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It takes a bold pastor to be willing to address what is being taught in public schools. There aren’t many pastors brave enough to tackle the elephant in the room. Upwards of 80 percent of Christians send their children to government schools. Most pastors aren’t willing to offend that 80 percent, lest they leave and take their money with them. It poses the question: What is more important, is it money or souls?

The church’s primary mission should be to create disciples. If the children, the future of the church, are lost, who then will go forth and spread the Gospel? Ask any pastor of any church and they will likely tell you that the children in their congregations are the future of the church. Yet, “A report by the Baptist Council on Family Life in 2002 found that 88 percent of children from evangelical homes who attend government schools leave the church within two years of graduation from high school, and most never return! Contrast this with another study which showed that over 90 percent of home-schooled children accept Christ as their Lord and Savior,” this according to exodusmandate.org. How can we expect Christianity to advance when a vast number of Christian youth are leaving the church for good?

At any given time, media platforms are inundated with reports of leftist indoctrination, Marxist ideology, Critical Race Theory, social–emotional learning and inappropriate reading materials in school libraries, yet evolution has been taught as fact in classrooms for decades. Where is the outrage from the church? For Christians, this issue should have been paramount when it first began. However, many pastors and Christian parents have remained silent.

Schools have taught children for decades that the Bible is a lie. Is there any doubt then why so many young people leave the church? The majority of Christian families send their children to schools that teach the very antithesis of the Bible five days a week, 30-plus hours a week for the majority of their children’s formative years. They are indoctrinated to believe their Christian faith is a lie.

“For nearly a century Christians have been losing the cultural war. The reason for this, we’ve been treating symptoms rather than the disease causing the problems—the secular schools,” Exodus Mandate continues. “George Barna’s studies show that only 7 percent of Christian adults have a Christian worldview. Unfortunately, most Christians are unaware of the toxic effects that public schools are having upon their children, and so, spend time, energy, and money in the hopeless task of seeking to improve them.”

Parents are choosing the wrong battles. The educational system is not broken. It is doing what it was intended to do. If parents want to truly protect their children, they must remove them from the system. It is the church’s responsibility to make sure the families in their congregations make that happen.

Even home-school families have fallen prey to the indoctrination via local academies that have sprung up offering their services to the home-school community. One in particular I found in our area was co-founded by a pastor and uses Next Generation Science standards. It teaches evolution as fact. This is egregious. It is shameful that pastors seem to be unwilling to defend Biblical truth. Authentic home schooling is parent-led and parent-directed. When parents abdicate that responsibility to others, they are no longer in charge of their children’s education and they are also not home-schooling. They are essentially providing their children with a school model that is teaching the same material as the government school system.

The Christian community needs pastors willing to speak truth from the pulpit and address the elephant in the room. Churches need a plan in place to assist parents with removing their children from government schools. They need to provide families with the support they need to successfully make the leap. I encourage churches and pastors to make this a primary mission for their church. The church should serve as the thermostat for the community. As the saying goes, “As goes the church, so goes the nation.”

Pastors who are interested in creating a plan to help parents free their children from government schools can contact me at freeyourchildren@gmail.com.