Strange Sounding Advice

I would like to submit to our parents that two of the greatest things you can do for your children sound extremely strange. I want to mention each of them and give a little guidance! I am advising this not because I am an expert, but because the Lord gave us a burden to do this for our boys and we initially struggled finding material to carry these two tasks out. I would suggest to you that the two greatest things you can do for your children are: (1) Catechize them (2) Introduce them to dead people. In our culture both of these thoughts seem rather foreign, so I want to take a couple of steps to not only explain to you what I mean, but link you to some resources that may help you. I will deal with the catechism in this posting, and we’ll discuss “dead people” later.

What does it mean to catechize your child? You may have thought of euthanizing them at certain times, but not catechizing them. If you know what this term means you probably think of it as a Catholic term, but it is not. To catechize comes from the Greek word "katecheo" which means “to sound aloud”, it also has as a connotation “to teach”: therefore, all we are doing when we catechize our children is allowing them to sound aloud biblical doctrine. This is done in a form of questions. This is so important in a day when doctrine is downplayed-we must make sure we are instructing our children to true doctrine of the Word of God. For the last several years we have taken a couple of questions a week and taught our boys to explain such words as: justification, sanctification, regeneration, etc. I must say that at 9 and 10 years old I had no idea what these words meant and I would further guess that the average Baptist would not be able to clearly define these terms. Catechizing your child means they will not have to hide when Mormons or people with false doctrine come to their door, because they know what the truth looks like. Below you will find some links that will help you to allow your children to learn real doctrine.

Christian book.com
This book “Big Truths For Little Kids” is a fantastic introduction to a catechism. It is written in a story format to keep their attention and the characters are kids that they can identify with. When you get to the section on baptism, you will need to explain the differences between Baptist and Presbyterians. But outside of that it is outstanding!

Doorposts.com
This is just a page that sells some resources for families. It includes catechisms and family worship guides.


Keepersofthefaith.com
This is a new found website that has some great resources, especially for boys.


Grace.org.uk
This is Spurgeon’s catechism. I love anything by Spurgeon.

Reformed.org/documents/cat_for_young_children.html
This is what we are doing with our boys right now. They know all the way down to question 60 thus far. It is incredible to watch your children learn these truths and be able to explain what they believe.

I know you may be thinking this is a daunting task but I am telling you that even young children can do this - but only if your reaction to this learning is the same as if they hit the game winning home run and if you put the same energy into teaching them these truths as we do teaching them to read. By the way this is more important than a game winning homerun or touchdown catch. Our children get their cues from us as to what is important…make this fun and watch God plant great truths in them!

Stay Tuned to see what "Introducing your children to dead people" is really all about!

Bro. Chad Everson

Blogging....A New Habit Forming!

I want to begin by stating how excited I am to be the Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Southaven, MS. I have never had a desire to blog…I enjoy reading other people’s blogs, I enjoy reading our family blog (my wife does such a fantastic job at using it to keep friends and family updated), but with all I have to do as a pastor I really thought of it as a burden to my time. I recently came across an excellent article by John Piper on “Six Reasons Why Pastor’s Should Blog.” As I read that article it rang so true in my heart that I saw clearly the value of spending some time during the week blogging. I wanted to share a some of the reasons that resonated with me as I read Bro. Piper’s article. I will only share the top three but you can read about all six in their entirety at the link below. http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1156_6_reasons_pastors_should_blog/

• The first point that really got my attention was that as I pastor I should blog to teach. As I thought about how many hours of study goes into a sermon and all I can give our congregation is 40-45 minutes (okay that may be an understatement) on Sundays. I realized that this is an opportunity to flesh out some of the other things I really need to say from the Word to our people. My prayer is that at times this blog give our people at Trinity nutrients throughout the week, to bolster what they heard on Sunday. This will give me an opportunity to clarify something that I may not have made clear Sunday, or something that I was going so fast you missed. Either way, I want to encourage our members especially to keep an eye on this blog. You can leave me comments or ask questions through email or by responding on this blog…

• The second point that served as a major catalyst was the opportunity to use this as a place to give recommendations. In my life there have been some very dear friends to me that I have never even met. Some of these friends are with Jesus now and I will only meet them when I get to glory. But there are some men who have written books that God has used to encourage, convict and teach me some great spiritual truths. We as God’s people must be readers if we are going to grow, but we must not only be readers we must be thinking readers. There is a minister I know that reads often but he reads without filtering it through the Word of God and it breeds confusion in his life. We must remember that as we read books that they all must line up with THE BOOK. This blog will give me a chance to share with some of you some wonderful books that can enhance your walk with God. It will also be a chance for me to point you to some wonderful web-sites.

• Finally, I will blog to “be known”. I don’t me to be known in a famous way, after all everyone has a blog. I am blogging because it gives our congregation another way to know me. Our Church at Trinity is a pretty large church, it will be very difficult for some people to know me outside the pulpit. But between this blog and our family blog they will be able to know me at another level. I want you to see me, my heart and our family – to be able to know who we are – inside and outside of Church you will find us the same…like it or not!

In short, I can’t promise you incredible writing, I can’t promise you awe inspiring moments, but I can promise you that I will be honored for you to watch this blog and I pray it will accomplish it’s purpose. I look forward to seeing many of you Sunday!

Bro. Chad Everson
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church

Welcome to Holding to Truth!

Welcome to my blog! It is my prayer that this blog encourages, challenges, and inspires you to be a man/woman of The Book. The purpose of this blog as you will see in my next post is primarily for the members of Trinity Baptist Church. I have only been the Pastor of this dear church for about a month. But my desire is to use every tool available to enhance their walk with God and love for the Word. Let me begin by stating how I came up with this name. I battled for some time as to what to name this. I wanted something that would capsulate my ultimate desire for this blog, so I played with long names and short names and still nothing seemed to fit. One name that I thought of was based in a quote by one of my favorite preachers of all time. The great London preacher Charles Spurgeon, read the outstanding book The Pilgrim’s Progress every year. He had great admiration for John Bunyan, as all lovers of Christian literature should. When Spurgeon spoke of Bunyan he said:
He had studied our Authorized Version…til his whole being was saturated with Scripture; and though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress---that sweetest of all prose poems---without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man in a living Bible! Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God.
Now I must confess that I can not say this of myself, nor would anyone else, but oh it is the desire of my soul! I want to know Him more, so I better know His Word more. My favorite chapter in all the Bible is Psalm 119. It tells us such great truths about what the Word does in our lives. In verse 7 I am reminded that I can’t even praise Him rightly if I do not know His Word. So while this blog may share much of my life, I hope throughout this blog you see in the words a “bibline” theme. I desire for each of us to hold to the Truth - with diligence and desperation! I look forward to the days ahead as God sanctifies us together through His Word. It will be an honor to have you read this blog as we walk through this journey together.

Bro. Chad Everson
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church