The Global Church Starts at My Dinner Table

By amazon Monday, September 23, 2019 Comment Edit

Why my kids participate in praying for the persecuted church.

“Pray for Leah Sharibu, the only Dapchi school girl still left in Boko Haram captivity. She refuses to renounce her Christian faith.”

“Pray for the safety of Yousef and his family in Egypt. They escaped their home just before an attack.”

“Praise the Lord for persevering believers like Sharik in Syria, who face threats from neighbors.”

My 8-year-old daughter has the job of reading prayer requests during family worship. The requests come from a monthly calendar sent by International Christian Response, a group that offers spiritual and material assistance to the persecuted church. Every evening, her small voice announces the trials and victories of God’s people around the world.

Religious persecution is a daunting problem with long-standing historical, cultural, socio-political, and spiritual entanglements. Recent Pew Research shows increased hostility against religious minorities worldwide, and between 2007 and 2017, Christians are listed at the top, with recognized persecution across 143 countries.

Reports like this can be disheartening. What can people like us do about a seemingly big and complex challenge? And why involve our children in it?

“We are not creating a ‘pure’ household into which we withdraw and retreat in order to protect ourselves from the big, bad world,” writes James K.A. Smith in You Are What You Love. Rather, “we want to be intentional about the formative rhythms of the household so that it is another recalibrating space that forms us and prepares us to be launched into the world ... to bear God’s image to and for our neighbors.”

If Smith is right, then the Christian home is less of a bunker against danger and more of a training ...