(A helpful article which illustrates some of the principles below is the interview with Margaret McPhail in the most recent issue of Good News, pp 5-7)
How our children come to faith
Stephen Smallman
P&R, 2006
P&R publishing have a helpful series of booklets entitled ‘Basics of the Reformed faith’. This booklet is particularly helpful for giving a covenantal understanding of how we should expect our children come to faith. It’s written by a grandfather who by God’s grace has seen all four of his children come to faith and marry Christian spouses.
Here are some highlights:
“In my pastoral experience, too many Christian parents are so focused on their responsibility for their children’s spiritual lives that their prayers are essentially, “Lord, help me do my job and fulfill my calling to raise my children in the faith.” They don’t stop and listen first to what God has told them about his commitment to our children” (p. 6)
“When we pray for our children and work with them in our homes and churches, God’s covenant-making and covenant-keeping should give us confidence that it is his purpose and plan to pass his salvation from generation to generation. In the Presbyterian tradition, we use the expression covenant children to describe their unique standing before God. That is a very helpful and biblical way to think of our children. Having this confidence in God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises is the most important single thing we can do for the salvation of our children. We should pray for them with earnestness, but pray with confidence because God has clearly revealed his will for our children and he keeps his promises” (p. 15)
“…Once we understand that regeneration is a hidden work of God, then we can pray and believe that the Spirit would begin that work very early in our children’s lives. It will probably be several years before our children express that faith in a public confession. But that doesn’t mean the Spirit hasn’t been at work from a very early point in their lives. I think many parents are particularly zealous to press their children to make some sort of “decision for Jesus” because they think that such a point marks the beginning of their spiritual lives. Actually, the beginning is the mysterious work that only the Spirit can do.” (p. 17)
“Do our children need to be converted? The answer to that is yes, as long as we don’t define conversion in terms of a particular kind of experience. In a companion booklet in this series, I have defined conversion in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism as “embracing Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.” Based on this definition, our children most certainly need to be converted—but that conversion could be so much a part of their lives that they grow up never knowing a time when they weren’t embracing Jesus Christ freely offered in the gospel.” (pp 20-21).
“The matter of how to make sure that our children are “saved” is a source of real anxiety for many conscientious Christian parents. Concerned parents begin to “evangelize” their children as soon as they are able to talk...Then they proudly announce that Mary, at age three or four, has “received Christ as her Lord” because she prayed some variation of the sinner’s prayer or answered the call at a vacation Bible school or Sunday school meeting. Loving teachers or youth leaders ask our children over and over whether they are “really sure” they have accepted Jesus. After a while they aren’t sure—because they don’t know which time they prayed the prayer was the “real” time. One of my children tells about making up a “testimony” to finally satisfy his youth leaders that he was a believer.
That is all well-intentioned, but I wonder if it is the best approach. How much of this way of dealing with children is a consequence of feeling that their salvation hangs on how effective we are in evangelizing them? I want to encourage you instead to start with an awareness of God’s wonderful promises and to rest in those promises. Of course we have great responsibilities, but that can’t be our starting place.
If we build on the foundation of God’s promises and Jesus’ statement about our children, then we can view the salvation of our children from the perspective of faith rather than anxiety. And by faith, we then set about the privilege of raising our children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The word that better fits this admonition is discipleship rather than evangelism. The earliest disciples were following Jesus even while they were learning what it meant to believe in him. Can’t it be said that our children are part of a family of Jesus’ disciples and that in that sense, they themselves are also disciples? As the family serves the Lord, led by the head of the household, the members of the family learn together what it means to embrace Jesus personally.” (pp 21-22)
“The term used in earlier generations to describe this more discipleship-oriented way of passing along the faith was Christian nurture. The question of how children come to faith received a great deal of attention in the Presbyterian church with the rise of revivalism in the nineteenth century. So much attention was given to dramatic conversion stories that the “boring” examples of people growing up and receiving the faith passed along to them by their families were considered invalid. In some ways it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because such ordinary means as family prayers, catechizing children, and faithful church attendance were being set aside to wait for the next great season of revival, many children were leaving the faith of their fathers” (p. 23)
In previous generations: “Christian nurture was, then, the appointed, the natural, the normal, and ordinary means by which the children of believers were made truly the children of God. Consequently it was the method which these leaders believed should be principally relied upon and employed for the salvation of their children.” (p. 23)