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Code red! The danger level is
code red! That is the way I felt when I read George Barna’s Transforming
Children Into Spiritual Champions. I want to say that every pastor, every
elder, every teacher, every parent, and every adult ought to put down whatever
they are reading at present and read this instead. On the book’s jacket, Bill
Hybels, pastor of the famous Willow Creek Church said, “Finally! I have been
waiting almost thirty years for someone to put into book form what I have known
to be true nearly all my ministry life. Children matter!”
This has been the message of
Christian Education and Publications during my years as coordinator, and it has
increasingly been our challenge and cry to the church. Barna’s conclusion, as
the subtitle states, children should be the church’s number one priority. How
biblical is that priority? The covenant community is the people of God
configured in family, immediate and extended. God has told the covenant
community to train the children in his ways, to pass on the faith to the next
generation, and to be a witness to the children of the church.
Here in this volume, Barna has
done some of the best research, with interpretations, that he has ever done.
While I have appreciated Barna’s work, having had an opportunity to read his
books and be with him on occasion, I feel this is his most important book. It
brings us to the reality that what happens in a child’s life prior to his or her
thirteenth birthday will set the stage for the rest of that child’s life unless
God the Holy Spirit intervenes.
Barna tells how he came to this
priority after a number of years of study and work. The book represents more
than five years of gathering and interpreting data relating to children but he
also indicates that it is only in the past two years that the conclusion really
connected for him. He concludes that less than ten percent of professing
Christians having a self-conscious, biblical worldview. Even children that are
being brought into the church are not taught a biblical worldview; hence their
understanding of Christianity matches that of their parents and teachers.
Barna exposes the myth that
adult ministry is where the action is in a local church. That’s what I was told
years ago when one of my seminary advisors said, Charles, “Don’t spend so much
time with calves, that you forget the cows that give the milk.” Can you believe
that myth? Of course you can. Look at your church’s budget. How much of your
resources are focused on the children? Barna states, with the accompanying
statistics to back his statements, “It was through this standard practice that
God opened my mind and heart to ranking ministry to children at the top of the
priority list.” He pleads with us that the church’s mission is not to see the
children merely as add-ons. He says, “Ultimately, the purpose of this endeavor
is to enable the Church to engage in the process of transforming mere children
into spiritual champions.
Barna’s chapter on the
spiritual health of our children is a stark reminder that the church must recast
its mission, Adults, preachers, teachers, and especially parents, must be
discipled with what we call a kingdom view of discipleship in order to pass it
on to the children. Unless this happens, he says, “their spiritual life is
prioritized and nurtured, they will miss out on much of he meaning, purpose, and
joy of life.”
We used to say that
seventy-five percent of all decisions, especially the decision to be a
Christian, happens before a child’s eighteenth birthday. Now the research lowers
that to thirteen years of age. I will not begin to list the numerous statistics
that make that point, but you will want to read this book carefully and
prayerfully. As I went through the highlights of this book with our CE&P staff
and committee, I was more and more convinced that we are failing to take God’s
priorities to heart.
As I began to write this
review, I was handed a brochure from a sister denomination delineating its
distinctives. The brochure highlighted the denomination’s priority was to
evangelize the lost, at home and abroad. Such is definitely a part of the
church’s mission. But, I saw no mention of ministry to the rising generations.
That may be the position of many of our churches, as well.
The church and its families
must come together in a way that equips them to disciple the church’s children,
and those not yet part of the church, with a kingdom view of discipleship.
Sunday school and youth clubs are part of that process but as Deut. 6 reminds
us, it must be at all levels of the children’s lives.
Barna concludes with the
challenge, “If we default on our responsibility, we cannot blame those
substitutes for making the most of the opportunity.” That is what is happening.
By the age fifteen, church dropouts increase significantly. Thirteen years of
age ought to be burned into our minds and hearts, as we look at children. Barna
has given us excellent information to encourage and challenge us to do whatever
we need to do, expend whatever resources we have to spend, in order to make
kingdom disciples of our children.
-Charles Dunahoo, CEP Coordinator
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