Here is the great thrust of much evangelical ministry in childrens and youth work. However, at the same time, the example of parents and their teaching and ministry in the churches speaks of the need for excellence in the educational sphere, the diligent application of the mind for the future can only be assured in our society by getting a first rate education, possibly at a good college or university and so this leads to fulfillment and true legitimacy for our being. This second message is present almost wherever you turn where the world is in the throes of westernization. I am not saying that there cannot be a way in which these two messages can be reconciled but on the surface of them, they are opposed the one to the other and the message that offers more instant and public fulfillment, namely the second one, will be the one which the young will more readily imbibe and become conformed to, especially when parents are reinforcing it by their own commitment to the values of the necessity of the best education as bringing a useful life to themselves and to their children. Possibly we need to give some serious thought to this profound discrepancy in our ministry to the young of our churches and check ourselves as to the example that we have given through the years. Along with this we must ask the Lord for that particular wisdom which comes alone from Him. Through Him we will be able to bring these two apparently conflicting things into reconciliation. I cannot see how we can reconcile them without that grace which comes from Him. It is vital that we obtain this grace from Him. The teaching of discipleship that is set forth by the Lord Jesus seems particularly ruthless at points as regards the things of this world and its path of achievement. On the surface we agree with that, ministering the need for a deep work of conversion and acceptance of the Lordship of Christ is fundamental to that. We long to see our young ones ‘on fire for God’ whilst encouraging them the message we also bring them is their need to do well in the world and give their all for that along the lines of their talents and mental skills. I realize this is but one aspect of this whole subject. That God is the God of the whole of life, that one of the perils that the church has fallen into has been the one of dualism, the subdividing of life up into the sacred and the secular. We need to find that wholeness in these things so that we might be faithful to God in the ministry to the young of our churches.
September 13, 2007
A fact of life in the churches of today is the frequent loss of the young from among the congregations as they reach into late teens and early twenties. This is of almost endemic proportions. I have read a number of reasons suggested for this fact and each of them appear to have some truth in them. A fresh thought that I have had concerns the conflicting messages that the children in our churches are subjected to from week to week in both the example of many of their parents and leaders and the teachings set forth. I can simplify this to two main elements. In the days of the evangelical awakening of the late eighteenth century the fact of original sin was emphasized. Children were born in sin and needed the grace of God to come to them in conversion, regeneration and all those precious gifts associated with these things. Jonathan Edwards represented this ‘conversionist’ view and it has been taken up and continues to this day in evangelical circles of almost every stripe. In the 19th century a man named Horace Bushnell wrote a book called ‘Christian Nurture’. In it the emphasis changed. Rather he wrote of right development of children, this coincided with the later workings of the industrial revolution and the need for increasing development in education and the need to keep pace with a society which was changing from mainly rural to that which was scientific and industrial . This seems to me to have led to a confused sound coming in the teaching of the churches and of Christian parents to their children. On the one hand we tell them that there is nothing good in them and that they need a mighty work of God in which they are born from above, deeply changed and this can only take place as they repent from all other dependencies and things in which they could glory in this world. They need to be on fire for God, laying aside everything else in order to obtain this treasure.
