Articles
HOW SKIPPING CHURCH AFFECTS OUR CHILDREN
Carl Trueman (Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, Ambler, PA) was asked about why
churches today are losing their young people. Typical answers to this question range from things
like the temptations of this world or the irrelevance of the church. But Trueman makes a keen
and convicting connection between our parenting and apostasy. “The church is losing its young
people because the parents never taught their children that it was important. It applies to family
worship, and it also applies to whether you are in church every Sunday and what priority you
demonstrate to your children church has on a Sunday. If the sun shines out and their friends are
going to the beach, do you decide to skip church and go to the beach? In which case, you send
signals to your children that it is not important.”
Now we know that artificially taking your kids to church neither bestows salvation nor
guarantees it. God is obviously not honored by external religious acts without heart worship.
This type of legalism is not the subject of this discussion. This is about parenting and the weight
of the responsibility behind how they prioritize their time and lifestyle choices for their families.
Parents make choices all the time for their families. As they decide on what takes priority in
family, every choice is carefully observed and taken in to the heart of their children.
Maybe the reason why our children have no love for Christ is due to the fact that we as
parents do not show any love or passion for Christ, evidenced by how we prioritize our time both
on Sundays and during the week. When television, sports, school, hobbies, even family itself are
elevated to a place of idolatry and replace the vital Christian responsibilities, then we tell our
children that Christ is secondary to all these things. We tell our children that it is not necessary to
take up your cross and die to yourself daily in order to follow Christ. We tell them that you only
have to live for Christ when it’s convenient for you. We tell them it is okay to sacrifice time with
the all-satisfying Savior if something “more fun” or “more important” comes along.
Let’s evaluate where our hearts are by observing our choices. Do you prioritize the local
church? Do you prioritize the worship of Christ in your home and on Sundays? Do you prioritize
serving Him and worshiping Him in the contexts of school and work? This doesn’t mean that
you can’t ever miss a Sunday or that you can’t have any extracurricular activities. Instead, it is a
sobering reminder that we shouldn’t put the things of God at the bottom of the priority list,
because it tells our children that Christ is at the bottom of our priority list. And the God of this
universe does not belong there.
My prayer is that we all would improve in this area. But beware, maybe we don’t see this
because Christ isn’t a priority in our lives. And if He isn’t a priority in our lives, then our
children will know and follow suit. ~Ben Daily, via Facebook, Aug. 1, 2016
