Over the past few days I have been thinking about the text in Proverbs 22:6 "Train up your child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." With this proverb in mind I had to ask myself the question why is it that 80% of youth who grow up in the church cease to continue going to church when they become adults. The only answer I can come up with is that we are failing to train them.
It is easy to blame the parents of the children. Ultimately the responsibility for training a child falls to the parents and more specifically the father. Parenting is a great topic that I would love to discuss some other time but that is not the topic I want us to focus on right now. Right now I want to focus on the churches role to train in general.
Why is it that it seems only 10 percent of the people in our churches are active in the ministries of the church? Why is it that only a handful of people seem willing to share their faith with others? Our churches are filled with a bunch of talkers, but not a lot of walkers. I believe that is because we have failed at training people to do.
How do most churches go about training their people? Well a major form of training comes in the Sunday morning sermon. If your preacher is good he will unfold what God's word has to say, point to our need to do what God's word has to say, and he will even tell you some ways in which one might do what God's word has to say, but it stops there. You may be asking what more do you want, and we get into that. How else do churches train their people? The next form of training is almost always Sunday School, or a Small Group. Many of which are poor reflections of a Bible Study, that ask how do you feel about this text, or what do you think the text is saying. If you have a good group you may get into a good discussion that real gets at what God is saying not just at your feelings, or even what you think it means. This too however stops with talking. If your church is good it has possibly set up a discipleship program, most of those programs I have seen take individuals through a workbook or something covering the basic tenets of Christianity. Most of these discipleship programs again stop at talking about the Faith. Should we wonder why we have churches filled with talkers, and not a lot of walkers.
David Maryn Llyod-Jones notes in his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount "I can never forget, in this connection, a man who whenever I met him, always impressed upon me the fact that he was a great Bible student. I suppose in one sense he was, but his life was unfortunately very far removed from that which one finds described in the pages of the New Testament." You see studying the Bible is not enough. Talking about means nothing when that does not translate into actions. What good is it to have the cure for the worlds greatest problems if we never apply it. Faith with out deeds is dead. Yet too many churches seem to feel they are doing a good job by filling people with knowledge but never really training them in how to use that knowledge.
Training people takes more than talking. Most people need to see what is being talked about played out. They need someone to come by and show them how to do it. Not only that but they need someone to help them through putting their faith in action.
Let's use evangelism as an example. We tell people that God calls them to do it. We show them the need to do it. We may even give them some scripts and techniques for evangelism, that tend to never go as planned in reality. Then we tell them to go and do it. After that they go away saying I want to tell people the good news, I need to do it, but when it comes time to do it most never feel like they are ready or know how. Yet I almost guarantee you if we would take the time to go out with them, or bring them along with us as we do it and show them they will be more likely to do it. After showing theme a few times, you have them try. You know what will happen before long they will be doing it on their own with out you. Then you need to impress on them the need to train people just as you trained them.
In many of Paul's Epistle he makes a plea that the Churches should remember how he acted when he was with them. They should be like he is. In his letter to Titus Paul tells Titus to have the older woman teach the younger, and he expresses to Titus to be an example. Titus was not not just suppose to talk about it, but show the people visibly as an example so they had something tangible to help theme understand how to live out the Doctrines he taught.
Christ for three years led the disciples and ministered in their presence. He took them along so they could see how he did things. Then he sent them out two by two to do it. Afterwards he called them back and debriefed them on what they did. He took time to walk along side them. In the book of John he notes to them that he has set the example for what they were to do. He not only talked about how to do the things they were to do but he made sure they experienced it.
Our churches need to find a way of training their people. Helping them to experience, and visibly see how all the talk plays out in their daily walk. Imagine what the church could do if it was filled with walkers, and not just talkers.
