Those Kids Need to be There…Always
Recently, I watched a sermon by a friend of mine who is a wonderful Gospel preacher. It was a sermon from a couple of years ago that I was interested in hearing all of, but, as often happens, there was one little statement that was made that just stuck in my mind.
In this part of the sermon, he was talking about decisions that elders had to make during the early-to-earlyish days of the pandemic. As elderships were trying to think of the best ways to proceed, they had to balance all sorts of things. He mentioned the eldership where he attends talking through those issues, as I know our elders at Central did, with prayer and much lost sleep.
But one of the things he mentioned that his elders were specifically concerned about was this: “We’ve got children who haven’t been in Bible class in months.”
Trust me when I say that I heard Central’s elders say similar things. And trust me when I say it was talked about in our own home constantly.
But this is not an article about the pandemic. It is not Monday morning quarterbacking the decisions made by elderships during that difficult time.
Instead, this is a note to those of us who are parents. Some of us need to remember to have that same heart that those elders showed: we need to get our kids back in Bible class.
A pandemic where things are totally confusing is one thing. “We stayed out late on Saturday night” is quite another.
Your children need to hear those wonderful lessons from God’s Word. They need to interact with those precious teachers who are giving selflessly to instill those lessons in the hearts of your children. They need to learn that the Bible–and taking time to learn it–is so valuable that we will go week after week to hear it taught.
Parents, we often will say that we need all the help we can get in raising our children. What we mean is that, we hope others will give our children good advice and that people will pick up our slack in areas where we might not have as much knowledge. While we are raising our children (don’t get me started on “it takes a village”), we know that others help and influence and for those who help in godly and wise ways we are grateful.
If that is true, then why do we choose to influence our children to stay away from Biblical training? What are we teaching them?
Parents, let’s not have a self-imposed shut-down! Let’s not have the attitude that this doesn’t matter.
To echo that wonderful elder: “We need to get our kids in Bible class.”
And, parents, that needs to happen every single week.
AUTHOR: Adam Faughn