What is the long-term goal you have for your children? For my own daughters, it was for them to know and love the LORD and live their lives in obedience to His will. So how do we accomplish this? We must teach our children the Bible, have them read it through, and help them to build their lives through Christ-centered thinking and actions. If done correctly, it will take us all of the time we have with them to help them build a Biblical Worldview and to live it out in their daily lives.

As a Christ-centered school, GCS comes alongside parents to partner in teaching their child(ren), but God still holds us, as parents, primarily responsible for raising our children to know and love Him and to nurture in them a Biblical Worldview. Can we do this if we ourselves don’t have a Biblical Worldview? Christ must flow through us at all times: when we speak to our children, when we make mistakes, when we make decisions, when we interact with others, and when we go to work. We must teach through our words and our deeds.

George Barna has conducted a lot of research and written many books on Biblical Worldview. His latest research has shown that only 4% of adults in the US have a Biblical Worldview. Here are five key research ^insights* from his newest book, Raising Spiritual Champions:

• Key Insight #1 – A person’s worldview begins developing in the second year of life (from 15 to 18 months) and is largely in place by the age of 13. That’s the prime window of opportunity for discipleship.
• Key Insight #2 – Parents have the primary responsibility for the spiritual development and discipleship of their children. But very few parents have the spiritual development of their children on their radar screen.
• Key Insight #3 – The research identified “outsourcing” as a troubling new trend among today’s parenting, as parents are increasingly delegating key child-rearing tasks to others.
• Key Insight #4 – The approaches today’s parents are taking in their children’s spiritual development are not working.
• Key Insight #5 – The research identifies four key strategies that parents can use to successfully disciple their children. And the heartbeat for this process is the “Seven Cornerstones of a Biblical Worldview.”

How do we begin to change the landscape of our culture? It begins with each of us reading through the Bible. If we read 10-20 minutes a day, we can read through the Bible in a year. My daughter and wife like to “listen through” the Bible, while I prefer reading. As a community, we need to start reading through the Bible with our children. I have read through the Bible twenty-one times. This has changed my life more than anything else that I have ever done. Let’s join together in reading the Bible, building a Biblical Worldview, and making a difference in our culture. 

*The five insights were taken from an email written by George Barna announcing his new book: Raising Spiritual Champions:Nurturing Your Child’s Heart, Mind, and Soul.