Christian educator says children ill-prepared to evangelize

Part 2 of a 3-part series posted at OneNewsNow.com

An advocate for Christian private schools says believers have a duty to give their children a godly education, and should not be fooled by the argument by some public school parents that their Christian children can be "salt and light" in the secular government schools.

The Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools is an Orlando-based group that is using two-day seminars in various cities to train church leaders in how to open private schools. Director Edward Gamble says Christians who give their children over to the secular public school system are disobeying God's command to educate their children biblically. He says many Christians believe the false argument that Christian children can be "salt and light" in the secular, humanist environment of public schools.

"I've heard that over and over and over again for the last 20 or 30 or 40 years," Gamble confesses, "and when I look at the results, the results say that the world influences the kids more than the kids influence the world."

That, says the Southern Baptist spokesman, is logical. "We don't send children to the mission field -- we send adults," he says, "and then only after extensive training, conditioning, and preparation." Gamble offers the following scenario by way of explanation.

"If you went to a typical Baptist church, or any other church for that matter, on a Sunday morning and asked the pastor or the Sunday school director to take you to the 3rd grade or the 8th grade, and show [you] the kids who [have been] prepared to be missionaries in a hostile environment, could they do it?" he asks.

"God doesn't tell us to send the enemy our children and have him educate them," says the SBACS director.