Divide and Conquer

 

It’s funny how God puts things in front of you multiple times within a short time frame, as if to hang bright, flashing neon signs with arrows saying, “Pay Attention Here!”  I observed different situations lately that started to make me think about segregation within the church.  What segragation do I mean?  I’m talking about the segregation of the parents and the children, and sometimes even the segragation of the spouses.  We try so hard to be integrated, but find ourselves segregated at every turn.

Why do we split the family up at church?  The kids go one place, the parents go another?  Where did it start?  Is it biblical?  Does it have an effect on families today?  I am beginning to wonder.  In some churches on Sunday morning, the children go to their own programs, and the parents go to “big church.”  What is really coming of it?  Do we now have a generation of kids that are no longer taught how to sit still in church and respect the worship of an Almighty God?  Are they pushed into another class or group setting, being taught that it’s all about them by giving them games and fun instead of reverence and adoration of a Holy God?  Does it cater to the current TV/video game mindset and reiterate that entertaining them while Mom and Dad do their thing is the norm?  Don’t they get that already when Mom and Dad go to work and they go to school?  Who is raising our kids anyway?  Government, video games, MTV, day cares, schools?  I can’t help but wonder what mindset segragation gives them.  What will they expect when they are suddenly emersed into “big church?”  How will it affect their ability to worship the way God designed it?  Will they easily be able to take in God’s Word seriously without the lights and motion, bells and whistles, and entertainment they’ve grown accustomed to?

Sadly, Mom and Dad are absent in many cases.  Sadly, when the parents actually do care and are trying to instill values and morals in their children are met by opposition from those who think they know better.  First of all, these kids will turn to their friends for things, not their parents, because they have learned to depend on friends for opinions and advice.  They believe it is ridiculous or dorky to ask the advice of parents.  I know that was the case for me.

Secondly, the Goverment believes it knows better than parents.  It has the power to go over the parents’ heads and they do so on a daily.  For instance, recently in a school in a surrounding county, a 15-year-old girl was caught missing school for several days, and bringing in forged notes to be excused.  One of the school staff talked to her and asked her on a hunch if she was pregnant.  She said she was (by her 19-year-old boyfriend), but she just had an abortion a few days before.  The staff person asked if her mother knew, and she said, “No, my mom can’t know.  She doesn’t like my boyfriend.”  The staff person asked her how she was able to get an abortion, because in NC we have the parental consent law.  The girl said that Planned Parenthood gave her a form and a number to call, and she went before a judge and was able to easily get the paper signed that waived the parent’s rights.  The parents to this day probably have no idea that their baby took the life of her own baby and their grandchild, and that a court of law disregarded them as her parents and took matters into their own hands, not to mention disregarded the statutory rape law. 

Thanks to today’s culture, parents are put in a tough position when both parents must work.  But we are still in control of Sunday!  We are in control of taking our kids to church.  We are in control of whether they learn to worship.  We are in control of what they learn about Jesus.  Will it make a difference?  I believe so wholeheartedly!  Yes, I think we should get on kids’ levels and teach them, and there are great programs that do just that, and I applaud them.  I’m just not sure the Sunday morning worship hour is the time for it (look at excerpt below).  It’s a fine line, I know.

Interestingly, I heard a Christian talk show today (Truth Talk Live) discussing this very issue with Scott Brown, Director of The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches”.  He will be one of the speakers at a conference in Wake Forest, NC on May 9-10 called “Puritan Family Restoration.”  I wish I could go.  Check out his info! www.scottbrownonline.com  Here is an excerpt:

Philip Goodwin, an English Puritan writing in 1655 urged parents to bring their children in to hear the preaching of the Word of God… It was an age that did not know youth groups. 

 “We should bring our children with us to the publick teaching, so may our private teaching prove profitable.  Oftentimes divine truths are as nails, one teaching sets them in, and the other teaching fastens them; one plants and the other waters, and so of both God gives increase.

 We should bring the word publickly taught home to our children, by repeating it to them, and requiring it of them. It is not enough that we with others teach them,  but we must see what they learn, enlivening things upon their hearts at home, by holy counsel. At our houses we should harrow in that good seed which hath been publickly sown, that so it may be covered the closer and root the better in the hearts of the children and servants.” 

Goodwin was the first to coin the term, “Family Religion” which became the watchword for christian familes for the next 150 years.  The term first appeared in his book quoted below,

From Philip Goodwin in his book, “Family Religion Revived, or a Treatise as to discover the good old way of serving God in private Houses; so to Recover the Pious Practice of those Precious, Duties unto their Primitive platform.” P 401-402, published in 1655.