"Our kids have grown up in boxes; sheltered homes, sheltered schools, sheltered colleges"

Escaping the Christian Ghetto

Do You Live in a Christian Ghetto?

We have homeschooled our daughters (7th and 5th grade) from the very beginning but recently they have been going to the local public school for a couple of music classes. When I see them interact with the other kids and see the limited presence of believers among the hundreds of children it makes me wonder if I’m missing something. I want to protect my girls and give them the “greenhouse” opportunity to plant deep roots without being faced with too much temptation, but they are going to grow up and have to know how to interact with people who have drastically different viewpoints than they do. I can’t help but wonder if it makes more sense for them to begin experiencing that while they still have mom and dad to guide them through some difficult situations. Also, the public schools are full of sweet kids that I desperately want to see come to know Christ. My girls would have a much better opportunity to share His love with them than I ever will. Am I hindering Christ’s work through my kids? Is the great commission only for adults? These are not easy questions and one of my great fears is that I will make the wrong choice out of an incorrect motivation. It’s too easy to not do it because I’m afraid what other people in our church might think, or to do it because it sure would be nice to save $2000 a year and give them access to more educational opportunities. At this point, I think we are leaning towards sending them for their sophomore years onward… still begging God for clarity until then.

Kirkedoyle,

Raising kids and parenting is the ultimate form of discipleship. The world is full of people who will make generalisations and strong statements such as “You must never send your kids to a public school because they will never end up following Jesus” or “You must send your kids to a public school because homeschooling is isolationist and Christian schooling is anti-evangelism” Both positions are extreme. I think your logic of homeschooling young, while introducing them into public social situations is sound.

BTW: I was homeschooled from year 8-12 and turned out fine. In fact, I now base much of my work from home (I run my a Human Resource consultancy). Homeschooling prepared me well for this.

The problem of the public school system is the indoctrination of the world system, in my opinion. We homeschooled our kids, they all played sports (hockey, soccer, a little baseball) and worked at McDonald’s. They got plenty of opportunity to interact with other kids and had good testimonies and witnessing opportunities. They are all serving the Lord as adults.

If Matt means some kind of total isolation by his article, then he’s right, that’s not helpful. Otherwise, he’s probably wrong.

By the way… where in the world do we have sheltered seminaries??? I’ve never experienced one of those. Every seminary I’ve ever been aware of has pushed involvement in some kind of ministry outside the four walls. Most seminarians are working their way through somehow, working “in the real world”. Not sure what he is complaining about there.

I’m sure that most everyone here is familiar with the annual “See You At The Pole” event which is held at schools nationwide. For those who may not be familiar with it, here it is in a nutshell: Christian kids gather around their school’s flagpole on one well-publicized morning each year to pray together for their schools.

In public schools, this has numerous repercussions. It serves as a visible witness to the campus. It gives Christian kids a unique leadership-opportunity at their schools, since these must be student-run events at public schools. It helps Christian kids identify other believers at the school. It also serves as a reality-check of the student’s convictions, for it requires them to identify themselves as Christians in an atmosphere in which doing so may open them up to scorn & ridicule. These aspects are what makes SYATP effective: they can prompt a Christian student to take bold steps of courageous faith to participate.

Many Christian schools also hold SYATP events, but for what purpose really? At Christian schools, SYATP events are school-sanctioned. (The ones I’ve seen are scheduled on the school’s events calendars, and promoted on the school’s websites, for example.) It would be expected to see all students present—to not be present would be considered the exception. Who on campus would consider it unusual for students to gather to pray? On a Christian school campus, SYATP does not serve the same purposes, with the same outcomes, that it does on a public school campus. It’s just another example of complacent Christianity.

So how to correct this? Why not have Christian school students gather around the flagpole at a prominent public park, or civic institution, or someplace else off-campus where their presence can serve some of the same purposes that SYATP does on public school campuses?

This article feels like a straw man built by someone who took northland in a less sheltered direction.

** Deleted by author! I should have chosen my words more carefully instead of arguing from silence :( **

• I’ve never really seen seminarians sheltered (good point Don). Having both been to seminary and being at a church with a seminary. The seminarian men are working hard to balance earning income (often times from multiple part time jobs) + family / marriage + school


• Avoiding the public school / Christian day school / home school debate: parents have to decide what is best for their own situation which includes: 1.) availability and ability to home school (I’m not convinced every mother (upon whom this task might primarily land) has the ability and temperament for this; 2.) a decent CDS (some are super … many are not); 3.) the necessary finances for CDS. With three kids it could cost $15,000 more or less. I conclude that the public school children are not sheltered. Probably the CDS students tend to be. And perhaps the HS‘rs may or may not be.


• I don’t think Northland is less sheltered. I really think the school has both a great history and a viable future if they can complete the transition from fundy U to C.E. U. Their struggle will be their remoteness, low enrollment, competition from other C.E. schools like Campbellsville University in KY. Also I don’t think the direction Northland took was all Olson. I think the Patz family drove it. But I digress


• Pastors aren’t sheltered


• The sheltered ones could be the ones who work for large Christian institutions where all of their social lives center there.

Don had a terrific point. Thanks for sharing, Don.

This is the part of the article that I thought was kind of the real key to where Dr. Olson is going:

When they attempt to enter the world, they are incapable of functioning outside the protective box – their “safe house”. And then we lose them. We lose them to repeat the same thing for their children – and often we lose them from Christianity altogether.

I’ve seen this myself even though I’m not in FT ministry. Kids grow up in the church, going to Sunday School, Church, Youth Group, Christian School / College / Grad School, and then they flame out and reject everything afterwards. Why?

Here’s where I think that the issues lie:

1. The parents of the kids assume that putting them in Christian structures will automatically make them strong Christians. It doesn’t…those organizations can’t take the place of good parenting and Deut. 6:6-9. They assume that doing that will protect their heart and help them love God the way we all should, but they are wrong.
   
2. The parents isolate the children from the world, and then they start opening up the constraints when they become teenagers. The teens hearts are seduced by the world (because it’s not as bad as the parents made it, or whatever), the parents are unaware of what’s going on, and the teens run towards it when they’re on their own because there are so many different hooks and ways for the world to steal them away from the faith, and all of them are far more interesting and compelling than the life of discipline, self denial, and following Christ.

There are very, very, very few, I think, kids that just abandon the faith entirely all of a sudden. The groundwork and foundations for doing that are laid long before they’re old enough to deliberately choose to go a different way in spite of their parents’ teaching.

I think Jay makes a good point as well, especially the idea of parents leaving the discipling to institutional Christianity. While the church surely has a role to play in this, the primary responsibility for discipleship lies in the home. Make the home saturated with the Word, talk to your kids about what’s going on in the world, in the movies/media the family is exposed to, etc, etc. Have the courage to discipline and correct misbehaviour and wrong thinking. Never give up because the kids seem to not be getting it. Show long term consequences that come from worldly behaviour (seemingly innocent at first).

I could go on, but it really would take a book and several have been written already.

While I respect Dr. Olson, I think the “box” analogy - whether we are being accused of putting “God in a box” or “living in a box” is almost bound to be a straw man. The sheltering instinct of parents isn’t all wrong, nor should it be. The real question is how we can disciple kids so they can be “in the world…and not of the world”. I think if we offer sanitized world substitutes, we aren’t any farther ahead. We have Christian celebrities, Christian music that is just like the world’s, but with vaguely different words. It runs parallel to the world system.

This article feels like a straw man built by someone who took northland in a less sheltered direction.

The SI snapping wolves can usually find something to eat from their favorite menu of, someone else’s school, home school, public school, translations, music, someone else’s organization, disagreements on finer points, etc.…. Today some had a meal of someone else’s school.

Olson is really dealing with two issues interchangeably that should be kept separate.

1. Christian adults insulating and isolating themselves in a “box”

2. Christian parents rearing godly children

On point 1, Olson makes sense. Isolating ourselves in our little church subculture is counterproductive to fulfilling the Great Commission. That, however, doesn’t translate directly to point 2 and the way we raise our kids. Don and Steve both mentioned discipleship. Every parent has a box of some sort. To argue otherwise is ridiculous. The question is what will we allow in the box. If we are living as disciples of Christ, we should be reaching out to the lost in some areas of our lives. If we are discipling our children to be disciples of Christ, they should be involved in some way with some part of our personal ministry to the lost. That does not mean that they are salt to be thrown into the world to sink or swim; it means that part of their training involves learning how to fulfill the Great Commission.

James,

Are you eating your own words here? I’ve seen mature discussion about ideas relevant to the Christian walk going on in this thread.

** Deleted by author! I should have chosen my words more carefully instead of arguing from silence :( **