The battle for your childrens' souls
The critical need for families to connect with a local church
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I love Norman Rockwell’s classic painting, “Sunday Morning.” A stern mom and her three children are walking through their living room on the way to church. The twin girls are reproductions of their mom with immaculate clothes, hair in place, hands grasping Bibles and faces set with the same grim determination. The younger brother has a different posture. While dressed like his sisters, he’s not perfectly in line with them. Instead, he’s pulled toward the father who’s most certainly not going to church. Still in his pajamas, he’s sprawled in a chair reading the Sunday morning paper. A coffee cup sits on the floor beside him while smoke from his cigarette rises in lazy circles toward the ceiling.
The painting is a humorous take on a bygone era (it was released in 1959) while at the same time pulling the curtain back enough for us to glimpse the troubling trends even then in operation. Women carrying the burden of the religious training of their children. Men bailing out of church. And children torn between what they perceive to be duty and freedom. I don’t want to be one of those pastors who throws cold water on the modern world at every opportunity, but I can’t help thinking that the odds of those three children growing up to raise their children in church are small. The odds of that family’s third generation connecting in a meaningful way with biblical faith are smaller still.
But the problem that “Sunday Morning” poses isn’t just the changing nature of religious practices. It’s the changing nature of the modern world. Far removed from Rockwell’s idealized vision of America , today’s families are faced not only with simple choices about where and how often to attend church but with larger, more urgent choices regarding how to protect their children from the dark forces that threaten them.
Today’s parents face a battle for their children’s souls.
I think a more accurate image of the challenges faced by parents today can be found in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (I’m not endorsing the spiritual principles of those books any more than I’m endorsing those of “Sunday Morning.” I’m just making some general observations). One of the many supernatural groups in the series is the Dementors or Soul-eaters. In the unique way that Rowling has of connecting with childhood dangers and fears, she describes the Dementors in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” as:
"among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself — soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.”
It’s a dangerous world today and J.K. Rowling, I think, has a better handle on what children are facing than Norman Rockwell. Life is hard, the world is dangerous and children aren’t safe. Andrew Linder lists five particular dangers that lie beneath the more obvious ones:
The saturation of media and technology. Children today spent much of their time in front of screens and have access to the world at their fingertips.
Social media. The dangers of the oversues of social media are well known. Unhealthy comparison with others. Poor self-image. Cyberbullying.
Access to pornography. The average child today is first exposed to pornography between the ages of 8 and 11. The damage that begins then can last a lifetime, affecting marriages and relationships of every kind.
Child sex abuse and sex trafficking. One in five children will experience some form of sex abuse before adulthood and many will be wounded for life.
The Attitude of Entitlement. One of the great threats to kids today is the mindset that the world owes them something. A recent survey of school counselors said “entitlement mentality” is one of the top five problems young people have today.
And this is where the local church comes into the picture. I believe that the local church is ground zero in protecting children, building families and raising up the next generation of believers. Within the church, there’s a structured rhythm of Bible teaching, moral instruction and spiritual formation that, while far from perfect, provides a foundation for children to flourish. Without the church, families are on their own and left with little more than good intentions.
I’ve known many families who thrived in their local church. The parents were committed followers of Jesus and reared their children in the faith. When their children grew up, they did the same. Some families in the churches I’ve served have fallen apart. Not because of church but because of any one of the many stresses that families experience today. But in their cases, the things they believed within the church weren’t enough to save their families. Other families, as their children grew older, didn’t experience divorce or anything like that. Instead, they just drifted off, like a boat cut loose from its mooring. The kids got so involved in school, sports or hobbies, that the parents simply abandoned church for the sake of their kids’ interests. I’ve seen other families on the verge of falling apart be restored in church. Husbands and wives got right up to the brink of dissolving their homes then people who loved them came alongside and lovingly called them back to the basic truths of their faith. Through God’s grace, they listened and did the hard work necessary to put their lives back together.
And I’ve seen almost every other situation in between. But through it all I’ve discovered a few principles that families can use in order to help their children navigate this dangerous world. So here are the key pieces I believe to be necessary in order to put church and family together in a way that helps you win the battle for your children’s souls:
Find a church home. Can an individual or family follow Jesus without being connected with a local church? Yes. But not very well. The New Testament is clear that our faith as individuals is deeply intertwined with whatever local body of believers we’re connected with as our “church.” Families that get that not only are obeying biblical truth, they’re also positioning their children for future spiritual success.
Put your children in a position to believe the right things. We can’t just turn our children loose, to believe anything they want to—it’s a dangerous world out there! Kids are exposed to all sorts of ideas, philosophies, life choices and others’ opinions on a regular basis. Many of these are wrong-headed, silly, erroneous and just plain dumb. Some will lead to ruined lives. For parents to sit back without comment—as I’ve known some parents to do—and just let kids experiment and find their own way through the thickets of world views today is a gross dereliction of duty. We can’t control everything they think, of course. Neither can we become constant critics of everything our kids encounter. We can, however, stay vigilant and engaged with them through their formative years. The Christian faith is far superior to any other belief system or world view. We parents have to take responsibility to get that message through to our kids.
Limit your kids’ involvement in extra-curricular activities. With today’s explosion of extra-curricular opportunities for our kids, parents today are faced with a dilemma. There’s not enough hours in the week for children to do everything they want to do in addition to the things they need to do. First, there’s school work, of course. Then there’s soccer, dancing, cheer-leading, baseball, karate, language instruction, SAT preparation, football, basketball, travel sports, music practice, drama and so many other things that you can’t keep track of them all. Oh yes, one other thing: church. But with a list so long, church inevitably gets pushed to the end of the line. What does that say about our true priorities? For families to get the most out of church, some decisions have to be made about just how much we allow our kids to do.
Make church a spiritual reference point for your family. I know first-hand, as a parent as well as a pastor, that church can become tedious, boring and irrelevant to how life is actually lived. Still, I’m a fan of church, not as substitute for a relationship with Jesus, nor in the sense of religious traditionalism, as though church attendance by itself will somehow give a person spiritual peace. I believe in church because it’s by far the best spiritual reference point for families. When a family knows every Sunday morning that they’ll get up, have breakfast, get dressed and go to be with other families who are likewise serious about God, that habitual experience becomes a powerful way to re-focus their spirits on God. It re-calibrates whatever spiritual drift that occurred during the previous week. Families who understand that do well, and their kids take with them into adulthood a sense of the spiritual enrichment that churches offer. Families who don’t, and who choose instead to engage their families with the wide variety of entertainment, sports or whatever other activity that happens to catch their attention on Sunday mornings, send a strong message to their kids in the wrong direction.
Show your children first-hand how faith is integrated into life. This is the easiest point to understand if the hardest to practice. If we as parents tell our kids about Jesus then live like unbelievers, our kids stand very little chance to become believers themselves. No parent is perfect, of course. We all do things and say things we regret. And part of real faith lived out in real life is allowing our kids to see first-hand how we handle those times of failure, sin and mistakes in redemptive ways. Still, there are many parents who relate as husband and wife in ways that make their kids wonder if they have any spiritual commitments at all. Other parents treat people poorly. Or are dishonest at work. Or rarely demonstrate any kind of spiritual sensitivities. That’s just hypocrisy, and kids will sniff that out quicker than anything. If we as parents aren’t on a real spiritual journey, we shouldn’t be surprised if our kids never start their own.
Celebrate the important spiritual occasions of your children’s lives. When your child makes a commitment to Jesus and is baptized, make a big deal of it. When she or he comes home from Sunday School with a Bible verse memorized, talk about that around the lunch table. When they go off to youth camp and come back determined to have a daily quiet time, encourage them. When they overcome a season of discouragement, celebrate with them. It’s in the transition points of their spiritual life that they can gain strength and resilience to overcome the further struggles that lie ahead. Take those moments seriously.
Be careful about how you process painful experiences at church. Churches are far from perfect and most of us can point to painful experiences we’ve had within them. But when, especially, parents bring their children in on discussions about church problems or individuals within our church, they can do more harm to our kids than they realize. Our children don’t have an adequate frame of reference to understand how everyone in church is limited and broken by sin in one way or another, and that brokenness sometimes results in causing pain to others. Instead, our children just perceive it as hypocrisy. And to be fair, it sometimes is! I’ve known many children who’ve been permanently turned off to church because of this issue.
Relive the faith experiences you have at church within your home. A great disconnect often takes place in modern American church life between what goes on at church and what goes on at home. We are “religious” at church and “normal” at home. Apart from creating the kind of religious schizophrenia so common to Christians today, that approach also sets families up for spiritual failure. Instead, we should look for ways to bring the two together. Discussions around the table of Bible lessons our kids learned in Sunday School. Working on church mission projects as a family or couple. Actively seeking to interpret family life experiences through the perspective of the faith we learn about on Sundays. Including God-talk within normal family conversations. But making faith real in your home now has longer term implications for how your children remain in the faith when they become adults with their own families.
Connect with a small group of like-minded people within your church. Whether you call it Sunday School, home group, small group, men’s group, women’s group or something else, for your family to get the most out of church, you must share your life with some other people. When we feel alone in a church, it will never be anything more than a religious activity. When we’re in relationship with other people on a similar spiritual journey, though, church becomes a true spiritual home.
Take responsibility for your and your family’s spiritual health. When all is said and done, your family can’t get the most out of church by just sitting back and letting the church do things for you. The programs, ministries, services and missions projects most churches offer are opportunities for you and your family to grow spiritually. But churches can’t do the work for you. Each family must assume responsibility for their own spiritual health. When they do, church can become a foundation for an authentic spiritual life.
Back off and let God do His work. This is maybe the hardest step of all. Our children aren’t our personal possessions: they’re God’s gifts to us. At best, they’re loaned to us for a period of time. Our ultimate goal isn’t to make our kids into what we want them to be, but to put them into a position where they’ll listen to God and become what He wants them to be. The holiest moment in the life of a mom or dad is when they realize that God is speaking to their child and their child is listening. That’s the moment we all long for, and the moment when we as parents must have the wisdom and strength to back off and let God do His work.
Great writing I really enjoyed and understand what you have written Wish I had done these things before with my sons