Evangelizing Your Children

Here is an email from a friend on this topic...

Centrality of the Home in the Evangelism
Childhood Conversion
Raising Christian Children? by Don Fortner

The above posts you may find helpful, especially the childhood evangelism one.

We tell our children about sin and judgment regularly. I’m not talking graphic sins of others, but actually their sins. When one is in trouble and in need of “Character development”, I really try to point out not only what they did wrong say in relation to another, but how they have sinned against God, such as lying or stealing. We have a notebook called Doorpost’s For Instruction In Righteousness which I found very helpful in relating the misbehavior of children to sins against the Lord. Essentially a 10 Commandment idea like Way of The Master does but directed toward children, i.e. Taking another’s toy is stealing.

We have never encouraged our children to “Ask Jesus into their heart” and actually have discouraged the idea and previous teachers from pushing that idea. Our children were not encouraged to “ask Jesus into their heart” and be baptized at the same age their peers were. We weren’t interested in the group effect, or peer pressure idea, but desirous of a serious commitment.

My sister sent her children to VBS and they were baptized. However, they have never been in church prior to that, nor since, yet my sister is confident they are going to heaven.

We are essentially flying by the seat of our pants though, because we have never been in a church previously that didn’t encourage “asking Jesus into their heart” as young as possible.