4 REASONS TO MAKE YOUR KIDS GO TO CHURCH

Worth considering for those of us with teenagers who may or may not want to go to church!  From Michael Kelley . . .
It’s been about 14 years since I’ve slept passed 7 am on any single day, rain or shine, holiday or not. For all that time, it didn’t matter how late our kids were up; it didn’t matter how much we wore them out; it didn’t matter how dark their shades were in their rooms. They would wake up before 7 am.

Until this year. This year is different. As we have entered the teenage years, we’ve seen the amount of sleep on the steady increase. While that’s great in a sense – I certainly have enjoyed the couple of extra hours every now and then – I know it’s just a matter of time until the unintended consequence of sleeping late will pop up in the context of going to church on Sunday.

The wake up will be hard. The kids will complain. And they will no doubt declare, “I don’t want to go to church today.” Which leads to the question:

Should we, as parents force our children to go to church, even when they don’t want to?

Short answer? Yes. Absolutely.

But why should we do that? You could argue the opposite – that in making our children go to church we are actually turning them away from the church. They will grow up resenting this environment they had to go to week after week, even if they didn’t want to, and as soon as they get a little bit of freedom, they will abandon that practice forced upon them by their unrelenting parents.

So why should we if we are indeed running a risk like that? I’d argue at least three reasons:

1. To teach the church’s purpose.

If we think the only reason we should go to church is our desire, then we are misunderstanding the reason for doing so at all. Of course, ideally we will want to go to church, but we go there not only because we want to – we go there because we need to. We are sinful, forgetful people. We go and meet with God’s people because we need to be reminded of who God is and His promises in the Bible. We need to be encouraged and held accountable for our Christian witness. And we need to participate in this for the sake of others, not just receive it from others.

2. To show the place of feelings.

If we don’t make our kids go to church because they don’t want to go to church, we are communicating to them that their feelings are their masters. And they are not… or at least they shouldn’t be. This is one of the ways we teach our children that we are led by faith, not by sight (or by feelings). We go because we believe this is the good and right and soul-nourishing thing to do, even if we don’t feel like it in the moment. Which leads to the third point…

3. To exercise your own faith.

Taking our children to church is a means of exercising our own faith. We trust that when we saturate our child in the things of God and the preaching of the gospel that something is going to get through. Eventually God is going to use those moments to bring about an awakening to the truth of faith in his or her life. We believe this, and therefore we act.

4. To feed the right appetite.

We trust that feeding a particular area of life makes it grow. We’ve all experienced this in a negative sense. Think about the escalation of drug addicts. I’ve heard that often addiction begins with experimentation and goes on from there – from something minor to something major. The appetite is fed, and as it is, it grows.

Or this one: It’s easy to sleep in one morning and not exercise. The next day it’s easier than the first day. And so it goes. We feed our laziness, and laziness feasts and grows fat.

Doesn’t it stand to reason the opposite would be true? When we discipline our children to go to church, we are, slowly but surely, feeding their appetite for godliness. It’s one spoonful at a time, to be sure, but in feeding it we are helping it grow.

Yes, parents, I believe we should make our children go to church. It will be a battle sometimes. But even as we do, we cannot trust that this attendance is a cure-all for the soul affliction of our children. We cannot outsource the evangelizing of our own families. So, yes, make them go. And yes, share the gospel with them before, during, and after, praying that the Holy Spirit would do His work of changing hearts.

3 REASONS TO STAY IN A CHURCH THAT’S NOT COOL ENOUGH

I have never read Michael Kelley but know biblical truth that runs contrary to Christian consumerism when I read it!  

I’m amazed at how deep my own consumerism runs. This is most clearly visible to me at how righteously offended I feel when someone or something doesn’t measure up to my expectations. So when, for example, the internet in my home is running slowly, I immediately look for the person who I have determined is the right recipient of my indignation.

That’s right – I look for someone to be mat at… when the wireless signal in my upper middle class home isn’t fast enough for me to sit and watch the exact tv show I want to watch on this magic box called a computer which, incidentally, also has no wires.

Sheesh.

It gets really disturbing, though, when that consumerism infiltrates our attitude toward our local churches. And it surely does. At some point, most any of us who grew up in a Christianized culture are going to look around at our church, the one we have supposedly given our lives to through membership, and see that some other church in town has better music. Or a trendier vibe. Or better coffee. Or a more polished preacher. Or whatever. Our church has suddenly become not cool enough, and that same righteous indignation boils up inside of us because we believe we deserve something more… we deserve the best!

So we leave.

Now let’s be clear – I’m not talking about legitimate reasons to leave a church. Those are real. There are doctrinal issues that are worthy of dividing fellowship over. I’m not talking an issue of the integrity of the gospel; I’m talking about the nonsensical issues of preference that make us church shop whenever we feel a little restless. In this post, I’d like to argue for three reasons to do the very counter-cultural thing of actually staying in the church that’s simply not cool enough:

1. It will teach you the nature of the church.

The church is not a place; it’s not an institution; it’s not a building. The church is the people of God, united despite their differences in race, creed, economics, or education under the common banner of grace and faith in Jesus Christ. We become consumers when we see church as an institution placed in the world to meet our needs instead of the called out people of God meant to represent His kingdom as an embassy in a foreign land.

When we choose to stay, we are recognizing that we actually are here for the church, not necessarily the other way around, and that we are giving of ourselves to this people rather than only taking from it.

2. It will teach you the nature of humility.

What does it mean to be humble? It means that we truly look to the interests of others ahead of our own. When we leave a church because it’s not cool enough, we are acting directly oppositely of this. We are acting in our own best interests, never mind the people who are still there. What’s more, we are failing to recognize that we have a unique set of gifts that God has given to that particular church in order that she may function in a healthy way. We have to be willing to forgo our own preferences for the sake of something bigger than ourselves. We learn to do this by the simple act of staying.

3. It will teach you the nature of unity.

Unity is not uniformity. Far from it. In fact, if we fast forward to the end of time, we will find that the fulfillment of God’s purposes in the universe involve a host of different people speaking different languages with different skin colors, all gathered around the throne of the lamb. Church is NOT where we all look the same, not in heaven and therefore not on earth.

True unity, then, does not come with something as easy as total agreement. It only comes through death. It comes when one or more of us choose to die to our own preferences for the sake of the overall unity in the body of Christ.

Before you make that visit, before you give up and cash it in, think about it. Think about staying. Think about it for the sake of your own soul – that you might grow in Christ through the simple act of standing firm right where you are – even if it means it’s not as cool.