Raising Christian Kids in a Public School

I recently received an email from a sweet mother who is about to put her oldest child in kindergarten. She’s nervous about it, as we all were that summer before the big first ever day of school, and she wanted some tips on how to raise kids to be godly even if you’re not homeschooling them.

It was an interesting question, and not something that I had spent a ton of time thinking about before she asked it. Homeschooling has never been a serious option for our family, although I don’t rule it out if the need arises. I have read many a blog filled with opinions that say homeschooling is the only way to take your Christian parenting responsibilities seriously, but I respectfully disagree. Homeschooling is wonderful. Most of the time. For some kids. In certain situations. But, public school can also be a great experience for your kids and you, even if you are a Christian family wanting to raise your kids to be godly people.

So, I thought I would quickly outline a few things that I believe have helped us teach our children about the gospel and about the Christian worl dview, even while they attend public school.

First, our family’s life is completely wrapped up in church. You may be thinking that’s a given: my husband is the pastor. But remember that Chad was a struggling musician/teacher first, then an attorney second, and has just been in full-time ministry for the past eleven years of our twenty-one year marriage. Our life has always been wrapped up in church.

All of our closest friends are church friends. Their kids are our kids’ best friends.. We hate to miss church. Even when we go on vacation, we go to church. If you asked our children which is a bigger part of our lives, church or school, they would say church every time. So why does this matter?

It’s important for several reasons. First, because the church was created by Jesus. Yes, it’s imperfect and is filled with imperfect people. But the church is meant to be a light in a dark world, a place where believers can grow together and share joys and sorrows. It’s a place where Christians come to worship God together, in unity of spirit, and where good preaching and teaching help create a worldview that aligns with scripture.

The church is one of the first places where children will learn to sing praises to God, where they will begin to see the crucial truth of the gospel message, where they will learn that Jesus loves them. A church helps to direct young hearts while they are tender and ripe for hearing and believing the truth of the Bible.

But the main reason this immersion in church life is so important is because it teaches our children that this faith is a big deal. It’s not just something we think about on Sunday morning. It’s something that is always affecting our life, directing our activities, determining where we invest our time and money and effort. It sends a powerful message to our children that, not only do we go to church because we need to, we go because we want to be there and we love being near God’s people.

If you are attempting to raise children who know Christ and who understand how to interpret the world’s craziness through the lens of scripture, but you aren’t faithfully throwing your whole self into serving in a church someplace, you are already setting yourself up for failure. God can do anything with anyone, but your children will have a much easier time understanding their need for a Savior if they see how important your faith is to you and how serious you are about teaching your family these truths.

Another important part of discipling our kids is having theological discussions at home. Children ask some deep, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes embarrassing questions. Our philosophy is that we talk about everything, even the stuff that’s hard to talk about. When our kids ask questions about death or sex or God’s will or evil or anything else that’s big and needs answers from the Bible, we tell them the truth about it. It’s tempting to make up cute stories or to tell them something we think will be easier for them to handle, but children can begin to develop a deep sense of good theological systems from young ages. A firm grasp on theology is going to be a crucial part of the faith for these younger generations who are growing up in a terribly confusing world. It isn’t enough to say, “Jesus loves you, now go do the right thing.” Who can tell what the right thing is anymore? What’s the only source of wisdom in this wild world? Only the scripture and a right understanding of it.

It’s remarkable to see them apply the scriptural truths that they’re learning to situations at school and in life. Sending our kids to public school in no way prevents us from teaching them a biblical worldview. We make it a point to tackle some subjects and ideas that they maybe haven’t encountered yet. This is important because it’s always better for kids to be spiritually prepared before a situation arises.

Finally, we take it one day, one situation, one child at a time. There is no perfect system for raising Christian kids. There are no guarantees that things will work out in our children’s hearts and lives the way we pray they will. No one approach is going to work for all kids. No one has all of this figured out–least of all our family. We are taking child raising one day at a time, and we handle each situation as it arises. You know why? Because there’s nothing else you can do. We can’t predict all of the things that our kids will question, wonder about, get involved in, get rebellious about. We can’t determine at these young ages if they’re going to be godly adults one day. But we can do lots of things, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that will give our kids a solid biblical foundation, even while they attend public school.

A sweet bonus of the public school connection is that being involved in the school allows us to get to know people we might not normally see. We get to be a part of our community, outside the walls of the church. We meet fellow parents, teachers, and kids that we can reach out to, minister to, and pray for. And our kids get the opportunity to influence others for Christ, which is really what the church is all about.