Training our Children

Recently, I was asked to attempt to occasionally make some of my blogs worthy of my church's website. While the thought of people actually reading my blog terrifies me (or at least makes me think I should write better), I decided to give it a go. So, as I attend a church, which firmly believes in propagating the gospel, we should be building disciples. Orlando Grace is fervently desirous of reproducing both Christians within our congregation and reproducing solid, biblical churches outside of our congregations. While the impact on missions and evangelism is obvious, we also feel it is essential to plan for the discipleship of the young that God clearly and obviously places within our covenant community—the children of our covenant members.

As you look around on an average Sunday, it is obvious that God has blessed us in this area. Sometimes, as believers, we look at ourselves and feel that we may not have been as responsible in our commitment to God in areas as we have been blessed. The training of our children here at Orlando Grace was previously one of those areas. However, within the last few years, we have completely revamped this and are finally starting to feel ourselves walking worthy of the blessing God has given us.

Orlando Grace Church believes that Scripture clearly teaches that the parents have the primary responsibility to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This includes teaching them about God, disciplining them and striving to honor God before them in all they do. The Children’s Ministry team at Orlando Grace desires to be a support to its parents by encouraging them and supplementing them in the nurture of their children, in accordance to Scripture and the vision of its God-given elders.

Because the church takes these things so seriously, we recently went on a thorough study of children's curriculum and added The Praise Factory to our Equipping Hour. We are already seeing the benefits of this in our church. As a father with children in the classes, I can attest to the fact that I am exceedingly excited about the awesome instruction my children are receiving! However, the leadership was not content to stop there.

So, with the knowledge that a new facility is on its way, we have undertaken the re-writing of our children's policy. With Evan and Katie Fairey spearheading this operation, a new policy has been authored and it is now going through the tweaking channels to make sure nothing (OK, as little as possible) gets missed.

This means that Orlando Grace Church will start to see some systematic changes in the way we filter our children, in the way we interact with them, in the way we look at their potential leaders, and the way we treat them as members of the broader covenant community. As an excited dad, I am further exuberant that I have begun to see these operational efficiencies and steps to improve what we do come. I am further energized by the fact that I have been given a chance to help integrate some of these changes, and I know that soon we will all be reaping the benefits of this new policy.

Serendipitously, God is synchronizing this with the initiation of a full time facility, which we get to look after and use for His glory. Continue to pray for the elders, deacons, leaders, and workers as these changes become part of the footprint of how God is using OGC to build disciples from these dear little ones with which He has blessed us. May we never take that for granted!