How Can We Help The Next Generation?

In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here is this week’s question:Dear Dave and Tom, My husband and I listen to your program and we enjoy it very much. Yet as we hear what you are saying regarding the state of the church, which our experiences have confirmed, it is more than a little distressful.We worry about our children if the Lord doesn’t return before they become adults.What can we do to help prepare them for a generation in which the church is so different than anything we have experienced.

Tom:

Dave, this almost sounds like a person over-alarmed, but the last thirty years we have seen trends take place within Evangelical Christianity that makes you wonder if the Lord doesn’t return until the next generation, or the end of the next generation what they are going to have to go through.And having 5 children of my own, the preparation is the preparation for any Christian, and that is, know the Word, know what you believe, why you believe it, be encouraged in the Word, check everything out, have a healthy skepticism about what’s going on, but mainly it’s the Word, read the Word, teach the Word, preach the Word.

Dave:

Well, Tom, without God, without his Word, we’re lost, we’re wandering, and the tragedy is, and we’re talking about public schools now, but some Christian schools are becoming almost as bad.

Tom:

Well, we could start at Christian colleges and work your way down, even in some cases home schooling, although that may be the best of all options.

Dave:

Yeah, so what do we get in public education?Well, evolution is taught.Now Richard Dawkins says, It was evolution that made an atheist out of me.Okay?Well, now we see what it will do in public schools, but you can’t bring in Creation as an alternate.Then we have the immorality, the sex education, and the denial of truth.Now we’re into relativism, which we have just been talking about.You couldn’t say that anything is right and something else is wrong, so take your pick, it’s kind of a cafeteria menu here, what would you like?So, Tom, I tremble for young people who are growing up now.

Tom:

So what do they do, Dave, these people who wrote this, they need some of your council, what do you recommend?

Dave:

Well, you had better have daily Bible study and prayer in your home.My father did it twice a day in our home when I grew up.I can tell you that’s still in good stead because I didn’t even have to memorize the Bible.I’msure there’s a whole lot more than I could have memorized, but I just knew it from Genesis to Revelation because I heard it over and over and over.Now, somehow, you’ve got to know what your children are learning in school.You have to counteract it.You can’t be—

Tom:

So, this isn’t the work of a youth pastor, or your pastor at church, this isn’t the church, this is a function of the home, the husband being the spiritual head of the home, his wife certainly the teacher of young children.But this has got to be a group effort, I think.

Dave:

Well, that’s true, Tom, but the home is where it begins.And somehow, you have to instill in your children a respect for the Word of God, the fear of the Lord, and if the parents don’t show any difference—I mean, you know the old saying:“If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”Well, I go down the street, I live in this neighborhood, I see they seem to live like everybody else, you go into their home, they are watching the same TV shows, they’re laughing at the same off-color, well, they get it worse and worse, they’re laughing at the same godless jokes—they just love it, they can fit right into, I don’t know the names of these programs, “Friends,” for example, they just fit right in with whoever it is.This is the world presenting their ideas and undermining the morals.So you can’t just be ignorant of this, you’ve got to know what the enemy is that you’re fighting, and you’ve got to show your children.You can’t just scold them and say, No, that’s wrong.You have to show your children by your own attitude and interest.What are you really interested in, what do you talk about at the dinner table?Is it really important, this stuff, or is it just like some TV show that you’d find and this family of ridiculous family.It’s one of the things that are making everybody ridiculous, it doesn’t really matter, it has no relationship to truth, who cares?Well then you can’t then says okay, now let’s have a little Bible study.It has to be consistent in the home.

Tom:

Dave, what about the church?We’ve seen major, major changes in the church, and as we see the church in the world and the world in the church, what about that?Because our young people, certainly home is important, but they need fellowship, they need young people to interact with.

Dave:

Tom, we talk about this all the time, we’re in an apostasy.We don’t even have the real Scriptures, we’ve got The Message or we’ve got a video, DVD.

Tom:

So, we have an EmergingChurch which wants you to cozy up to this postmodern generation in their rebellion against authority, and so on.

Dave:

Yeah, so much has gone wrong in the church, Tom.I don’t know where we would begin, but there again, it begins with the home.The father, is he going to take someone to a church where he knows they are violating the Word of God, where they don’t even study the Bible, where they make a pretext of studying the Bible, where you’re not going to get the truth.Well, you’ve got to know what that is from the home, and then you’ve got to shun—and I’m not telling people to leave their church—well, you may have to.Because if the pastor and the elders, if they have elders, will not go by the Bible, you had better get out of there, otherwise you’re following men, and you will be subject to all of their errors and heresies.