One of my readers posted a comment about the tragedy of the church’s opposition to families who are receiving their children. She mentioned that their ministry had actually lost supporters because they “had too many children”. Her comment fertilized a seed that had already been growing as an idea for this blog. Apparently, many churches feel that a couple can be more effective in evangelizing sinners if they are not “hindered” by children. I’m not going to even beat around the bush here…that is LUDICROUS! It is an absolute mockery of God to refuse His heritage in the name of “His work”. And not only a mockery, but it doesn’t make good sense. The children God so wants to give us are our “arrows” in this battle of winning the lost…they are a powerful tool in reaching out to a lost world… a vital part of God’s evangelism plan!
It’s a two-fold plan: First, I embrace the call of God to bringing up a godly family, where my very family becomes my ministry and my children grow up witnessing the heart of real evangelism. Then, as I accept God’s gift of children, I exponentially increase the fold, thus multiplying the power of evangelism through the sheer numbers of my children! If we could seek after the heart of God, in everything (including our children), we would see an advancement of His Kingdom that would tremble the very heart of Satan.
Now am I suggesting that winning the lost and evangelizing the world is not the mission of the Christian? Absolutely not! But we are trying to use our own strategies while forsaking those of God, and the evidence is showing our failure. Despite the enormous outreach efforts of most churches, less people now proclaim the name of Christ than ever before in the history of our nation. Statistics are alarming. There are more divorces than ever, more teen-pregnancies than ever, more apostasy, more evil. This may hurt feelings, but we’re not doing a very good job.
Imagine a nation where the people of God live like the people of God. They seek first His Kingdom, they commit to loving the Lord with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves. Then imagine those people receiving the children God wants to give them. And they bring those children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And those families, TOGETHER, begin to evangelize; inviting people into their homes where the sincere love of Christ is evident in every member. Where husband and wife are loving, where children are honoring, and others are loved. Reaching out in love through simple hospitality and compassion to those around them. Then the world looks on and says, “Now there is something I don’t have. They have a genuine faith and I want it.”
And THEN, that house full of children who have spent their whole lives learning to truly evangelize others, go out, and establish their homes, and receive all their children, and repeat the above scenario. WOW! Imagine what this nation would look like in a few generations? (It gets really exciting if you do the math!) We didn’t have to establish a new youth group or limit our family size so it wouldn’t hinder our ministries. We would have done it God’s way…in God’s time….now that’s evangelism.
1 comment
That is a fact that should be preached and re-preached, until there is no church that has not heard it! Then, maybe it will also catch on in the secular crowd.—the numbers of Christians that are being raised (as children, at first) in Christian homes—THIS IS EVANGELISM! Does the church wish to increase its membership or its power to reach people? Why should the family be told to limit its members and therefore also limit its impact on the lost, or on the world? Reaching the lost in the church or reaching them at home–bringing the Gospel to them and instructing them in righteous living…
This should not only be left to the church. It is the duty of Christian parents to do this with their own families. Families reach out to other families, and they eventually have more families, thus growing exponentially…There is tremendous potential to evangelize, and I think that generally, the more children a Christian family is blessed with, the more potential impact. It is a lot like church membership.
We need churches for a common place of worship, for teaching and instruction in God’s word, and for fellowship and support between families. Families have the ability to monitor individual growth more closely than the church can. That is partly where the time factor comes in. Church meets two or three times a week, for the most part in predictable atmospheres. At home, there are all kinds of situations, mixtures of emotions and personalities, formalities, informalities, politeness, impoliteness, … that can happen many times DAILY. This is the time to instruct, and to be instructed, to work with each other and to learn to live with and love each other…In this way, the family should be more effective in molding lives than the church, just because there are different roles for the family and for the church. The family needs the church, but the church needs the family. The family can’t be as effective as the church if it tries to fulfill the role of the church. Neither can the church be effective if trying to fulfill the family’s role. Leaving the training of the family up to the world, such as the case of public schools, for example, is very dangerous for the soul. Limiting the family in its role and in its numbers ultimately limits the church.