Is Your Child Living With A Missionary?
By editor on Nov 4, 2008 in Family Life, Featured
Is Your Child Living With A Missionary?
by Deb Burton
Maybe he should be.
Various recent studies have shown that 85-88% of all children from evangelical homes will walk away from their faith when they graduate from high school. That number is staggering, especially when you consider that these are homes where the children are brought up in church. Good, regular attending church folks who send their children to Sunday school and mid-week youth activities and Christian camps and stuff. The folks the media likes to lambaste for taking this faith stuff so seriously.
Us folks. And our kids.
How do our children make a saving decision for Christ, and once that decision is made, how do they learn to love the Lord and want to follow Him even into adulthood? Is it finding the right church, one that has an active youth program where our children can hang out with good kids and be taught how to make good decisions?
I don’t think so. I think our church has a great youth pastor who is spot on with his teaching, but not all the kids who attend reflect a godly walk. My daughter hears about the best parties in town from other girls in her group.
Is it making sure our kids are in church every Sunday, no matter what, so they hear the Word of God preached from the pulpit? According to the statistics, even that isn’t enough.
So what is it we parents have to do? Is the answer really to send them off to live with a missionary?
We don’t have to send our children off anywhere. They’re already living with missionaries. It’s us.
God has called us parents to be a witness of His Word to our children and to disciple them in His truths in order to create a legacy for His kingdom. Many of us are familiar with the usually quoted Bible verses pertaining to teaching our children about God.
“Train a child in the way he should go….”
“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home….”
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up….”
We’ve all heard these verses, but do we really understand, I mean really, that our home is a mission field and that our children are our primary target of outreach? An oft overlooked Bible verse is this one:
“Has not the Lord made them [husband and wife] one? In flesh and spirit they are His. And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring” (Malachi 2:15, emphasis added).
That verse is not placing the emphasis on church attendance or having our children in the right activities and programs. It’s talking about the reason God brings a man and a woman together in holy matrimony. It’s to be sure that any children born of that union are dedicated as a continued legacy of God’s nature.
How do we change that horrible statistic around to where our children continue to walk in the Lord after they become young adults? We have to recognize that God has called us to missions work, to make disciples of all nations and to teach them to obey everything He commanded us.
We start at home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deb Burton writes to parents in her blog The Greatest Mission Trip You’ll Ever Take (http://thegreatestmissiontrip.blogspot.com) . Her desire is to encourage parents in their decision to focus on their home as a mission field and to equip them with ideas, tools and resources. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter where she loves sharing short tips on how you can be a witness to your child.
Deb,
You are so right. Too many parents have a false sense of security about their children’s spiritual future, thinking that because the kids are in “safe” places around “safe” people they’ll grow up saved and sanctified.
First of all, there’s nothing “safe” about God, who constantly demands stepping out of our comfort zones in order to please Him.
Second, we don’t really know what spiritual direction are children are getting unless we are a major part of it.
Third, going to church won’t make anyone a Christian, as exhibited in my two latest posts on “Becoming an Atheist”.
Deb, thank you for your constant inspiration to do better.
God bless us.
Diane L. Harris | Nov 17, 2008 | Reply