Mark Vroegop: We’re going to spend a few moments here engaging a little bit in conversation about some of the themes that Pastor John talked about, and also its application in life of children. I can’t even believe that I get to facilitate this discussion time. I feel like I’m a guy at Mount Rushmore, between the two of you and the resources that you’ve produced. It’s a real privilege to have the opportunity to engage with the two of you in questions. My family is different because of both of you, including my kids’ and my own view of God, so thank you.

What I’d like to have both of you think about is this: When you consider the application of theology — a big view of God in the children’s ministry space in particular — what are you really hopeful about and encouraged by? And what are you really concerned about and anxious — in a good sense that you have some deep care, like Paul had care for the churches? So, what are you hopeful about and what are you concerned about?

Piper: Well, God is God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There’s always a reason for hope. God is on the throne and he means to have a people. He will have a people and he’ll see them through to the end and he will call to himself whom he pleases. We don’t ever need to fret that our life is wasted if we’re pouring it out for the gospel to the young or the old. That’s the first thing that needs to be said. The reason for hope is that God is, and he’s a God of sovereignty and a God of mercy and a God of wisdom. He’s absolutely the same, and the gospel is the same, and prayer is the same, and the cross is the same, and heaven is the same, and sin is the same.

It’s amazing. I was asked in Dallas a few days ago, “What are the new challenges to church planters?” I thought, “Well, the ones that matter aren’t new,” but we should get to the newer ones perhaps. Probably a bunch of your first-graders are carrying these phones. That’s not a good idea. I think today there’s a lot of research happening, among Jonathan Haidt and others, that suicide and depression are undoing our young people because parents have not had the courage to withhold from them smartphones until a certain age. So, I don’t mean to minimize the newness of the challenges that we live in, but really as far as hope, and I think as far as the dangers, they are always, generation after generation, the same. Sin is sin. It never changes in its definition and its danger. Hell is hell. Heaven is heaven. God is God. The cross is the cross. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. We operate in the same power that Paul did in his day. That would be my first response.

Michael: I think I’m sensing in lots of parents and lots of churches a desperation, a hunger for their children to have a firm place to stand. I think those of us who grew up in my generation had the support more or less from the culture to reinforce the biblical values. Now the challenge is to raise children in a world where they will be hated for what we teach them. Some will be put to death. I think we’ve sensed that urgency, and I think that’s good. I think the challenge we’re seeing again and again is to see the church get serious about the discipleship of the next generation. If we wait until they’re grown to begin discipling them, it’s almost too late. So, we want this discipleship mentality over and above the program mentality where we’re just doing things with kids. We should have a plan, a mission to disciple them, to raise them in a world that is increasingly hostile for them.

Piper: The culture is increasingly hostile. Statistically, you can just prove that. The statistic I read in getting ready for last week was that in the last 10 years, if you asked the question, “Is it a good thing that fewer people are religious?” 25 percent said yes. Today it’s about 45 percent. In other words, religion is perceived to be a problem. We’re a problem in the culture, so that’s a statistically true observation. But here’s an anecdote. I look at how many kids don’t make it to adulthood today as believers growing up in our churches, and I look back at White Oak Baptist church, where I grew up. It wasn’t any better. It was not any better. My friends were no more given to true Christianity in the 1960s than they are today, which means the good old days of culture affirmation were pretty worldly.

They were pretty worldly. They didn’t talk about killing babies. They didn’t talk about homosexual marriage. They didn’t talk about transgenderism. They didn’t talk about that stuff, and therefore, it didn’t have the blatant, in-your-face animosity. But my goodness there was lostness everywhere. So, it is new. It is hostile. And the social media, entertainment atmosphere that every kid lives in, we all live in. We have Netflix, Prime, Apple Plus (whatever the streaming services are), and you are all prone to watch something every night on those and binge on the weekends for some series that you hadn’t watched. That is a ubiquitous challenge. And I would say it’s a challenge not primarily because of sex and violence, which is really a problem, but because of worldliness. Most of the streaming services, most of the TV programs, most of the movies are presenting you with a worldview that is discipling you and your children away from Christ even when it’s not explicitly gross.

Vroegop: It’s interesting you mentioned Jonathan Haidt. I actually wrote this down, as it is connected to one of the questions we worked on before about his analysis of an anxious generation and the mental health challenges that we’re seeing in the lives of our kids. I wonder if we just think about what’s happening in very early ages with our children related to social media and access to information. For the standard parent, what do they do? Haidt suggests some solutions, which I found to be interesting and a bit impossible. I wonder from a biblical standpoint what you would say? We’ve probably been here before, though not with the same technology. How should parents think about this? You have a four-year-old and they’re moving into their early elementary days, and this is the environment that they live in. What do they do?

Michael: This is Ask Pastor John and I really want to hear. This isn’t “Ask David.” This is Ask Pastor John. I really want to hear what Pastor John has to say here.

Vroegop: And then we’re going to have episode one of Ask Pastor David.

Piper: Well, I’m glad I’m not parenting in this generation so I sympathize. I don’t make light of that question. The first thing is that our children, quite apart from negative steps we might take to restrain access to destructive material, need a positive presentation of a glorious vision of life in God. Mom and dad love God. He’s really important to them and he seems to make them happy. He seems to make them strong. He seems to make them loving. He seems to help them take risks. He seems to make them be kind to other people. He seems to make them want to go on missions. There must be something to this God. That would be the first thing I’d say. Parents who are crazy radical in love with Jesus are going to have a big effect on their kids.

Second, we parents in a healthy church, small or big, need to rally together and talk through how we can work together on this. Because if you try to do this yourself, it won’t work. It’s like having standards for how your kids dress and they are the only kid out of 10 families who have to dress this way on Sundays, or whatever. You’re the only family. But if all the parents could get together and say, “Can we just agree on a few things?” it would help. I remember when we had curfew times for our kids in high school. We would say, “You’re going to be home at 10:30, all right?” They would say, “Oh, 10:30? All my friends are out till midnight.” I’d say, “Whoa, let’s call the Stellers right now. ‘Hello, Julie. When do your kids have to be home? 10:30.’ The Stellers’ kids have to go home at 10:30.” My kids would say, “Oh.” That really happened.

That is a simple observation that community matters. A lot of people are discovering this. As the culture goes to hell in a hand basket, we need to have alternative communities. Otherwise, what are our kids going to do? Where are they going to live? Where are they going to have friends that don’t destroy them? The answer is communities. I know that can sound Amish, which is not all bad. I don’t think your kids are called to be missionaries at ages 4, 5, 6, and 10. That’s your job, not their job. Their job is to get trained to be missionaries, not to be sent out into the world to be trained by the world and be worldly. That’s crazy. So, what you want is a place. We chose to do it in downtown, inner-city Minneapolis. We didn’t have a TV. People would say to us, “You don’t have a TV? How do your kids know anything about the world?” I’d say “We live in it. We live in it.”

My kids might say, “What are those two people doing on the ground in the front yard?” I would say, “Well, we’ll talk about that later.” Or they might say, “Why is that guy swinging our water spout and making blood come out of other guy’s face?” We live in it. That was a better solution, I think, to having a television. Disciple your children in the way of viewing the world. So, community is a second thing I would say.

Then third, I really do think we need to listen to wise people about how to handle smartphones and tablets. The tablet is a default babysitter. Just stick a tablet in front of your kid’s face on the plane or at night and let them watch something innocuous. What are you going to do? Tony Reinke, who has written a lot on the iPhone and whatnot, told me on the phone, “Our phones go into the kitchen drawer at 8:00 p.m. — moms and dads and teenagers — and they are shut there until in the morning.”

Now, what he did and when he started giving them iPhones, I don’t know. Talitha got her first smartphone at age 16. Maybe that was too early, I don’t know, but that was our choice. She’s 27 today so you can see when that happened. But all that is just to say in principle that we need to think through not just default giving kids what every other kid has, but what’s healthy for them. And maybe the first thing would be to get them to read and read to them early so that a three-year-old knows it’s fun to hear mom read great stories and not just have her stick a tablet in front of my face and go do whatever she does. That’s not all the answers. I’m a grandpa with no responsibility anymore, though that’s not quite true either.

Vroegop: No, you’re a grandpa with an iPhone, right?

Piper: In fact, here’s a legacy of these folks here. Bud, who took over the children’s ministries when Sally and David left, stood up last Sunday when we were having some gathering for parents, and he recited the text that we will teach these things to our children and their children. I was sitting on the front row thinking, “He’s talking about me. John Piper will teach these things to Elizabeth.” She’s nine months old and lives three doors down. I need to have a plan here. So when they drop Elizabeth off at our house, which happens a lot these days, what’s the plan, Grandpa? The Bible says you’re supposed to teach these things to the children’s children, not just to the children. So that was a rebuke to me, as if I don’t have any responsibility here and I just get to enjoy these rascals.

Michael: Truth78 has some great tools that could help you with that.

Piper: I have the app right here for Bible verses.

Vroegop: Anything you want to add to that, David?

Michael: No, I ditto what he said.

Piper: I need a lot of help. I think getting together as a band of parents with your common concerns and just talking and praying would be great. You have to be really careful because you’re going to disagree and that can cause real tensions in a church. They might say, “We don’t agree how our daughter should dress,” or, “We don’t agree when they should get an iPhone,” or, “We don’t agree how late they should stay up,” or, “We don’t agree what movies they can go to.” The differences in the church can be very, very threatening to harmony. But man, if you have to go it alone, that’s really tough.

Vroegop: A number of years ago one of my kids was complaining about the lack of access that they had to particular technology, and I said, “Son, we’re technologically Amish. You just need to be okay with that.”

Piper: There you go, praise God for the Amish.

Vroegop: That’s right. That was actually a term in our home.

Piper: I saw an Amish couple. She had the head covering and very long dress and they looked Amish to me. I’m not inclined to be negative about that. Anyway, I looked on that and then he was over there on his iPhone. So maybe he was semi-Amish.

Vroegop: He was German Baptist, so there we go. Let’s talk about the one other aspect of this. I want to just take a different angle. It’s ironic that we live in a society and age where our children seem to be emotionally struggling at a lot of levels. It seems like it’s in ways that are unique and problematic. And at the same time, parenting strategies seem to be more inclined to try and reason with a child even at the earliest age and convince them towards obedience, seeking to understand their emotions rather than to correct them. To be clear, I’m not saying that understanding their emotions is inappropriate, but I’m questioning where that falls on the parental discipleship paradigm. The question is, in what way do we discipline our children in light of this reality? And specifically, how does that relate to the application of the gospel in their lives?

Piper: I’m so old school, you could just turn me off right now if you don’t like it. I think spanking is right, for example, or a firm grip on a little one-year-old’s arm, saying, “You don’t ever sock your daddy in the face like that again.” He’s sitting there on your arm and he goes pow. How do you communicate that’s not appropriate? Squeeze. He thinks, “What just happened to my arm?” I think physical, non-abusive discipline is appropriate. There’s a big difference between abuse and spanking. A huge difference. A lot of people think spanking damages and other things don’t. I don’t think that’s true. I’ll take Barnabas as an example. He was four years old and there was a big orange crayon mark on the wall at a four-year-old height. He knew good and well you do not use a crayon on the wall. I’m looking at that and I’m asking, “Barnabas, did you make that mark on the wall?” Now he knows lying is worse than crayons. He didn’t want to go deeper, so he said, “Yes.”

I said, “What should happen?” He said, “A spanking?” I said, “That’s right.” That’s such beautiful contrition, how can you even come close? So, I gave him a whop on the behind. He gave a little whimper and trotted off like a happy camper. He thinks, “It’s over. It’s over. I have atoned and I’m done. This is settled. Daddy loves me. I’ve paid the penalty for the crime and it’s clean.” That’s what I mean by “health.” I just think day after day, keep it clean with your kids. Whereas if I were to say to him, “Well, how do you feel about that? Why don’t you go to your room and think about that for a while about how guilty you are?” I just think that’s murder. That’s murder. Get it done, get it over, get it clean. Have a good time together. I’ve seen kids recover so quickly from appropriate discipline. And you can tell when it’s not appropriate, right?

They know if dad’s out of control and if dad’s out of control, that’s his problem and he ought to change. But if he’s in control and he’s a loving dad and the kid know he’s loved and you use the discipline that way, it’s healthy. That’s my first response. I want to defend “He who spares the rod spoils the child,” which is a biblical reality.

Now I want to say what you said. We certainly do not have to choose between shepherding a child’s heart (that’s the title of a book) and shepherding their behavior. That book is probably designed to say too many parents control behavior and don’t go any deeper than that. That’s a mistake. And I probably made that mistake. People say, “What would you do differently?” I say “I’d do everything differently”, meaning I would try to do everything better.

I want to do everything better. But one of the things I would seek to do better is to linger longer over reasons why they behaved the way they behaved and try to get into their hearts better than I did. So, it is not either/or, right? You govern their behavior and keep them from running out into the street and getting killed, and you shape their hearts by listening and probing. You ask a kid when he comes home from school in the seventh grade, “How was your day?” He says, “Fine,” and goes upstairs. That’s not a conversation. You need to go beyond “Fine.” What are some creative questions to draw out a seventh grader to know what’s really happening at school that he’s really angry about, or discouraged about, or guilty about, or fearful about that might be shaped in some of his acting out?

Vroegop: That’s great. Anything else, David?

Michael: Blessed is the man who fears the Lord and takes great delight in his commands. And with my girls growing up, I’m very conscious I am their father. I am representing to them what one day I hope they will see in their heavenly Father. And the discipline side is part of it. Fear the Lord. Fear his disapproval. Fear is wrath. But I also want them to take delight in their heavenly Father. So if discipline and correction is in the context of great delight, then it’s different. I love being a dad. I love my two daughters and I hope you felt that, Christie. So when the correction came, it was in the context of love. I wanted them to understand pure submission because I want them to grow up and submit to God and his will and his way. I can’t reason with a five-year-old. It’s just hard. It’s almost pathetic to see people try to reason with their children on why they shouldn’t do this and that. Sometimes it’s a simple “No,” and “You need to honor my authority and submit to it.”

Piper: Right.

Vroegop: That’s good.

Piper: When a four-year-old says “Why?” for the 400th time, the final answer is, “I’m your mom,” or “I’m your dad, period. That’s over.”

Vroegop:Here’s the last question. This is really practical. Are there some suggested habits, patterns, or liturgies that you might recommend for families to keep and follow that foster spiritual growth in their children?

Piper: I would just pick up on that last point that one way to say it is to be the smile of God for kids. In other words, maybe you have nightly devotions. We had them every night. And I think if I could do it over, I would try to make those happier and less duty oriented. Now I’m Mr. Christian Hedonism. I get it. Duty-oriented obedience minus delight in the commandments of God is not the ideal, but delighting in God and looking like you delight in God to a child. For a child to even conceive of delighting in God, what does it mean? What will it feel like? What will it look like?

I think the liturgy does involve daily family worship time, whatever amount of time — ten minutes, fifteen minutes, five minutes, thirty minutes, or however you do. It might have Bible reading in it, recitation, working on a catechism, or singing a song. Can dad play the guitar? Probably not. Can anybody sing? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it looks like, the kids, if at all possible, should look forward to it. They should want to be there. That would be gold, right? That would be gold if the kids loved gathering with mom and dad to thank Jesus for his goodness and praise him and pray to him for the help they need in school the next day.

Vroegop: Do we still have praying the promises of your children at night with Truth78?

Michael: Yeah, since our girls were small, we just began the habit of praying for them. I got to pray for them most nights one-on-one. And somewhere along the way, the Lord just impressed upon me my inadequacy to be a blessing to my daughters. I just remember the moment, feeling that way, looking at these two little girls, and saying, “Okay, I may fail at being a blessing, but there is one who will bless them.” I turned to each of them and I quoted the only benediction I knew from Numbers 6. I looked each of them in the eye and said, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.”

In that moment I would say there was a bidirectional focus. I’m looking at them and I’m saying, “Amy and Christie, there’s no hope for you unless God blesses you. And this is the desire of your father, that he blesses you and only the Lord can keep you. I want to keep you. I want to protect you tonight as you’re going to sleep but unless the Lord keeps his watch over the house, we’re laboring in vain.” So, I wanted them to see their daddy saying, “He’s the one.” And as a prayer, I would pray, “Lord, bless my daughters, keep them, make your face shine on them, be gracious.” And that was a tradition. Christie was in third grade when we started that and we continued all the way into college, and that’s been one of the routines that remained.

Piper: That piece of family liturgy landed on Bethlehem powerfully and on me. Bless your kids. That was new to me. It was new to most people. Speak a blessing over your kids. It came late for the boys, but it didn’t come too late for Talitha. She let me do it until she was 18 and I would walk into her room. Of course, you get permission before you walk into an 18-year-old’s room. You don’t have to do that when she is four. I would say, “Come rest your head and nestle gently and do not fear the dark of night. Almighty God keeps watch intently and guards your life with all his might. Doubt not his love nor power to keep. He never fails, nor does he sleep.” And she’d just beam. She’d mouth it and I would sing it. She was 17 when I was doing this, picture that. You’re singing that song to a 17-year-old girl. That’s pretty unusual.

Michael: I have a 40-year-old that still lets me do it.

Piper: Good. Amen.

Vroegop: That concept actually was my introduction to Children Desiring God. That was my entry point into your . . .

Michael: What’s Children Desiring God?

Vroegop: Well, that’s what I mean.

Piper: Back when it was that.

Vroegop: I’m saying that on purpose because that was my entry point, my goodness, probably 25 years ago. It was that parental blessing over children at a Bethlehem conference for Pastors. Here’s the second thing. I’ll just say another liturgy that just comes to mind. I remember being at Bethlehem Baptist when child dedications took place and being in the sanctuary just weeping with the beautiful vision of parents with big promises and the God-centeredness of that. It affected my church in Holland and it has affected church here. There’s another liturgy related to how we even think about the community. Those promises matter in what they communicate and also what they teach, right?

Michael: And you still do it here at College Park?

Vroegop: We still do. By God’s grace we do.

Piper: Together with your parents who love you dearly, and these people who care about the outcome of your faith, I dedicate you to God, surrendering together with them all worldly claims upon your life and hope that you might belong wholly to Jesus forever. And Bud now adds “with great joy.” And all the people said . . .

Michael: Amen.

Vroegop: Amen. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for the Q&A.