“I believe that now is the time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. This strategy would affirm the basic and ultimate responsibility of Christian parents to take charge of the education of their own children. The strategy would also affirm the responsibility of churches to equip parents, support families, and offer alternatives.”–Dr. Al Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY)
As self-proclaimed Christians we use the Bible to give us the content of our faith and to give us wisdom and discernment as we seek to make decisions in daily living. In short, it is an authoritative and sufficient guide for all matters of life and faith.
The Sad State of the Church
A few months ago I wrote a blog (“Reformation: A Response to Wimpy Christianity”) on the sad state of the Church in America, which said that the Church has become wimpy and anemic because it is not biblical. My solution is that we desperately need to reform the Church by applying the Bible to all areas of life and faith.
One of the biggest problems facing the Church today is that self-proclaimed Christian parents do not evangelize and disciple their children the way God said to in His Word. It should be no surprise then that 7 to 9 out of every 10 children raised in self-professing Christian homes are not saved.
What the statistics say…
So, let’s stop and examine that statistic real quick. If there are 50 million Christian married couples in America and each couple on average has two children then there will be 100 million children. So, if only 1 to 3 out of every 10 of these children come to a saving faith in Christ, then the next generation of Christians begins with only 10 million to 30 million people. If they in turn get married we will have 5 to 15 million Christian couples having 10 to 30 million children. With only 1 to 3 children out of 10 being saved, the number of Christians going on to the next generation is somewhere between 1 million to 3 million on the low end to 3 million to 9 million on the high end. Are you beginning to see the problem?
I am an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is among the biggest promoters of evangelism among any Christian association or denomination. A while back I heard that something like only one out of every ten Christians in the SBC leads somebody to the Lord, which means that conversion baptisms are almost nonexistent. Sadly, even those numbers are misleading because they include congregations that practice easy believism and decisional regeneration.
That being said, what if 50% of Christians were able to lead at least one person to the Lord in their lifetime (not including their children) and that person remained a Christian their entire lifetime? What would that look like if we maintained a generational conversion rate of 10 to 30% of children raised in Christian homes and added these outside conversions?
The following chart demonstrates that this dramatically improves the overall numbers at the 30% child-conversion rate, but the Christian population is still declining rapidly. Even so, the 10% child-conversion rate still drops drastically even with the added conversions. These statistics should point out that we can’t reach the world for Christ if we are losing most of our own children.
Sadly, most of those who make decisions for Christ do not evidence the salvation they claim because they lack obedience, good works, spiritual fruit, and they are not being persecuted for their faith (because a world that is hostile to God finds that their faith isn’t worth persecuting). In other words, they are not saved.
My question is why on earth are we spending so much time, effort, and money on saving the lost outside the church while completely neglecting God’s plan for the salvation of our own children? Even if 5 out of every 10 Christians led someone to the Lord and those people had genuine faith, you would still have a steep reduction in believers with each passing generation until Christianity in America became as dead as Christianity in Europe is today.
A Lack of Pastoral Leadership
Clearly, the question of how Christian parents should evangelize and disciple their children is one of the most strategic and critical facing the Church today and yet I’ve seen little to no leadership from pastors in this area. (Here is a blog post I wrote with what the Bible says about educating our children.)
This is reflected by what I experienced at a conference I attended at Focus on the Family’s headquarters several years ago. The theme of the conference was how to evangelize and disciple children and it was attended by a couple hundred pastors, student ministry directors, and children’s ministry directors from throughout the country.
At one point during the conference the leader (a VP at Focus on the Family) asked all of those present to stand up if they had a specific plan for raising their own children in the faith. Sadly, only three people stood up that day: the leader, his wife, and I.
In other words, the trained ministry professionals who are most often in charge of trying to raise other people’s children in the faith do not even have a plan for their own family. It’s a clear-cut case of the blind leading the blind.
Worse yet, the little advice that I have heard from pastors is almost always contrary to Scripture, which is even worse than silence because it verbally endorses an unbiblical perspective. Of course, silence also endorses unbiblical practices because they are not being confronted.
One of the qualifications for being an elder/pastor in the church is that you must manage your family well (1 Tim. 3:4; Titus 1:6). Part of managing your family well is making sure that you raise your children in the faith.
I don’t know how a pastor or the congregation he serves can consider him qualified if he does not have a biblical plan to raise his children in the faith. In fact, very few pastors have taken the time to look at Scripture and seriously think about what it means to evangelize and disciple children biblically. If they did then they would stop promoting public school and they would stop hiring well meaning twenty-somethings to disciple teenagers in their church and would instead start equipping and encouraging parents (especially fathers) to disciple their children and holding those accountable who refuse not to.
Roadblocks to Reformation
Very few people are talking about these subjects in Christian circles often because they either have blinders on in this area or because we get attacked whenever we do. Here are five reasons why we are attacked for taking this stand:
- Unexamined Presuppositions: Most self-proclaimed Christians have blinders on in this area and have not seriously examined what the Bible says on this matter. Most self-professed Christians are unknowingly holding to secular humanistic presuppositions in this area. Of course, presuppositions if they are unexamined can be dangerous things because our knee-jerk reaction is to defend them rather than examine and change them. Pride gets in the way too. Its hard to admit when we are wrong.
- We turned out ok…didn’t we?: Most of us went to public school and we figured that we turned out okay, so our children will too. We reason that anybody who thinks otherwise is legalistic. Of course, we fail to see that we were, in fact, damaged by this experience. The damage is that we make decisions based on experience rather than making decisions based on the Bible. That’s called humanism. To change direction, we have to acknowledge that we were damaged by public education and that our parents were wrong in sending us there. It would be good for our parents to understand this as well.
- Egalitarian Feminism: God’s plan for the family includes specific roles for men and women. Men are to be leaders, providers, and protectors of their wives and children while women are to help and submit to their husband’s leadership as well as nurture and give life to their children. The sad truth is that the Church in America is weak in this area because they do not teach God’s plan for the family, therefore, those attending Christian churches rarely hear sermons on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood from the pulpits. So, women who do not recognize biblical roles will have a problem with giving up their careers (and their total autonomous freedom) in order to pursue their role in God’s plan for the family.
- Finances: Many parents (husbands and wives) don’t want to give up the extra income they have from two careers. This is really a heart issue. Most parents wouldn’t hesitate to risk their lives and even die for their children and yet they often fail to demonstrate the same concern for their children’s walk with Christ. One of the most important things you can ever do as a parent is to point your children toward Christ and yet most parents are unwilling to lose the money needed to follow a more biblical pattern of education. They want the toys, trips, cars, houses, etc. Of course, there are also those parents who initially lacked the vision to prepare to disciple their children at home and now they are in debt up to their eyeballs. There are also single parents in this boat. (Click here to read an excellent article about a divorced mom who homeschooled her children.)
- Evangelism: The command to evangelize does not negate the Biblical mandate for Christian parents to raise their children in the faith (incarnationally, informationally, throughout the day) nor require our children to be indoctrinated by the state. Family-based evangelism is a better application of both teachings. The truth is that mature Christians are called to be salt and light (Matt. 5:13-16). Unfortunately, most children raised in Christian homes are not Christian. They do not hold a Biblical worldview, they know little to no doctrine, they are biblically illiterate, and they evidence no fruit of redemption. We become salt and light when we stand for truth apart from the culture! Our children are gifts from God and they must be protected and raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (properly discipled), so that they may become knowledgeable and faithful followers of Christ. It is then that they become arrows in the hands of a warrior (Ps. 127) to go out into the world to advance the cause of Christ. Again, not only are public schools not biblical, but the vast majority of children raised in Christian homes do not come to faith because they are discipled to become humanists rather than Bible-believing Christians.
My motivation and my risk
Please understand that I have nothing personally to gain by you making the decision to home school your children. In fact, I’ve lost significant financial support in the past because I’ve advocated Christian homeschooling and I’ve also received threats from other donors saying that they will no longer support us if we continue to promote Christian homeschooling. Clearly, I have been hurt financially by this and I risk further harm by continuing to advocate for it.
What if you decide to homeschool? Do I benefit then? The answer is most likely not because I don’t have curriculum to sell you or a vast array of other products. Actually, chances are that if you decide to homeschool your children, you will have less money with which to support my ministry, so we don’t benefit there either.
Therefore, from a financial perspective there really is no good reason for me to challenge you to homeschool your children from a Christian worldview. I have nothing to gain for holding this position. So, why would I risk losing more financial support during horrible economic times when we are already suffering from significant losses?
The reasons that I advocate for Christian homeschooling despite the risks are:
- I love God and I believe that when we do things God’s way we bring glory and honor to Him. which is our purpose in life.
- God is sovereign and those who come to faith do so in response to God’s grace. At the same time, man is responsible and He seems to honor those who honor Him. I want every child raised in a Christian home to come to a saving faith in Christ and the best way for this to happen is by following God’s plan.
- I love the institution of the family and I want to see families function in a Biblical manner. Husbands need to lead their families in love. Wives need to help their husbands and love their children. Children need to honor and obey their parents.
- I love the Church and I want to see it reformed, so that it is no longer anemic. I want to see Christians go out into the world and make disciples. Strong Christian families and strong Christian churches can impact the world for Christ.
- The things of this world are temporary, but the things of God are eternal.
To those who disagree
I expect many of you to have a knee-jerk reaction against the things that I am teaching, which is fine. However, if you disagree with my position then there is only one appropriate response:
Be a Berean (Acts 17:10-15): Scripture must be our common point of reference (aka Nexus) or else we are merely playing games with religion. So, go to the Bible and see if what I am teaching is true. If it is not true then show me from Scripture where I am wrong. If it is true then repent, turn to God, and follow His ways.
If you are not willing to go to Scripture and argue your position from it, but rather simply choose to argue from your own experience, emotions, and human reason, then you deny the authority and sufficiency of Scripture by your actions. In other words, you are demonstrating that you hold a secular humanistic worldview rather than a Christian one. You need to repent and turn to God.
To those who persecute
There are some who would prefer that I teach only on Mormonism because Mormonism is an enemy of truth, which is true, but Mormonism and other cults only grow as a result of the hypocrisy of Wimpy Christianity in America. Parents who teach Biblical truth in their home, personally disciple their children, and cast a vision for their family do not have children joining Mormonism.
Many self-professing Christians say they believe that the Bible is authoritative and sufficient, but then deny those important truths in practice because they do not use the Bible when making decisions. Doing so demonstrates that we either (1) lack the faith to believe that God’s ways are best and we forget that man’s ways are tainted by sin,(2) that we are ignorant and need to start living examined lives in light of Scripture, or (3) that we are not saved because the things of God are nonsense to a lost and dying world.
Mormonism is only a symptom of a lack of orthodoxy (right doctrine) and orthopraxy (right practice). Therefore, to fix the problem of Mormonism and other false worldviews requires Christians to keep Christ as their first love and honestly seek to apply all of Scripture to all of life. How we educate our children is critical to this.
It is incredibly sad for any self-professing Christian to threaten to pull support from a Christian ministry simply because the ministry is intentionally seeking to rightly handle the Word of God and make honest application from it. Our applications are not infallible, but we have to make application nonetheless.
If you refuse to be a Berean and search out what I have taught, but instead choose to simply persecute me in response then that is your sin. I will fear God over man any day because I trust that the God of the universe will continue to watch out for me and my family (“Standing Strong: Fear God, Not Man”) .
The Good News!
The Good News is that God loved us so much that He sent His Only Son to die on the cross to atone for our sin. It is by grace through faith in Christ that we can be reconciled with God. God has given us His Word, so that we can follow and obey His teachings for His Glory. We must seek to do all things for the glory of God.
During a time when most children raised in self-professing Christian homes are rejecting the faith, we must turn to God’s Word for answers. (We should be doing this in both good and bad times.) God’s plan for the evangelizing and discipling of children is revealed in the Bible and education is a very important part of that plan.
The Bible says that education is discipleship and that the message must be rooted in Biblical truth and the methods used must be parent-directed. There is no education option available that better represents these biblical principles than Christian homeschooling.
Be faithful by making the application and give God the glory!
Other Recommended Links:
The following rewrite of the Superman theme song was presented to me by some dear friends at my 40th birthday. I also received the “Meltonman” (aka Metro Man) action figure (to the right) as well.
We are uncommonly close to each other and our marvelous REDEEMING God and Savior!
I served for five years in youth and college ministry and what I saw and experienced is that modern youth ministry as we know it is an abysmal failure because it was dreamed up by sinfiul man and is not the plan God prescribed in the Bible.
I’ve served in full-time Christian ministry for more than ten years now. During that time I’ve been faced with situations that caused me to decide whether to fear God or to fear man. I wish that I could say that I was always 100% perfect, but that would be a lie. Even so, I am blessed to share that we’ve faced difficult challenges and stood strong for the cause of Christ. One of the passages of Scripture that always encourages me during difficult times is found in Daniel 3.
Human nature being what it is, certain Chaldeans brought charges against the men with the hope that the king would execute them. Therefore, the king ordered the men to be brought to him and when they were present he told them to either bow down and worship the statue or die in a fiery furnace. The men told the king that they would not bow down and worship the statue. In response the king’s face contorted with rage and his wrath poured out with the order to heat the furnace seven times hotter than normal.
We see from this passage in Daniel 3 that these men feared God more than they feared man. Furthermore, the men did not require some kind of assurance that God would save them before they acted. Instead, they acted in faith that God alone was worthy of worship and, regardless of the consequences, they would not bow down and worship any other. God chose to use the faithfulness of the men to serve as a witness to the king and his leaders by protecting the men from the king’s own hand. As a result, the king and his leaders saw that the God of Israel was more powerful than any other and that He must be honored as such. As a result of the faithfulness of the three Jews, the God of the universe received the glory due only to Him.
