Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “A life of service”
Our Bible verse for today: “These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “We must pass the faith on to the next generation.”
Os Guinness, in his book “Impossible People”, tells a story from the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. In the relay races Team USA was highly favored to win gold medals. They had the fastest runners, they were the best trained, and the relay races were events that American runners had dominated for decades. But in the 2008 Olympics Team USA won no medals in relay races. Here’s why:
“Again and again spectators in Beijing and around the world heard the eerie sound of a hollow aluminum tube hitting the track. The American runners had dropped the baton. The US teams had the speed and the strength, but not the art of the handoff. They were brilliant individual runners, but swift though they were, they were not a relay team.”
Increasingly Christians in the USA are not a relay team either. We have lost the art of the handoff. We are not effectively passing the faith on to the next generation and consequently we are losing the race to influence our culture.
I’m convinced that an effective life of service for the cause of Christ on earth has got to include effectively passing the faith on to the next generation. Adult Christians must not only faithfully practice the faith themselves, but they must make it a point to involve the children and teens in their lives in the practice of the faith as well.
They should hear you pray, and they should pray with you. They should see you reading your Bible, and they should hear you talk about it. You have to go to church, and you must bring them with you. You should participate in ministry activities, and you should involve them in those same activities with you. If you want the faith to be a vital part of their lives, they must see that it’s also a vital part of yours.
One of the things I love about our church, Oak Hill Baptist, is that because we are a small church, age distinctions are less of a factor in our church life than is commonly true in larger churches. Rather than being always divided and separated into age-distinctive groups for church activities, we have everyone involved in everything all the time. Young people are as much a part of the overall church life as are adults. Children serve food and bus tables at our Rescue Mission Sunday nights; teenagers serve as greeters and ushers and worship dancers; we often have children and teens singing in the choir right alongside adults; and on it goes.
As a Christian community an important part of our life of service for the cause of Christ on earth is to pass the faith on to the next generation. To accomplish that, we must involve them in all aspects of the practice of the faith. If we do, it will become as much a part of their lives as it is in ours.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 