here - The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

disciple children through church programs instead of
expecting parents to participate in this process? No matter
how many times I encourage and equip the moms
and dads, some of them don’t even seem to be trying!
Even the ones that try don’t always do a good job. Why
constantly acknowledge the parents as primary disciplemakers
when so many of them do it so poorly? This is
so inefficient!”
If that’s the way you feel, you’re partly correct. If
your goal is organizational efficiency, equipping parents
may be an inefficient use of your efforts at times, and
turning over children’s spiritual lives to professionals at
church might make perfect sense.
But efficiency is not the goal of gospel-motivated
ministry.
The crucified and risen Lord Jesus determines the
shape and establishes the goal for his church, and it has
been his Father’s good pleasure to constitute his church
as a conglomeration of amateurs, not as a corporation
managed by professionals (1 Cor 12:4–31). His Spirit
does not give gifts for the purpose of making the church
efficient; he arranges gifts in the body according to his
will in order to make us holy (1 Cor 12:11).
The role of God-called leaders in the church is to
encourage and to equip their brothers and sisters (Eph
4:11–13) to serve as ministers and missionaries first
within their own households, and then far beyond their
households (Acts 2:39). These processes are not likely to
be quick or efficient. Sometimes, it will feel as if professionalized
programs would be an easier solution, but
no church program can develop in a child what parents
are able to engrave in their children’s souls day-by-day.
And so, despite the apparent inefficiency of expecting
parents to disciple their own children, family-equipping
ministers persist in their passion for training fathers and
mothers as the primary disciple-makers in their children’s
lives.
In the early twentieth century, a journalist named
G.K. Chesterton offered these comments about the
British and American jury system:
The trend of our epoch up to this time has been
consistently towards specialism and professionalism.
We tend to have trained soldiers because
they fight better, trained singers because they sing
better, trained dancers because they dance better,
specially
instructed laughers because they laugh better,
and so on and so on. … [Yet] our civilization has
decided, and very justly decided, that determining
the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too
important to be trusted to trained men. When
it wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks
men who know no more law than I know, but
who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box.
When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar
system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it
uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything
done which is really serious, it collects twelve of
the ordinary men standing round. The same thing
was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of
Christianity.
A similar statement might be made regarding the
training of children to respond to the gospel day-byday.
Though professionals may certainly partner with
parents in this task, such a serious undertaking is too
significant to be relinquished to professionals, too profound
to be befuddled by a focus on efficiency. The formation
of a child’s faith is not a skill for specialists. It is a
habit to be developed in the lives of amateurs, and these
amateurs are known as “Dad” and “Mom.”
In my childhood, one of the most significant habits
that shaped my soul was a single, simple pattern that
required no special skills. Each night, my mother came
into my room, sat on the side of my bed, and listened to
me pray. What was significant about this wasn’t so much
the prayer. It was the conversations--and the fact that I
had to face my mother every evening, regardless of what
I might have done during the day.
At some point in early adolescence, I informed my
mother that I could handle praying on my own from
that point forward. I regretted my request even then,
and I regret it even more now. In some inexplicable
way, knowing that I would have to face my mother each
night placed a limit on what I was willing to say and to
do during the day.
Today, this pattern from my childhood marks the
3