Parents across the state and nation have had enough of the COVID-19 lockdowns and the cancellation of numerous conferences and other events. Thankfully, it looks like we are slowly getting back to normal. That said, some public school districts are still planning on limited in-person class time in the fall of 2021. Additionally, the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health will also continue to require that students wear masks in schools.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Parents and grandparents have serious concerns about the deficiencies of public schools, including academic failings and the teaching of corrupt propaganda. Just this past month, state lawmakers mandated the teaching of “comprehensive” and “age appropriate” sex education that will begin in kindergarten. And in a sign of pure lunacy, state lawmakers overwhelming approved legislation to mandate taxpayer funding of menstrual hygiene products in all bathrooms in every government school building in Illinois. Yes, that includes boys’ bathrooms (4th grade and above).

The time has come to seriously explore Christ-centered educational opportunities for your children.

The annual Illinois Christian Home Educators’ conference is an excellent opportunity for parents and grandparents to explore the great option of homeschooling. A review of the event website (check it out for yourself here) reveals a broad lineup of speakers and subjects. Topics range from the practical to the inspirational to the philosophical. 

Kirk Smith, Executive Director of ICHE points out that “there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach with homeschooling. At the ICHE conference, you will be able to hear a variety of approaches and be able to tailor your school experience to what best fits your values and priorities as a family.”

The ICHE Family Conference will be taking place this weekend: June 3-6 at Olivet Nazarene University.

Homeschool veterans agree on the centrality of home education in passing on their faith and values. “Homeschooling is really an extension of parenting. It’s the opportunity to teach and disciple our children with a degree of intention unmatched by other options,” writes Jonathan Lewis. “So if you want to be a better homeschooler—or a better parent—be sure to check out the ICHE Family Conference!”

As a veteran homeschool father myself, I agree with Kirk Smith who acknowledges that “so many dads and moms want to do parenting right but lack examples and resources. The conference will give them both.” This conference has been a tremendous blessing to my wife and me. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

So if you want to be a better homeschooler—or a better parent—be sure to check out the ICHE Family Conference! Check it out HERE.

I was thinking about the birth of John the Baptist recently when an aspect of the story struck me in a new way.

The scriptural account of his birth (and even his life) is relatively condensed. We know that Zechariah and Elizabeth were old and childless when the angel made his appearance to Zechariah foretelling the birth of John the Baptist. We know there were the nine months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. And then we know there was a period of years before John began his public ministry.

We can learn all of that in just a few minutes of Bible reading. And when we do, it’s easy to get caught up in the miracle and drama of it all and forget something that Zechariah and Elizabeth would have experienced very keenly.

The waiting.

Imagine what it was like for them to be told that they would be the parents of the very special child who would grow up to be the prophet who would precede the long-awaited Messiah. Imagine the excitement when they realized that the hundreds of years of God’s silence were ending, and that He was about to bring to fulfillment His longstanding promises to send a Deliverer to Israel.

What exciting news! What an extraordinary time it must have been for them!

But then they had to wait.

They had to wait for nine months while a child grew inside Elizabeth’s womb.

They had to wait for perhaps thirty years, more or less, until John began his ministry.

Think about how they must have felt. They knew God was moving. They knew He was doing something incredible. They knew He was about to reveal the Messiah.

But the process couldn’t be rushed. A baby had to grow into a boy. And the boy had to grow into a young man. And the young man had to grow into fully mature adult. Think about all the long, ordinary days between the promise and its fulfillment. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.

Days stretching into weeks, into months, into years, and into decades.

That’s a lot of waiting.

And yet, I can’t help but think that Zechariah and Elizabeth were well-accustomed to waiting. They had waited many years for a child who never came. And finally, perhaps, they had given up waiting and had accepted their lot in life—only to begin the waiting anew one miraculous day when an angel paid a visit.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to wait. My guess is that most of us don’t. When I’m facing a problem, I want it to be solved now. And when a challenging season of life starts drawing out, it’s easy to begin chafing at the delay and wondering why we can’t experience breakthrough sooner.

No doubt it’s partially human nature, but our culture of speed hasn’t helped this natural propensity. There’s hardly any aspect of our lives that can’t be performed exponentially faster today compared to several generations ago.

Unfortunately, that mindset of speed can get in the way of waiting on God.

We want everything now.

We like our answers from God to be immediate. We like our miracles to be fast.

But some miracles are slow.

Sometimes we have to wait.

Just ask Zechariah and Elizabeth.

But you know, I have a hunch they’d say some miracles are worth waiting for.

Help us meet our end-of-year matching challenge goal!
Dollar for dollar match through December 31st.
Your $25 becomes $50, $100 is $200, and $250 becomes $500.

If you’ve been a believer for any length of time, you’re familiar with the Great Commission—the call to reach the whole world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s the marching orders of the church, so to speak, and rightly receives a great deal of focus and emphasis in the body of Christ.

But has it ever occurred to you that we also have another call that’s equally important—and, if anything, even more specific when it comes to the who and how of the calling?

It’s the call to reach our own children.

Now, as I continue, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that the Great Commission is a second-tier priority. I’m simply pointing out that, as important as the call to reach the world is, God has also given us a clear and urgent priority to reach our children. And sadly, I’m afraid we’re failing at that calling all too often.

As a father of young children, I don’t presume to have all the answers, nor do I want to take a good outcome for my children for granted. Lord willing, all of my kids will grow up to know and love God and impact others for Him. But that’s still an unfolding process with far more ahead of us than behind us.

I’ll also say that, frankly, some of us (and I include myself here) find it easier to focus on our families and sometimes need a push to reach out beyond our four walls and make an impact on someone else. But by and large, I believe Christian parents have surrendered far too much ground when it comes to raising and training the next generation. We’re seeing the results in a mass migration of young people away from the faith.

Let’s get back to the Great Commission for a moment.

It’s interesting to note that there’s a sense in which our call to reach the world is general. God doesn’t tell me in the Bible exactly who I, Jonathan Lewis, should reach and how I should reach them. (Should I do prison ministry? Visit nursing homes? Serve as a missionary overseas? Run for a local political office?) On top of that, the call is shared with literally the entire body of Christ.

This open-ended quality of the Great Commission doesn’t make it any less significant; I’m simply pointing out that there are innumerable ways to play a part in fulfilling it.

But the call to reach the next generation? It’s as specific as the children I share the dinner table with each evening. God’s methodology is also clear: invest an enormous amount of time alongside our children, faithfully instructing them in the ways of God (see Deuteronomy 6:6-7). And it’s not really a shared calling. Beyond parents and grandparents, no one else is specifically given any responsibility for my children.

In other words, I can play a role in accomplishing the Great Commission in many ways and with varying degrees and types of involvement at different stages of life. But there’s literally only one way for me to fulfill God’s call on me as a parent. I only have one opportunity, one method, and one target.

These distinctions don’t make the Great Commission less significant. Indeed, reaching the world was important enough for Jesus to make it the subject of His final instructions to His disciples before ascending to Heaven.

Instead, I’m simply seeking to point out that the same God who told us to reach the world also gave us incredibly specific instructions to reach our children. And if God has given us two callings, I think we should heed both.

Clearly, we shouldn’t make our children our sole priority. But nor should we make the opposite mistake of being so occupied with reaching the world for Christ that we neglect what may be our closest, most specific calling short of nurturing our own personal walk with God—reaching our kids.

Of course, rather than either downplaying or overstating either of these God-given responsibilities, our aim should be a place of balance. We have two urgently important callings from God: reach the world, and reach our children. If we get out of balance in either direction, someone is going to suffer for it, and some of God’s greatest work on earth will remain undone.

My main concern is that the church has generally placed more emphasis on reaching the world, and less emphasis on reaching our children. And in the meantime, young people are walking away in droves. It’s become a full-blown crisis. Yet despite the amount that’s been said on the topic, I’m not sure we’ve really come to grips with the fact that until parents embrace their calling with passion and commitment—and until churches and pastors consistently equip and encourage parents in that direction—we’re unlikely to turn the tide.

Should we put the Great Commission on hold while we focus on the next generation? No. But nor should we put our children on hold while we reach the world. We ought to do the one, while not leaving the other undone.

Only then can we hope to accomplish all God has put us here to do.

Join us on October 5th for IFI‘s Annual Fall Banquet

This year we are pleased to be featuring George Barna to share his faith, political insights and his most recent polling work regarding faith-based statistics, leadership and upcoming elections in the United States. You will not want to miss this opportunity to hear directly from what many call “the most quoted person in the Christian Church today.”

Secure your tickets or table now!
Click here or call (708) 781-9328.

Program advertisements & banquet sponsorships available.

Don’t Delay – Early Bird Specials Expire on Sept. 14th!

Jesus once stated that “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke 16:8). Unfortunately, this has been proven all too true in recent generations when it comes to the battle for our culture. On the whole, it seems that those who oppose Christ have been far more successful in shaping society than have the followers of God.

One area of our culture where this appears to be particularly true is the realm of education. While the church has been surprisingly complacent on the question of who will educate our children, many in the world have keenly understood the value of capturing the minds of the next generation.

Consider a few quotes from some of the greatest villains of the twentieth century:

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” – Adolph Hitler

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” – Joseph Stalin

“Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” – Vladimir Lenin

It’s All About Ideas

Why did these men place such emphasis on education? The answer isn’t complicated. Through education, we communicate and inculcate ideas, values, and beliefs. He who is most successful in communicating his value system and worldview to the next generation wins the culture.

Stalin expressed it this way: “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas[?]”

Stalin understood that whoever controls the flow of ideas controls the direction of culture. He understood that in a fight for physical superiority, it would be foolish to hand your opponent a gun. Similarly, in an intellectual battle, the one with no ideas and convictions is sure to lose. And so whether the goal is amassing political power or reconstructing society, gaining a monopoly on the flow of ideas is a powerful move.

NO NEUTRALITY

No education is neutral because education is about ideas and ideas aren’t neutral. Despite the popular notion that our public schools are neutral, the truth is that they’re nothing of the kind. Neutrality simply isn’t possible when we’re discussing such worldview-laden topics as history, science, ethics, and morality. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the dominant worldviews in our public schools today are far from Christian.

This isn’t a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It’s simply a fact. Our public schools aren’t making any attempt to educate our children from a Christian perspective. So is it really surprising—after decades of a near-monopoly on the part of secular education—that our culture is becoming more secular? What would actually be surprising is if our culture somehow weren’t becoming more secular!

REAPING WHAT WE SOW

This is a fundamental truth, yet one we often overlook when it comes to education. If we sow secularism in our children’s minds, the result will be a secular culture. But this goes back to the point I made at the beginning of this article, that the church has been surprisingly complacent on the topic of education. It’s as if we believe the principle of sowing and reaping applies to everything but our children’s minds. An honest look at what’s happening around us should convince us that this is faulty thinking.

WISING UP

It’s been said that politics is downstream of culture. While this may not be universally true (and policy certainly exerts an influence on our culture), we can’t deny that our politics often respond to the direction we’re moving as a society. If that’s true, and if we want to turn the tide in our culture, we need to direct our attention upstream. I’m not saying we should ignore politics (we shouldn’t). What I am saying is that if we fight only in the political sphere and leave the shaping of the hearts and minds of the next generation to our ideological opponents, any political victories we may win will be short-lived.

Education is certainly one of those areas that’s upstream of culture, and it’s time we wised up to its power. There’s a reason God commanded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6 to teach their children diligently in His ways. Simply put, the formation of young hearts and minds is a big job, and the worldview we teach them matters.

CHANGE A MIND, CHANGE THE WORLD

When we instruct a young mind in God’s truth, we’re literally impacting the future. When we take the formation of the next generation seriously, we not only impact our children (which is, of course, significant on its own), we also reclaim the power to change our nation.

Imagine what would happen if every Christian family in America decided that we’ve been losing the next generation for too long. Imagine what would happen if every Christian family in America said no to secular education. Imagine what would happen if every Christian family in America decided to educate their children in a manner consistent with their faith. Would it make a difference? Absolutely. Because what we teach matters.

Education really is the not-so-secret weapon of the culture wars.

IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

With this being the season we celebrate the birthdays of two of our greatest presidents—Lincoln and Washington—I thought it would be fitting to share a quote from our first president that still has tremendous relevance today.

Washington understood the power of education and its influence on young minds. In a letter written in 1795, he shared the following:

It has always been a source of serious reflection and sincere regret with me that the youth of the United States should be sent to foreign countries for the purpose of education. Although there are doubtless many, under these circumstances, who escape the danger of contracting principles unfavorable to republican government, yet we ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems before they are capable of appreciating their own.

The wisdom encapsulated in this paragraph from Washington’s letter holds a lot of relevance for us today, albeit in a different context. While Washington was concerned about foreign ideas of government, today we need to be equally—if not more—concerned about worldviews and value systems contrary to the Word of God (and not just regarding government, but also morality, ethics, and every other area of life).

Just as it was Washington’s desire to see more young people educated here in America rather than abroad, my desire is to see fewer young people from Christian homes educated in secular schools and more given a distinctively Christian education.

Let’s break this quote down and look at some of the wisdom it contains.

SINCERE REGRET

Washington begins by observing how solemn his concern is, noting that this has “always been a source of serious reflection and sincere regret” for him. Indeed, the possibility of our young people adopting contrary worldviews and belief systems is (and ought to be) a matter of “serious reflection.”

SENT AWAY

Washington lamented young Americans being sent away to foreign nations. In our day, however, it’s not foreign countries we need to be concerned about so much as the institutions in our own country that are foreign to our worldview and beliefs. Sending our children away to these institutions brings risk just as surely as sending an eighteenth-century American student to Europe did.

FOR THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

Here we come to the crux of the matter. These young Americans in Washington’s day weren’t being sent overseas merely as tourists or sightseers, but as students—“for the purpose of education,” as Washington put it. And that’s a key distinction. When we send our students to schools where we know the worldview is contrary to our own, we have contradictory hopes. We hope our children do learn what we want them to learn, but at the same time, we hope they don’t learn what we don’t want them to learn. Do you see the dilemma? We hope the school is effective, but not too effective. We hope our children learn and believe some of what is taught, but not all of what is taught.

How are our children supposed to know the difference? How are they going to parse it all out and embrace the good while rejecting the bad? It’s a tall order for a young mind.

Never forget: the purpose of a school is education; the foundation of education is ideas; and the content of our ideas determines our direction in life.

ARDENT AND SUSCEPTIBLE MINDS

Here we come to another important point. Washington knew that many of the young people sent overseas for their education were bright, intelligent . . . and susceptible.

Think about some of the synonyms for susceptible: vulnerable; prone; liable; at risk.

Washington knew that young minds are often ardent, but that this ardor can bring vulnerability to wrong ideas. That was his concern in 1795, and it’s no less a concern today. 

TOO STRONGLY AND TOO EARLY

Washington’s fear was that these young Americans would be impressed with contrary ideas “too strongly and too early” for their own good and the good of their country. And his concern wasn’t unfounded. Indeed, the combination of youth and inexperience is a dangerous blend. Mix in some wrong influences, and you’re inviting disaster.

CAPABLE OF APPRECIATION

The final point in Washington’s argument is insightful: he recognized that these young people were not yet capable of completely understanding their own nation—what it offered and what it represented. They would be susceptible to other ideas of government because they had not yet come to a point of full appreciation for the American experiment and the value of individual liberty.

Is it any different today, in the realm of other ideas and beliefs? Are our children so wise and mature that they can recognize the value of the Christian worldview and hold it as the precious thing it is, even in the face of conflicting belief systems?

EMBRACING THE WISDOM OF WASHINGTON

The father of our country was rightly hesitant about sending our young nation’s students abroad to be educated in countries that didn’t share our values of liberty and self-government. He recognized that a young person’s inexperience, ardor, and susceptibility would all combine to make him or her uniquely vulnerable to embracing foreign ideas of government. And in turn, this would be dangerous to the nation he had dedicated his life to building.

In our day, we’re seeing young people walk away from the church in droves. Perhaps we should take a cue from the wisdom of Washington and stop sending our young people, with their “ardent and susceptible minds,” to be educated by those who share neither our faith nor our worldview. Let’s handle the education of our children with the care and concern it deserves.