exhaustion, moms and dads are each working two jobs so they can buy more stuff, and they still recognize that they’re not connecting with their kids as they should.The foundations we need to build our families on—lifelong mentoring, intentional blessing, and
transitional events—require time. Once parents get this, they’re pretty pumped. “Sometimes you sense in parents—not so much from what they say as from what they don’t say—a reluctance or lack of confidence that they can pull off this type of parenting. It’s difficult to give somebody something you don’t have, and men have been wounded over the past few generations to the point where they don’t know how to engage emotionally with their kids. But, thank God, guys are mustering up the courage even to ask how to do this with their kids. “I encourage guys to look within themselves to identify what they’ve been burdened with, what they keep stumbling over, and where they’ve been wounded. From there they need to look back to identify the origins of these vulnerabilities, and then look forward, like Jesus at the cross looking forward to the joy set before him. I contend that Jesus endured the cross for the joy of seeing God’s children freed from sin. If guys endure the pain of the process of dealing with their wounds, weights, and sins, they can help future generations to be free. Finally, they need to look up, because God is willing and able to guide us into support networks
Rites in Retrospect “God has given fathers a window in time to help their sons make the transition from being boys to being men. My passion is to ‘ruin’Timothy as a typical American teenager and to instill in him a vision of the world’s poor that will influence his calling and shape his destiny.” —Keith Wasserman, commenting on a six-month world tour of ministries to the poor, in conjunction with his son’s 13th birthday “I have learned how much we have in comparison to many people. I have also learned that when we follow God’s path, the way is slowly illuminated for us. I know that when my son turns 13, I’ll take him on a trip like this.” —Timothy Wasserman, commenting on his rite of passage “We want our kids to have a shared history, to celebrate each other’s passages through childhood. Sam, the oldest, has taken on a leadership role with the other kids since his initial rite of passage. Both he and Graham, the younger boy, have taken part in some other boys’ ceremonies, and peer accountability is becoming significant for them as a result.” —Keith Cote, reflecting on the initial rite of passage for his oldest son “There was a lot of great, solid teaching in my confirmation. But an emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ was secondary to an educational process, and my own confirmation didn’t address the need that each of us has to hear our Father say he loves us.We’re each looking for a father’s approval, and, until our identity is grounded in that, we will look to fill this need in a variety of ways. “I wrote a letter to Ben, and I invited 20 guys—family and friends, mostly adults, with a couple of young people—and we surprised Ben with a ceremony at our church. I read my letter, and we affirmed him and prayed over him.We told him, ‘You’re a man now, not a boy, and real men take responsibility for themselves.’” —Ric Olson PRISM 2004
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and other resources to help us get free of our wounds, so we don’t project them onto our kids.” What about people who are afraid of Jesus, or don’t have time for God, or are otherwise averse to religious faith? Molitor often finds himself in conversations with nonChristian parents who are eager to infuse meaning into their kids’ lives. Lifelong mentoring, intentional blessing, and transitional events have an appeal that transcends Molitor’s own evangelical experience, but the quest for identity and destiny is undeniably spiritual, and talking about these issues in parenting is a way of talking about spirituality that can be ultimately life-changing. “I’ve never once, since we’ve started exploring the concept of transitional events, had anyone reject the concept of our program,” Molitor muses.“The conversation goes something like this:‘You’re going to be imparting something to your children. It’s important, regardless of your attitude toward God, that children be acknowledged at some point as adults, rather than indulging childish behavior in 30-year-old bodies. However, becoming an adult involves coming to terms with issues of identity, purpose, destiny—undeniably spiritual issues. Your responsibility to your kids is to know where you stand and
help them to determine where they stand.’ I’ve seen people be born again in response to reading through my first book, A Boy’s Passage.” That’s only fitting. Molitor likes to think big, and his vision for parenting and mentoring is no exception. “As we begin to incorporate these values—lifelong mentoring, intentional blessing, and transitional events—we can change the course of our culture in one generation.” ■ Brian D. Molitor is the CEO of Molitor International, a consulting and training company specializing in building interpersonal relationships; the author of Boy’s Passage, Man’s Journey (Emerald Books, 2004); and the founder of Malachi Global Foundation (www.malachiglobal.org), which exists to inspire and equip men with the tools needed to love and disciple the next generation successfully. David A. Zimmerman is author of the forthcoming Comic Book Character: Unleashing the Hero in Us All (InterVarsity Press) and the online column “Strangely Dim”(www.gospelcom.net/ivpress /campus/sd).
Transitions for Girls Kathy Molitor shared her husband’s desire to give their kids a strong start into adolescence, but the concept for a girl’s rite of passage was uncharted territory by the time their daughter Jenny approached age 13. “Girls seem to have self-esteem issues that boys don’t usually have. One of the goals of the transitional event is to establish a young person’s identity, so shoring up a young girl’s self-esteem becomes a particular priority for the transitional event. The keys to these celebrations are these kinds of life lessons that God wants to impart to each individual.” Each ceremony is unique because each child entering adolescence is unique. So Kathy prayed and thought and observed Jenny over time, determining what core issues would need to be addressed as the Molitors marked Jenny’s transition. “Jenny was in track and was feeling somewhat insecure because some of her friends were really good at it, and one particular student was getting more of the coach’s attention than Jenny was. I was sensing a lot of insecurity and jealousy in her and decided that Jenny’s celebration would need to address this insecurity, helping her to be satisfied with the gifts and talents God has given her and not to compare herself to other people. “One skit we used for Jenny is called ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,’ which focuses on inner beauty. A girl is getting ready for a party and looks at herself in a mirror, pointing out all the things she doesn’t like about how she looks.Then an audiotape plays with a deep, male voice—representing the voice of God—calling the girl’s name and describing how he painted each freckle on her face and made her exactly how he wanted her to be. He then asks to go with her to the party.The girl ultimately looks back in the mirror and feels better about herself, feels confident going to the party as she is.” The proof of the ceremony’s success is in the subsequent behavior of the child. Did she grasp the messages being communicated? Did she embrace the vision for her that’s been presented? Did she connect with the idea that she is a treasured child of God as she is and a gift from him to the world? “This event was a real life-changer for Jenny. I haven’t heard her compare herself—her height, athletic ability, appearance —to anyone since the event. It seems to have just subsided. I remember being really concerned that the ceremony wasn’t coming together. I’d pray at night,‘God, this isn’t fair.The boys’ ceremonies didn’t take this long! Give me some ideas!’ But it did all come together, and God used it to generate substantial growth in Jenny’s life.” ■ PRISM 2004
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