Table of Contents

How Do We Get From Fun to Fundamentals?

Using the advertising illustration as a model, we might picture the result of good Christian teaching like this: A student wipes the traces of milk from her face and asks the church: "Got meat?"

By Billie Davis

"It has fun and play value," a marketer said of a new carbonated cereal "that sizzles and pops in your mouth." According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, marketers are trying to put bubbles in everything because "it is a big selling point for kids. Carbon dioxide is bubbling up in some surprising places [as marketers] seek more excitement for their products." E-moo is carbonated milk that claims to put fun into drinking milk. "Carbonation provides food and drink with entertainment value. When you bite into a bubbly pear . . . it’s completely fun."

Three popular ideas are being carried to extremes that threaten to destroy the church’s teaching ministry: change, market, and fun. We have been convinced, mostly by marketing strategists, that everything is quickly obsolete. Change is presented as a positive value almost without exception. Any type of resistance to change is presented as old and bad. The word fun is used to sell not only toys, sports, vacation trips, and movies, but also food, clothing, furniture, automobiles, computers . . . and now the Sunday school. We are almost forced to believe that every value must be sold, just as any product on the market, and the best way to sell it is to make it seem like fun. Words such as school, study, and education are to be avoided. We call our classes fellowships and name them for popular television programs.

Producers of curriculum materials emphasize that the lessons are fun and easy to prepare. All you need is in this colorful box. How would you feel about your calling and preparation for ministry if all you needed were a packaged sermon and a video presentation designed by experts in entertainment? How do Christian educators who feel a call to ministry adapt to the idea that our success depends on shaping a product as fun to target a specific market? How do we respond to the current emphasis on fun and entertainment as ideal tools for gospel outreach and Christian education?

Think About It

"It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other."* These words from Ecclesiastes 7:18 describe the ministry of education. Education looks both ways. It preserves truth and knowledge from the past and provides the foundation on which to build appropriately for the future. We study and pray so we can grasp the truth of God’s eternal plan. Being educated means we have received knowledge and wisdom from those who have left us the results of their studies, thinking, and experience. Then we study and pray and work to understand cultural trends that shape thinking and behavior in the present. Our purpose is to share the Christian heritage, and also to stimulate new thinking and action. Extreme positions usually lead to confusion and error. So we must teach that God’s truth is absolute, and that it can also be applied in innovative ways. God does not change. Cultures change. The basic needs of people do not change. Culture creates new situations that require us to meet basic needs in appropriate ways. The function of education is to preserve the past, develop present potential, and stimulate future outcomes.

The idea of change threatens Christian education when leaders, believing that postmodern children and youth reject all tradition, go to extremes. For example, teachers and children’s pastors may take everything that seems religious from meeting rooms. They paint the walls with distorted faces and animals and scenes from science fiction. They try to turn each lesson into a game or a TV program. They think everything must be as new and exciting as the latest wireless technology. They fail to grasp the importance of unchanging sacredness. I have read the words of megachurch pastors advising us to eliminate Bibles from the pews and even suggesting that old-timers who insist on carrying Bibles so obviously to the services will intimidate the unchurched visitors. This is what I mean by extreme reaction that goes beyond real understanding of human nature and basic human needs.

Studies in human development find that children do not like too much change. Unless they are especially stimulated to want a new product, most of them prefer the familiar. They get excited and enjoy media presentations, but they are influenced most by a familiar voice that is warm and loving. Adolescents do not dislike all tradition. They do not drop out of church because it is too traditional unless we are so rigid and judgmental they feel misunderstood and rejected. We usually lose young people because we fail to include them and connect them in meaningful ways to a Christian heritage. Often what we take for rebellion or disdain for tradition is really a cry of frustration.

An example is a report called "New Wheels for Generation Y." At a showing of concept cars a respected designer declared, "The kids today dress casual and carry all this entertainment. We will give some fantasy, some excitement . . . . We will take people to a different world."

But a young design student disagreed, saying, "That would be a huge mistake. People have this stereotypical image that young people want [something] totally off the wall . . . . In reality, they want something smart . . . but that doesn’t translate into bizarro."

Neither new generations nor secular people want us to change everything to suit them. They want life to make sense. They want us to understand them, love them, and make them a part of our lives. They need empathy and appreciation more than they need change and fun.

How Educational Is Entertainment?

Good teachers have always devised interesting and pleasant ways of presenting lesson content. Persons of all ages have always found real pleasure and satisfaction in learning. The idea of trying intentionally to make learning into fun was born out of television. One of the first programs to claim a teaching goal was Sesame Street. Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, says the program was generally approved by educators who thought it would help teach children to read and encourage them to love school. A number of studies and experiments with the results have indicated that children do not learn content from cute puppets and catchy tunes any better than they learn from good, traditional teaching. The studies show that children do remember some of the content intended as education, but they remember more about the characters and the drama. Numerous reports from other sources agree with Postman’s statement that TV programs teach children to love TV programs, not school.

In a report of how children and parents rate popular video programs that have biblical themes, we see the same tendency to remember more about the action and technology than about the message they were intended to deliver. Children and parents who viewed some popular Christian videos were asked to give ratings and make comments. Most gave good ratings, saying the presentations were well done, biblically sound, and interesting to watch. But among the kids no one mentioned God or the Bible. One child mentioned a specifically moral lesson. All other comments related to the jokes, technology, actors, music, and cool or scary adventures. Not one child mentioned a biblical truth learned from the videos. No one made the connection between a video character and a Bible character. None of the parents’ comments included mention of God. One mentioned a moral theme. All other comments referred to the fine technology and production. The point is, as many careful scholars have declared, the medium very much influences the message. Tools such as video and dramatic presentations of magic tricks and clowns must be used judiciously to keep viewers from remembering more about the presentation than about the lesson it is supposed to teach.

"Why is Jesus Like My Dog? Is He a German Shepherd?"

The greatest flaw in educational entertainment is the belief that children can understand metaphors and allegorical stories. Evidence of this is found in the numerous supposedly funny stories of how children react. One example is the way an adult class laughed about the boy who asked if Jesus were a German shepherd like his dog. A good teacher sees beyond the humor. Children need explicit explanations. They learn more from plain words, such as Jesus loves you, than they do from stories about a good shepherd or some vegetable that cares for sheep. Even adolescents and many adults are confused or simply entertained by fun games and cartoons that are supposed to teach a lesson. Sometimes brightly colored drawings, fast-moving video images, and stirring rhythms disguise more than they express.

Dawson McAllister, a proclaimed expert on youth and culture, says, "Teenagers are entertained to death. They love it, but . . . ." He says young people will tire quickly of one kind of fun and look for something more exciting. He quoted a survey of 30,000 teenagers who had stayed in church for some time. The question was, "Why do you stay?" Only 3.6 percent of the teens chose "fun," but 57.1 percent chose, "It’s helped me to grow as a Christian."

How Does Market Relate to Mission?

The most persuasive argument for the use of culturally relevant tools and methods is that we must make a bridge between the church and the culture to attract unchurched persons. We feel that Jesus left us with a mission, and in today’s terms, we must sell the message of salvation. So, we find a way to market the message. This leads us to copy advertising and entertainment strategies. In our sincere desire to gain the interest and attention of the unchurched, we sometimes go to extremes and give more attention to marketing than to the mission.

In a recent secular publication, a writer explained some advantages of Christian schools. He claimed they offer good teaching, and the influence of the market has forced them to moderate the role of religion. He said market forces soften religion as schools compete to attract students. This makes Christian schools more acceptable in the general society. He thought he was making a positive statement, but to us it is a warning.

Relevant also is the complaint we read in many national publications about grade inflation in our schools and universities. A University of Missouri professor writes: "Universities are now modeled after the corporation . . . . Students are called customers and vice presidents fret over providing the best customer service. What’s the very best way to keep customers happy? Give them what they want."

Our challenge is (1) to be aware and relevant to reach our market without allowing cultural adaptations to soften the message, and (2) not to be so consumed with providing immediate pleasant experience that we neglect the teaching ministry. McAllister says his experience leads him to conclude that we should not be negative and condemning of cultural trends, but on the other hand, ". . . if you and I model the love of God and let young men and women see our hearts and our values, we can focus far more on our purpose . . . and far less on the external trappings of the culture."

Among the best examples of moves toward cultural adaptation are church-sponsored youth clubs where hip-hop music is the vehicle for ministry. Recently Christianity Today published a thoughtful report in which the authors liken hip-hop ministry to intercultural strategies used by missionaries to evangelize unreached peoples. They cite leaders of popular youth clubs who explain how they use hip-hop "to shine a light on the message of the gospel."

A youth minister explains that hip-hop music promotes brutal honesty and expresses the need of young persons to keep it real. "We must be willing to acknowledge our own shortcomings," he says, and help youth to "experience a biblical message within their own cultural context." Older Christians can seem self-righteous and unwilling to make appropriate adaptations to the needs of questioning and seeking younger generations. We must appreciate people and accept them as products of our culture.

Then in a striking example of postmodern syncretism, the authors of this article quote another youth leader, "Our use of rap and hip-hop is just the milk of getting people to the meat of discipleship and biblical truth." They advise us to use popular exciting strategies as our milk to get people into the gospel. They close the article with a popular line from advertising, asking the church: Got milk?

Biblical use of the milk metaphor is not that milk is given to attract infants. It is given to nourish infants. Nourishment is not the same as simple attraction. Entertainment may serve to attract. Education is to nourish. We must be careful not to become so involved with cultural relevance and marketing strategies that we neglect basic educational goals and teaching skills. Peter says, "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good" (1 Peter 2:2,3). Fun and entertainment endanger spiritual growth when we go to extremes. They can create appetites for something ever more exciting, like carbonated milk and tingly blue pears.

Using the advertising illustration as a model, we might picture the result of good Christian teaching like this: A student wipes the traces of milk from his face and asks the church: "Got meat?"

Billie Davis, Ed.D., is professor emeritus of education, psychology, and sociology at Evangel University, Springfield, Missouri.

*Scripture references are from the New International Version.

References

McAllister, Dawson, Saving the Millennial Generation. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999.

Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.

Wall Street Journal. 4, 14 January 2002.