What do you do to make sure you pass on your faith to your kids?
Mar 31st, 2009 | By art rogers | Category: Church, Family, General ChristianIt’s been pretty well documented that the church in America has lost one generation and the jury is out on whether we’ll lose the one following.
My take is that the church has facilitated the abandonment of parents being the primary disciplemakers to drop and go Youth and Children’s Ministries. Those things were never supposed to be that, but a supplement to the role of the parents.
As a Youth Minister for 19 years, I frequently found myself counseling kids to do the opposite of what their parents were doing – shall we say “modeling a bad example?” It was ironic to find myself in conversations with parents of young adult graduates of my Youth Ministry who then blamed me for not doing enough to disciple their kids.
Suffice it to say, it’s one of the reasons I left Youth Ministry for the Lead Pastor position. I wanted to guide the church to do better.
So, what do you do? How do you pass on your faith in your home?
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I agree wholeheartedly. I think there are many Christian parents who would agree they are the primary spiritual teachers & leaders of their children, but by default they do not carry it out because of the church. Churches are facilitating the drop-off & service mentality by the way they are structured & organized. We’ll never get parents to take the lead if we’re always doing it for them. Churches are failing to equip parents to follow God and disciple their children. Adult ministry rarely has a twofold focus: (1) to assist parents in their own walk with Christ and (2) to assist them in the development of their own children’s relationship with the Lord. “Let the ‘professionals’ do it,” “I’m not a biblical scholar,” and “What if mess things up?” aren’t valid excuses for parents. Look at the stats – parents have more time & influence in the lives of children and teens than the church does. And in the end, we all – parents and churches – will be held accountable for what we did with the truth, the biblical mandate for parents to train up their children (Prov. 22:6, Deut. 6:4-9) and for the church to equip believers of all ages for obedience to the Lord (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
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