by Bob R. Bayles


CATCHING THE VISION: Family-Based Discipleship


It is not the role of a children’s pastor or youth pastor or senior pastor to evangelize and disciple my children. That honor and distinction belongs to me, their father.


OR 16 YEARS I have had the dis- tinct honor and blessing of teach- ing many young adults in the Department of Christian Min- istries at Lee University. Many of them were (and are) incredibly talented and passionate for the ministry and kingdom of God, coming from all types of back- grounds: churched, unchurched, Pentecos- tal, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and non-denominational. Despite their differ- ences, I have observed a common thread. Many cannot clearly articulate the core principles of the Christian faith, indeed even of their sponsoring denomination. Recently I had 35 students in a required course. One day I asked them, “If I give you a sheet of paper, a pen, and 30 minutes, who could write out your denomination’s basic doctrinal beliefs?” Not one student raised their hand. Under-


F 18 EVANGEL | November 2010


stand that 20 of these were Church of God young people fresh out of their youth groups. I relate this not to criticize but to sound an alarm that many of our young people know a lot about culture but are not nearly as literate in biblical and theo- logical principles as we think or wish. This story illustrates the statistics published by The Barna Group, Lifeway Research, the PEW Research Center, and others that show most young people drop out of church after leaving high school.


The Problem


At the risk of oversimplifying, the bottom line is that discipleship is not happening at a deep level. As Judges 2:10 describes, we are bringing up a generation that does “not know the Lord” (NKJV). When youth, fresh out of 18 years of church ministries, cannot articulate the


basics of the Christian faith (much less their specific denominational doctrines), we have a problem. There are multiple cul- prits in this failure: the church (at large); children’s ministry geared to “Disney- esque” methods; youth ministry geared to mosh pits, laser lights, fog machines, dance machines, ad nauseam; adult dis- cipleship programs that barely exist (we adults often don’t feel we need more knowledge about the Bible). My suspicion and burden is that families, and particu- larly fathers, are not doing what God has called us to do: disciple our children.


The Vision


Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Often this is taken to mean a visionary person or a church’s vision for ministry—“Where there is no vision statement, the people


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