It’s been a while since the last Millennial Monday article here, thanks to our Questionable Quotes series and a number of other writing projects. But, the issue of youth leaving the church in droves still remains and, in my opinion, needs to be the number one focus of the church today. We’re here to help point souls toward heaven, and if we continue lose half or more of those who we already have in the church from birth we’re not doing our job. Two or three generations down the road the church in America will be increasingly hard to find if we don’t start keeping our own more efficiently.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily the church’s responsibility. Nowhere is the church charged with training up the young. That is left to the family, and that’s where the turnaround has to begin. In Deuteronomy 6 God provided His blueprint for developing faithfulness in multiple generations. Though we’re under a new covenant and don’t have the need to be faithful to the Old Law, that same plan for building a long-term foundation of commitment to God should be our blueprint as well. I believe the text provides three questions all Christian parents should be asking themselves.
Is God’s Word open in our home?
As I write this article, I’m also tracking the score of a Colorado Avalanche hockey game at the same time. Growing up we watched their games on TV, attended in person when we could, bought the t-shirts, discussed our favorite players… it was part of our life then, and it still is today now that I’m out of the house. The same can be said for so many families with their favorite sports teams, political parties, or any other interest – if it was something that was important to their family life, it remains important into adulthood. How sad it is that so many Christian youth root for their parents’ favorite teams and hold the family political views but leave home without understanding that God’s Word is an essential part of their lives.
How does that change? God’s Word must be open in the home on a regular basis. In Deuteronomy 6:6-7 God told the men of Israel to have the Law on their hearts and teach it to their offspring at all times. If you’ve got time to watch sporting events with them, have your favorite news shows on, attend various events, but don’t have time to open God’s Word and explain it to your children, don’t ask what happened when they grow up and leave the church. The world doesn’t only call to them two days a week, and so they shouldn’t just be taught the Bible by someone else on Sundays and Wednesdays. They need to see its importance in your home. Make a plan to sit down with your family on a regular basis and discuss the Bible. It doesn’t have to be deep theological musings. It needs to be applicable, reverent, discussion of what God has done for us and how He wants us to live. That’s all.
Is God’s Word lived in your home?
There’s a difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it, and that gap is what leads a number of children away from the church. Though they are responsible for their own actions, it should say something to us when they talk about the church’s hypocrisy. If children see their parents nodding their heads in approval to the sermon before going home and doing the opposite, they’ll see that the Word doesn’t matter. If they are made to go to worship on Sunday but from Monday-Saturday they are allowed to hang out with worldly influences, they’ll learn that what they’re taught on Sunday doesn’t apply to “real life.” Deuteronomy 6:1-2 called for the men of Israel to learn the commandments they were given, fear the Lord, and keep His commandments all their days so that their children and grandchildren would follow it as well. 6:10-25 discusses the need for the people to keep the commandments and points out that by living out God’s Word the opportunity would be given to teach their children why they followed those commandments. If they weren’t living God’s Word, they wouldn’t have a chance to teach their children to do the same.
Is a love of God cultivated in your home?
In one of my Lost Generation seminar lessons I like to ask how many in attendance plan on leaving a billion dollars to their children. I’ve yet to see a hand raised, mainly because most people don’t have a billion dollars to give to their children. By the same token, we can’t expect the next generation to develop a love for God that isn’t cultivated by this generation. At the center of the teaching of Deuteronomy 6 is what Jesus called the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. People who love God don’t have to go to worship, they get to worship God because of all He’s done for them each week. People who love God don’t serve Him begrudgingly, they serve Him out of an appreciation for what God has done. Israel forgot that first command, and once they stopped loving Him they had no ability to pass it on to the next generation. The worst part of the statistics on youth faithfulness is it tells us that there’s a percentage of those attending the church that doesn’t love God whole-heartedly, and that percentage is larger than we’d like to admit. What the church needs, what the world needs, and what the next generation needs is for the current generation to make the decision to love God with all their hearts, souls, and might.
The turnaround has to begin somewhere. Just because your children and teens are attending youth today doesn’t mean they will be in ten years. There’s no way to guarantee their faithfulness because everyone has to make their own choices, but you have a choice to make, too. Will the Word be open in your home? Will it be reflected in your life? Will a love of God permeate all that you do? Your choices might make an eternity of difference to yourself and those you love.
By Jack Wilkie
