The greatest danger zone for Christian children?
The world is full of dangers to children, we get warnings about this and that is a choking hazard. We have become hyper-sensitive to every danger and threat, perceived and otherwise. Every time a kid gets a speck of dust we douse them in hand sanitizer.
But what is the biggest threat to our children?
Drugs? The Internet? Immorality on TV and in movies? Humanism in schools?
The church?
The American church, in my mind, can be one of the most dangerous places for a child growing up in a Christian family. We know the obvious stuff, stuff that we hear from James Dobson and company to be on the lookout for. Strangers, drug dealers, R-rated movies, internet pornography, HARRY POTTER BOOKS! There are tons of things that are obvious dangers. But sometimes the greatest danger is the most subtle, the danger that strikes when and where you least expect it and when you are most vulnerable because you feel the safest.
There are three big dangers for kids growing up in church:
1. The sense of false conversion, brought on by being in church your entire life and putting your reliance in that experience. Adults raised in the church as children often attribute salvation to being in church or an emotion driven experience of “making a decision for Christ” as a child in VBS. That is not to say that children don’t come to Christ in VBS, but it seems to me that far too few adults who profess Christ have ever really been confronted by their sin.
2. A laissez faire attitude towards church and Christian service, making it rote. Talk to a lifelong Christian and then talk to someone who came to Christ much later in life and see the difference in fervor. Fervor needs to be tempered sometimes, but I would rather try to rein in a new convert who is on fire for the Lord than try to encourage a lifelong Christian who is utterly lacking any passion.
3. A shallow knowledge of the Gospel and decades perhaps of never getting beyond the superficial. It is amazing to talk to people who have been in church for their entire lives who lack even a rudimentary knowledge of Gospel basics. I am not talking people discussing the difference between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism, I am talking about justification by faith alone, why we hold to the inerrancy of the Scripture, where the Bible came from.
So what to do? Well the answer is not to stop going to church! The answer is to make our children’s ministry and our youth programs line up with what we should be seeing in adult ministry, in other words ministry that is focused on Word and prayer to glorify God and lift up Jesus Christ. Children and youth ministry should not be viewed as a safe daycare while adults do church stuff, but as an active and vibrant and absolutely vital ministry opportunity. It gets back to the issue of sending money to missionaries in far away lands, and ignoring the ministry opportunities right under our nose in our church, our neighborhood and our families. We should evangelize our children with the Word of God, teaching them the fear and admonition of the Lord. Catechizing children so they have a foundation in the Word. Providing them with classes that are fun and at the appropriate learning level, but that are also challenging and Scripture saturated, with Scripture that is applied and not just memorized in a vacuum. It does no good at all in my opinion to memorize a Scripture verse and have no idea what it means in context (which may be why so many adults throw a verse out to make a point having given no thought at all to what the context and the big picture really is). Show them that Christ and Him crucified is the theme of the Bible, that the Bible is NOT a collection of stories designed to foster morality but rather a record and revelation of the living God.
The church needs to be an integral component in that education, but not a replacement or a substitute. Parents cannot subcontract out the responsibility for the rearing of their children to the church and certainly not to a school. The process starts and ultimately stops at home, but the church needs to be a partner in that instead of an impediment. I have not met a person in youth or children’s ministry (although I am sure there are some) who are not well meaning and sincere, but the leadership of the church needs to take a far more active hand in those ministries.
The world is full of dangers to children, we get warnings about this and that is a choking hazard. We have become hyper-sensitive to every danger and threat, perceived and otherwise. Every time a kid gets a speck of dust we douse them in hand sanitizer.
But what is the biggest threat to our children?
Drugs? The Internet? Immorality on TV and in movies? Humanism in schools?
The church?
The American church, in my mind, can be one of the most dangerous places for a child growing up in a Christian family. We know the obvious stuff, stuff that we hear from James Dobson and company to be on the lookout for. Strangers, drug dealers, R-rated movies, internet pornography, HARRY POTTER BOOKS! There are tons of things that are obvious dangers. But sometimes the greatest danger is the most subtle, the danger that strikes when and where you least expect it and when you are most vulnerable because you feel the safest.
There are three big dangers for kids growing up in church:
1. The sense of false conversion, brought on by being in church your entire life and putting your reliance in that experience. Adults raised in the church as children often attribute salvation to being in church or an emotion driven experience of “making a decision for Christ” as a child in VBS. That is not to say that children don’t come to Christ in VBS, but it seems to me that far too few adults who profess Christ have ever really been confronted by their sin.
2. A laissez faire attitude towards church and Christian service, making it rote. Talk to a lifelong Christian and then talk to someone who came to Christ much later in life and see the difference in fervor. Fervor needs to be tempered sometimes, but I would rather try to rein in a new convert who is on fire for the Lord than try to encourage a lifelong Christian who is utterly lacking any passion.
3. A shallow knowledge of the Gospel and decades perhaps of never getting beyond the superficial. It is amazing to talk to people who have been in church for their entire lives who lack even a rudimentary knowledge of Gospel basics. I am not talking people discussing the difference between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism, I am talking about justification by faith alone, why we hold to the inerrancy of the Scripture, where the Bible came from.
So what to do? Well the answer is not to stop going to church! The answer is to make our children’s ministry and our youth programs line up with what we should be seeing in adult ministry, in other words ministry that is focused on Word and prayer to glorify God and lift up Jesus Christ. Children and youth ministry should not be viewed as a safe daycare while adults do church stuff, but as an active and vibrant and absolutely vital ministry opportunity. It gets back to the issue of sending money to missionaries in far away lands, and ignoring the ministry opportunities right under our nose in our church, our neighborhood and our families. We should evangelize our children with the Word of God, teaching them the fear and admonition of the Lord. Catechizing children so they have a foundation in the Word. Providing them with classes that are fun and at the appropriate learning level, but that are also challenging and Scripture saturated, with Scripture that is applied and not just memorized in a vacuum. It does no good at all in my opinion to memorize a Scripture verse and have no idea what it means in context (which may be why so many adults throw a verse out to make a point having given no thought at all to what the context and the big picture really is). Show them that Christ and Him crucified is the theme of the Bible, that the Bible is NOT a collection of stories designed to foster morality but rather a record and revelation of the living God.
The church needs to be an integral component in that education, but not a replacement or a substitute. Parents cannot subcontract out the responsibility for the rearing of their children to the church and certainly not to a school. The process starts and ultimately stops at home, but the church needs to be a partner in that instead of an impediment. I have not met a person in youth or children’s ministry (although I am sure there are some) who are not well meaning and sincere, but the leadership of the church needs to take a far more active hand in those ministries.
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