Proverbs 22:6 – “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

This issue must be a top priority for the church.   

1) The parents must receive instruction about their personal responsibility for the spiritual instruction of their children.  Many parents think it is the church’s job to teach their children about Christ, and the parents do almost nothing.  This is the opposite of God’s perspective. God’s plan is for the parents to have the primary role in spiritual instruction of their children, and the church  programs like Sunday School merely fill in the gaps, support what the children already learned from their parents, or maybe make up for the neglect of the parents in this area.  Whether they want to admit it or not, the parents are the single greatest influence on the values of their children (this is true about everything – values about honesty, work, reading, prayer, kindness, generosity, reliability, etc – children usually become like their parents in these areas).  At best, churches have second place in this regard, even where the church tries very hard to work with the kids.

Yet most parents do not think this way.  They believe school and church are responsible for teaching values to their children. Therefore, the pastors must instruct the parents (repeatedly and frequently) to take their responsibility seriously. God has entrusted the children (who are His servants) to those parents; this is a serious responsibility.

Sometimes it is helpful to give the parents practical guidelines, like telling them to have one evening a week when they read the Bible with their children and pray for a list of needs in the church.  This teaches the children to pray and to read the Word.  Many Christian children grow up never having seen their parents read the Bible or pray at home.

Some parents also are very relaxed about the activities that they let their children do with other children in the neighborhood. They are not vigilant about their children coming under bad influences from bad children, or even from the occult-based movies, television shows, and video games that the other kids enjoy for entertainment. Christian parents need to be a little more strict about worldliness, modesty, and similar issues than the other parents around, without going to irrational extremes.

Children should learn about the entire Bible by the time they are adults.  A child raised in A Christian home should have read everything in the Bible at least once, if not more.  Unfortunately, most believers never bother to read the entire Bible; they read just their favorite parts. If, however, we start reading through the Bible one chapter a day with children when they are about ten years old, we have eight years or more to work with them at reading through it before they reach adulthood and live separately from their parents.  Cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons exploit the fact that so-called “Christians” have never read some sections of their Bibles and have never encountered some of the difficult or confusing passages before. When our children are old enough to attend a university or go to the workplace, they should already be aware of everything in the Bible, no surprises.

2) OUR GOOD TESTIMONY AT HOME – The children know if their parents are hypocrites.  We have to remind the parents of this.  When they are hypocrites – acting godly only in the church, but ignoring the Lord when they are at home – their children see this up close.  Then the children think this is normal for Christians, and lose interest in the Gospel as they grow up. They saw that the gospel made no difference in the personal lives of their parents outside of church.

3) IN THE CHURCH ITSELF – Most churches treat the children as a means to an end – that is, they do programs just so that the parents will come.  Many pastors care only about the adults because they think of the adults as a source of tithes and offerings. For these pastors, children are worthless except for the sake of bringing their parents to the church.  The church must change its mentality and view the children as real members of the church, even if they cannot yet tithe. We must take them seriously and teach them well – they are just as important as an adult member. A child who receives salvation and becomes established in the faith is just as significant as an adult who converts. We must not think of children as “potential members” or future members of the church. Spiritually, God views them as current members, even though they are children and still depend on their parents for everything.