Posted on 08/24/2013 10:20:59 AM PDT by ReformationFan
"What do we do about our kids?" The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I'm a high school pastor, but for once, they weren't talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a "good Christian" child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church's youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn't want anything to do with it anymore. And, somehow, these mothers' ideas for our church to send college students "care packages" during their freshman year to help them feel connected to the church didn't strike me as a solution with quite enough depth.
The daunting statistics about churchgoing youth keep rolling in. Panic ensues. What are we doing wrong in our churches? In our youth ministries?
It's hard to sort through the various reports and find the real story. And there is no one easy solution for bringing all of those "lost" kids back into the church, other than continuing to pray for them and speaking the gospel into their lives. However, we can all look at the 20-somethings in our churches who are engaged and involved in ministry. What is it that sets apart the kids who stay in the church? Here are just a few observations I have made about such kids, with a few applications for those of us serving in youth ministry.
1. They are converted.
2. They have been equipped, not entertained.
3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.
(Excerpt) Read more at ipost.christianpost.com ...
True. Good point.
Live what you preach.
bump
“3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.”
The primary role of evangelizing and disciplining rests on the parents, more specifically on fathers (Eph 6).
Is it possible that modern day Youth Ministry usurps that role and is partly responsible for the decay?
Youth Ministry has replaced fathers in spiritual roles.
Welfare has replaced fathers economically.
Sharing the Gospel has been replaced with “come to my church this Sunday”...so you can hear my Pastor tell you what I’m suppose to tell you...in a worship service that is for Holy Spirit dwelt assembled Saints, which ironically since they have not the Holy Spirit they can’t worship in Spirit and truth, understand in a life changing way the Word of God, partake in Communion without drinking judgment to themselves or stand out like an outcast as the elements are passed, and sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs from a heart focused on God.
Thanks for the ping!
Homeschooling now can't possibly compensate for fifty years of not fighting the battles that should have been fought to keep the schools from becoming instruments of State indoctrination just like being a "pure" conservative can't possibly make up for eighty years of letting democrats control both Houses of Congress.
I agree it's the best thing you can do if possible at this point and home schooled my kids for their High School. It seems to me a lot of homeschooling advocates overestimate how many people can actually do it, though, and those who can't aren't limited only by their willingness to tighten their belts a bit.
If the child’s chances of abandoning their relationship with Christ is** EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT**, what parent in their right mind would do that to a child? It is highly unlikely that any child would be left totally illiterate and innumerate, but even if they were, illiteracy and innumeracy can be fixed. People do it all the time. An eternally lost soul or the permanent temporal consequences of STDs and broken marriages can not be fixed.
2) Before a family decides to put their child in godless indoctrination camp, they should get **all** the facts. They should attend their local homeschooling meeting and talk with other homeschoolers.
It is **AMAZING** who manages to homeschool and how they financially manage. Really! Even single moms are successfully managing while holding down a full time job and their children are thriving spiritually, temporally, and educationally.
They find a pack, maybe one that's not yet totally corrupt, adopt a couple of the traits of that pack, and before you know it they and their entire little pack have no problem joining in with whatever the media popularizes. That's how you have churches that brag about the number of college age kids who attend during their summer break by sort of cough and mumble when you ask them about queers marrying one another or abortion.
The kids they failed have come home to a place they know will compromise and another cycle of compromising and lowering standards to keep young people interested begins.
Homeschooling now can’t possibly compensate for fifty years of not fighting the battles that should have been fought to keep the schools from becoming instruments of State indoctrination just like being a “pure” conservative can’t possibly make up for eighty years of letting democrats control both Houses of Congress.
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Homeschooling isn’t about saving the nation. It is about a parent giving their precious child the best opportunity for saving their one and only **eternal** SOUL!
I invite you to read up a little on the history of compulsory government owned and run single-payer and socialist-entitlement K-12schooling in this nation.
Since the dawn of modern government compulsory schools ( mid-1800s) these schools were, and always have been, “instruments of state indoctrination”.
This is a very interesting post.
True! Every word of it.
2. Their chances of abandoning Christ when they get on their own whether they're home schooled or not is nearly the same and probably 95% if they're uneducated and feel betrayed by parents who kept them out of school for some reason. I saw a whole lot of that in the criminal justice system, people who had parents who felt that no education was better than hearing about evolution, hearing that black folks are equal to white folks, all sorts of things.
3. Nothing difficult is ever easy and it's difficult to go from having fifty or a hundred bucks a month that isn't allocated in advance to dealing with a single car you can't repair if it fails, budgeting food stamp meals, and deciding what payment you have to miss as soon as there's a $50 bump in the road you didn't expect.
Do you directly or indirectly gain income from the government schools? Just wondering.
This piece is very off-base, I think.
What is the point in learning the Gospel of Christ if they never get a chance to go out into the world and use it?
How many people in Church are hungry or thirsty or need helped out of the ditch?
Too many parents stop at being saved by Christ and not becoming like Him. It’s bad doctrine that leads to bad outcomes.
“hearing that black folks are equal to white folks,”
Equating religion to racism. Your liberalism is the most bigoted of all.
I’ve been teaching Sr High Sunday School for 13 years. Today we are doing John 3:16 vs John 3:36.
Some of the best Sunday School lessons my son had was when they had to outline particular scripture passages. He still remembers those-and that was when he was in 3rd grade.
And, btw, they were instrumental in his coming to Christ.
You and the horse you rode in on, pal.
What others had to say about what they believed is what they believed and they lived accordingly. If someone thinks stating a fact about the way people make excuses for themselves is “your liberalism” then that someone has major reading comprehension problems along with their obvious lack of intellect.
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