In this episode, Mark joins Associate Professor for the School of Theology & Leadership, Daniel Gluck & Associate Professor of Youth Ministry, Fritz Moga. Together they explore the difficult topic of whether Christian parents should force their children to go to church. Many children associate church with boredom, uncomfortable clothes, and weird smells. When they begin to voice a desire to not go, how should Christian parents respond? Could forcing church on them only cause them to run the other direction when they are older? Could not stressing it diminish the important role the church plays in the spiritual life?

TRANSCRIPT

0:08

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm joined by Daniel Gluck and Fritz Moga. Daniel, tell the listeners a little bit about what you teach here at Jessup.

0:18

I have the privilege of serving as lead Faculty of our BA in Christian Leadership Program, undergraduate students who are going into ministry and have a heart for leadership.

0:29

Wonderful. And Fritz, what do you teach here?

0:31

I am the lead faculty for the youth ministry department. So work in conjunction with Daniel everything's going on and leadership. And this would be a very specific part that trains young people to go work with young people.

0:42

That's wonderful. It's great to have both of you on the show. And I'm extremely interested in the topic that we're going to discuss today. And the big question that we're going to be tackling today is this. Should Christian parents force their children to go to church? And it's funny, every time I pose that to people, they all have a similar reaction, which is like, ooh, oh, that's a good question. And some, some with younger kids are like, I want to listen to that, because I don't need it yet. And then others who are right in the midst of it, I can feel their pain. I feel their pain. Yeah. When we say I didn't, and to be fully transparent. With this question. I have a lot of skin in the game. So as you know, along with being a Christian parent, myself, father of two middle school boys, so pray for me. Yeah. For me, I pray daily. And a professor here at Jessup. I'm also pastor at a church in the Arden arcade area of Sacramento, right? Yeah. And yeah, just bring them all together. Yeah. And at church, we've been having this discussion lately, we're just talking with parents, mostly parents of middle school and high school students, the fridge, you can kind of connect there to ministry, and just kind of having this conversation of, hey, if my child right now, is, is voicing maybe a boredom with church? A Yeah, you know, I starting to be maybe even a little disgruntle. about going and just trying to tackle that of like, man, how do I approach How do I approach them? How do I, how do we, as a family kind of handle the church question and that Now, before we get into it even deeper, I'd love to hear kind of your backstories and experiences with church. So first, what was your experience kind of growing up with church?

2:35

Yeah, I grew up in a go into church was a little outside the Christian denomination kind of church. However, I'm intrigued. I just don't want to name names. But But we were, we were forced to go. We got up every Sunday, and we went to church. And I was, I was particularly bored with things that were going on. But I I rediscovered God a little later on, like in high school. Yeah. But I've always looked back and thought, you know, those were not wasted years, forced to go to church, write write stories, I could recall things. It wasn't ultimately life changing then. But then later on, when I really accepted Christ into my heart, I could look back and go, you know what, that was not a bad thing for me to be there with those times.

3:22

Right? Yeah, it's so helpful to look back and see that and yeah, you can't in the moment, you're not going to be able to realize No, they're the impact about what you