By Dr. Josh Mulvihill
In a child’s life, there are three primary shaping influences: home, church, and school.
Parents and pastors have often been guilty of minimizing the impact of the home and ignoring the life-altering power of education while placing all their discipleship eggs in church programs that impact children only a few hours per week. To be clear, God has called the church to disciple all its members and every pastor should be as passionate about the discipleship of the younger generations as they are the adults in their congregation. However, the impact of approximately 16,000 hours of educational teaching in secular humanism is extremely transformative, and the Church must help parents to understand this reality.
Education is discipleship. It shapes. It forms. A child becomes like the people who teach him. This is the teaching of Luke 6:40, “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Did you catch that? Teachers reproduce who they are in others because information brings about transformation. 16,000 hours of training in evolutionary, homosexual, anti-Jesus, the-Bible-is-outdated teaching slowly erodes a child’s faith in Christ.
Renewanation has been a valuable resource for Grace Church in our effort to leverage education as a vehicle to reach and disciple young people. Yearly, Grace Church provides a Christian Education Fair gathering evangelical schools and homeschool groups so that parents can explore the Christian education options for their children. Renewanation’s president, Melvin Adams, generously provided counsel to me regarding how to maximize this event and how to expand its impact in the Twin Cities. Renewanation resources, both print and audio, have been a valuable tool in our efforts to raise the awareness of our congregation to the strategic place of education, have helped us encourage families to consider Christian education instead of non-Christian education, and have been a resource to equip parents to train their children with a thoroughly Christian worldview. I highly recommend Renewanation to any parent or pastor who would like to address the impact that education is having on the children of today.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he states that he labors and struggles “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28-29). Education must be on every pastor’s radar as it either helps present or prevent maturity in Christ. Let us labor and struggle with education in the attempt to see our children treasure Jesus Christ.
Volume 5 Issue 1 - The Renewanation Review
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