I grew up going to children’s church in the early and mid 90’s and children’s church has really changed drastically. Like back in the day in my children’s church, there was no fog, no lights, nothing really.. But the felt board. The felt board for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s essential a carpet board that you Velcro bible stories too. All the stories that I learned in children’s church were through the felt board. Like there would be the felt board ark, the felt board Noah, there was the felt board Peter. The one felt board story that always stuck out to me when I was younger was the one about Jesus calling Paul on the road to Damascus. It has always stuck out to me, because it was creepy. Like the teacher would have Paul walking down a road, and he looks like what Paul would have looked like, but what made it creepy, was when my teacher put Jesus in the sky calling out to Paul, it wasn’t a normal Jesus, it was Jesus face superimposed into the sun. it was so bizarre. Creepy I know, maybe it was because I grew up in California, I don’t know.
Beyond the felt board though there is something that sticks out to me even greater, and it’s the songs we sung in children’s church. Songs like, father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham I am one of them and so are you. But then there were other songs that we sung that were a little different like this, “Jesus loves me when I am good, when I do the things I should.” Or the legalistic or I mean classic one, “o, be careful little hands what you do” and then each new verse would select a body part to warn about. What these songs reinforced to me and many others from a young age is that there is a merit system with god. It carried into everything, if we brought a friend to church, we got more stars than everyone else, if we memorized a verse of the bible we got more candy than everyone else. And I learned from a very early age that I was pretty good at this merit game. I would pride myself in how many more stars I had than everyone else, I like my felt board Saul before he became Paul, understood how to thrive as a Pharisee. When your young, when your a child its really quite common and easy to be a Pharisee.
Little kids are great at being Pharisees. I remember listening to a Mark Driscoll message recently and he said, be careful when it comes to children not to mistake being a Pharisee for leadership.. It really is such a piercing thought, because many parents will say, my child isn’t bossy there just a leader, there not a bully, they are just assertive, there not a little toy- Nazi, they just want to distribute the toys evenly, so apparently socialism begins at an early age. So often in children we mistake what we think are marks of leadership when really what we see is marks of being a Pharisee, a little Pharisee on our hands, and I was one of them and so where you. Its important for all of us to understand that being a Pharisee is not something you grow into, its not a place you randomly arrive at, its something that is innate to who you are, we all have tendencies to be Pharisees and its so important that from an early age we see this and cultivate children to be like Jesus, not like Pharisees.
These things don’t just apply to children but to all of us. There is probably some one you work with, someone in your classes, maybe your related to them, could be you, to were they disguise being a Pharisee for leadership.
How can you tell? Leaders don’t take credit they give credit, , leaders do what’s best for everyone and not just themselves, leaders are servants, leaders are patient, leaders are encouraging, leaders are humble, if you feel like you’re a leader but this doesn’t sound like you, your probably not a leader and you need to repent of being a Pharisee, I know so often I need to repent of being a Pharisee, its so easy in my life to mistake being a Pharisee for leadership.
It takes a life of humility and trusting in Jesus to defeat the pharisee in all of us.
