Tag Team: Working Together to Reach the Next Generation
We all know about travel sports – whether you have kids that participate in them, you have friends with kids that participate in them, or you participated in them when you were a kid.
Travel sports are set up in the same way discipleship should be set up. Multiple adults invest in a group of kids and parents invest in their own kids. This means taking time to get them to practice with other kids, to help them with practice one-on-one, to give them tips and advice, and to show up and cheer the kids on at games. It takes several groups of people for the sports team to function: the coaches, the families, and the players.
The coaches and the families must work together as a tag team to help the players succeed.
From a discipleship standpoint, we should be doing the same with the next generation in our church and in our community. We should be investing in our own kids one-on-one, as well as in youth events, guiding our kids to the Bible, and supporting our kids when they need the love and grace of God. It takes many groups of people for the next generation to function within the context of Christianity: the church staff, the families, and the youth.
The church and the families must work together as a tag team to lead the next generation to Christ.
Kids are at church 2-5 hours per week. There are 107-110 more waking hours in the week. That’s a lot of time we could be pouring into our kids rather than looking through Pinterest for home décor ideas or recipes, binging Netflix for 5 hours at a time, mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, continual house chores or home improvement, watching WALB or your favorite news channel, keeping up with the Kardashians and other celebrity drama, sitting in a deer stand, or picking your drafts for your fantasy football team. So how can we pour into our kids? We can ask them what they learned at church, read the Bible with them, pray as a family before meals and before bed, relate daily activities to God’s plans for us, apologize when we’ve wronged them, serve in the youth group at church, play Christian music in the car, or help them get through hard times by pointing them to Jesus.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 - 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 frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
How will YOU help reach the next generation?
Listen to the whole life application podcast with Rob Craft and JR Neal here:
