Children and Youth---Whose Responsibility?, Part 1

On the Idolatrous Over-Correction Nowadays of Some Family Integrated Ministry

There's a timely, well-meant correction, generally, on the part of some brethren nowadays about children, youth and family ministry. Hats off to our brethren. Amen and amen.

I stand with them—1) they have biblical concerns to trounce the entertainment-oriented contemporary expression of youth ministry; 2) they have theological drive to deputize and dispatch children and youth to do hard things, calling our kids to take up the mantle of ministry-charged service in the kingdom of God right now, not when they reach their 20s and 30s; and 3) they have practical cultural sensitivity about standing firm and standing together as today’s family in our broken world; for men in the home, it means entering into and persevering with the masculine mandate to be dominion dads and taking up the yoke of child nurture.

Who can find fault with such reforms?

It’s not these reforms, necessarily, that summon watchful attention. It’s when these reforms are cloaked in over-correction about the role of parents.

Here’s the particular danger for some: it’s the separation of church and parents.

What God has joined together, let not man separate.

In the name of recovering parental responsibility for the nurture, discipleship, and training of their children and young people, parents can be misled into the vulnerable spot of isolation from the wider body of the local church; and ironically, this is the very thing that we’ve been cautioned about regarding our children and youth for the past 25-30 years. Separating children and youth off from the Body of Christ by excessive youth group programming, we’ve been learning, is a no-no. Parents must be cautioned about this same mis-application.

Family training in isolation from the biblically-designed, grace-filled, and grace-dependent relationships of the whole of the church signals danger--an invitation to idolatry of the biological home.

What kind of isolation is meant? There can be isolation of parents from the church when they believe that faithfulness means: 1) being the primary ones to do the Bible and doctrinal teaching with their children and young people, and 2) being the ones, solely, to have responsibility for other things like: hosting social events, service projects and evangelistic ministries. When its family integration in these kinds of expressions—with parent-dominant, often parent-exclusive ministries, then we’ve lost sight of the very important doctrine of The Parenthood of All Believers.

The 16th century Reformation churchman, Martin Luther, recovered proportion about all having access to God, not merely the Roman Catholic priesthood. What he called The Priesthood of All Believers might also be connected to the doctrine of The Communion of the Saints.

The Westminster Confession of Faith 26:1 speaks to this:

All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by his Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and, being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces, and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man.

In the Body of Christ, there’s the way of grace with the communion of relationships within the whole of the church. Grace is a gift for every-generation life and ministry. This grace of The Parenthood of All Believers and The Communion of the Saints can be seen by the multiple generational expressions of life and ministry with multiple-callings on hand, varied-marriage and family situations involved and the manifold-gifting of people and their experiences deployed and employed. It’s the church and her needful role as Mother and Household with the children and youth of our homes.

Variety, rightly seen in God's design of this every-generation stewardship, leads to awe-ful, majestic, and grace-promoting glory before God. It’s a God-ward thing. It makes us dependent on Him, not man.

As a father, I have to trust in God for His work in and through the church, the whole of the Household of Faith.

Trust in God about such things reminds me of the Bible’s signature imperative: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.”

G. Mark Sumpter