Thursday, January 01, 2009

The Call to Dunkirk

In 1940, the allied army on the mainland was trapped at Dunkirk and pressed on all sides by the Nazi forces. With the sea to their backs, they had nowhere to turn. In an amazing feat, they were ferried off the beaches onto waiting British naval ships, much of the ferrying done by regular citizens in their personal boats. One third of a million Allied troops were rescued, troops that would have been killed or captured by the Nazis. It was one of the great, unheralded acts in World War II. Now the members of the Exodus Mandate are making a call for a new Dunkirk, a new rescue of those trapped....



The Exodus Mandate is an organization dedicated to encouraging parents and churches to pull Christian students from the secularized, God-denying government run public schools and turn to Christian schools or homeschools. This video is a powerful plea by E. Ray Moore, Jr., Voddie Baucham and others to rescue our kids from the government schools and fulfill our obligation, difficult as it may be, to raise up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. They have been involved annually in putting resolutions before the Southern Baptist Convention, a resolution that would call on SBC parents to withdraw their children and for SBC churches to do more to make Christian schools available and affordable for families. Dr. Mohler has written about this as well in Needed: An Exit Strategy. It is way past time for the most vulnerable among the body, our children, to be protected by their parents. Not just protected from the violence, bullying, drugs and other ills that permeate public schools but to protect them from an institution that denies Christ and affirms the opposite of what the Bible teaches. Hear me on this:

Public schools are not value neutral. They deny God and affirm what the Bible denounces.

How can you send your kids somewhere knowing full well that the above is true? If it is not true, I defy you to explain to me how it is not.

If the institutional church has a real mission, a real function it would be to develop Christian schools. Real schools, not schools that teach a watered down version of Christianity, but schools that live and breathe and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and where every thought is held captive to the Word of God. Where math is taught in a Gospel honoring way. Where science and history are taught in a Gospel honoring way. Where God is exalted and Christ is proclaimed. The institutional church should support homeschooling parents instead of looking at them like they are weird. Providing a place for homeschoolers to come together and share knowledge. Instead the institutional church sits empty for most of the week. If your church meets two hours on Sunday morning, an hour on Sunday night and an hour on Wednesday, those four hours stretched out over 52 weeks totals equals 208 hours. Even add a couple of hours a week for meetings, special events and fellowship meals. That is 312 hours. Even if you have a really active church, and I round up to 400 hours that means that the church building is sitting empty for over five thousand waking hours a week. I am not counting the middle of the night, just normal hours when people are active. Five thousand hours in tens of thousands of church buildings. Meanwhile, public schools are teeming with our children being taught that God did not create us, we are advanced monkeys. That homosexuality is not only a valid lifestyle choice but to say otherwise is hate speech. Where our kids learn to adapt to the world instead of conforming to the Word. If the institutional church hopes to survive it better get serious about Christian education, about feeding the sheep instead of amusing the goats.

Would that cost money? Sure. But would we be better served subsidizing a Christian school, where our children are instructed in a Christian education for 35-40 hours a week or in dumping a bunch of money into “youth ministry”’ where we pay a youth pastor to babysit the local children but never seeing those kids in worship? Where we have crass and inane entertainment to amuse kids who don’t know Christ and fail to teach the kids who do? Where we vainly try to undo the thousands of hours of secular indoctrination our children have received? Youth ministry in many churches is an guilty attempt by parents to undo the damage that they themselves have caused by sending their children to secular schools. Don't like that? Think I am being judgemental and unfair? What is more unfair, me pointing out that Godless schools are teaching our kids in opposition to the Word or sending your kids to those schools because you haven't made raising up your children in the way of the Lord your highest priority as a parent? If you are honest with yourself, you will see what is truly unfair is expecting some 20-something youth pastor with spikey hair and horn rimmed glasses to do for your children what you have failed to do yourself.

Let's rescue our kids, pull out all the stops. Let's get serious about Christian education and let's do it now. We have lost too many children to the world already.

3 comments:

Bethany W. said...

Great post, Arthur.

Anonymous said...

I have linked your to your post from Why Conservatives are losing ground - Call to Dunkirk

Dan Gehrke said...

Excellent post - I couldn't agree more - check out dlhsprincipal.blogspot.com for more of the same rationale!