Ministry to the Next Generation

I was speaking to a friend recently who was asking how he should prepare his young daughter for the problems she will face as an adult. As complicated as this world is, the answer is simple: catechize her and model diligent use of the ordinary means of grace for her. In other words, give her the truth and show her how to use it. Proverbs 22:6 puts it like this “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is not a promise that all children who are well trained will live lives that please and honor God, but it does capture a fundamental truth. If we teach the next generation righteousness and love for God they will know how to do that and God can and often does bless that abundantly.

It’s the vital combination of true teaching and lived example that allows generation after generation of Christian to learn, grow, and flourish. Deuteronomy 6:4-8 puts it like this “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” This is not merely Sunday morning Christianity or even daily family worship, it is a life defined by passion for God and His Word that spills over into every corner of life.

This is most obvious in the relationship between parent and child, but it should be the heart and passion of every man and woman in Christ’s church to see the fulfillment of the Great Commission through successive generations of the church. Matthew Henry brings forth the beautiful messianic blessing of Psalm 110:3 saying “The dew of the youth is a numerous, illustrious, hopeful show of young people flocking to Christ, which would be to the world as dew to the ground, to make it fruitful.” We need to not only long for this, and pray for it, but work towards that end. To see the next generation of the church well equipped to live life in this fallen world by pursuing the covenant children, youth, and young adults and young Christians among us for fellowship and spiritual conversation.

In light of all of that I can think of no better “vision statement” for a ministry to young adults, youth or children than Herman Bavinck in the Wonderful Works of God “The Christian, who sees everything in the light of the Word of God, is anything but narrow in his view. He is generous in heart and mind. He looks over the whole earth and reckons it all his own, because he is Christ’s and Christ is God’s (1 Cor. 3:21–23). He cannot let go his belief that the revelation of God in Christ, to which he owes his life and salvation, has a special character. This belief does not exclude him from the world, but rather puts him in position to trace out the revelation of God in nature and history, and puts the means at his disposal by which he can recognize the true and the good and the beautiful and separate them from the false and sinful alloys of men.” That is what we should desperately want for ourselves and for the next generation. Not merely a head knowledge to repeat the truths of the faith, but a heart knowledge that knows joyfully and intimately who God is and what He desires of us. So let’s strive to give that blessing to the next generation, to teach the truth clearly and to model it in our lives.