Our children, Mia and Caden, love nothing more than jumping aboard the food truck with me and going out to one of the many inner city sites where we serve meals. It’s more than a job. For my family, it’s sheer adventure. The kids can’t wait to carry boxes, serve the food, pick up trash, and talk to the people who line up for a meal. There was one time, however, when Mia and Caden became a little anxious. The lines were really long that day, and after doing a quick visual inventory of what we had in the truck, they came to me with worried expressions on their little faces.
Faith & Fitness Magazine: Families can train for exercise and identify ways to serve. But can they create encounters orchestrated by God? How do they prepare for the encounter?
Matthew Barnett: You can’t prepare for ministry encounters and that’s what makes it so special. Life’s unpredictable moments are the one’s that shape our lives and create memories. Children can learn that by showing up and being a blessing. Half the battle of being used of God is showing up.
“Dad! We don’t have enough food. We’re going to run out!”
“You just watch,” I told them. “There’ll be enough food.” They glanced at each other as if to say, What is he talking about? “But, Dad!” they protested. “We’re almost out!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know how it will happen, but everyone is going to get fed today. There will be enough food.” And somehow there was! That little bit of food fed all those patient people waiting in line, and no one went away hungry that day. As we were packing up, the kids were wide-eyed with wonder. “Dad,” they said, “that was just like the Bible story about the five loaves and the two fish!”
“That’s the way it always works,” I told them. “It’s happened every single time, no matter how many people show up. We’ve never been short. We’ve never run out. God always comes through.” God always does comes through.
That’s the lesson Mia and Caden went away with that day, and I don’t imagine they will ever forget it. I think that one experience impacted them far more than a hundred lectures on the bigness and faithfulness of God. They got to see God’s sufficient provision firsthand while they distributed that food with their own hands.
It’s one thing to help Dad with a task. It’s another thing to find yourself in the middle of a miracle. Someday, when my kids find themselves facing a hard deadline, a scary medical diagnosis, a heartbreaking relationship, or a season when there’s more month than paycheck, I’m guessing that they will remind themselves, God always comes through. He’s done it before, and He’ ll do it again. I can trust Him in this.
Faith & Fitness Magazine: How does a life lesson – a spiritual encounter with God in tandem with physical investment and personal investment in others differ from simply being taught a life lesson, say for example at a Sunday morning church service?
Matthew Barnett: Life lessons are valuable. The sights and sounds of the places our family serves can’t be duplicated in a church building. It’s amazing how showing up with a softball in a housing project can create so many powerful feelings of encouragement in the neighborhood. Also, questions asked on the way home from my children about what they saw in the projects. We’ve talked about poverty, being thankful for what we have, and as a family leaving a legacy of serving. Those life lessons can only be caught by “doing”. Not just hearing. Jesus ministry was practically all in the streets, that’s what makes the lessons he taught and the lessons learned so incredible.
We live in a culture today that tries to push God out of the marketplace of ideas and shut Him out of every public discussion. Many public schools don’t even allow His name to be mentioned. Popular media mocks His followers, uses His name only as a swear word, and ignores the role of faith in everyday life. Knowing that’s what our children will encounter day after day, our role as parents is to show them something different. Yes, show. Not just tell.
If we want our kids to have a stronger spiritual life than ours, we need to show them God’s power, His faithful provision, and the extraordinary things He can do in people’s lives when they submit to Him. But no matter how well-intentioned we might be, we won’t successfully teach this lesson with our words alone.
Before Caroline and I had children, I sometimes worried about whether we would be able, on a pastor’s salary, to give them the opportunities they needed to really succeed in life. Specifically, would we be able to help our kids get into the “right” schools, attend the “right” college, or find the “right” career?
After Mia and Caden came into the world, however, and as they grew up around Angelus Temple and the Dream Center, all of those concerns melted away. I came to realize that my children’s lives would be enriched to the maximum level not by money or an elite education, but rather by the life experiences we would share.
Faith & Fitness Magazine: You talk about, “The extraordinary things God can do in people’s lives when children submit to Him.” How do you feel parents can lead by example and demonstrate that submission to God through exercise and diet helps children grow spiritually?
Matthew Barnett: I think parents showing discipline in any form is a great lesson for children. The fact parents value their lives and want to live stronger for their kids so they can do more is a powerful lesson. The lesson only truly has impact when health and fitness has a goal. A goal of passing on secrets of well-being and perseverance to others. Fitness to just look good and feel good is empty. Our goal is to maximize our health so that we can maximize our life as a gift of serving. Our fitness goals create good health, which gives these [ministry] works the best of our God given gifts.
So, from the time they could toddle, my daughter and son have ministered with me. They’re out with me every week, serving on the food truck, meeting and helping people in the neighborhoods, and working in the café. And they absolutely love it. The world where we minister together is a big and exciting place with lots of interesting people, scores of honorary “aunts” and “uncles,” and something always happening.
Actually, what’s happening most is life. Life out of death. Freedom out of addiction. Hope and laughter and dreams rebuilt out of wreckage and despair.
When I look back on my own life, I see that my dad took me on the same kind of faith adventures when I was their age. At first I felt a little shy and reluctant about interacting with needy people. I remember driving through south Phoenix when I was just a kid. We were going through a rough area, and I started to roll up my window. My dad glanced over at me from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I want you to keep your window open for a while. I want you to see the need that’s right here in our own city.” Yes, when I wanted to look away from the brokenness and poverty and need, Dad made me look right at it, even when it was difficult. I know, without a doubt, that experiences like that one shaped me. Everything in my life and ministry today was defined by Dad exposing me to those sometimes heartbreaking experiences when he took me with him on his journey.
Faith & Fitness Magazine: What do you say when parents express concern about the potential dangers of taking children into these kinds of learning environments to develop confidence and serve?
Matthew Barnett: My dad never feared going into a neighborhood. He taught me that you can’t fear what you choose to love. Love what you fear and you can’t fear it. He realized there was more to lose by sheltering kids from the joy of serving than the danger of being in tough communities. His passion and love for the most forgotten of humanity have become the building blocks of everything that truly matters to me in this world. Kids won’t always remember what is taught but they never forget the lessons caught. I caught an attitude of serving from my father. It was radical, fearless, and courageous, but somehow it felt safe. Being in communities where you need God’s help is a safe place. God is there.
Yes, he paid attention to my grades and how I was getting along in school. But he was most interested in whether I was grappling with the principles of life in Christ and whether I understood what it meant to be a Christian and to serve others.
On Saturday mornings when I was just a young teenager, Dad and I would drive into some of the poorer neighborhoods of south Phoenix and park the car. “Okay, Son,” he would say. “Go knock on twenty doors, and I’ll knock on twenty doors. Between the two of us, we’ll talk to a bunch of people about the Lord and tell them how to get rides to church.” Most of the important things I have learned in life weren’t lessons from a classroom or academic circles, but rather lessons learned during family experiences and these adventures of faith with my dad.
Faith & Fitness Magazine: So, the Dream Center has a fitness facility. Describe it, what you like to do when you exercise there and how it ministers to people.
Matthew Barnett: The fitness center at the Dream Center is incredible. It’s open morning until night and it has allowed us to reach people that traditional ministry could never do. We have gang members working out in the gym. Many of the guys feel they are headed for prison and they go to the gym to prepare for a day when they will be in prison. However, our gym has been an open door to the gospel and allowed guys to realize that the gym was not really an open door to their fitness but to their salvation and hope through Christ. Families, kids, in the neighborhood are amazed that the church would put so much money and resources for a community that most people would drive by and not think twice about. That’s what makes the investment of a gym amongst this needy community so special.
Many parents wring their hands and groan, “If I could just get my kids into a better school than I went to, their lives will turn out better.” Maybe. Maybe not. That “better” school might be the worst thing that could happen to your child. Besides, there is so much more to parenting than just providing for your kids the kind of educational or career opportunities that you didn’t have. Parenting doesn’t even require trying to put your kids in a position to “find security” or earn a great amount of money.
Christians know that there are goals infinitely more important than financial goals. To be specific, what matters most is whether we are passing on a legacy of solid, scriptural values to our sons and daughters. My dad taught me a few things that will stay with me forever. To this day I can hear him say, “Find a need and fill it. Find a hurt and heal it.”
But he didn’t just say words like these, words that you’d expect a preacher to say. My dad lived them. And as he did, he took me along for the ride. We did ministry together. We helped hurting people together. He even took me into some of the tough meetings he had as head pastor, so I could see how a Christian leader responds under criticism and pressure. Dad let us kids serve right alongside him, so that we could experience making a difference together, and that’s what Caroline and I are trying to do with our children too.
I think the best and most blessed thing we can do for our sons and daughters is to give them opportunities to share the burdens and touch the hearts of others.
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Faith & Fitness Magazine: I suspect that at the Dream Center you and your family have seen people come there who put on a disguise because they don’t want to reveal their true self. How does God help them to take off the fake appearance and ultimately put on God’s dream for them?
Matthew Barnett: Yes, a lot of people fear others seeing who they really are. When they come to the Dream Center and see hundreds of other people who live here vulnerable and open those walls come down fast. The church’s role is to create a blank slate for people to dream again. It’s in that blank slate they can lay down a failed dream and they can dream the way God intended. Usually, that dream has something to do with a person’s past history. It’s no longer seeing your past as a crutch, but as a weapon [against Satan]. Finding God’s dream often comes within a broken dream. When we pick up the broken pieces and present it to God we find that he can do more with broken pieces then a false mirror. That’s the beauty of God’s dream slice in us.
It’s always fun for a child to get toys, but it’s even more exciting when they choose to give those same toys away to children who have nothing at all.
All kinds of kids come to our children’s church on a Sunday. Some parents drive their kids in from the suburbs, and other boys and girls come from South Central LA or right off Skid Row. Some of these children are homeless, and they have never been to church in their lives. A few of them come through the doors looking a little wide-eyed and afraid. That’s when my nine-year-old daughter Mia jumps in.
Mia feels like it’s her job to love on kids like that, to help them to feel welcome and accepted. She’s always going through her stuff saying, “I’m going to give this away.” She goes into that 11:00 a.m. children’s church with a missionary mind-set: she wants to reach those kids who have experienced great sadness, trauma, and disappointment in their short lives.
I don’t know what Mia will do when she grows up. But I am confident that, from a very young age, she’s known what it means for the Lord to use her in the lives of others. That discovery will stay with her long after many of the sermons and Sunday school lessons have faded away.
