Ruined for Anything but What Matters!

“My kids said I ruined them for anything but what matters.”

 A friend of mine said that to me a few weeks ago, while we were sitting in a local establishment in Cannon Beach, Oregon. It was cold and when I got there the surf was absolutely roaring. The waves were huge—fifteen to twenty feet. I was there giving the oral report for a diagnostic we’d done for a regional district in a Christian denomination (for my non-churched readers, a denomination is a group of Christian's who organize themselves around certain theological truths and historical events). My friend, Randy, who is the supervisor of that district informed me that his children had said this to him. It caught my attention. Why would they say that? Why would they put it like that? 

 Here’s why: Randy is entrepreneurial, a church planter, and radically committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. He and his wife raised their children to not play church or to be moralistic religious people. They raised them to radical followers of Jesus and they did so in the Pacific Northwest, one of the least Christianized parts of the United States. Their kids were part of exciting and culturally sensitive congregations that served others and brought people to a life changing faith in Christ. By doing this, Randy and his wife ruined their kids....for anything but what matters. His children won’t waste their lives simply on making money, or having the American dream, or just having fun. They’ve been ruined for blasé, boring moralistic religion. And they’ve also been ruined for the vacuous claims of a culture that promises the world but leaves one ultimately empty. So, here's what do I plan to do with this.

I hope to ruin every church I work with for anything but what matters! And I plan to do the same for my adult children and their children. It’s a worthy goal and one I look forward to doing.