“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22: 6.)
One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my mother’s lap, staring up at the chapel roof, which was dark and imposing. I was probably about 2 or 3 at the time, but from the beginning, our little Baptist chapel was a huge part of my life. Half past 2 on Sunday afternoons was Sunday school time, come rain or shine. My mother would shepherd as many children as she could fit into her car off to church, where we would hear Bible stories, sing songs, and draw. I was not very good at the drawing part, but I was not going to be left out.
During the week, I told anyone who would listen about going to Chapple and suggested in the not so sensitive way only a child can get away with that they should come too. This resulted in the parents of my friends having to drive as much as half an hour every Sunday, because their offspring insisted, they had to attend the same church as me. After all, I had told them it was good! Some even came to our mid-week children’s meeting called Sunshine Corner. I guess back then I was a little evangelist.
I remember many children coming through Sunday school and Sunshine Corner while I attended. Names spring to mind of people I haven’t seen or heard from in years. In fact, the older we got, the less youngsters there were, until I felt like I was the only one left. I knew there were more young Christians in other churches, but there were no longer any in ours, and that was hard on me.
As I look back, I wonder why I held onto my faith when so many didn’t. It’s certainly not something I wish to gloat over, and I don’t feel it makes me special, or better than the others. I can only put it down to one thing. Jesus was always a huge reality in my life, and not just on Sundays. I didn’t take him out of his box for Sunday School or Sunshine Corner, and then put him back in for the rest of the week. I found myself thinking about him most days, and I felt an interest in learning more about him than I was able to glean through basic children’s ministry.
I feel some people see Jesus as brilliant for children. Learning Bible stories is wholesome, and teaches them good morals, but that’s as far as it goes. Sadly, if children don’t have Christian input that goes beyond what they learn in children’s meetings, they will quickly lose interest. They may grow up, have children of their own, and send them to Sunday School, but their motivation for doing so won’t be for their children to find a personal relationship with Jesus that will carry them through their adult lives. How can it be, when the parents don’t have that themselves?
However, I have observed that it’s not just the children growing up in non-Christian homes who sometimes walk away from their fledgling faith during the teenaged years. This can also happen to youngsters who’ve grown up in Christian families. Perhaps you don’t think this is possible. Maybe you are a loving Christian parent, trying to nurture your child in the ways of the Lord, and you can’t see any way your child could wander away. Well, trust me, they can.
At some point, every young adult needs to find their own faith. As children, we can draw from the faith of our parents, but the older we get, the more we seek to find our own way. And that’s where so many get lost. The pressure to be like everyone else can be intense. The majority of their peer group probably won’t be Christians and admitting to having faith probably isn’t the in thing. For a while, a youngster may live a double life – living one way at home with their parents while attending church but interacting differently with their non-believing friends. Then, slowly, as they pull further away from the family home, their choices lead them away from Jesus and the faith of their parents. I have seen this too many times, and it fills me with sadness.
So, what is the answer? In an age where Christianity is being touted as a thing of the past, how can we ensure our young people take hold of its relevance for today? How can we ensure we don’t lose them during those confusing teenaged years? I believe the answer is simple; we need to encourage them to make Jesus the centre of their everyday lives from the earliest age possible.
While encouraging children to attend church is crucial, it must go so much deeper if we don’t want them to consider Sunday School something cute and positive for little ones, but of no further relevance when they grow up.
Looking back, I remember the many ways my mother brought the Lord into my everyday life. If I had a problem, she would encourage me to pray, and then we would rejoice over prayers answered. If I misbehaved, we would talk about Biblical principles, and why Jesus encourages us to live a certain way. The stories I heard on Sundays were applied during the week, which brought them to life. I always loved stories, but I began to understand there was something different about the stories in the Bible.
The older I became, the more relevance the Bible had for me. Rather than dismissing Jesus as a sweet part of my childhood, I grew to revere and honour him as the most important person in my life. I still got a lot wrong, and I didn’t always behave in a Christ-honouring way, especially as a teenager, but the Holy Spirit inside me pricked my conscience whenever I overstepped the line, and I found I couldn’t sustain bad behavioural patterns for any length of time without feeling I’d really grieved him.
I still pray for many of the youngsters who heard those Bible stories with me during our childhoods and ask the Lord to bring them back into his fold. I hope that especially now, as we face a time of global crisis, a memory may be triggered that will re-kindle their faith. I know that is possible, and I don’t believe any time spent listening to God’s word is wasted, but I can’t help wishing they’d held onto their faith instead of letting it go as the pull of the world grew stronger.
I know many little ones who are growing up in Christian homes, and I admire the way their parents are teaching them from God’s word, but I pray that as they grow up, their parents’ faith will become their own. I pray that they will learn to put Jesus at the centre of their every-day lives, and not just leave him in a Sunday box. Jesus is far too big to fit into any man-made box. All I can say is that looking back, I am eternally grateful Jesus walked with me through my childhood, teenaged years, and into adulthood, and that he still guides me today.
I’d like to end by sharing Romans 12: 1-2. These have become my life verses, but I’m going to share them from the Message translation which brings them starkly to life.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”