Preparing for the Future of the Church

The original article can be found here.

It is vitally important that we prepare now for the future of the church. How we train our children and young people has great bearing on the spiritual commitment of the next generation. God has high expectations and standards of conduct for our youth and young adults. Our intentions and motives have been right, but has the spiritual education in Sunday Schools, vacation Bible schools, Christian schools and church youth groups been consistently producing young people who are up to God's expectation and standards? Are they capable of providing future leadership for the church with the same doctrine, standards, and convictions that they have been taught? Are the children learning the Bible doctrines that they should? Are the young people in the Christian Church mature and following God's ways?
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Everyone has an opinion of how to raise and train children. Some have excellent results, some mediocre, and some poor results. Wisdom is seeing the cause and effect sequence of the majority who have a particular child training philosophy and making decisions based upon the general trend of results, rather than looking at exceptions. It is foolish to follow a child training philosophy in which the majority of the young people are not reaching God's expectation and standard, and hope that all our children will be an exception to the norm.

As I look at the results of those who have been raised in the traditional Sunday school, summer Bible School programs, the Christian school, and the church youth group, the majority are not where they should be spiritually. The majority of them are not prepared to provide strong mature leadership and evangelism for the future of the Church.

• Many do not appear to have much interest in missions or evangelism, especially in the mission of their home congregation.
• Many hold beliefs and life applications that are not what their parents or church held.
• There are a number who are not serving the Lord.
• Using Sunday school and summer Bible School as a means of evangelism to bring children from non-Christian homes without their parents has had little success in the child becoming a mature Christian, obedient to God's Word. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

God makes a statement "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6 When we do not see the results in what God has stated will happen in Prov. 22:6, we must not question God's intelligence, what He said, or His ability to state what He meant. We must accept the fact that we have made a mistake, and look for our mistake(s). We as Christ's Church must look at what we have been doing wrong in the Christian education of our young people that is training them to go in a different direction than what we thought we were training them.

The church has actually been training the young people in the church through its peer group education programs to develop an independent spirit in the area of beliefs, and to follow society; the exact opposite of what we thought we were doing. Parents and the Church have trained their children and young people in the way that they have gone — away from the Lord. Unfortunately to the grief of many parents and churches, as their young people get older, many are not departing from the wrong way to serve Jesus with all their heart. "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart form it."

There is a LOT more in the article. It is a really really good article.