‘Starting Out’

The first piece of inspiration dates back to the ’80s. The work of Scripture Union staff over the years to produce ‘Starting Out’ was groundbreaking in providing a simple, easy-to-read booklet to help young people think about beginning or continuing to follow Jesus. A distinctive of this work was the ‘thank you, sorry, please’ prayer … a simple, yet effective pattern of prayer for beginning and continuing friendship with Jesus.

The writers of this booklet also recognised the need to simply address the basic questions of:

• Who am I in relation to God?
• Who is God?
• Who is Jesus?
• Why did Jesus have to die on a cross?
• How can we be friends and followers of Jesus?

Exploring these ideas will also be the challenge of 3friends.

‘Starting Out’ also began by exploring the idea ‘You are special and important to God!’ celebrating our unique relationship with Creator God.

3friends has adapted this idea more specifically to: ‘We all matter to God. We are each welcomed by God. We are all loved by God.’

3friends also utilises a key ‘Starting Out’ question: ‘Are any of these three friends just like you right now?’ thus encouraging a level of engagement with the ideas being expressed by Aurthur, Peta, and Chloe.

The Thinking Teen

Secondly, the investigations and challenges undertaken by the three young people depicted in this resource … Arthur, Peta, and Chloe … are a reflection of three different styles of investigation. These styles have been inspired by observations and a study of Dave Benson accessible now as an online paper … The Thinking Teen published on Jan 20, 2010. An exploration, evaluation, and application of three apologetic strategies in commending the Bible to contemporary western adolescents. Dave Benson

His work suggests there is at least three typical teenage responses to the Bible. These being those of an antagonistic atheist, an untrusting sceptic and a confused seeker. Benson uses the work of Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel and Rob Bell respectively to challenge each of these common world views. According to Benson, these theologians offer distinct voices commending the Bible in the market place of ideas.

The challenge here is to appropriate something of this approach for households of faith as well as faith communities who intentionally faith-mentor those of a much younger age than teenagers.

3friends

Will it work?

The result of forming an approach and developing a style for each of the 3 friends, Arthur, Peta, and Chloe will be a construct. This will have its strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully this will allow participants, both faith mentors and young people, to identify with one character in one context and perhaps a different character in another.

All these complex understandings! Yet simply explored! Again, there’s the challenge!

At any point of this more theoretical side of the discussion, feel free to swing over to 3friends adventures and check out how helpful this resource will be for you in your context.

The challenge: exploring complex ideas; sharing them in simple ways without being simplistic!

After more than 40 years of experience and observation in this area of discipling people of all ages, you see and hear some disturbing things. Top of the list are two of the ways I have heard ‘sin’ explained.

Firstly, I once heard that “Sin is the bad things you do, and the good things you don’t do.” Hmmm, what’s wrong with that? Apart from that is entirely simplistic? Apart from the damage inflicted when teaching simplistically and having to reteach a concept later on? Apart from the fact that our behaviour (the bad we do or the good we don’t do) is the outworking of sin … the outworking of systemic failures in relationship with God, our selves, our history, our environment, and other people?

Secondly, I once heard the metaphor used in ‘the Gospel in 5 colours’ that ‘sin’ is black. (You can web-search ‘gospel in 5 colours’, ‘wordless book gospel’ even ‘gospel 5 colours bracelet’.) These days, the ‘black’ colour is now referred to as ‘dark’.
So what is wrong with that approach? Apart from that fact that this approach is deeply metaphorical and children are literalists? Apart from the fact that a lot of my favourite people are black/dark? Apart from the time I heard this metaphor used in a congregation where there were two families of Nigerians seated in the pews? Apart from the lengthy explanations needed to explain away that ‘black’ is not really ‘black’ but ‘dark’? So why use simplistic, dangerous metaphors when it would be easier to teach it simply another way?

Herein lies the challenge!

How do you share complex ideas without being simplistic or complicated?

• It begins with partnering with Holy Spirit in prayer and in engaging the Bible
• Next comes the further reading and thinking about the theologies at the heart of our beliefs.
• It continues into wrestling with complex truths to reword our explanations without jargon. Simply!
• It involves grounding our conversations, with Holy Spirit’s direction, in the lived experiences of each person we are sharing with.
• It means growing our abilities to share our own experience of God and our faith journey.
• It takes a willingness to share our own God experience, questions, doubts, and discoveries honestly.

Enough of that here.

Hopefully, you will see something of this process in the explanations below. In 3friends adventures, you will hopefully see much of this translated to simply express something of the beauty and the complexity of The Gospel message.

Note#1: Underlying assumptions

It’s worth starting with these observations.

In exploring the theme of following Jesus from three unique world views and relating these to the world of a child … particularly that of of an upper primary aged child … certain assumptions are made:

• Patterns of personality, learning and inteligence styles, and preferences are are set and observable in a child prior to teenage years;
• The ways of viewing the self, God, Jesus and the world are being formed and developed prior to teenage years;
• Investigation, engagement with, and response to the claims of Jesus is possible at early ages;
• Parents, family members, faith mentors and small group leaders need help to be able to see and respond appropriately to these developing world views in children.
• Children coming to this document do so with some background understanding of themselves, God, Jesus and the Bible story
• Children coming have some level of curiosity, desire, or commitment concerning being a friends and follower of Jesus

Note#2: JustRight

Wouldn’t you love everything to be ‘JustRight’?

This is a new word invented for 3friends and will be used and applied in a variety of ways in the relationships explored here.

Central to this is the idea of dreaming the Dream of God with God, loving what God loves … loving that all relationships are meant to be and can be just right!

LOVE: who God is, mercy, deepest care and compassion, a full supply of all God’s benefits, Jesus!
ALL RELATIONSHIPS: with God, one’s self, others, our history, our environment and our world.

JUST: justice, fairness, fair for everyone, a fair go, everybody matters to God, fullness, nothing missing!

RIGHT: righteousness, right relationship, correct, healed, healthy, helpful, right for everyone not just me, right view, not crooked.

Yes, the Dream of God is complex, yet simply expressed in God’s love for the world in and through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus (John 3:16ff) … noting:

• God’s interest is in us personally AND for the rescue of the whole world.
• A personal relationship with God is important for its own sake AND God’s desire is also for a big rescue of the environment, whole communities, the whole world, it’s systems and structures.
• All this in order for EVERYTHING to express the Dream and Sovereignty of God.

In exploring what it means to live JustRight in all our relationships, 3friends emphasises that we do so with Holy Spirit’s help.

• This is how we are meant to follow Jesus. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ example for us to follow.
• This is how we are empowered to imitate Christ and ‘walk-in The Spirit’. Paul’s letters emphasise this.
• We rely on Holy Spirit together as we are made/formed by God to be the Church.
• Individually and together we demonstrate the love of God, the truth of God and the power of God.
• We are a living story of this to one another, our community and the world.
• In doing so, we express the reality of a relationship with God in the ‘now’ AND as a foretaste of the ‘not yet’ which is to come.

Who are you most like? Who is your child most like?

Note#3: Sin

Expressing a theology of ‘sin’ is the elephant in the room!

Adults tend to find it difficult to talk about sin simply yet helpfully and correctly around children. ‘Starting Out’ did it extremely well talking about it in terms of ignorance of God, broken off from relationship with God, or ignoring or pushing God away from our lives. As a consequence of sin, a variety of unhelpful, unhealthy and certainly, ungodly behaviours emerge and demonstrate these failures in relationships.

3friends build on this and continue this approach expressing the notions of sin as:

• Darkness … an absence of or a purposeful covering up of God’s revealing presence (truth and light) … evil (actively working against God).
• Brokeness … ignorance of God or God’s way for living, heading away/backing off from God, separation, falling short of even our own standards let alone God’s.
• Lostness … confused, ignoring God, pushing God away, rebellion, believing lies, making gods of other things/people or self.

These aspects of sin will be explored in a variety of ways, sometimes not even using the word ‘sin’. When the expressions ‘failures in relationships’ or ‘stuff-ups in friendships’ are used, you may recognise we are talking about ‘sin’. In this way, the complexities of this topic will be hopefully, simply expressed.

By the way, we could wonder that if sin did have a metaphorical colour, could it be the vile, smelly, multi-colour of vomit? Even then, this would only be symptomatic of a not justright relationship … the true stuff-up in relationship somewhere … resulting in this vomit.

Who are you most like? Who is your child most like?

3friends thinking

Engaging the antagonistic atheist, the untrusting sceptic and the confused seeker.

As noted above, 3friends has been inspired by observations and a study of Dave Benson. His work suggests there is at least three typical teenage responses to the Bible. These being those of an antagonistic atheist, an untrusting sceptic and a confused seeker. Benson uses the work of Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel and Rob Bell respectively to challenge each of these common world views.

The 3friends approach is a response to these three world views, establishing a framework with which to faith-mentor children.

Although the 3friend approach is undergirded by these observations and the thinking is here in this section to read, it will largely be transparent to the participants in sharing the adventures of the Arthur, Peta & Chloe.

Who are/were you most like? Who is/was your child most like?

Considering the mid to upper primary aged group of children you know, can you see the seeds of any of these stances developing?

Response

According to Benson, the three authors addresses the fundamental issues of their respective audiences in the following ways.

Approach

The approach of Arthur, Peta and Chloe will be a simple version of the approach of each of the authors to their three respective audiences summarised below.

The goal of the 3friends is to challenge the mind, heart, and spirit of the readers using simple but pertinent questions and comments. If the readers are not yet sensing these issues as they are raised, it will be a moot point. Continue on. If engaging the approach of any one or more of the 3 friends does cause comment or question in response, it may provide a clue as to what a young person is experience is. Allow time to explore.

Typical faith stance

Arthur, Peta & Chloe will each express a typical faith stance in relation to the audience they are addressing. It doesn’t mean they hold this faith stance exclusively. In fact, they will often be seen to be expressing confidence in, and thankfulness for the faith expressed in different ways by their other two friends.

Faith is saying, “YES!” to God … “YES” to living life God’s way as shown to us through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Believing this, saying it is true and living it in all our relationships are each ways of saying, “YES!” to God.

For Arthur, Peta and Chloe, it doesn’t mean saying, “YES!” without asking all sorts of questions sometimes. Together they will puzzle through some of the hard bits and be honest about some of the things we can’t possible find out about God and Jesus.

Arthur, Peta, and Chloe will say the following sorts of things in answer to the antagonistic atheist, the untrusting skeptic, and the confused seeker respectively.

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