What's the purpose of the church, and how can it help my children? Part 1

If we want our children to adopt any life habit, life skill, or principle, we should explain to them why it's important and what the benefits are. Our job isn't done until they understand why we're asking them to do what we're asking them to do. The same goes for church. If we take or drag our children to church and never help them understand why, never help them see the purpose behind it, they'll find better things to do with their Sunday mornings when they're old enough to make the choice.

Three of the benefits church provides parents and children are help in teaching process, support by a loving community, and opportunities for choosing and building good friends.

1. Help in the teaching process

Life isn't lived in isolation, so it's very difficult to teach our children how to live and why a certain lifestyle is best unless they're involved in a larger group that supports and shares in the teaching process. This is one of the primary purposes for church in our children's lives: to help us in teaching our children about God and in preparing them for life. If we're the only ones involved in our children's spiritual life, the only ones who talk to them about God's pronciples and way of life, they may well end up thinking that anything that has to do with God is just our own personal hang-up.

Some people go to the other extreme. Many parents (and our culture in general) put the promary (or even solo) responsibility for teaching children spiritual matters on the church and its leaders. But it's impossible for pastors and teachers to teach kids how to live God's way when they see them only one or two hours a week.

There isn't a single place in the Bible that puts this responsibility on the church. The primary task is ours, as parents, with the church there to assist and support us. The people who teach our children at church are delighted when we take an active role in spiritually training our children, and they will serve as active and effective advocates with us in that process.

We need to help our children understand that one of the main reasons they go to church is to learn about God and his principles for life- knowledge that will help them be all that God wants them to be and have a good, rewarding life. It's fine to talk to them about all the fun they'll have, but we need to encourage them with the benefits of learning as well. (it's not unlike school. Although kids know that school can be fun and that they can spend time with their friends there, they also understand that the primary purpose of school is for them to learn and to gain the benefits of an education).

Incidentally, this learning angle will help you when your children become bored with church and don't want to go. If the only reason for going is to have fun, and they're not having fun, you have nothing left to motivate them with. But if one of the primary reasons for church attendance is for them to learn, then you can continue to motivate them to go, even as you seek ways of making the experience more enjoyable.