Training Your Kids To Fail Forward-Part 7

Training Your Children

            There’s a word that secular businesses understand better than we in the church. That word is training. When you begin a secular job where training is offered, they are going to put you next to someone who knows what to do. That person actually has hands-on experience, so they know what works and what does not.

            When training begins, they will tell you to watch that person. You watch, ask questions and allow them to demonstrate that job to you. Then, little by little, they will turn things over to you. The whole time they are turning it over to you, they are watching to make sure you do it right. As a trainee, you know that it is their way or the highway. They will make corrections along the way and teach you, so that in the end you know exactly how to complete that job.

            Unfortunately, in the church it doesn’t always happen that way. For example, let’s say someone is willing to teach a children’s church class. The ministry leader gives them a Sunday school book, throws them in a classroom and tells them to not come out until Jesus comes back. Three years later, that volunteer has recruited a helper. The new recruit comes to the class, walks in, and the teacher in the class runs out hollering, “I quit!” So the person recruited to be a helper turns into a replacement. That’s not training; it’s dumping. And that’s what is going on in a majority of America’s churches today.

            We need to train our children just like we need to train workers. Proverbs 22:6, a familiar verse to children’s pastors and parents says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” We have a responsibility to do more than just give our children lip service; we must train them. The process of training our children begins with us as parents. We are the models. After we model the correct behavior for our children, only a few more things are needed to properly train them to discover their God-given potential.

            Also, while you train your kids to do the right things, do not let them know that times are hard. The best thing we can do is to follow what God’s Word says in James 1:2, “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” In trails of any kind, we are to consider it joy. That’s weird, isn’t it? Think about it. When you are facing a trial, consider it pure joy. It is not pure joy if you are thinking the way the world thinks, but when you make your thinking line up with God’s Word, then you will be able to count it joy.

Similarly, we know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Verse four of James one tells us, “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” That’s pretty good, isn’t it?