There's a blog post circulating on Facebook about the role of the default parent, the one who takes care of everything for the family. She (it often is the mom) makes sure the kids are taken care of in every way possible, while the backup parent "helps."  I am grateful for all that my wife does, but I have some confessions to make.

When we first got married, we decided that I would do the laundry. I was fine with that idea. But after two months of marriage, I realized I was never doing the laundry. My wife brought it up, wondering why I never did it. My response? I never got a chance to do it. Every time I turned around, she was doing another load of laundry, as often as once a week. That is excessive. You see, as time-saving bachelor, I bought enough underwear, socks, shirts and pants so that I had no need to laundry for an entire month.  I had three full loads of laundry to do, once a month. After I finished, I went back to living the good life. I never did the laundry when we got married because I never ran out of socks and underwear. That never worked for her because she only had one week before she ran out.

But I think it's us backup parents that save the world. If our children never encountered an adult as helpless as us, they would never learn to take care of themselves. There is something beautiful about the way my ten-year-old takes charge of breakfast, lunches, and getting ready in the morning when my wife is gone. Or with the way my five-year-old gets to pick out some amazing outfits to wear to school. (That only sometimes works, because my ten-year-old will step in and nix some of the outfits he chooses.)

We are the ones that do the dirty work of missing appointments, forgetting to brush the kids teeth, having cereal for supper, and giving kids lots of free time because we never get them signed up for anything. And if we do sign them up, they still get lots of free time because we forget to take them.  We teach our kids boundaries and putting other people's needs ahead of their own as we absolutely insist on privacy in the shower and to wait for the commercials during football. We help our kids learn the consequences of not putting things away as we have no memory of where anything is in the house. If they lose it, we don't know where to start looking and they're just out of luck.  

We are at our best when the default parent is gone for the weekend. There is only one rule, don't make a bigger mess than you can clean up yourself. Because as the backup parent, there is no way we're cleaning it up for you. We carefully lose the instructions on how to make our meals, and then have McDonald or Papa John take care of us. The house and kitchen still becomes a wreck and then we flurry around before the default parent gets home to hide all the signs of our irresponsibility.  We've been there when things fell apart. And amazingly, they don't fall apart.

We are backup parents because every kid needs a backup. They need a chance to fail, knowing that there is someone behind them that will help them get up. We know that tears are okay when things don't turn out, not something to be avoided at all costs. Being the backup means that our children are learning responsibility, experiencing consequences, and finding out what it means to take care of their own needs. They keep track of their own schedules and make sure we get them there on time.  We carry our role with pride. As one backup parent to another, we rock.

Now, before you judge me for my pride in being a backup parent, this is satire. As a backup parent, sometimes I exaggerate a bit. 
-John M Troyer

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“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19, NIV)

I am poor, imprisoned, blind, oppressed (mostly a victim of my own oppression). I need good news, freedom, healing and most of all, the Lord's favor. The words above are Jesus' words, proclaimed at the very beginning of his ministry. Jesus and justice go hand in hand. The Lord's favor is on all people, and it is our exposure to that favor that we are transformed. This word that Jesus spoke came immediately after the temptations in the wilderness. 

We can find other ways to make bread. We can find other ways to gain power and authority. We can also find other ways to protect ourselves from injury. But the power and direction of Jesus life was unswervingly focused on the Father in heaven, releasing people from captivity, speaking truth, and bearing consequences. Healing, freedom for captives and sight for the blinded was a threat to the status quo. In our culture today, who is threatened by healing?  I love the way Julie Rodgers talks about her life and experiences.  

She is experiencing healing.  Not because she got the broken things immediately fixed, but because her vulnerability and woundedness found a home in God. Now she is choosing not to hide that vulnerability and pretend it isn't there, but live openly and unswervingly in God's favor and God's rest. In her blog comments, some object to the healing she's found. However, she inspires me.  I hope she inspires you.
-John M Troyer

A month ago my sister-in-law and her daughter went sky-diving for the first time.  It was a 60th birthday present for her. Much of the energy of sky-diving is focused toward one particular moment: the landing.  If I had jumped out of the plane with them, but without a parachute, the first part of our descent would have been the same.  We could have enjoyed the same things, except I would likely have been consumed by knowing exactly what my landing was going to be like.  

In our daily lives, we do the same thing.  How much energy do we spend on making sure that the outcome of our energy is exactly the way we want it.  We want the sure thing, the guarantee that everything will work out in the end.  The truth is, that those in Christ do have that guarantee.  Hitting the ground at the of life (what we call death) has been demonstrated to be an illusion by Jesus Christ.

If I were to take a step of faith, and it turned into a spectacular and humiliating failure, I would gladly take that step if that is where God is calling me. In fact, I would be glad to take that step if I just thought it was where God was calling me and I found out later I was wrong. Every failure, every risk taken is an exercise in learning to hear God's voice and increase my dependence on Him.

The true tragedy, the true failure is when nothing is risked, when I assume my security comes from the systems and patterns of this world.

When I stand before God at the end, it will be a great dissapointment to tell him I played it safe. The tragedy is not just my own, but a tragedy for my family who will see a husband and father who chose fear, safety, and compromise. No one chooses this path for me. I choose it myself. 

I also can choose a different path. I have been called to live. I will live and share that life with others. I have been called to live freely in the middle of difficult things. I will live freely. I have been shattered and humbled by the challenges of life. I will embrace that brokenness and humility. 

I am the person Christ created me to be. That is who I'm called to be. That is who I will be.

Now excuse me, while I go take off my parachute.
-John M Troyer

Last fall, my wife Sheila and I went to the National Youth Workers' Convention in Nashville.  I had an interesting experience with statistical analysis while I was there. I went to a seminar led by Steve Argue, a pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI. In it, he gave some background to the widely quoted statistic that young adults are leaving the church at a more and more rapid pace. He said that is simply untrue except for one group. This is better understood if you distinguish between mainline Protestant churches and Evangelical & Black Protestant churches. In mainline churches, young adults leave the church at a rate that is increasing and they are not coming back as they get older. However, Evangelical & Black Protestant young adults are leaving their church at about the same rate they have for the last 40 years, and returning at about the same rates. Argue's counsel was that while it is always a concern when only one young person leaves faith, the statistics that are being quoted are overblown and not reflective of churches besides mainline churches.

Right after that session, we went to listen to Rachel Held Evans and she let us know that young adults are leaving the church and not returning. But she had a solution. The solution was for the church to be more open to embracing gay marriage. So her solution was that evangelical churches (whose young adults were continuing to come back) should adopt the perspectives of many mainline churches (whose young adults are staying away). In other words, the way to fix the problem you don't have is to adopt the methods that led others to having the problem you don't have.

A few years ago, I heard a young man give his faith story.  He talked about how his parents lived a good life, tried to follow Jesus' teachings, but that he never heard them talk about their inner relationship with God nor did they seem to have a vibrant prayer life.  He decided that, at this point, he too wanted to live a good life and try to live according to Jesus' teachings.  But at the same time he was an agnostic, unsure if God really existed.  My thought at the time was that this young man came by his agnosticism honestly.  

This really tracks well with what the Fuller Youth Institute has learned in their project called Sticky Faith.  Young people will largely model after the lived faith of their parents, especially the faith of the father. (Sorry, moms, that's just what the research showed.) This is the critical and most important factor. They also found that if the father was not religious, even the grandfather could have a significant effect.  When church attendance is not important to parents, it will not be important when they become adults. When a personal relationship with Jesus is not demonstrated, young people will assume God does not truly exist.  This is not true in every case, but it is simply what is most likely to happen.

If you are a parent, you cannot outsource the faith development of your children. If you are a father, you cannot expect your wife to take care of it for you. If you don't have a faith story to share, get help and start to develop your faith journey. If you are only nominally Christian, ask God to awaken a passion within you. Live into that story and share that story in vulnerable ways with your children. Their futures depend on it. And so does yours as a parent.

You can read part 2 of this blog post about young adults leaving the church.

For more information about Sticky Faith, you can start with this article and this book.

For more about statistics about young adults, you can start with this article and this book.  In another post, I'll talk about attitudes toward Christians and divorce statistics. Again, the popular view is not the accurate view.
-John M Troyer

Thursday is the 15th anniversary of my father's death.  For as long as I can remember, he would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and go out to his recliner in the living room and read, pray, and reflect.  About two years ago, I started to regularly wake up about 4:30, and I would just lay in bed.  When I started this blog a few weeks ago, I started to come out to my recliner in the living room and read, pray, reflect, and write at about 4:30 in the morning.

My father was born Amish, the fourth oldest of nine children.  He was 18 years old when he and my mother were married, and I am the youngest of their six children.  I grew up Beachy Amish Mennonite, a group that dressed in plain clothes, but embraced most modern technology. I didn't like it.  I didn't like the restrictions, I didn't like looking different from everyone else. My dad and I had a conflicted relationship and I wouldn't have wanted to admit I was becoming like him when he was still alive. As he and I would have our many conversations about my desire to leave their church, he had one line that he often repeated, "John, don't just think about yourself, but think about your children and their children."  And I have come to absolutely agree with that concern.

My father was a carpenter, skilled at building and remodeling homes, offices, and retail outlets. As his sons, all five of us spent our summers working with him through most of middle school and high school.  What most impressed me about him was that the values he taught me were the values he lived. He worked hard, didn't drink or use coarse language, treated others with respect, was generous in helping those in need. He wasn't afraid to ask for help when he needed it. You saw one man whether it was at home, at church, or in the workplace.  It wasn't until I was older that entered the working world that I discovered how rare that is.  I learned that people from all walks of life and all kinds of religious background were often inconsistent in the way they lived their values.  And I learned how hard it is to live that way in my own life.

I think I am understanding better the secret to his consistent faith.  You see, my father and I have the same Father in heaven.  And when my earthly father was sitting in the living room in the early morning, he was spending time with that Father.  And it is this relationship with my Father that moves me to sacrifice my own needs and desires and to begin living on behalf of not just my children and their children, but on behalf of the world as a whole.   It is this relationship that strengthens my inner self to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God." (Micah 6:8)  My father lived well and left a wonderful legacy.  Martin Luther King, Jr summarized it well,"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-John M Troyer