Peter Witkowski Evangelism, Parenting

Do I Need To Win My Child To Christ?

paul-bence-221565Are we responsible for the salvation of our toddler who just jammed an entire waffle into her mouth and the teenager who just texted us that she might have hit a pole when backing up? Will God find fault with us if we fail to usher our children into the kingdom of God before trade in their pig tails for a college I.D. card?

Some pastors would say, “Yes.” Paul proclaimed, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them to Christ” (I Corinthians 9:19). As the following verses make clear Paul did anything and everything he could to win people to Christ. He suffered all kinds of hardships; he argued the gospel from all kinds or perspectives. He worked hard to win many to Christ. “I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some, ” he reported (I Corinthians 9:22b).

Paul appears to be implying that parents must work hard to win their children to the Lord. We parents seem to be responsible for making sure little Johnny walks the aisle and for making sure little Sarah gets baptized. We must talk, persuade, and influence our kids until they are willing to accept the Christian life. We must win them for the Lord while the day is young.

While such thinking is pervasive in SBC circles and in evangelicalism in general, such thinking is not ultimately biblical thinking. Flip back to 1 Corinthians 1:1-2:1. Paul tackles the Corinthians’ boastful thinking by reminding them that God does all the work. God saves sinners as the apostles preached (1 Corinthians 1:21). God chose those whom would believe (I Corinthians 1:27,28, 31). Paul clearly did not believe that his sermons, his evangelism strategies, and his programs caused people to repent and believe.

He wrote in I Corinthians 2:1-2 these words:

And I, when I came you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and hum crucified.

Paul saved no one.

We will save no one. Even if we get junior to repeat a prayer after us, we have saved not saved Junior. We are not responsible for winning our children to Christ. We do not have to play the right music, leverage the right amount of guilt, or seize the perfect moment when our kid is both still and awake. Nor do we have to hold our kid hostage in a spiritual timeout, suspending our family movie night until our girl repents and believes.

We can save no one with our passion, sincerity, and skill.  Only God brings dead souls to life through his Word (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Can you or I by our earnest talking break the power of Satan over a man’s life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Can we hope to convince sinners of the truth of the gospel by patient explanation? No. Can we hope to move men to obey the gospel by any words of entreaty that we may utter? No. Our approach to evangelism is not realistic till we have faced this shattering face and let it make it’s proper impact on us. – J.I. Packer

We do not have to worry about saving our children. We are not called to win them or anyone else to Christ. We are called to proclaim the gospel. As Mark Dever cautions us, “Evangelism must not be confused with the fruit of evangelism.”

We can rest assured that our job is only to teach our kids about the gospel. We can be like Paul and share the gospel with the son who thinks he can work his way to heaven by obeying his parents’ rules. We can evangelize our daughter who believes she can find joy apart from obedience to Christ through self-fulfillment via sex. We can point our son to Christ as he grieves his latest break up; we can point our daughter to Christ as she mourns her rejection from her top college of choice. We can at all times and in all circumstances point our children to Christ.

To be a soul winner is to be a parent who sacrifices all for the chance to share Christ with their children.

We have to be willing to skip our favorite T.V. show, mess up our vacation plans, and lose money on non-refundable tickets. We have to be willing to play with dump trucks and rub a sore knee, and do everything in between. We have to be willing to be all things to our children. J.I. Packer said,

The truth is that personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other person.

Do we have personal relationships with our children? Are we sacrificing all to get to know our children so that we can love them, train them, and point them to the gospel? Or are we just the bank, the shuttle driver, and the tutor? Do we know the kids sleeping under our roof?

We should know our kids. But, we do not have to add ‘salvation’ to our list of parental responsibilities. To be a soul winner is to be a preacher of the gospel. We can do this.  Moreover, we must do this as our own obedience and the vitality of our faith is directly tied to us sharing Christ with our children (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6).

Thankfully, many of our kids are open and receptive to hearing the gospel from our lips. Some eighty-six percent of Americans today claim that their family influenced their identity. How you respond to your kids’ angry bat toss, their perfect report card, and their completion of their driver exam will shape them for better or for worse.

What are will telling our kids? Are we sharing the gospel with them?

Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry, Parenting

Love God: Love Discipline

discipline“No.” I hear the word a lot. I hear my kids say it. Being a children’s pastor, I hear kids at church say it over and over again. If they do not say it, they often brazenly demonstrate the thought by grinning at me while the directly disobeying my latest command to sit down. “No!”

When our kids say no they do not ultimately have a problem with authority. They have a problem with God. The creator of the universe tells children to obey their “parents in the Lord for this is right,” and tells them to “Obey your leaders and submit to them.” (Eph. 6:10; Heb. 13:17).

When they tip over their cup, when they hop out of their seat, and when they scream at their parents in anger, they are declaring themselves to be the God of their universe. They are saying, “I know better; This will make me happy, and I have every right to get it regardless of the cost.” Little people who cannot go to the bathroom by themselves are attempting to turn the world upside down when they say, ‘No.’ We cannot let this happen.

The Bible has a term for such little people: fools. In Psalm 14:1 God says, “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.” We should lovingly discipline children when they do abominable deeds because such children are ultimately rebelling against God. We send kids home from church and place them in timeouts so that they will learn that they our fools. We imperfectly model divine judgement because we want our children to see their foolishness and repent of it. A one week ban from church is much kinder than an eternal life in Hell. If we love the children in our homes and churches, we will discipline them.

This is the mindset of God. He says in Hebrews 12:6, “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” God punishes his children because he loves them and wants what is best for them. For us to be like God, we too must discipline children out of love.

If we remember 1 Corinthians 13, we will remember that love does not boast and does not seek out it is own. We discipline not because ‘our’ authority was challenged, and not because we are upset that ‘our’ plans have been changed. We should never punish children to defend our pride. Like our children, we are sinners daily in need of grace and correction. We discipline because we hate sin wherever it appears and because we hate seeing foolishness destroy our children’s lives. God administers such loving discipline to us. We must follow our father’s example. Are you ready?

Peter Witkowski Parenting

Why IQ Scores Are Not Enough

I-QWhether it’s the fake IQ of Sheldon Cooper or the true genius of Albert Einstein, we typically gravitate towards smart people. We sit in awe of their keen insights, wondering what special arrangement of genes made their success possible. We tend to assume that smart people are born smart.

But the reality is far more complex than an IQ scores. Men and women can have great IQ scores and yet never win a noble peace prize, never graduate first in their class, and never even get a stable job.

Take Physicist Robert Oppenheimer and college drop out Chris Langan. Both men were incredibly smart. Both men faced adversity and experienced very different results. 

Malcom Gladwell reports that Oppenheimer was brought before an academic counsel at Cambridge University when he poisoned his tutor. Oppenheimer received academic probation and was told to visit a psychiatrist. Several years later, the gifted Chris Langan was kicked out of Montana State University because he could not get a ride to his 8AM classes. The University would not let him switch classes.

What determined the men’s success in academia was not their IQ. Their success was driven by their families’ background. Langan grew up in a poor and dysfunctional home run by divorced and drug riddled parents. Oppenheimer grew up in a stable home with parents that valued education and ingenuity. Consequently, Oppenheimer learned how to read and interact with people while Langan did not. Their family backgrounds trumped their IQ.

Their stories are not anomalies. Studies repeatedly have shown that children without fathers are five times more likely to live in poverty, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in jail than those with a father. When single moms remarry, their kids benefit greatly, gaining access to better social, financial and health care networks. The way we structure our homes and the decisions we make about our marriages will have a lasting influence over our children.

Exodus 20:5 agrees. The text says,

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands[a] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The parent who loves something more than God will teach their children to love sports, money, and academic awards more than Jesus. Such loves do not prepare people to thrive. They lead ultimately to judgement and despair regardless of one’s IQ.

To raise successful kids, Christians must actively live out their faith. They must do more than drop off their kids at church a couple of times a week. They must create a culture of faith in their homes and families. They must regularly follow and obey the Scriptures. (Deut. 6). They must regularly talk about the Bible and their faith with the children, detailing how the Bible drives their choices. When Christians expose their children to the commands of Christ, parents expose children to the grace they need to succeed in life. Having a home structured around the gospel is the greatest gift we can give our children.

Admittedly, Christians homes cannot guarantee a child’s salvation. But they can point children to the truth. They can equip children with the life skills and the theological framework needed to navigate life. They can bless children with advantages not found in secular homes. Children need these skills to succeed.

Intelligence alone does not guarantee success. Intelligence matched with a godly home can produce great results. Are you ready to parent in such a way that your family revolves around the Bible?