Children and the Gospel (Part 1 of 4)

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I'm going to take on a couple of different topics that will require some length. So, I'll break it into "bite-size" chunks!


Children and the Gospel! (Part 1)

Disclaimer:

Please note that I will probably use a good bit of generalization. I may, in fact, lean on a stereotype or two. If your experience was the exception, please don’t blindly disregard the rest. I’m using generalizations/stereotypes because they only get to be generalizations or stereotypes because they’re true a lot of the time. I’ll do my best to be frank when needed, in hopes that as a Christian community we can begin to talk about the simple truth of the gospel in the most effective way for children. Not just for the short-term peace we may achieve, but for the long-term benefit of the children to whom we parent and/or minister.

The gospel is the most simple, yet complex, life-encompassing idea. Praise be to God!

My Story

I grew up in the South. I was the kid who was always at church. My parents made it a point to bring me on almost every Sunday and Wednesday. I was so “entrenched” that I dressed up like Moses for one church Halloween party when I was about 3 or 4 (great picture by the way…it’s amazing how much a fake beard can annoy a child). I grew up hearing the truth of Jesus Christ from a very early age.

In fact, I had a grandmother (a wonderful servant of the Lord) who made it a point to share the simple truth of the gospel to each of her grandchildren until they came to know the Lord. To this day, I’m prayed for every day by my grandmother, and there’s no telling how the Lord has used those prayers.

Here’s the thing…I’m in my grandmother’s den early one morning, and I “get” the gospel for the first time. It just clicks, and my grandmother asks me if I’d like to trust Christ as my Savior. I did want to do that. So, when we got back to my home church, I walked down the aisle and got baptized, like a good Southern Baptist kid. For the next 10 years or so, I continued to grow in the faith (not without a few hiccups along the way), and never really had a time where the truth of the gospel and Jesus Christ didn’t make the most sense to me. God was extremely gracious to me.

It wasn’t as easy for some of the other children I grew up with in the church. They were “good church kids” who shook the pastor’s hand, said something about Jesus, got baptized, but then years later they realized they did it for all the wrong reasons, questioned their faith, and traveled some uneasy paths.

I don’t really know the difference between those two scenarios. My gut tells me there was an unspoken (or maybe spoken in some situations) pressure to “go down the aisle.” Many kids may have done that before they were really ready.

This scenario played out in a lot of churches in the last 20-30 years. Some of you may have had similar experiences. It really brings up a lot of questions.

What do we do? Do we wait to share the gospel at a particular age? Can really young children really make a genuine decision to trust Christ? When will they be ready? How do you know if it’s genuine or not? What happens if they question their faith later?

The more and more I think about this subject, the more I realize this idea of children and the gospel may be the most simple, yet complicated situation to navigate as a parent/volunteer.

Stay tuned...there's more coming!