Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Your hearts are in the right place. You want to reach families and children. The ideas and activities you work so hard to produce and the time you sacrifice are all signs of your desire to promote the spiritual growth of the youngsters around you. This is a noble desire and a worthy cause. You are seeing the dwindling church body across America, and you are rightly concerned about the future. But even with lovely Sunday schools and thoughtful catechism classes, even with youth nights and special outings out with pizza, you will not bring the majority of the youth to lasting faith and a firm relationship with Jesus Christ if you don’t also reach their parents.
We’re trying to take step five before we’ve taken step one as a congregation. We’ve been skipping over the parents in an effort to reach their children. Our congregations are filled with parents who are lost and directionless in their parenting, confused in their priorities, and unaware of the impact and treasure of their faith for themselves and most especially, for their children. We have avoided discussing the impact of modern ideologies on the family unit, thinking that this doesn’t pertain to our mission and focus as a church. Doesn’t pertain? It’s a dastardly poison that has harmed every single family that walks through those church doors.
Parents are constantly being bombarded through social media, friends, and society at large with fatal concepts pertaining to every single aspect of parenting, from their priorities as parents to the degradation of their children’s abilities, from the complete lack of support or discussion about effective discipline to the promotion of outrageous behaviors in childhood, from the acceptance of prolonged and unvetted screentime to worldly acceptance as the highest good, and so much more. The world sees fit to prioritize these discussions… Why haven’t we?
And do not be deceived into thinking that these things do not intersect and impact parents’ and children’s Christian faith alike. Every single one of these things does. Christianity isn’t a religion in the sense of being a mere subject. It is not relegated to one part of a person’s life and left there. Christianity is a calling to be unlike the world because you are following Christ. Christ has spoken about what we do, our priorities, and our value systems. He has spoken about sin, and he has commanded us to care about how children are being formed.
Our parents, who do not yet know these things, are not a lost cause. They need help, and that help needs to come from us within the church.
Parents are often exhausted, overwhelmed, and afraid, which can make it difficult for them to distinguish between truth and fiction when it comes to parenting advice. And the church has so much to say, so much truth to impart. Many of our parents do not read their Bible every day, nor are they aware of what the Lord has said beyond the scripture read in the Sunday service. They do not know that they can find direction and comfort in their parenting in Holy Scripture. They are unaware of how to discipline, what to care about, and how the content entering their homes affects their children spiritually.
We’ve been thinking that it is easier and more productive to try to reach children without their parents, or maybe that it’s the only course of action available to us. But it is foolish on our part to think that our time is best spent trying to shape and mold kids without their parents or despite them. Although there will always be exceptions to every rule, this has, in general, proven to lead to disaster.
If you don’t offer parents direction, believe me, the world will. It already has. The direction parents need goes far beyond words of verbal support or more programs for their children. They need concrete evidence to guide their decisions and God’s specific word about their lives so that they can grow as parents and raise their children strong in the Faith.
