Editorial: How A Biblical Worldview Shapes The Way We Teach Our Children -- By: Timothy Paul Jones

Journal: Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry
Volume: JDFM 04:1 (Fall 2013)
Article: Editorial: How A Biblical Worldview Shapes The Way We Teach Our Children
Author: Timothy Paul Jones


Editorial: How A Biblical Worldview Shapes The Way
We Teach Our Children

Timothy Paul Jones

Timothy Paul Jones oversees online learning and teaches in the areas of family ministry and apologetics. Before coming to Southern, he led churches in Missouri and Oklahoma as pastor and associate pastor. Dr. Jones has received the Scholastic Recognition Award and has authored or contributed to more than a dozen books, including Conspiracies and the Cross: Perspectives on Family Ministry; and, Christian History Made Easy. In 2010, Christian Retailing magazine selected Christian History Made Easy as the book of the year in the field of Christian education. He is married to Rayann and they have three daughters: Hannah, Skylar, and Kylinn. The Jones family serves in SojournKids children’s ministry at Sojourn Community Church.

To have a biblical worldview is to interpret every aspect of our lives—including our relationships with children—within the framework of God’s story. At the center of God’s story stands this singular act: In Jesus Christ, God personally intersected human history and redeemed humanity at a particular time in a particular place. Yet this central act of redemption does not stand alone. It is bordered by God’s good creation and humanity’s fall into sin on the one hand and by the consummation of God’s kingdom on the other.

This story of creation, fall and law, redemption, and consummation is the story that Christians have repeated to one another and to the world ever since Jesus ascended into the sky and sent his Spirit to dwell in his first followers’ lives. This age-old plot-line should frame every aspect of our lives—including how we treat and train children.

Gifts From God And Sinners In Need

In each movement of God’s storyline, it is clear that children are neither burdens to be avoided nor byproducts of human sin. Every child is a blessing and a gift (Ps. 127:3-5). Even before humanity’s fall into sin, God designed the raising of children to serve as a means for the multiplication of his manifest glory around the globe (Gen. 1:26-28). A few bites of forbidden fruit, raising Cain as well as Abel, and a worship service that ended in fratricide took their toll on that first family—but God refused to give up on his first purpose to turn the family into a means for revealing his glory. God promised that, through the offspring of Eve, he would send a redeemer to fulfill his plan to pour out his glory over all the earth (Gen. 3:15; 4:1, 25)....

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