Church, Equip Parents to Disciple Kids

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Cameron Cole: Hey, good afternoon. My name is Cameron Cole. And I’ve been doing youth and family ministry now for about 18 years. And I’m going to talk at a really concrete and practical level title of my workshop is the critical need. And simple direction for equipping parents to disciple kids. And so I want to start with Ephesians, three, verses 11 through 16. I’m just gonna make three points from this, I’m not gonna do a super deep dive. So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there, by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect, the mature body, the mature body, of him, who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work where the Lord Alright, so a free three principles that I want to point out from this text here, that we’ll kind of come back to throughout the talk. One is that the focus of discipleship is maturity. So when we are talking about family discipleship, we are ultimately thinking about the long term maturity of a child such that they have a sustainable faith with Christ.

We are also talking about the maturity of the parents, there is a positive and supportive correlation between the maturity of the parent and the long term maturity of the child. So focus on the side flips maturity. Second is that we are discipling kids to Christ. And we are also discipling them to the local church. The center of a child’s discipleship is that they grow in relationship with Jesus. But we want them long term to see and understand that the local church is the place that their relationship with Christ is nurtured and sustained. And then the third thing is, you can see in this text, that a function of the church is to equip the saints for ministry, particularly leaders. That’s what Paul has in mind, particularly in this part, as well. It is pivotal for every church to view parents, as critical spiritual leaders in that church to equip for ministry within their church. So there’s just three little points there from Ephesians three that you’ll kind of see flowing throughout this 30 minutes. And so the my thesis statement for this talk is that the church is the primary disciple of the child. But the parents is the most effective disciple of the child, the church is the primary disciple where the parent is the most effective disciple. Here’s why I’m saying that. Oftentimes, we use the language that the church, the parent is the primary disciple or the child. In fact, we saw quite that said that just before, but one thing we want to keep in mind is that when we’re talking about the discipleship of children, we are always thinking long term, I always say we’re not talking about 18, we’re talking about 28, and 38, and 48, and 58.

So we want to have a vision for the discipleship of young people that goes beyond their time in our home. And so with that being said, we want the child to view a local church as the place where their faith will be nurtured, without being sad. And something we’ll talk about a lot today, and we’ll look at some of the research that validates this is that parents are far and away the most influential and effective spiritual voice in a child’s life. It’s undefeated. So that is where we’re gonna go. So what I first want to do is do a quick little overview of kind of where we are in this kind of the spiritual lives of kids in this century to stay five minute history on that. Then I want to look at the good news, the bad news and the best news about what we know about the parents role in kids lives, and then talk in very practical terms about the implementation of family discipleship in any church regardless of size and resource. So first, what is the state of the spiritual eyes of young people and children and this young people in this country in this century? So first, the first question that was asked at the turn of the century is, is are the discipleship efforts of Churches working as youth ministry effective as children’s ministry effective? And so the resounding answer was no. And there are different studies and they’re different numbers. But you can roughly say that about 70% of kids who are growing up in the American church were not returning to church after high school.

So the next question was, why not? Like, what, what’s what is going so wrong? And so there were three factors with one being the dominant factor. The primary factors were one churches were not equipping parents to spiritually engage in their kids lives. Two kids were being segregated from the life of the church, they were not being integrated into the life of the church as a worshiper in a service such as they are being prepared for church membership long term. But third, the biggest factor was the theology, the theology of ministry to kids, what kids actually believed that, you know, there was the many studies particularly in national state on youth and religion, where they found the composite theology of young people was moralistic, therapeutic, deism. What kids believed about the Christian faith is antithetical to basic Biblical Christianity, kids understanding of Christianity is that it is a set of rules, it’s a set of behaviors that we follow. They saw the purpose of the Christian faith as bolstering their self esteem, and making them happy. And then their view of God was that of a God who was deistic, who’s not involved in your life, except in the case of an emergency. So a lot of the attention in the first half of this century, this is a young century, I recognize that is focused on moving away from a model of ministry, that is entertainment, and legalism, and moving towards serious discipleship of young people that is based in Scripture, and that is based in the proclamation of the gospel, moving away from dodgeball pizza and don’t have sex to legitimate discipleship, as the Bible says, Okay. And if you’re a senior pastor, and you’re still pushing dodgeball with your youth minister, please don’t do that. Doesn’t work doesn’t work. Bible gospel, discipleship, that works.

All right. So that’s the first question that was asked first half of the century. Second question that is asked is, who is influencing kids? Who has the influence over young people? That question is asked because of social media, because of very aggressive political and ideological agendas to influence our kids. And so people are wondering with this exposure, this unprecedented exposure to information that our young people have, and with some of the agendas that are out there, people are concerned, who has influence over our kids. There was a major study by Christian Smith, who also did the national study on youth and religion. It’s published in the book handing down the faith. And it validates what anybody who works with kids knows, and that is that parents have the most influence. If you have worked with kids, if you’ve been a youth pastor, and you have this sense that what you’re doing with a child at church is supplemental to what’s happening at home. No rules, no guarantees, but by and large, those are the kids who tend to stick. And so this is what Smith says. He says, All the research in the United States today shows clearly that parents are by far the most effective important factor influencing their children’s religion, not only as a youth, but also after they leave the home, not clergy, religious schools, youth ministers, neighborhoods, Sunday school, mission trips, service projects, summer camp, peers, or the media parents. That is who matters here. Now, parents define for their child the role, that religious faith and practice all to play in life, whether important or not, most children roughly adopt. Something that’s important to understand is that there’s a shift, there’s been a shift over the last 50 years in the way that parents view their role in the spiritual life of their children, and the role of the church. So in the previous century, second half of the 20th century,the term that is used to describe it as a communal solidarity project, parents trusted the church, it was kind of the outsource mentality of the church is the one who will mediate truth.

And so we’re gonna go to church, we’re going to involve our kids in the programs, and they’re going to get the job done for us, while the parents were not terribly involved. Well, interestingly, there is a shift in this century, where parents actually see themselves as the central figure in the spiritual formation of their kids. And they either have a mistrust or they have a lack of value in the role of the church. Here is here’s a quote that kind of just rods this and what is called a personal identity project. Church’s social ontology is not an authoritative carrier of truth, but an optional lifestyle accoutrement. So in other words, parents actually view themselves as the primary influence over kids. And they see church as an accessory that can maybe help them in that endeavor. And that’s why church attendance, you can see that manifested, and the infrequency of church attendance and commitment to, to different programs in life of the church. So with that being said, the situation that we’re in right now, there’s some good news, there’s some bad news. And there’s some really, really, really good news. The good news is this. Parents are actually more engaged in the spiritual lives of their kid than they have been in the past. And on top of that, parents are actually more eager to be educated and equipped than they ever have. There’s a woman named Mary Flo, really, greatest name in the world. That’s a name from for someone who’s from El Paso, Texas. But Mary Flo has an industry called the birds and the birds and the soy helped me please. And she basically trains parents on how to talk to kids about sex and age appropriate ways. She has been doing this for 40 years. And one of the things that Mary Flo said to me is she has seen this incredible increase in the eagerness of parents to be educated and equipped. I have observed that and my almost two decades of ministry as well. So that’s good news. Another piece of good news is that we don’t have to be so afraid of everything that’s out there. I understand it. There are a lot of voices. There’s a lot of messaging out there.

That is that is that is terrifying, right? The media, the far left, the far right, whatever it may be, that scares you. The good news is, they have very little influence over your kids compared to you. So parents, we don’t have to be worrying so much about what everybody out there is doing and what they’re gonna say to our kids. We can just focus on taking care of business at home, because we have the influence. That’s what the Bible says that’s what research validates. Well, here’s some bad news. One piece of bad news is that while parents see themselves as the central influence over their kids, they’re taking more responsibility. Parents are very poorly equipped, particularly theologically and biblically to do so. What you find in this study, one of these studies, is that what parent Christian parents, the United States believe, is generally the same as what secular parents believe. When asked about why do you want your child to be a believer, the parents said, and you all are gonna, you can all mouth it, you all know what I’m gonna say, I wanted to be a good person, and I wanted to be happy. And one of the others in this study, not a single person mentioned the eternal salvation of their child. And no one mentioned the glory of God. Like, why do you want your child to follow Jesus is for the advancement of the kingdom of God, no one, no one said that.

So you can see that from a theological and biblical standpoint, parents are very poorly equipped to spiritually leave their kids. Second piece of bad news is that you also see a very limited commitment to corporate worship, attendance and commitment to participation in the life of the church. So that’s bad news. But here’s some great news. The great news is to be an incredibly effective, impactful Christian parent. It’s not really that complicated. It doesn’t take a seminary degree. It’s just basic faithfulness, that any Christian parent can do. You don’t have to move the needle that far, to put parents in a position where they can have a very powerful impact in the spiritual life for their child. So there are four, four very simple things that have very powerful impact on the spiritual lives of children. The first is church attendance. Okay. I wrote an article about a year ago for TGC. The title was parents just go to church. Okay. Amen. Amen. Say like my dad. My dad was a wonderful man. And he was not a man who knew the Bible very well. He did not know anything about theology. However, he did know that Jesus was the only way to salvation. And he did value church attendance. And so we went to church every Sunday come hell or high water. And it’s so funny because you know, we would complain, I was the kid he was complaining, I don’t want to go. And my dad from Alabama, if you haven’t picked that up yet, my dad was really from Alabama. He would say, Son, God gives us seven days a week.

One morning isn’t too much to ask. All right. And actually, dad were actually supposed to give God seven days a week too. But the point was clear, the point was clear. And maybe one of the most impactful things that we did is when we go on vacation, we would go to church, we’ll be up in North Carolina, we were at the First Baptist Church of Waynesville. And it modeled to us that God is a priority, it is the priority of life, and a model that the church is the center of that. Second thing, so So with that being said, when I meet with every parent of a two year old in my church every year, and I sit down with him, one of the first things I say is, guys, if the best thing you can do for your child, is to make a commitment to go to church every Sunday. And to warn them that as your child gets older, they’re going to be a lot of competing priorities like travel baseball, and you need to warn them to think about their commitments and how it may impact the commitment to Sunday worship. All right, second, second, powerful practice is just the basic presence of Christian practice in a home, we are not talking about doing a right one liturgical service every morning, we are talking, just praying at meals, just open up the Bible, every now and then, let’s listen to some Christian music in the car. Basic Christian practices are very powerful in terms of promoting lifelong faith in the life of kids. Third, is having spiritual conversations with kids. What I mean by this is when the the matters of life come up when there are challenges when there are questions, just simply relating them to the character of God, to the promises of the gospel to the things that we know, that are true from from Scripture. And so this is why just basically discipling parents in the word is very, very valuable family ministry. I’m not talking about technical information, technical skills on how to be a Christian parent, I’m talking about let’s open up the Bible. And let’s help you grow in your relationship with Christ and in your maturity in the Word. So I one thing that I have done, and since

I’ve been doing family ministry is I do a dad’s discipleship course. And it’s just basic fundamentals of the Bible of the gospel on how to read the Bible on how to pray. Generally, the univocal fruit that I hear from the dads is, the best thing I got out of this is I feel comfortable, and I feel confident, talking to my kid about spiritual things, and answering their questions. And so with that being said, one of the best things we can do is to help parents grow in their own faith, so that they feel confident and comfortable having spiritual conversations for their kids. Alright, final factor here is basic Christian character. Here’s what I mean by that. What you see in the research is that in households that are either overly permissive, or overly authoritarian, kids tend to be repelled from the faith of the parents. So what we’re talking about is homes that are overly permissive that the parents maybe connect really well with the child. But there’s no presence of discipline and structure. Or you have households where there’s a lot of discipline and structure. But there’s very little warmth, very little affection, very little emotional, relational connection with a child. And so authoritative parenting is where both of those are present. There’s a presence of discipline, structure boundaries. And there’s a real live emotional connection and relationship and warmth between the parent and the child. And so, you know, obviously the character of a person, that is a very, very, very large endeavor that is the work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. But two practical things that I would say, to kind of help promote kind of a good posture for parents, is the first thing I would say is, I think one of the primary responsibilities if you’re ministering to parents, is to assuage their fear. All parents are afraid all parents feel inadequate. And so when I am ever in front of parents, I want to start and end, reminding them of the goodness, the grace and the sovereignty of the Lord God, I want to remind them, that God loves their child more than they do, and that the Lord is pursuing their child.

And that helps to assuage some of the hyper controlling hyper afraid parenting that is really not very productive for the spiritual life of the child. Second thing I encourage parents to do like crazy, so I want to encourage parents to be a repentant confessing sinner before their children. I say to parents, the most powerful way that you can share the gospel with your kid day and day out, is when you wronged your child, when you’re harsh with them, when you lose your patience with them, to confess your sins to your child, ask for their forgiveness, to reconcile and tell your child, I’m a sinner in need of God’s grace, I need the Holy Spirit to change this in my life, when you hypothetically, are the kind of person who loses his temper when you’re driving your car, and your children are in the backseat, and you you know, demonstrate ungodly anger, to recognize to your children, Hey, guys, the way I just acted was inappropriate. That’s not That’s not how I should act as a man of God. And I need God’s grace and he the Holy Spirit to change me. So that I think these are probably two practical things we can do for parents to help them be in a good posture. So what does all this mean, for local churches?

What does this mean for every church and so the thing I want to communicate is that I think it should be a priority of every church, regardless of size, regardless of budget, that there is some presence of a family discipleship, equipping ministry in that church. And so with the aim being to give parents confidence and competence and spiritual engaging with their kids. So I want to talk about three principles, three last kind of practical principles that I think can help any church regardless of size and resource to think in this direction. So the first thing I would say is to think about family discipleship, in terms of facilitating rather than leading a family ministry, here’s what I mean by that. Generally, it is only very wealthy, very large churches that have a family ministry, because they have the money to hire a specialist. So a lot of times, the way that we think about family ministry is we need to go out there, and we need to find a specialist who’s going to teach the parents all this technical, Christian parenting stuff. Well, the reality is, is first off, it’s very hard to find that person. There aren’t a ton of people out there where that’s That is their skill set. And that’s their ability. Second thing is hardly any churches can afford that person given the other demands of the church. And so when we think about facilitating a family ministry, we drop this vision that we have to have a specialist. And instead we think about how it is that a children’s minister, or a youth minister, or an associate pastor, or an older adult in the church, who’s wise and who’s mature, and who has a heart for the young parents, how it is that they can coordinate opportunities to equip parents. So that may look like something as simple as like rooted, we have a product called routed reservoir, family discipleship.

And we know that it’s hard to find good instructional content in churches, to help equip parents. And so it’s video courses with Bible study. And it can be as simple as getting parents together to watch a video course over a series of weeks over over the over the series, or over a number of weeks, it can be as simple as regularly sending out the emails that different ministries that have to do with Christian parenting that they put out every month. ministries like center for parent youth understanding, access, apologists routed we have one as well, just sending on that content to parents is actually a good deposit, to encourage and equip parents. And then the last thing I would say is to also, you know, most churches, regardless of size, you have Bible studies, and you have Discipleship Ministries, really get parents into those into those, those resources into those communities. Because a parent growing in their own faith and their knowledge of the world will spill over into the discipleship of their kids. That’s number one thing in terms of facilitating number two, is pursue parents and give them concrete vision and clear direction. Now, a couple of caveats with this, you have to be very careful to explicitly tell parents that there is no formula to producing a Christian child appearance, we’re looking for that and I’m one of them, just like give me the play. You know, we’re gonna run read option we’re gonna throw to the tight end, and we’re gonna have a wonderful child who loves Jesus and you know, wants to glorify God, right, just give me the play. The play doesn’t exist, like, we just want to be faithful on our side of the street. And then we’re going to pray and trust the Holy Spirit to do his thing, right. But it is helpful to define for parents, what it looks like in concrete terms to be faithful on our side of the street. So like I said, I meet with the parents of two year olds, and I say, here’s some things we would encourage you to do that we’d like for you to do that we think are simple, sustainable and achievable. One, make a commitment to go to church every Sunday. Number two, pray with your kids. Say a blessing before dinner. Say pray with your children when they when you put them to bed three eat twice a week, try to open up the Bible.

That can be a Children’s Bible. That can be the real Bible, whatever it is, but twice a week try to open up the word together. For and for do the gospel catechism. We have this catechism gospel catechism, where we say what does gospel mean? Good news. What’s the good news? Jesus died for my sins? Why did I for my sins? I can have relationship with God, who loves you the most? God he’ll just second most Mommy and Daddy, what can you do by God’s power and grace hard things. And so we we encourage our parents, when you send your child off, when you send them out to school, when you drop them off at daycare, whatever it is, do the gospel catechism so that you are explicitly reviewing the gospel with your child as the last word as they go into the world. Okay, those things, they’re not rocket science. They’re simple, sustainable, and achievable. So you can think about in your context, what might be some concrete direction that you can give parents to take steps towards faithfulness, while also telling them, this is not a formula. And ultimately, this falls in the hands of the sovereign work of Holy Spirit. Alright, last thing, last thing is, with a talk like this, a lot of times three action can be, we just need to drop children’s ministry, we’re gonna drop youth ministry, let’s get rid of everything. And all we’re going to do is just focus on the parents. And I will say I think in terms of bang for buck. Investing appearance is an incredibly wise investment of time and energy, it may look like it may mean that you need to simplify some of what you do with children and youth to make room for for family, a family equipment, family discipleship, equipping ministry in your church. But also keep in mind that we are discipling kids to Christ. But we want kids to see the local church as the place that nurtures their faith for the rest of their life. And so those kinds of programs within a church are really valuable to build that paradigm for the child to see the church as the primary place where their faith is nurtured for the rest of their life. All right, so I’m going to close five, practicing what I preach, to remind you of like when you hear something like this, where there’s tons of practical, how to best practice kind of stuff. The temptation is like to feel tons of pressure, to feel like we got to go do all this stuff. I as a parent have got to call the right plays. Just remember, we want to be faithful. If you’re in this play this room right now, good chance that you’re being faithful. At the end of the day, our confidence is in Jesus. Our confidence is in the work in the Spirit. So be a competent rest in that. Thanks so much.