Posted in Homeschooling
Perhaps the best extension of the concept of homeschooling is participating in your church's worship service as a family instead of scattering to the Sunday school rooms. Sunday school itself has an interesting history. It began as an outreach to children in the late 1700's and early 1800's to combat the hooliganism among the unchurched poor and it employed the same tactics as Vacation Bible School. Since then, it has morphed into the catch-all system to keep the churched faithful on the straight-and-narrow. It is not the best system for the same reason that secular group-schooling education is not the best system: It separates the children from their parents as the source for life instruction.
When I was working within the Sunday school system as a youth leader for my church, I realized what a troubled model I was working in. The kids in our group were struggling with sex, drugs, and peer issues. Part of the problem was that every teen went to government schools. Another reason was the fact that their parents were not involved. Just like government school teachers, we fought against the attitude of parents, which could be phrased, "Here, you take my kids and teach them about God. I don't have time."
Still another problem, however, was integration. When our group's kids would graduate, they would either continue to hang around the group or go off and disappear. They did not want the main church worship, despite our efforts. I have to wonder if they were so used to having the word handed to them in a youth format that any work at getting the Word from the main service simply did not seem worth it. Regardless, another reason was that the children weren't seeing it modeled in their own parents.
As a result, my wife and I want to intentionally model our faith for our children. Like with homeschooling, I am not training my children to be children; I am training them to be adults. So why would I put them with children? We want our children to feel at home in corporate worship with adults.
We make it a point to practice Deuteronomy 6:6-7, where we are told to impress God's word on the hearts of our children while we go about our lives. We find that our church's worship gives us a great platform to talk to our kids about God and why we worship the way we do. Perhaps there was something in the sermon or a particularly meaningful song or hymn that our kids don't really understand but should. We can ask them, "Do you remember when they said...? Why did they do that?" Rather than let someone who barely knows my kids try to spoon feed them the Word, I'd much rather train my kids to engage their minds and hearts in their faith. God made us to worship Him with everything in us, body, soul, and spirit and He made us to worship Him as a family.
Follow up post: What Good Is Your Faith?
When I was working within the Sunday school system as a youth leader for my church, I realized what a troubled model I was working in. The kids in our group were struggling with sex, drugs, and peer issues. Part of the problem was that every teen went to government schools. Another reason was the fact that their parents were not involved. Just like government school teachers, we fought against the attitude of parents, which could be phrased, "Here, you take my kids and teach them about God. I don't have time."
Still another problem, however, was integration. When our group's kids would graduate, they would either continue to hang around the group or go off and disappear. They did not want the main church worship, despite our efforts. I have to wonder if they were so used to having the word handed to them in a youth format that any work at getting the Word from the main service simply did not seem worth it. Regardless, another reason was that the children weren't seeing it modeled in their own parents.
As a result, my wife and I want to intentionally model our faith for our children. Like with homeschooling, I am not training my children to be children; I am training them to be adults. So why would I put them with children? We want our children to feel at home in corporate worship with adults.
We make it a point to practice Deuteronomy 6:6-7, where we are told to impress God's word on the hearts of our children while we go about our lives. We find that our church's worship gives us a great platform to talk to our kids about God and why we worship the way we do. Perhaps there was something in the sermon or a particularly meaningful song or hymn that our kids don't really understand but should. We can ask them, "Do you remember when they said...? Why did they do that?" Rather than let someone who barely knows my kids try to spoon feed them the Word, I'd much rather train my kids to engage their minds and hearts in their faith. God made us to worship Him with everything in us, body, soul, and spirit and He made us to worship Him as a family.
Follow up post: What Good Is Your Faith?
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