An Effective Environment For Our Children

Within the book You Lost Me by David Kinnaman, the author discusses why young Christians are leaving the church and rethinking faith. He gives us an overview of the trends within the mosaic generation. Through this overview, we as student ministers can better understand the generation in which we are ministering to. With this understanding, we can reach these students and bring them back to their home, that is the Church. In this report, I will discuss the book by chapter and finish with my reflection.

Whatever age group or setting you are working with, you must plan an environment that encourages the development of the whole child. First of all you think about the different settings that children and young people aged 0-16 years may experience. These settings have both indoor and outdoor physical spaces that need to be considered. The layout of the physical environment is your team’s responsibility and contributes to giving each child positive outcomes in their learning, and development. The available space will influence the way the furniture and equipment is set out.

Pipes and Lee, in Family to Family: Leaving a Lasting Legacy seeks to provide parents with a framework for passing a lasting Christian legacy to their children. Of course, they do so with a decidedly conservative underpinning one would expect from Southern Baptist ministers and they make no excuses for doing so. Pipes and Lee lay out a plan in six chapters where parents can pass on their faith to their children and reverse the trend of them leaving the church upon turning 18. Beginning with Healthy Families in Chapter One and concluding with sharing the message in Chapter Six, Pipes and Lee provide and outline filled with helpful tips and ideas on how families can grow closer

What is meant by a positive environment is a happy place. A happy environment is a setting that has structure and routine so that children can rely on a secure environment. Always looking at the positive in everything that children do can help them to be more confident. A positive environment can also help to stimulate children and in affect make the children want to learn more.

While the goal of Christian education and discipleship is spiritual formation of the new believer into a true disciple who makes other true disciples, this concept has been watered down in the American church today by emphasis on programs instead of progressive spiritual growth in every member’s life. There are many

A church whose pastor and others in leadership have failed to put in place a proactive plan for discipleship for Believers is usually a “growing” church — growing stagnant, growing cold, growing spiritually immature Christians, and eventually, many growing closed. Patte said, “There is much at stake in accepting or rejecting the challenge of discipleship…” When a pastor or a church makes a conscious decision to make discipleship of Believers a primary focus in their

Another challenge concerning the Millennials is that a lot of these young adults are growing up without attending church. The Barna group calls them the unchurched segment and report that this segment has increased in the last 10 years, from 44% to 52% (5 Reasons). This is a problem because it decreases the chances for new members to join the church. The majority of people that follows a specific religion learned about that religion in early childhood. Students of human behavior believe that “The most significant borrowing occurs in early childhood. Family is thus an important factor…” (Wuthnow 106). If the number of the unchurched segment continues to grow at this pace, in the next few decades, this will continue to be a major concern for church leaders across the Americas. It is a lot harder to try to reach those people that have never attended church or don’t come from a religious background than try to reach those that belong to a church or have been brought up in the faith.

The word “Christian” in Colorado Christian University is more than just a belief shared amongst the Faculty and Student Body. It is the foundation on which all aspects of the educational experience are built. Beginning with a strong Statement of Faith, which aligns with core beliefs of the National Association of Evangelicals, the University proclaims its belief “in the Bible as being the only authoritative Word of God, that God exists in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as belief in the salvation and resurrection that is only found in Christ Jesus” (Statement of Faith at Colorado Christian University, n.d.).

Limited Church: Unlimited Kingdom: Uniting Church and Family in the Great Commission addresses the challenge of how churches can centralize God’s call to parents to shepherd their children found in Deuteronomy chapter six. Rob Rienow founded Visionary Family Ministries with his wife Amy in 2004. In addition he is a pastor at Gospel Fellowship Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He earned an MA in theology at Wheaton College, an Mdiv from Trinity International Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry in Christian Leadership from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Rienow has authored many several books addressing family ministry including Visionary Parenting, Reclaiming the Sufficiency of Scripture, When They Turn Away: Drawing Your Adult Child Back to Christ and Five Reasons For Spiritual Apathy In Teen. In this work, Limited Church: Unlimited Kingdom, he not only argues that every

Discipleship students, or those who already have a faith commitment, tend to immediately join one of two categories. The first, or Stagnant, students are those who “made a decision to follow Christ at some time in life but never really grew in faith.” These students, from the outside, look very similar to the world as “the distinction between churched and unchurched students is rapidly shrinking.” These students require time to draw them into a

There has also been a decline in spiritual enrichment in churches to its followers which has allowed new religions and new age innovations to come up. Christians convert to these religions trying to look for spiritual enrichment and fulfillment. “Christian knowledge is being challenged with scientific and worldly knowledge. There is no longer the idea of one truth, one correct body of knowledge,” (Bruce, 1996). In a world based on facts, Christians are continually looking for facts of God’s existence and they forget that faith believes in the unseen.

Educators need to understand the impact of religion on the lives of their students. According to Gallup poll data, nearly 95% of teens believe in God and 86% believe that Jesus Christ is either God or the Son of God (Gallup & Lindsay, 1999 as cited in Ream, 2003). These and other similar statistics demonstrate the importance of considering religion when dealing with young people. Ream

As we go through our day by day lives in a very secular world, I believe it is very easy to question ourselves as Christian educators. We ask ourselves if we are doing our jobs exactly to God’s calling. Are we striving to teach the truth? And with that, what is truth? According to Gaebelein in his book The Pattern of God’s Truth, “All truth is God’s truth.” As educators we are called upon to cultivate “Christlike minds” (Moreland). This is quite the task, especially given our surrounding circumstances and constant secular environment. Not only are we, as educators surrounded by this secularism, but our young, adolescent students are as well. So, how do we accomplish such as task of guiding

Why are the youth being drawn in great numbers to the Christian faith? Could it be the sense of belonging that they are after? Has the culture that they have grown up in made it important to belong to a group? What makes the youth of the nineties different from their predecessors? It’s not like all of these kids come from disadvantaged or broken homes. Many of them are well-adjusted middle-class kids that don't need to be attached to something out side of themselves to be validated or excepted. The one thing that they all seem to have in common is that they have been raised in a much more complex social atmosphere than past youngsters. They have spent more time in front of a television than any other generation. They have been labeled a generation without a cause. Their energy has been sapped by endless hours of Nintendo and the constant race to stay on the cutting edge of fashion. They become consumers at younger ages too and that brings on the pressure to have the best, and have it first. Kids find themselves making one purchase after another and never coming away with anything that will last. The life that Hollywood romanices and glorifies leaves them feeling hollow and unfulfilled. The youth today are experiencing burn out at a very young age. Suicide

It is the youth who are encountering the most serious challenge to his/her faith under the impact of godless culture of modernity.