Educating for transformation should be the goal for Christian education in every church especially when teaching adults. Paul’s charge to Timothy, resonate well with that goal. He says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Timothy 2:2) This intimates that if we want to make a difference in the coming generations we must act today and focus our efforts to teach adults. Only adults fit Paul’s description. When taught and trained well, they can become stable and reliable men and women, qualified to teach others, whether fellow adults, youths or children.
Equipping every adult in church
is a strategic move to channel the same impact or more to children of these
adults and others within their sphere of influence. The impact will also be
replicated to the grandchildren because a well discipled parent will most
likely raise well trained children who fear and honor God. To equip adults is
to multiply the ability of the church to influence society.
In the Old Testament it was the responsibility
of parents to teach their children. God commanded Moses to ensure in Israel
that the parents taught their children about the Lord and His Law (Deut 6:4-7).
This teaching in the Old Testament was life related and not school based. “The
ritual observances of the community and the home life of children were the
primary vehicles of transmission of the God centered culture.”[1]
When we
teach adults, we make a creative move to transfer the classroom from the Sunday
school, for children and camps for youth to the security of the home where
everything taught comes into its relevant context and can be immediately applied.
At home Pazmino suggest that interactions between teacher and student should be
“a relationship of love, trust, openness, honesty, acceptance, caring, support
forgiveness, correction and affirmation.”[2] There
is no better description of the real family.
All the above are qualities which
can and should be found in the Christian home. This hints to God’s objective to
reveal Himself in a family setup. His working can only be traced through the
family tree of the people He worked with and through. He chose to be known as
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the three principal patriarchs’ in Israel’s
journey of faith. The role of the church in education then is to provoke and
empower parents to take an active not passive role to raise a godly generation (Mal
2:15) because as Pazmino confirms, “Despite the multiplicity of educational
influence today, parents are still the primary educators who actively or
passively determine what influences their children.”[3]
Parents or adults are the
reservoirs of resources available to help teach all areas of Christian
education. As Anthony says, we succeed or fail as ministers of Christian
education as we succeed or fail in adult education.[4] It’s through educating adults that ministries
tap from many years of experience that can be channeled to give crucial training
to others that is based on tested facts and principles.
A failure in adult education
will therefore trickle down to failure in children as well as youth ministries.
Since parents determine what influences their children in there formative years,
they will either cancel or legitimize through their lifestyle what the church
teaches the youth or the children. This means the church may have a great
teaching ministry on Sundays but if this ministry is not reinforced at home the
results will not be that encouraging. We will labor to receive and teach the
children from the front door of the church only to have them leave the church from
the back door because at home they lack a support mechanism to help them
internalize and implement the values taught in church.
There are no life exhibits that
help illustrate the gospel truth. Parents or adults provide that support
mechanism. They are the real life visual aids which though not perfect can
effectively by Gods grace help illustrate the gospel to make sense to their
children. Their witness is therefore relational and incarnational. If adults are
not prepared to take up such a strategic position, the next generation is set
up for hard work or failure.
It’s adults that set the pace
for the success of the coming generations. Since they are the custodians of
resources they too, have the power to determine how these resources will be spent.
If they are not taught to honor the Lord(Pro 3:9) and seek first His kingdom(Matt6:33)
and are let to embrace hedonistic priorities they will become a stumbling block
to God’s will and purpose in their generation. A growing adult ministry spells hope
for the current and future leadership of the church. It creates a strong financial,
human and material resource base for future church ministries.
Growing churches are those that
engage the adults relevantly and effectively. They are committed to nurture
adults to reproduce spiritually. We thus measure success in this ministry by
how many people are trained and launched into fruitful ministry within the body
of Christ and into the community. Otherwise as Anthony says, we will have
“wounded consumers of church services who never heal and never impact their
neighbors for Christ.”[5]
A church that severs her relationship with the community
which consists of adults will soon become irrelevant and only exist to serve
the whims of its membership.[6]
As the salt of the earth, the church takes up her role to preserve the moral
values of society and give it flavor just as salt influences the food it become
part of. Any sin or malpractices that the church confronts and overcomes in the
community becomes a victory not just for the church but for its immediate
society. Whatever is not conquered in the church ravages the community around
it.
[1] Micheal J. Anthony, Foundations of Ministry: An Introduction to Christian Education for a
New Generation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992),40.
[2] Robert W. Pazmino, The Foundational Issues in Christian Education: An Evangelical
Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Books House, 1988), 19.
[4] (Anthony 1992, 171)
[5]
(Anthony 1992, 172)
[6] Ezekiel K. Nzau, Growing
in Christ (Nairobi: Uzima Publishing House, 2011), 26.
