Train a Child
Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.†NET What an awesome privilege to walk with someone on their path to the Kingdom. Teachers and pastors are especially called to this task. How about you? Do you feel called? Do you have to be a parent or a Sabbath School teacher? God calls you to walk with a child or adult on their spiritual journey, no matter who you are. I so appreciate some of our members who are walking with others in preparation for baptism, answering their questions, encouraging them when they fall, praying with them.
I recently got an invitation to go back to Bend to participate in the baptism of four young people who are students at our church school there. The question immediately flashed through my mind, “Why me? Why is it important to go all that way, when they do have a pastor there?†The answer soon jelled in my mind. Most of the four had been students in Bev’s class and I had helped with the Bible and PE classes. We were the spiritual leaders in the church and school and our participation in their lives created a bond that was meaningful and positive enough for them to invite us to come back and seal their decision to follow Christ in baptism.
Only in the Kingdom will we know how much influence the Christian School had in molding the characters and choices of your children. Ellen White writes in Child Guidance, p. 304, “In planning for the education of their children outside the home, parents should realize that it is no longer safe to send them to the public school, and should endeavor to send them to schools where they will obtain an education based on a Scriptural foundation. Upon every Christian parent there rests the solemn obligation of giving to News & Notes from the McMinnville Seventh-day Adventist Church his children an education that will lead them to gain a knowledge of the Lord and to become partakers of the divine nature through obedience to God’s will and way.â€
Now I know there are those who argue that some children have left the path after attending a Christian school when they mixed with the wrong crowd. There are also those who went to a public school and went on to become pastors. Parents can never relinquish their parental oversight no matter what school their children attend. Each child has a different disposition, background, talents, and circumstances, which need to be taken into consideration when deciding on how to educate their children. If you had to risk, where would you take your risk, with the church school, homeschool, or the public school?
We are told that children need a good home, a good church, and a good school. If one fails, it is more difficult for the other two to pick up the slack. It is hard to sit on a three-legged stool, when it has only one or two legs.