Church-Parent Partnership in Discipling Children

The church's role is to nurture, encourage and equip parents to train and disciple their own child. This was the main theme of my article in the summer edition of the ChinaSource Journal titled, "As the Family Goes, So Goes the Church." The local church has the responsicility to engage and equip parents to be spiritual leaders of their child. God's Word teaches that parents have the primary responsibility to disciple their child - not the church or the school. Parents have become distracted by the self-imposed pressure to help their child excel intellectually and are not giving as much attention to mentoring their child to know, love and serve God. Church leaders in china must reclaim their responsibility to nurture the spiritual life of parents so that they, in thurn, can train their own child spiritually.

During the last few years, there has been a growing realization in the church around the world of the need to develop far more effective ministries with children and youth. Leaders recognize that they have not given proper attention to targeting this demographic group. In response, there has been an increasing realization in China to "rethink" the way we mentor and disciple children.