Introduction
I was speaking with an older man not long ago whom we’ll call Aaron. Aaron was talking to me about his son – now an adult with kids of his own – and his son’s not being a Christian.
Aaron spoke with pain in his eyes about two things: 1.) his son was running headfirst into Hell and raising his own children to do the same, and 2.) that Aaron felt powerless to share the Gospel with his son who refuses to even discuss it. Aaron knows what is waiting for his son, and while he consistently prays for his son’s salvation, hope is difficult to maintain.
This situation is not at all uncommon, and I have spoken to many older saints whose children have left the church in similar fashion. After my conversation with this man, I considered two things.
First, not having children of my own, I can’t comprehend the anguish of watching someone you love on a path to spiritual destruction.
Second, as a youth minister, I sometimes watch as parents unintentionally raise their churched children in a way that naturally produces the same outcome.
While it is true that God saves — just like God opened Lydia’s heart to believe the message of Paul (Acts 16:14) — our participation is not inconsequential. For example, Paul speaks to Timothy about the faith which his grandmother passed to his mother who passed it to him (2 Timothy 1:5).
As an illustration, a parent who abused his children is often surprised when his adult children cut him out of their life, but no one looking at that situation from the outside is surprised. Similarly, I often find that parents will raise their children with a casual regard for their spiritual well-being, and then they are surprised when their children leave the church as adults – a clear demonstration of a faith that never existed (1 John 2:19).
In the same way that God might restore a relationship between a victim and his repentant abuser – much to the praise of His extraordinary grace in that situation – God might save a child whose parents neglected the Gospel in his upbringing.
My selection of abuse as an analogy may seem extreme, but I chose it because both situations demonstrate a lack of love for the child – one because of the abuse that is added, the other because of the love that is withheld.
So what are the ways we can miss opportunities to shepherd our children? What are the signs of spiritual disaster so clear to some, but so obscure to others?
For the interest of brevity, I will discuss one destructive practice that, if addressed, naturally corrects most of the others:
The failure to prioritize church and healthy spiritual community in one’s life and the life of one’s children.
Church in the Life of a Christian
Church is essential in the life of any Christian. We are commanded to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:24-25). As this verse mentions, one of the purposes of the Church is the encouragement of other believers. This naturally results in oneself being encouraged as other believers carry out this command as well.
This encouragement comes in multiple forms.
First, the local church is a place where the Bible is taught. Paul commands a young pastor to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). In fact, the message of the saving Gospel is a centerpiece of the Church, and Paul encourages Timothy to “keep a close watch on [himself] and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16, emphasis added).
Second, the local church is a place where Christians are spurred toward righteousness. Hebrews 10:24-25 is quoted above, and the importance of encouragement toward righteous practice is so central that Paul commands churchgoers to “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Encouragement is so essential that every word spoken to other believers is supposed to be for the ultimate purpose of their spiritual growth.
Third, the local church is a place where we learn to help others and receive help overcoming sinful habits (Matthew 18:15-20). All of this is meant to be done “in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1) because sin is a poison that destroys the sinner – “desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15).
There is much to be said about the benefit of parents from being thoroughly plugged into a church where other mature Christians can help teach them to parent well and support their parenting. However, I will focus on the direct impact of church involvement in the life of a Junior High or High School student specifically.
Influences in the Life of an Adolescent
Adolescence is a massively impactful time in a person’s life. I have been ministering to young people for the last 8 years, and most of that time has been spent working with children in late elementary school (3rd-6th grade). For almost the last 3 years, I have had the chance to work specifically with Junior High and High School students, and I don’t think anyone would dispute how essential these years are.
When working with Elementary students vs. Youth Group students, there is a distinct change in emphasis. With Elementary students, there is an emphasis on information and habits. We try to ensure that these students know the Gospel well, and we try to equip them with behaviors that will benefit them later in life. While some students – like myself in second grade – come to a genuine salvation at this age, my main goal was to provide students with knowledge that might lead to salvation when they were old enough to truly comprehend what they knew.
In Youth Group, our emphasis switches from knowledge and habit to thought and identity. This is the stage of life where students are developing their own sense of self, and they are migrating away from being an extension of Mom and Dad and toward being their own person.
At this absolutely essential age – where a person is forming their own convictions and beliefs – influences are world-changing.
Consider this: in a given month of youth ministry, we meet for 1.5 hours a week on Wednesday, 1 hour every other week on Sunday, and about 2-4 hours every third Saturday. Accounting for holidays and youth camps, a student that attends every youth meeting in a year will hear about 70 lessons and spend about 132 hours with the youth.
That might seem like a lot, but compare that to time spent in a public High School. A student will be in school for 180 days a year1, and let’s say they spend 8 hours at school and there are 5 content-based class periods each day (averages based on my experience in High School and the experiences of my students).
That’s 1440 hours and 900 lessons of influence at a public high school in 1 year compared to 132 hours and 70 lessons for a student that attends every youth meeting in a year. That means a ratio of ~11 hours in school per 1 hour of youth, and ~13 lessons in school per 1 lesson in youth.
The world knows full-well how critical this time is in the formation of a person, and they have a near-monopoly on it. If Christian parents are not intentional about shepherding their children, then the child will naturally be a product of the culture instead of the parent.
However, if parents are intentional about shepherding their kids, then all that time in a secular environment becomes time to practice living our mission as evangelists in a secular world. I was in public school myself, and the single most helpful thing to my spiritual growth was to function in some culturally anti-Christian environments with this mindset. My faith became deeper and sharper as it felt pressure from the world while I had a strong spiritual base from my parents and church. It was more soul-giving than any purely Christian environment I’ve experienced, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
As an adolescent, a student will develop his own beliefs and convictions. While being around Christian influences does not guarantee that a student will embrace a relationship with God through Christ, we should be eager to provide every opportunity. And do we not want to do so before they go to college or work and largely leave our influence?
However, we are not only pursuing the opportunities for salvation provided by church involvement. We are actively exemplifying our own beliefs of God’s importance in life.
Example in the Life of an Adolescent
The role of example in a person’s life is extraordinarily important. Some famous Biblical examples include Jesus’ teaching His disciples about service through the example of washing their feet in John 13:1-20, Paul telling the Corinthians to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1), or Joshua leading Israel after serving Moses for almost his entire life up to that point (Numbers 11:28, 27:18; Deuteronomy 31:1-8).
There’s no teaching more powerful than a good example – or a bad one.
In fact, consider Jesus’ indictment of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:2-4
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”
Jesus identifies the Pharisees as teaching accurately, and yet He judges them because their examples did not match their words. Far be it from us to follow the Pharisees’ lead by living lives that undo the words we speak!
Regarding our example to our children, how we relate to the Church is a massive indicator of how we relate to God. The Apostle John even says that how a person relates to the Church demonstrates the state of his own spiritual condition when he says “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
When I was growing up, our parents worked very hard to imprint the priority of the Church.
We didn’t skip church for homework, sports, jobs, or anything else. While there were some rare situations where we might miss church for something, that was the exception and not the norm. All the while, we were not merely forced to attend despite our hatred for it, but our parents discussed the value and priority that Church is in the life of a Christian. Moreover, they demonstrated a love and priority for the Church in their own lives.
If we had a massive amount of homework due, a test to study for, and a presentation to deliver on Monday, we went to church. If we interviewed for a job, we told the interviewer that we wouldn’t work during church, and when the job scheduled us during church anyway (Starbucks in my case), we called and let our manager know we wouldn’t be coming in. When an extracurricular or recreational activity bled into the church service, we skipped it or left the extracurricular activity. Even when we traveled, we would attend a church in the area we were staying.
By the time we were adults ourselves, church was something we were committed to and loved being a part of.
One time, I woke up at 3am on Sunday and spent the entire morning in the worst agony I have ever felt as I spent over 6 hours passing a 4mm Kidney stone through my ureter. Then, since there was no way I was missing the best part of the week, I went to the 11:00am service instead of the 9:00am service.
Because of the commitment encouraged and demonstrated by my parents, that same commitment and conviction became my own. This same thing can be accomplished in the life of your own child, and it is something worth striving for. I can’t begin to count the blessings I have experienced in High School and adulthood because of my parents’ training in this area.
The message was always clear: God comes first.
Our relationship with God is second-fiddle to absolutely nothing. God comes before work, school, clubs, friends, fun, everything. It’s less a legalistic idea that you must never miss church and more a love for God’s people where the desire to skip church isn’t even there.
On the flip side, when parents have their students miss half the Sundays in the year because of sports games, vacations, homework, etc.; that also sends a clear message: God is less important than everything else.
If a student regularly sees that the gathering is not worth prioritizing and is not taught how the gathering relates to his own relationship with God, then that creates a broken spirituality. It creates the perception that God is an accessory to our lives instead of the center of our lives.
That student will learn that what really matters is career, friends, and fun. If God helps me, then He can come along for the ride.
In other words, that student won’t be a Christian.
A Christian is a person with God at the center. Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38).
When we train students that God does not matter, then of course when they are adults, they’ll leave God behind. Having a plaque in your entryway that says, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD – Joshua 24:15” won’t do a thing when your life adds, “as long as I don’t miss the game.”
It starts with us and our example. What do we care about? What do we prioritize? Let’s lead well and teach our students the right lessons with the lives we ourselves live.
Conclusion
If we are the parents of children, our foremost priority is their spiritual condition. That sports trophy, that extra 900 bucks from the Summer job, that extra 0.1 on the GPA; it’s not as important as whether your child goes to Heaven or Hell. Twenty years down the line, you’ll regret the misplaced priorities.
The point is not that we are legalistic and judge people. I’ve also seen plenty of people leave the church whose parents were chiefly motivated by external behaviors with no consideration for the heart behind it.
If someone misses a few Sundays, we don’t look down our nose and decide they must not be Christians. You are not saved because you’re in a church on Sunday mornings, but a Christian will live a life with God at the center. When you don’t prioritize the gathering – as God frequently commands us to do – that is a demonstration of your priority for God Himself.
It’s not that the actions are important in and of themselves, but actions communicate something to our children. As the saying goes, “Actions speak louder than words.” As we raise our children, our lives are going to speak loudly.
When I see that a family is routinely not in church, and their students structurally prioritize everything other than their relationship with God, I know the impact that is going to have. I know what they’re missing out on.
I pray for them, and I feel heartbroken for them. My mind goes back to Aaron and the slew of parents like him. People whose children have abandoned God, and who would give anything to do their parenting over again. People that will never get the chance.
My encouragement is this: don’t do that. Be a parent that prioritizes God in your life and teaches your children to do the same. It will be a gift to them in this life and in the next.
If we actually care about God, and if we actually care about our kids, then our lives will structurally demonstrate that.
So I guess what I’m saying is this:
Go to church, and bring your kids.
1 National Center for Education Statistics. “State Education Practices: Table 5.14. Number of instructional days and hours in the school year, by state: 2018.” Accessed August 13, 2022. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_14.asp
“Church” vs “church”: “Church” with a capital “c” refers to the Universal Church comprised of all genuinely saved believers — past, present, and future — and only those genuine believers. The “church” with a lowercase “c” refers to a local church, denomination, etc. There are no non-Christians in the Church, but there are non-Christians in churches.