As I noted in my last post, one of the most common objections to homeschooling made by Christians is that homeschooling is inherently unevangelistic.

The claim is that, if Christians remove their children from public schools, there will be no more "salt and light" left in a place that is already so dark and tasteless.

I have wanted to say more about this, but I have been wrestling for over a week now with what exactly it should be. I have so many thoughts on this matter, and it's hard to know where to begin.

We know that merely hanging around with unsaved people doesn't make us evangelists any more than hanging around with Christians makes a person a Christ-follower. We also know that bad company corrupts good morals. (I Corinthians 15:33)

But it goes deeper than that. We also know that most Christians kids who are going to public schools are not doing much evangelism. Truth be told, most Christian adults are not doing much evangelism in their workplace, either. Why is this?

We must ask ourselves, what are the things that are necessary for Christian evangelism to occur? Based on my understanding of the Scriptures, I can think of four:

--The Holy Spirit. In John 14:16, Jesus promised his disciples that he would ask the Father to send another helper to them, to enable them to do the work that he was going to leave them to do. This helper is the Holy Spirit. Which brings us back to the issue of rebirth. We know for a statistical fact that somewhere around 75% of kids being raised in American Christian homes walk away from their faith by the end of their freshman year in college. According to I John 2:19, this means that the vast majority of these young people do not have saving faith. Without saving faith, there is no promise of the Holy Spirit to help a child evangelize.

--Biblical Literacy and a Knowledge of the Gospel. Biblical literacy among Christians--that is, knowing what the Bible teaches and how it is to be applied--is at an all-time low in this country. Less than 10% of churched teens have a biblical world view. This isn't just on "hot button" social issues like gay marriage, premarital sex, or abortion. These young people don't understand the core foundational truths of the gospel--sin, grace, atonement, justification. They don't believe that Jesus is God, nor do they believe that his life on earth was one of perfect sinlessness. If young people don't get these things, how can they possibly share the gospel with their friends at school?

If you went to public school, ask yourself, am I still close to anyone I was friends with in public school? Who are those people? Chances are, they are people you spent a significant amount of time with outside of school. I know this is true for me.

School is not the only place for kids to make friends, nor is it even the best place. In reality, institutional settings are as lousy at equipping people for human relationships as they are at educating them in other areas. Which brings me to the fourth necessary element...

One of the reasons that children don't do much evangelism in public schools is that it is not really their job to talk. It is their job to listen. The teacher is the one who does most of the talking. To be direct, instead of Christians students evangelizing their peers, the secular humanist teachers are discipling our Christian kids!--telling them what to think and not to think, what to believe and why to believe it.

Even public school teachers who are Christians are not talking much (if at all) about God. If they did, they'd be out of a job--fast. I did have one public school teacher who made it a point to share her faith with her students, but she did it by sharing her life with us. She spent a great deal of time with us outside the classroom, and her office was always an open door to us. She was the high school choir teacher, so she had some liberty to choose sacred music for us to learn and study. This, however, was 15 years ago (ouch...am I old???). I doubt many teachers have that kind of freedom to share their faith today. 

For children to share their faith with their classmates, there must be time and opportunities for effective communication. A quick two minute conversation between bells doesn't do it.

So far, I've spent most of my time explaining why there isn't much evangelism happening in our public schools. But what about homeschoolers?  How are we to fulfill the Great Commission? Are we doing it?

Let's look at those four necessary elements again:

Outside of our homes, we also have opportunities to share our faith. We can become involved in community organizations, visit nursing homes, or volunteer to help the needy in various ways. We can make ourselves fixtures at the local library or playground, especially during the summer months where children who are schooled outside the home are typically board and lonely. If we truly have a heart for unsaved school children, we can become involved in ministries like Child Evangelism Fellowship's Good News Clubs, where Christians bring Bible teaching and the Gospel of Christ into the schools to reach lost children and their families.

There are so many ways for our families to share the gospel with others, if we would just open our eyes to them and seek God's leading in our lives!