Southern Bread Blog

Somebody from church mentioned to my wife this week that there were some events coming up that she could take part in that would help her be “more involved” in the church. My wife told her that she would participate in the event she called about but beyond that she didn’t want to become “more involved”. I think this is hard for some people to understand. Church folk have come to associate spirituality and godliness with how much time you spend doing church. This could not be farther from the truth. History provides us a glimpse of church life that was much more reserved and non-intrusive up until just recently. Congregating with other believers is a good thing, and something that is explicitely mentioned in scripture as something that should not be overlooked. But just like everything else, when you turn that into “churchism” it gets your life all out of wack.

The biggest problem with spending lots of time at church is that it directly takes time away from your family. Nowhere do we see that as much as in the youth departments of our churches. Parents spend so much time at church that it might as well be a second job, and their kids demonstrate that lack of hands-on time. My wife and I are consistently appalled at the immodesty of the girls in modern church youth groups. It’s a distraction to all concerned and it is clearly something that needs to be addressed, but not by the church. This, as well as most other issues, should be addressed by parents. It’s not enough to have someone come and speak to your youth group about modesty; telling them they shouldn’t wear those overly revealing clothes in their closets. No, it needs to be the parents that should never let those clothes into their house to begin with. Parents in the church have got to stop depending on others to instruct and guide their children in important life lessons. That’s our job.

Is it time to talk about sex? Sign ’em up for a sex ed. class at school. Do they need bible study? Send them to a youth retreat. It’s a mindset that has to be changed. As parents we are responsible for much more than just meeting our children’s basic human needs of food, shelter and clothing. Those things are the responsibility of every human being to every other. If we see someone in need of basic life needs, we are to meet them. But, as parents, we are responsible for so much more in the life of our children. It’s our responsibility to make sure they grow up with a clear understanding of scripture and why they can trust it. We are the ones who should be a model of modesty for them to follow, and a hand of discipline when they don’t. They should come to us to learn about the proper and godly way of interacting with the opposite sex. Basically it’s time that church parents stopped giving their lives to the church and started giving it to their children.