Our kids need to hear the stories of Daniel and David, but they need to know the God of Daniel and David. That happens through systematic teaching of doctrine in a relational environment. By reading my kids systematic theology, they have been asking questions about God they hadn’t asked because it is creating categories about who God is that never existed in their minds before. This truth is grounded in the reality of God’s love and how that love intersects our world.

In 1987 the suit-wearing, red-headed British sensation Rick Astley debuted “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It stayed atop the charts for months and became a music sensation. My generation loved it. Thanks to internet memes, Astley is enjoying resurging fame. Kids send a link that is mislabeled to a friend, and the link takes them to a short gif of Astley dancing. “You just got Rick Rolled,” the kids say.

1987 was also that same year that I started doing kids’ ministry almost weekly. A lot has changed since then. Our culture has changed. The straight-laced rocker Astley would not make it in today’s music scene. Our world has changed. We have exchanged the Cold War of the 1980s for the global war on terror that began in earnest in 2001. However, how we teach kids is largely unchanged. We have implemented video, but after forty years, we still teach Bible stories about animals, such as Noah and his floating zoo, Daniel and the petting zoo of lions, and creation and the making of all the animals.

Without realizing it, we often teach kids sanitized versions of Bible stories. We edit stories that we feel are a bit too much. We instinctually ask if we should teach this to kids rather than assuming, as Paul did in 2 Timothy 3:16, that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” If that is true, then we don’t have a content issue. We have an application issue. The question for us isn’t, “Should I teach this difficult or disturbing story from Scripture?” The question is, “How do I teach this difficult truth in a way that kids can understand?”

In our book How to Teach Kid’s Theology, my coauthor Hunter Williams and I define theology this way: “The application of a person’s knowledge of God’s revelation to all of life.” We like this definition for two reasons. One, it’s broader and doesn’t give the impression that a person has to be an expert or elite Christian to be a theologian. You don’t have to be an expert, you just need to be faithful.

The second reason we like this definition is that it acknowledges the practical nature of theology. God reveals himself to all peoples, and their response to his revelation is their application of it. Whether people study God’s Word vigorously, or ignore his design in the world intentionally, they are operating as theologians, because they are taking the knowledge of God they’ve received and deciding how they will allow it to affect their lives. As teachers and parents, you are called to accurately share God’s revelation with your kids and teach them how to faithfully apply it to their lives. Theology is a holistic, ongoing practice in which people receive and respond to God’s revelation, meaning that all of us are theologians—you, me, and everyone.

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