A reader writes:
“I had recently just started helping with our children’s program only to stop dead in my tracks when I read this lesson from the curriculum they follow.
I know that something’s really off with this and I’ve been asked to share why I can’t be a part of teaching this to the kids.
Could you look it over and give me your thoughts?”
“Dead in my tracks” is right.
[Editor’s note: I can’t find a link to the four-page example of curriculum our reader supplied, but I will be quoting from it extensively in a future post.
The material comes from KAIO Publications, Inc., in case that name rings any bells with our readers, and is entitled “Prophetic Practice”. Its objective: “To introduce children to the gifting of prophecy and the ministry of a prophet. To give them practice at asking for, receiving and giving prophetic words to others.”
The plainly stated goal of this training is to “activate the prophetic gift in believers”, in this case impressionable children. The sort of thing that passes for “prophecy” in the material includes guessing the number and type of coins in an instructor’s pocket, attributing correct guesses to God. Activities include anointing children with “the oil of gladness”.
Uh … yeah. IC’s reply to our reader follows.]
I agree with your concern. Whether or not other people will be able to understand that concern, legitimate as it is, will depend on what sort of church you attend, and what its view of theology is. Sometimes it’s not easy to be right … nor even to explain to some folks why you are. But it doesn’t make you wrong.
There are various problems with this particular exercise. The chief one I see is that it takes “prophecy” to entail something outside of the word of God, and unregulated by that word. However, we are to test the spirits because there are false prophecies, and many of them. How shall we test them? We have nothing but the word of God to guide us. Apart from that word, we cannot know what is genuine prophecy and what is one of the many false prophecies that circulate, and against which the word of God specifically warns us.
In this exercise, I see absolutely no such testing or checks. Whatever the child may think, imagine or suppose is simply assumed to be genuine prophecy. This is exceedingly dangerous, especially for children, who are prone to flights of imagination and low in discernment. How much better if they were being trained to question such “prophetic” utterances, by comparing them to scripture and rejecting everything contrary or outside of the word of God.
Even a prophecy that is not directly contradictory to the word is problematic. What is its status? We don’t know. Is it truly a word from God? Is it a flight of fancy? But more, is there a word from God that is inferior and a kind that is superior? If all the words of God are sacred (Proverbs 30:5 says, “every word of God is pure”), then is whatever comes out of the child’s mouth equal with sacred scripture? Should we perhaps start writing the words they imagine they have received from God in the back of their Bibles, adding the new words of God to the standing word of God? How could we not, if what the child is receiving is nothing less than the true words of God, delivered to mankind?
I submit to you that the devisers of this lesson have badly misunderstood both the gift of prophecy and also the importance of examining and testing it. The danger I see is of opening up the young people of God to whatever any “spirit” may dump into their imaginations, or whatever flights of fancy may take them. Surely, the congregation at large cannot be thinking of treating the pronouncements of children as co-equal with God’s word, can they?
So I share your concern. Now, the gift of prophecy itself is a big topic, and one surrounded with issues. It’s by no means clear how it is to fit into the present day, and I believe there are two ways of looking at it. One is that at present “prophecy” entails nothing in excess of the right exposition of the word of God, scripture itself. The other is, as is suggested by verses like 1 Corinthians 13:8, that it was a temporary gift to the Church, given at a time when the canon of scripture was not yet complete, and so now is no longer functional. As you can see, Paul specifically identifies prophecy as something that will “cease” when the “perfect” arrives; and the “perfect” cannot refer to eternity, because faith and hope persist; but they are done away with, and only love remains, when Christ returns — both giving way to sight. So the “perfect” must refer to the word of God, I believe — the complete revelation of God’s words to man, which needs no further supplementation, most particularly from the imaginations of children, and unchecked by the revealed truth.
Whichever view we take, the sorts of exercises in this children’s lesson are wildly off point. You’re right. Stand firm.
The Lord bless you for standing firm for truth. You may not be understood, brother, but the Lord will understand.
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