by Tom Parsons

Created on: March 28, 2009

Some people argue that the church is made up of bricks and stones, and as such is simply another structure in our towns and cities. But churches are not made of bricks and stones. Churches may build structures for their use, but the building is not the church. The church is people who have made a personal, conscious choice to have a faith relationship with God.

I do not believe it is wrong for parents who have faith to share that faith with their children as they grow up. I encourage parents to take their children to church as they are growing up. Churches are not about gold, as some might say, but are about God. The view of God they give may not be an accurate one, but it is, nevertheless, a starting point for children.

With more than twenty-five years of experience as the pastor of a local church behind me, I am convinced that the Christian faith, at least, cannot be taught. It must be caught. People become Christians when they make a conscious decision to trust Jesus Christ by faith. It has nothing to do with baptism, or church membership, or what faith the parents have or do not have. It is a personal and conscious choice. I cannot speak for other religions, but this is the way it is in the Christian faith.

My wife and I raised our three daughters in church. We took them to church three times a week because it was the natural thing for our family to do. It was part of our family life. However, each of our daughters had the right at some point to make her own decision about personal faith. In fact, as parents we encouraged them to do so, and as a pastor I encouraged the same thing of all our children and young people.

All three of my daughters, now grown with families of their own, made a personal faith decision to trust Christ. Two of them with their families worship God at the same church with which my wife and I are now affiliated. The third one lives in another city and is part of a church with very similar views to those of our church.

We are glad they made those choices, but we never forced them to do do. We tried to teach them what we believed, and then practice it consistently in front of them. We tried to teach them to depend upon God, and then we tried to practice dependence on God consistently.

Our daughters are true believers today, not because we forced them to go to church, not because we spoon fed religion to them, not because we threatened to disown them if they did not follow our faith. They are believers today at least partly because we chose to teach them the tenets of faith and show them with a consistent example what a believer's life is like. They then chose to commit their own lives, not to religious tenets, but to a personal God who loves them and takes care of them.

Local churches, and their buildings, are not the problem as some have suggested. The problem is parents who try to force their children into religious dogma they do not consistently practice themselves. Parents must be true believers themselves before they can place each of the bricks of faith in the edifice that is their children.

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