ApParent Privilege

If you haven't heard the news, the youth of the church are not becoming the men & women of the church. Multiple studies show that most teens who are active in church lose their faith within a few years of leaving home. It's not the "bad" kids, but the "good" ones, the ones leading worship and going on mission trips, yours & mine, that graduate from church as they graduate from high school & college. What's the problem, and how do we fix it, for our own children & all those in the church? That's the question that many leaders & parents are wrestling with in the church today. A few years ago youth pastors and parents Steve Wright & Chris Graves wrote ReThink, a book that sent shock waves through the evangelical community. In ReThink they persuasively argued that business-as-usual youth ministry was not the answer to the failure of the church to see the youth of the church through to maturity. Now, their in new book ApParent Privilege they say that business-as-usual parenting is not the answer either. The book starts out with the testimony of a father: We truly believed that if we could find a good youth program and keep our children active, then they would continue to serve Christ... our two adult children now in their thirties are no longer walking with Christ... I wish that someone would have told us that the responsibility of discipling our children was ours, not a pastor's. I wish we would have known. That, in a nutshell, is this book: your church, your youth program, your children's Sunday School teachers or youth ministers have neither the ability nor the responsibility to grow & mature your children's faith. Only you do. But how? That is what the book deals with, giving both a theological foundation and lots of practical advice. He starts by laying out that, despite appearances, most teens really do listen to their parents and desire a mentoring relationship with them. He then moves on to a Biblical theology & foundation of parenting, and what should make Christian parenting unique and distinctive from what is commonly practiced in our culture. There are also practical chapters on how the church can help parents, specific tasks and tools for parenting, the role of fathers, and encouragement for parents dealing with a prodigal. ApParent Privilege is well-written, thought-provoking, and practical. Every parent and church leader will gain both healthy perspective & sound advice by reading it.

Steve Wright, youth pastor of 20 years and father of 3, has made a valuable contribution to my family...and to the church as well. Bringing parents and church leaders back to our biblical roots of discipleship being driven by both pedals of the family and church bicycle, Wright calls for balance that is sorely lacking in our families today. He clarion call, however, is to parents to reclaim the responsibility and privilege we have to discipline our children in the training of the Lord. He includes foundational principles, practical ideas and even a short job description for dads. He did a good job of challenging me as a father without pummeling me with a spiritual hammer. I came away with a new resolve to better father my girls and lead my family to be fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. I also was spurred on to teach this to parents at our church. I believe this is a book every parent or parent to-be should read and take to heart. It's substantive but not overwhelming. It's intelligent without being overly academic. I love Steve's passion for the family and the local church. A great treasure here. There is also small group or Sun. school curriculum available. You can get a sample and check it out. I believe this perspective will shape our preschool, children and youth ministries at our church for years to come. It's that important. I look forward to reading the sequel ReThink.

In their follow-up book, Steve Wright and Chris Graves dive deeper into the parent element of their Rethink strategy. When Wright first asked us to rethink youth ministry, it was his way of swinging the pendulum back toward the direction of the parent's role in discipling their teens. Rethink, however, wasn't written to parents. It was written to Youth workers/pastors. ApParent Privilege is the "parent version" of the Rethink philosophy. The pastor at my church had our deacons read Rethink and when they gave their approval, we bought all of our parents their own copy for them to read. I wish now that I had waited just a few more months until this handy little book came out. Giving out Rethink caused some momentary confusion among our parents. After all, why would we give them a book written to youth pastors and not parents? I do not know how many countless books there are on parenting. Even Christian parenting books must range in the hundreds. So, why bother with this one? Because Steve Wright does a brilliant job of connecting some dots that other parenting books do not and he overlaps the different aspects of parenting that other books tend to shy away from. Some books look at parenting from a "culture commentary" point of view. Others go the theological route and discuss only the Biblical text. Most parenting books, however, spend their time giving you nothing but practical advice with little cultural or theological content. This is where ApParent Privilege is different: it does all three. The first part of the book is mostly commentary on where our American culture is in its attempt at parenting. The second part digs into scripture and gives us a solid foundation of what it means to be both the primary evangelizer and primary discipler of your own children. Finally, the third part gives the reader practical tips that help flesh out all of these concepts. So, what are the pros and cons? Pros: Wright says some stuff here that I've always thought and now it's finally in print for me to share with others. For example: Shifting Adolescences: On page 38, Wright addresses the cultural shift in understanding when we go from being an adolescent to an adult. I see far too many young dads in my neighborhood that still dress, act, and spend money on stuff that makes me think they never made it out of their childhood. And women, as Wright points out, are no longer immune to this mentality either. This has a tremendous impact on families. People are getting married later which causes them to want less children. And don't think they give up their adolescent ways when they get married either. (When I read this chapter, I thought of that commercial where the wife has a couple of kids but doesn't want any more so she can do the stuff she's always wanted to do like take that trip to Paris or finish that book- finish a sentence! It's like, "Kids are great, but any more of them will just get in the way".) A theology of the family centers around the gos