Annette's February reading

OUCH! That opening line is KILLER..."Sunday School is actually more likely to be detrimental to the spiritual and moral health of our children."  I'm not sure that I would recommend this book to some of the traditional people that I associate with.  That would be a pretty offensive statement to them. We still hear on occasion questions about why we don't have Sunday School at First A/G. 

I think we need to be careful about jumping to action here.  Your first instinct might be to "change what we're teaching" in Sunday School or life groups.  That's NOT what is being communicated here.  It's not about teaching Bible stories with accuracy.  It's about helping young people to construct a CHRISTIAN WORLD VIEW!  That is something different entirely!!  That is way more HEART focused than head focused. 

This just pressed on me the urgency of crying out to God for supernatural wisdom about how to reach the younger generation.  Our man-made ideas aren't working out so well.  #1: Parents must step up to their spiritual responsibilities.  If they're doing that, then the chances of their children becoming spiritual champions is much greater.  #2: This is an admonition to look at what we're doing in children/youth ministry and why we're doing it.  I'm all for renovation!  Let's allow God to shake up the way we minister to kids.  I believe He already has been...we're doing most things differently than they were done before.  I believe that was Holy Spirit driven.  What do you think?

I agree wholeheartedly with the challenge to bring apologetics into every level of Christian Education.  I'm so glad to hear them say that!  We need to match the aggressiveness of our culture in how they're indoctrinating young people with their apologetics of evolution and secular humanism.  Here's another shocker...

Let there be no mistake, it's time to do something - it's time for YOU to do something.  If not, you might as well sleep in this Sunday.  The statistics show that not going won't hurt your kids one bit.  In fact, they might be better for it.

Wow, he's not worried about offending us, is he?  :o)  One thing you will notice throughout the book is that Dr. Ham is obviously very concerned about the Genesis issues.  That is his primary focus in  ministry so he tends to look for that information a lot.  Do you think it's relevant?

I was also struck by the idea that to that group that planned to come back after they had kids felt that the Bible was relevant, but the church was not.  We can definitely do something about that!!!  While some of this information was discouraging (although not entirely surprising to me), that made me feel very hopeful.  I would summarize the findings of these two chapters in this way: it's time for the church to GET REAL!