Last year, the New York Times described evening gatherings in certain Macedonian refugee camps. There, Albanians who had fled Kosovo would meet nightly to watch their children perform poems. It’s not difficult to imagine the head patting, the murmured encouragement, the parental nods. All over the world, of course, people support their children in developing communication skills, in becoming expressive, in saying what they believe. What is more difficult to imagine, is the poems themselves. Long memorized poems about the Serbian atrocities.

It is, however, the way people have done things for time out of mind, isn’t it? The way nations have handed on their culture, values, and sense of identity—the way the Corinthians of the first century relayed theirs—the way ours were handed on to us. "You’ve got to be carefully taught," as our own poets, Rodgers and Hammerstein, put it.

Yes, we are quick to teach our children what we believe. And we start young. After all, researchers tell us, the typical child is taking in an average of a dozen words a day by the time they’re eighteen months old. We have no time to lose. We have to make sure our children are getting the right words. Almost all the moms and dads I know are very focused on this. We peer into the eyes of our babies eager to understand and be understood.

A recent language acquisition study showed that French laymen, listening to the recordings of pre-verbal babies from many different countries, could pick out the babblings of French babies over other babies with near-perfect accuracy. We are focused. We know our babies. We get right in their faces and speak our "parentese"—that high pitched, slow paced, musical language that has been know to connect, to communicate, to get through to our young. And even before they form the words, "je m’appelle Suzy," they already sound like us.

Almost everybody I know is focused on getting through to their kids. From day one, we are teaching them to say "thank you" for the cookie, "please" for a turn on the slide, "no" to strangers and "yes" to Grandma. "What do you say?" the daddy says. "What do you say?" the mother repeats. Some parents feel they have worn out their tongue with the question. We do everything we can to teach our children what to say and what to believe.

It certainly sounds like we are taking Paul’s advice. "We believe and so we speak," he says. "So do we," we answer. But we wonder. Some of us. Here we are making our beliefs and values and ethics so perfectly clear. Why do they seem to be having so little effect? Why does the world—why do our children—seem so untouched by our faith? Why do they not seem to be taking the baton we are trying so hard to hand on to them? Aren’t we following Paul’s example? Why do we not see that "extending" of grace that he so boldly foretold?

Well, yes, Paul does say that expressing what you believe is important. But for Paul, belief is not a system of doctrine. To see faith bloom in the next generation or in the next block—in the next country or the next zip code—it takes more than teaching values and ethics, more than shared language, more than clear ideas. It takes the experience of grace. "I do all this," Paul says to the Corinthians, "so that grace may extend to you and through you to others." The contagion of faith starts with being touched by God’s grace. And that is something we have a hard time talking about.

It reminds me of the awkwardness you sometimes see at the adjacent restaurant table—you know, one person eyes another person for that kind of non-verbal cue—‘Are we going to say grace?’ Outside of Sunday morning, many people of faith are just not entirely comfortable pronouncing the key sounds involved in the deal: Jesus, Lord, God. Some of us even consciously avoid them—the way we avoid using the words just and want in prayer. It’s understandable. It’s common. Perhaps even normal. Nobody wants to be thought of as a "Holy Joe." Nobody wants to leave themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy—to be known as a spiritual exhibitionist. Our reluctance is natural, normal.

The problem is you can’t have the gospel without expressiveness. The gospel is not its own evangelist. "God rides a lame horse and walks a crooked mile," as Martin Luther said. You can’t have the gospel without expressiveness. You can’t have God. You can’t have faith. You can’t have grace. You certainly can’t have the grace of God extending.

Best-selling author, Anne Lamott, is a devout and sometimes unconventional Christian—someone who knows something about believing and expressiveness. She also happens to be just a teensy bit nervous about flying and just a teensy bit superstitious. "I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed." she says. So, as she explains in her newest book, Traveling Mercies, when she was asked by a seat mate at the start of a particularly long flight, to say something about how she came to be a Christian—it gave her pause. "My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian," she says. "They think of me more along the lines of being Christianish...a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it’s not true." she says. And when presented with the opportunity to say what she believes, she managed. She told the story of her experience with grace.

We need to be able to do that. There are lots of ways to get words around our experiences of grace. My own denomination—my own faith community—is one of those that’s not always free with faith language. The "frozen chosen" we call ourselves. We know that we can be a bit reticent—valuing order over ardor and decorum almost over everything else. However, there is one place that we are spectacularly at home with faith language. One place where we give each other all kinds of permission to express spiritual experience—and that is around the notion of call. Most any Presbyterian can say the word call without so much as a blush. "God calls us to ...", "We felt called to ...", "That’s not something I felt called to do...." Sometimes even, "I have a call." I know one church in West Virginia that makes discerning a sense of call the focus of their high school program. Each member of the senior high group is helped to talk about where they see God working in their life. We could do more of that. It’s a good starting point. And there are lots of them.

If the middle-of-the-road, middle-class, middle-aged Christian is not especially good at translating God’s word of grace into rap and hip hop, we do have a boffo tradition of congregational singing. What if we reclaimed that? What if we not only sang standing next to our kids in the pew—but what if, every once in awhile, we put the book down and sang the words by heart. "Amazing grace how sweet the sound." We know the words. What if our own kids saw us singing like we mean it?

If mainline Christianity is not especially comfortable with spontaneous testimony, we are fervent on the subject of the written word. Let’s build on that. Maya Angelou says she found her way to faith through the oral performance of the written word—and a speech teacher who would not let her stop at a mere pronouncing of syllables, but kept her trying over and over again until the words "God loves me" took root.

There are lots of ways.

A couple of years ago, at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, during a traditional African-American Good Friday service, I saw the grace of God extend. In a lovely turnabout, the men of the congregation were providing the special music that day while the seven last words of Christ were being preached by seven women preachers. The men, some of them not technically old enough to qualify for the demographic category, were clearly getting a kick out of it. I was, too, especially since my favorite baritone, Deacon Sellers, was scheduled to sing right after my sermon. I barely managed not to swoon each year when Deacon Sellers sang "The Holy City" and this year I was only glad I didn’t have to follow his song. Of course, there are not seven male soloists of the stature of Deacon Sellers who can get off from work on a Friday afternoon—even at a large, flourishing, wonderful church like Allen Temple—and so it was that some of the young baritones-in-training were given their first outing at this service.

I remember one young man who seemed to be eleven or twelve years old, who tremeloed his way through the first few bars of the assigned song, and who was a good two blocks out from the key the organist was in. The congregation was with him, though. "All right, now," I heard. "That’s right. Sing, child."

Gradually, I noticed a strengthening, and then a course correction. The young voice was encouraged by the congregation’s support, but there was more. The boy’s voice was being shadowed, it seemed to me, by a steady, stealthy voice. I looked around. In the choir loft a few yards behind the soloist, sat Deacon Sellers, his face and eyes averted. He just happened to be there, you know. Waiting his turn. I looked again. He was singing. Quietly, steadily, surreptitiously singing that green twelve-year old into key. Gradually, I realized that there were four or five men scattered through the large loft, also looking very casual, also singing.

There are some things about the Christian faith than can be taught. But the most important are caught, Paul reminds us. From moms and dads, from writers and speech teachers, and baritones... who say grace.

Floyd Brown: Thank you again for a most thought-provoking sermon. You know, you relate so well. Does your acting career give you kind of an edge to help you to relate to audiences? Do you get a lot of feedback?

Jana Childers: I don’t know if it’s the feedback exactly. I would say it has something to do with the kind of authenticity that they teach you in a really good acting program. I had a wonderful teacher who taught me to work from the inside out so that you are matching your own feelings with the feelings of the psalmists, say, or in this case, the sermon today with the feelings of the Apostle Paul. And it’s a wonderful way to come to know a text more deeply.

Brown: Well, you certainly relate well to the audience. I get a feeling for what you say. You carried me with every one of your stories. And one of the areas that you talked about I found rather challenging. Remember the old words they used to use, I guess in the sixties and seventies, "Jesus Freaks" they called the persons who were born again and what have you. How do you strike the balance from being an exhibitionist and one who expresses their beliefs?

Childers: Yes, balance is always the key, isn’t it? And not always easy to do. I would say it’s about–it’s about being truthful to yourself, to your own experience. Not to try to overstate. A lot of people who we sometimes use to call Jesus Freaks or who we thought were a little bit excessive in the way they talked about their spiritual experience, I think, sometimes overstated the case. If you say exactly what has been true for yourself, if you talk in plain and truthful terms about the way you sense God’s presence in your life, then I don’t think you’re going to be an exhibitionist.

Brown: Can you tell if somebody is going to be receptive or not? Well, just be honest, I think is what you’re saying.

Childers: Be honest. Right.

Brown: We’re not trying to change what you’re saying.

Childers: Well, and I appreciate your sensitivity to the comfort of other people. Can you tell if they’re going to be receptive or not is a big question. And I think you should honor the sensitivity of other people and not overload them with more than they need to hear or with language that is stronger than somebody is ready spiritually to hear.

Brown: A lot of this, I imagine, comes from your religious background, however. There are a certain persons’ approaches to religion and worship that are different from others’ and they’re more expressive. Does that really enter into the picture as much as what we should do honestly?

Childers: Oh, it’s great. Does everybody have to be expressive or could we just let some people be expressive?

Brown: Right.

Childers: My concern is that we are living in a time where, despite the wonderful preaching that we see on this show, and despite the thriving ministries in many congregations, we are living in a time where the Gospel is not just on everybody’s lips. And that even in this country, so sophisticated and well-educated we think we are, there are many children and young people growing up without a sense of what the Gospel’s "bottom line" is.

Brown: You know, I think parents, a great number of them, feel that this is a method of teaching when they relate to their children, though: asking the Lord’s blessing, referring to callings and these kinds of things from the Lord. And you mentioned that the French can discern their children in their early learning and teaching. Do you feel that that enters into the teaching of the children, the fact that they reference to the Lord and his blessing and what we receive from that? Do you think that enters into it? Is there a place for it?

Childers: Yes. You know, the sermon title is kind of a play on words, isn’t it? Because I’m not specifically talking in the sermon about saying grace, but I think what we usually mean by that is asking the blessing, saying a prayer before the meal that returns thanks to God. So I’m not only thinking about that in the sermon. But, yes, I do think that that is an example par excellence of the way that grace can be passed, an experience of grace can be passed to the next generation.

Brown: How does one discern their call?

Childers: Well, in my own theological tradition, we often say that the inner and the outer should match, that there should be a correspondence between what you feel, what you sense in terms of God’s presence in your life and what God might be saying to you. And what your own faith community tells you might be your gifts for life.

Brown: It’s a very difficult question and I could enter into it and we could go a long way, but you’ve heard people and I think you used it in your talk when you talked about people saying, "I’ve a calling to this," and particularly in the Presbyterian Church. "I’ve got a call." Talk a little bit more about calling because I have heard people say, "I was called to the ministry." Others say, "I was called to sing in the choir." Can you just discern a little bit for that person over there who is now laying there thinking, " Have I ever been called to do anything? I haven’t heard a message, lately!"

Childers: I suppose it’s true that we use that word mostly when we’re talking about folks who end up going into the ministry to become pastors or preachers or ministers. But I do think, and I think that the Bible thinks this, and I think that many of the great theological traditions think this, that everybody has a call. That God has an idea about everybody, that everybody is gifted, that there is a course if not a blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute plan that they could be following in their lives that would maximize their gift and make a contribution to the world. We live in a world that has huge needs. One way to say it is, we really cannot afford for anybody to not exercise their gifts and try to meet those needs.

Brown: Isn’t there something in the Bible about not using the talents that you have received, not using them, they’ll be taken away?

Childers: That’s right. The story about the man who buried his talents in the ground. He was not somebody who pleased Jesus very much.