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Saturday, February 5, 2011

A Call For Biblical Literacy

Ken Cukrowski in the book "God's Holy Fire" relates a wonderful and timely story.

I'm reminded of my experience at the Broadway Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas. Every five year old had to know the books of the Old Testament, the books of the New Testament, the names of the twelve apostles, and the entire Twenty-third Psalm before graduating to first grade Sunday School. I remember one parent saying, "No five year old can memorize all that!". The longtime teacher responded, "Every five year old here has for the last thirty years."

I recently read an article entitled, "What Are Our Children Really Remembering From Bible Class?" written by Barry Stump. The gist of the article exposed the Biblical illiteracy of our children and teens and what we can do to correct what's wrong. It's time we reevaluated what our Bible school programs are really doing (or not doing). If we're sending teens off to college without real faith, based on Scripture then we are sending them off as lambs to the wolves.

Ultimately it's parents who have the most accountability for teaching their children but isn't it also the Church's responsibility to expect a certain amount of Bible be learned by children before moving them from one Sunday school class to the next?

God spoke through the prophet Hosea and said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge". That's as true today as when first spoken. The good news is that a worthwhile lesson can be learned from that longtime Bible school teacher who had expected those five year old children to know real and discernible Bible information before they graduated to the first grade class. Thank God for such servants!

It's up to us to put that lesson and example into shoe leather.

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