Cross-Cultural Chinese Parenting 101
Episode 4
Hi everybody, John Yoder here. Welcome back to the fourth and final episode of this introductory series, Cross-Cultural Chinese Parenting 101. You might be asking the question, John, why are you providing this series for us in English? Why isn't it in Mandarin? Well, years ago, when I was at the peak of my language skills, I did some preaching and teaching in Mandarin, but that was years and years ago.
[00:00:27] My Chinese skills are not that good. At our ministry, we do not have the staffing to provide these resources in any second language. We would love to provide it in Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, and several other languages, but we are going to depend on groups of friends like you to provide that. If you, as an individual, or with a group of people, would be interested in providing weekly oral [00:01:00] translation into Mandarin, I would be very glad to talk with you.
[00:01:04] When you request our free guidebook, Five Steps to Influence Your Adult Children for Christ, You will have my email address, and I'd love to stay in touch with you, and I would love to see this podcast translated, not only into Mandarin, but into other languages as well.
[00:01:13] Today, we want to talk about the unique barriers to faith that your young adult multicultural children experience. Now I know, not everybody listening in is a Christian, and that's okay. I'm really glad you're here. My experience is that peoples around the world who are not Christians still find Christian morality to be a strong basis for healthy individuals and for a healthy society.
[00:01:42] The foundational moral principles of Christianity are really pretty simple and pretty easy to understand. Honor your father and mother. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't commit adultery. Don't hurt other people. Don't be jealous of what other people have. Love [00:02:00] everybody. Work hard. Give generously. Look out for the poor. [00:02:05] Don't be argumentative. Forgive people who hurt you. Treat people the way you want them to treat you.
So folks, around the world, people of other religions really embrace these tenets. Because Islam is founded on the Old and New Testaments as well as the Quran, most Muslims will endorse these kind of Christian teachings.
[00:02:29] Latinos, whether they're Catholic or Protestant, follow them. And when I was in China, I found that people who followed Confucius, as well as people who had no religion whatsoever, believed that basic Christian morality was a good, positive influence on society.
Now, these are benefits that Christianity provides for society, but there's far more than that. [00:02:53] As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has risen from the grave. And because he [00:03:00] has, he offers us forgiveness of sins, eternal life. We believe that God adopts everyone who follows Christ. As his son, as his daughter, and makes us brothers and sisters of one another in his global body, the church.
[00:03:18] That gives us the basis for a healthy society. However, in the real world, it's not quite that simple. And so we have to be honest that those of us that follow Jesus often fail. And we have to sadly admit the tremendous harm, the pain, that has been done by scandals in the church: sexual abuse, affairs, financial mismanagement, and we regret that so many pastors as well as lay people have been involved in these sins and [00:04:00] organizations have tried to cover them up. [00:04:02] We mourn with all who have been wounded and with everyone who loves them. And we want to be fully transparent about the flaws that we have.
When you read the Old Testament and the New Testament, God is very honest about the flaws and the sins of his people. And so, we openly admit that churches have been places of wounding[00:04:27] that Christians have caused great pain and left deep scars for many.
But we still believe, we still know from experience, that many churches are places of hope and healing, and Christians are people who bring hope and healing. Research has shown that religious people, on the whole, are happier than the general public. [00:04:51] That Christians are more likely to get married, stay married, parent their own children than others, and that [00:05:00] Christians on the whole have more happiness and less mental illness than others. In short, the church is good for society because we believe that Christianity is best for society and best for every individual.
[00:05:15] We want to exhort people to come to the Christian faith. And so I'm going to talk to you about some barriers that we can tear down that often impede our second generation kids from coming to faith. But before we do that, we need to recognize the biggest barrier of all, and it is one that you do not control, and that is pride.
[00:05:37] Now you can call it a number of things. You can call it selfishness, you can call it greed, lust, unforgiveness. It all comes down to wanting things our way. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when God said, “Do not eat of that one tree”, and Adam and Eve said, “No. We're going to eat from that anyway”.
[00:06:00] We cannot force our children to choose God's way above their own. But, one thing that we can do is humble ourselves. If our children know that there are areas of pride in our lives where we are unwilling to change. But they see a change in our hearts, a willingness for us to let go of things that we've dearly held on to, it is likely to motivate them to generate that kind of humility as well. [00:06:32] With that said, let's talk about some common barriers to faith that you do control. And by working on these issues, it may make it more likely that your children.
One particular barrier to young people coming to faith in Christ is language. God requires that parents bring up their children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. [00:06:59] But [00:07:00] he does not require them to do it in any specific language. Any language that those children love will do.
Today, dating services are very popular and people meet one another on blind dates. That's how my wife and I met. What if? You bring two people together for a blind date. They've never met each other before, and they have two different mother tongues. [00:07:25] And as they share dinner together, they can understand about 30 percent of what each other has to say. Do you think those two people will fall deeply in love with each other? Of course not.
If your kids come to church, and they understand 30 percent of the sermon, and 30 percent of your teaching, and they understand 30 percent of what Jesus says, do you think your children are going to fall deeply in love with Jesus? [00:07:59] [00:08:00] I think you know the answer.
A few months ago, I worshipped in a church that is Haitian, and they worship in the Creole language. And I said to the pastor, “It's absolutely fine if I come to your church. I don't understand anything, that's okay with me, but if you have a translator that can sit next to me, that would be great”.
[00:08:19] So he introduced me to a wonderful, friendly young woman in her twenties. She sat in the back of the church next to me to translate. The pastor began to preach, and she said nothing. After he spoke for a minute, She came up with a sentence or two, and through the course of the sermon, she told me about 20 percent of what the pastor said.
[00:08:43] About halfway through, she said to me, “John, I really want to apologize. I was born here in America. I'm trying to work on my Creole skills. They're not very good. I really don't understand very much of what the pastor's saying”.
So I asked her, “Well, that's fine if your [00:09:00] Creole is not that good, but how do you feed yourself spiritually? [00:09:04] How do you grow”? And she said, “Well, every now and then I read a Bible passage or something else on YouTube”. In other words, this young woman is not getting strong Christian nurture and her pastor knows that she doesn't understand his message. It is an act of love when Christian parents say, “My kids are going to learn about God in their primary language”.
[00:09:34] Another barrier to many young people coming to faith is dress codes. And I've been in many different churches and depending on the country or the denomination or the ethnicity, there are different rules about clothes, about hair, about music, about makeup, about jewelry. And each church, you have to figure out what their rules are.
[00:09:59] [00:10:00] The problem is that most of those rules don't come straight from the Word of God. I was speaking with a young Latino woman who was asked to speak for a conference, and a Latino pastor, an older man, asked her and said, “This is our dress code, and I want you to teach this”. And her response was, “I teach the Word of God. [00:10:20] If you show me straight from the Bible that it says this, I'm very willing to teach it, but otherwise, I won't”.
I think that's a very good standard for all of us. Do not let the dress code of your home country be a barrier that keeps your children from God.
Another barrier that keeps young people from faith is lack of empowerment for leadership.[00:10:47] Many of you come from countries where power is reserved for older married men, and very specifically in the church is reserved for older married men. You now live in a country [00:11:00] that empowers women, singles, and young people. Your children, your young adult unmarried daughters can become vice presidents, CEOs, they can get PhDs, they can earn six figure salaries. If the only thing that they can do in the church is sing in the choir and work in the nursery, You may well lose them.
[00:11:25] Also for the young men, if you look at a 40 year old, or even a 35 year old, and feel that that person is not old enough for significant spiritual leadership, there's a really good chance that you are going to lose them because if the church will not allow them to develop.
So I recommend to immigrant churches that they worship in a second language, they can do everything they can to start an English language small group, separate English [00:12:00] language service, plant a daughter English language church, work with an American church to start something multicultural. Whatever it takes, do something that recognizes the spiritual gifts that God gives to your young people, even before they become mature adults.
Brothers and sisters, I know that these are very hard words to hear. [00:12:25] I know your motives are pure, and I know that you are driven because you want the best for your children. But often, those things drive them away from the faith.
Let me ask you a question about your grandchildren and your great grandchildren. Do you expect them to speak your mother tongue? Do you expect them to wear your kind of clothes? [00:12:48] To read the Bible translation that you read or to sing the music that you love? I think you know the answer already that your great grandchildren are going to be very Americanized [00:13:00] and may not know those things at all.
May I suggest that you begin that process even with your own children. The goal is not that they become American style Christians, nor that they remain the style of Christians of your homeland, but as multicultural people faithful to the Word of God, they blaze their own trail to understand God.
Friends, I understand how difficult a sacrifice this is. I have nothing but admiration for those immigrant parents who lay aside their preferences to see their children come to faith. Their sacrifice reminds me of the way that Jesus humbled himself when he went to the cross.
[00:13:46] This is Philippians chapter 2, verse 5. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing [00:14:00] to be grasped. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
“Therefore, God has highly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
When Jesus Christ hung there on the cross when he suffered that physical pain. He had the shame of hanging there naked and bearing the sin of the world. He was mocked and rejected. It was his finest hour. and when you and I lay aside those things that we treasure so dearly so that our children can find God, it is our finest [00:15:00] hour and we will receive from God honor and glory.
As we wind down this series, Cross Cultural Parenting 101, I want to leave you with 10 practical steps that will increase your spiritual influence with your children.
Number one, pray. The biggest thing that you can do that will make the greatest impact is to seek the face of God.
[00:15:25] Number two, remember how they think. We talked about this in episode two. They think in English, they're empowered to speak up, they're empowered as leaders in society, in the workplace, in education, even if they aren't in the church. They are screen based, they live in a world with no majority group where nobody is 50 percent of the people in the room, and they realize that in their world, Christianity is a minority view.
[00:15:55] Number three. Remember how they learn. They prefer audio and [00:16:00] video over text over books. They prefer short segments of learning as opposed to long lectures. They prefer stories over abstract concepts. And they prefer dialogue over lectures and sermons.
Number four, remember the issues they face that are the burning issues that they encounter that may be different from your generation. [00:16:24] We talked about four of them, identity, mental health, race, and gender.
Number five, I would like to encourage you to listen into both series of podcasts. Both this one, Cross Cultural Parenting, but also the parallel one for your children, Cross Cultural Voices . It will let you understand how God loving Christians of that generation think.
[00:16:49] Number six, identify a young adult or a teen who's already in your church. Get them to subscribe to Cross Cultural Voices. Help [00:17:00] them help others in your church so that you can impact the people who are with you.
Number seven, get your own children to listen in to cross cultural.
Number eight, start a small group or even a one on one discussion with your children about these issues.[00:17:20]
Number nine, connect them with other Christian peers of their age who love the Lord.
And finally, number ten. Get a copy of our free handbook, “Five Steps to Influence Your Adult Children for Christ”, because it will take some of these things I'm telling you in a very short window right now, and they'll be written down and easy for you to come back and refer to.
[00:17:45] And so friends, that brings us to the end of this series, Cross Cultural Parenting 101. But it's not farewell, it's just farewell for now. Because we will be posting weekly episodes in Cross Cultural Parenting. I want to stay in touch with you. I want to hear from you. And so let's look forward to meeting together and learning how best to share Christ across generations.
