Last week, I mentioned that one of the young kids in my Sunday School class had been confronted with an objection to Christianity by an atheist classmate at his school. For Christian parents, this brings up some good points to remember.

• Prepare your kids early. I enjoyed both God’s Not Dead movies, but if you think your kids aren’t going to be facing challenges to their beliefs until high school or college, or that the challenge will just be from adults like professors, think again. Most of the boys in my class said they knew an atheist classmate or online friend. Depending on their age, challenges like that from peers may be more likely to have an impact than those from authority figures like teachers.
• Understand the nature of the conflict. The apostle Paul tells us that we do not battle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces.[1] And it’s a battle for their very souls. These are high stakes, parents. Invest in your kids accordingly.
• Recognize your part. I love getting to answer questions from kids and see them connect with ideas. But one hour a week with me or any other Sunday school teacher or youth group leader isn’t going to prepare them adequately. You can delegate some tasks to others, but your kids need you to lead the way. And fathers: it’s time to man up. The Bible actually calls for you to train up your children.[2] Too many dads are physically present but spiritual deadbeats that leave any spiritual training up to the mother. But if your kids see you sleeping through church, or finding anything else to do other than going to church, or never see you open a Bible, they’ll notice. And they’ll remember that.
• Understand the difference between teaching and training. In my time in the Army, I experienced a lot of both. For a lot of the teaching, the memory of struggling to stay awake in hot, stuffy classrooms is all that remains. For the training, and especially the more realistic training like room-clearing scenarios, I can feel my heart rate go up just remembering it. Seeing a demonstration, or discussing tactics in a classroom setting, or reviewing historical successes and failures all have their time and place. But applying theory – putting knowledge into practice – is where the rubber meets the road, as they say. Martial arts was the same way. Joint locks in Hapkido are very nuanced, and you just don’t develop effective technique without lots of good, correct practice. Likewise for getting my pilot’s license. I learn a lot by reading, but reading about stalls just isn’t the same as pulling back on the yoke, feeling the controls start to get mushy, and suddenly feeling the plane break over into a dive!  Are you teaching your kids? Good! Now, take it up a notch and start training them.[3]
• Train like you fight. We had a saying in the Army: “Train as you fight; fight as you train.” The more realistic the training, the more likely you’ll respond appropriately in a real fight. Training that doesn’t prepare you for what you’ll actually face in battle isn’t just a waste – it can develop bad habits and overconfidence that can hurt you in the actual fight. Your kids will face tough questions in life. Go through real-life examples with them of how they can apply Scripture to different situations they may face. You can start out with “softball” situations, but don’t stay there.[4] Stretch them. Could you blame them if they got bored with baseball if all you ever did was toss them slow-pitch softballs? Is it any wonder when they leave the church if they never see their parents addressing the tough stuff, and their youth group is more about playing games and eating pizza than learning to actually apply the Bible to the hard issues of their lives?
• Prepare yourself. I am often impressed with the sophistication of the arguments or objections I’ve heard from young people. You can’t teach knowledge (or train for skills) that you don’t already possess. When I took martial arts, my instructor was a black belt, so he could teach any of us. As we moved up the ranks, we could teach the lower ranks because we were already familiar with what they were just learning. Don’t wait for your kids’ questions before you investigate a topic. I can answer my students’ questions (generally) because I’ve already wrestled with the question before they’ve asked it. Check out resources like J. Warner Wallace’s Cold Case Christianity (www.coldcasechristianity.com), Greg Koukl’s Stand to Reason (www.str.org), William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith (www.reasonablefaith.org), or Frank Turek’s Cross-Examined (www.crossexamined.org).
• Be honest. Finally, kids are often surprisingly good polygraphs. If you don’t know how to address a question, the appropriate response is “That’s a great question. Let me do some research and get back with you with an answer.” And then follow up. While you may have to write down that you need to follow up, they’ll remember if you say you’ll get back to them and forget (as I found out my first year teaching).

Hopefully, this gives you a place to start your own training program with your own kids. 🙂

[1] Ephesians 6:12-13
[2] Ephesians 6:4 – “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
[3] Proverbs 22:6 – “Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
[4] 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, Hebrews 5:12-14.