The Myth of Discipling Children

Parents are clearly commanded in Scripture to instruct their children in the ways of the Lord. "...these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). Parents are to be the primary spiritual instructors of their children. However, we've created a church culture that I believe has unintentionally told parents that the church can instruct their children for them. In the past 40 years we've seen an exponential increase in the number of paid youth and children's pastors in our churches. We've also seen a precipitous decline in the number of baptisms of children and youth. Is there a one-to-one corollary between these two phenomenon. I don't think so, but I do believe they are related.

There is a scene in the movie Top Gun that talks about why the US Navy created the Fighter Weapons School (aka Top Gun) in the late 1960's. The reason was that pilots in Vietnam had become overly dependent upon their technology and had lost their air combat skills, also called "dogfighting". Missiles had lured them into a false sense of security and they had forgotten the basics of being a fighter pilot. Top Gun was designed to help them recover those skills. I mention that because I believe "professional" youth and children's ministry has done the same thing to parents as missiles did to pilots in Vietnam. Parents have become overly dependent upon a youth pastor and a children's pastor to provide spiritual instruction to their children and they've lost the ability to do it themselves.

Now I'm not saying get rid of youth ministry or children's ministry. The US Navy didn't get rid of missiles just because their pilots had become overly dependent on them. They simply reinforced the idea that pilots also need to develop their air combat skills alongside the use of missiles. Similarly, we need to help parents take responsibility for the instruction of their children themselves, and to view the ministry of the youth/children's pastor as a supplement to what they are doing already in the home.

I don't believe that parents are ultimately to blame for the situation in which many of them find themselves vis-a-vis youth/children's ministry. I believe the church must take the lion's share of the blame. With the rise of youth/children's ministry we've sent a subtle, unintentional but powerful message to parents, "Don't try this at home! Leave it to the professionals!" Unknowingly we've communicated to parents that if they will get their kids to church, get them in children's ministry events, get them in youth ministry events, that their kids will be discipled. There are a couple of problems with this approach.

1. It's not biblical: God commanded parents to take responsibility for the spiritual instruction of their children, not abdicate that responsibility to someone else. A parent is not passing on their faith to their children if the only source of spiritual instruction that the child gets is from their youth/children's pastor. The faith that is being passed along is the youth/children's pastor's faith not the parent's.
2. It ignores parental influence: Many parents feeling like they have little or no influence in the lives of their children, especially if they're teens. As a result they think someone else can do a better job of instructing their children because they have more influence with them. This is simply untrue. Parents (regardless of whether their kids will admit it) are the single biggest influences on their children. A youth/children's pastor may spend 3-4 hours a week with a child, whereas that child will spend 30-40 waking hours with their parents in a week. A youth/children's pastor may spend 4-6 years with a child, whereas their parents will be their parents for a lifetime. From personal experience of over a decade in student ministry, no matter how close or influential I became in a student's life, I never overtook the influence of their parents regardless of whether that influence was good, bad, or indifferent.
3. It stokes the myth of the "hired gun": A study was done for a PhD project to determine who could better teach spiritual material to students, parents or youth pastors. Now, conventional wisdom would tell us that the youth pastors (i.e the "professionals") would have the advantage over the parents. Presumably they have had some sort of theological training (i.e. Bible college, seminary, etc.) whereas the parents likely have not. The teaching materials were distributed, the lessons taught, and after a few weeks the students were tested to see who learned the material better. Well shock of all shocks it was not the students who had been taught by the "professional" youth pastors who learned the material better, it was those who'd been taught by their parents. There is power in a parent instructing their children in truths that are important to them personally.
4. The statistics tell a different story: Latest stats tells us that 7 out of 10 students who are actively involved in church as juniors in high school (meaning they attend at least twice a month) will not still be active in church after their sophomore year in college. The empirical data simply does not support the argument that the best way to train children is to let the church do what God has called parents to do. The church cannot pray for church members who will not pray, it cannot read the Bible for church members who will not read, nor can it disciple the children of church members who will not disciple (at least not as effectively as it should be done). When parents do not take an active role in the discipleship of their children they are sending a subtle but unmistakable message to their children that spiritual instruction is not important. Remember, actions speak louder than words.

There is a disciple-making crisis throughout the church. Collectively we've lost the ability to make disciples and the understanding that this is Christ's intended raison d'etre for the church. I suspect that part of the reason that we've lost our focus on disciple-making is that we've stopped doing it at the most basic level, with our children. If the church is going to regain its God ordained mission to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20) then I believe it must begin in the home. Parents let's stop relying solely on the professionals and start using them properly (as supplements), and obey God's call to instruct our children ourselves.

A great resource for learning how to disciple your children at home is Voddie Baucham's book "Family Driven Faith". I don't agree with everything in this book, but it has helped our family tremendously. You can find it on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Family-Driven-Faith