Recently, I attended the Heritage Builders Seminar at the Roswell
Street Baptist Church. This Focus on the Family-sponsored
seminar was dedicated to the purpose of helping families build
a Christian heritage in the hearts and souls of their children.
The day-long program was inspirational, packed with content,
most appropriate for Christian families, and, I believe, for
Christian schools.
The seminar emphasis was on parents needing to
be intentional in teaching their children about God, the Bible,
and Christian living. Whereas the probability of a child accepting
Christ as Savior is at 32% prior to the age of thirteen, the
probabliity drops to 4% between the ages of fourteen and eighteen
years old. Beyond eighteen the probability is at 6%. The message
is that if we as parents fail to teach and model our faith for
our children when they are young, we have a very low probability
of extending our Christian heritage to and through them.
Speaker after speaker stressed the need to build
stable marriages, to intentionally lead our children into godly
living, and to reach out to those persons who are not so blessed
with such experiences. In this way, by God's grace we are able
to pass the baton of faith and godly living to our children.
Such an approach is the biblical standard.
Here at Cumberland, I am encouraging our teachers
and staff to faithfully continue to model and teach our students
about our Lord and his Word. We want to help you "raise
up" a godly generation. Even so, we are aware that we cannot
take the place of parents and grandparents. The name of the game
is family. Children model after their parents and adopt their
families' values. Though we may be able to teach them much, we
can only build upon what they bring from their families. The
Word says that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children
to the third and fourth generations. The need is for godly families.
Let us provide them.
