Once it was the preacher’s kid who was pitied and notorious because of his father’s attention to the church flock rather than his own child. Within the Adventist world, the preacher’s kid is no longer alone as entire congregations abandon their own children in order to pursue other ministries, to enable evangelism in the local church.

At the recent Northern California Conference constituency meeting this attitude was crisply articulated by the finance committee chairperson from one of the largest churches in the conference. He stood at the microphone and lamented that one-third of the church budget went to the local K-12 school, thus rendering his congregation unable to pursue ministry.

No one pointed out that sixty-three young people from his church attend the school, or that education is a ministry. If he was looking for sympathy from the other delegates and hoped to encourage them to vote in support of the motion that required churches to join school constituencies, he did not succeed. The motion failed.

Education once was considered one of the most important ministries within Adventism, as is evident in the following description of the philosophy of SDA education in the SDA Encyclopedia:

SDAs hold that it is a right of all children of SDA parents to receive a Christian education, and that, although a major share of the responsibility for providing it rests upon the parents, the local church too bears a responsibility to see that all children of the church are provided as much education in SDA schools as the young person desires or as can benefit him. (417)

Written in the 1960s, the SDA Encyclopedia described an SDA culture much different from today. It was during the 1950s and early 1960s that the church developed landmark programs for children. The first Pathfinder Club was created in 1950. By 1957, Pathfinder Sabbath was placed on the North American church calendar as the fourth Sabbath in September, and every church had a club. The last volume of Arthur Maxwell’s The Bible Story was published in 1958.

Pathfinders and Adventist books for children are alive today. But are they given the same priority that they were in the past? Year after year, we celebrate evangelism, have a year of evangelism, and sponsor programs galore to inspire and promote evangelism. When will our children get the same kind of attention as nonbelievers do? Are the souls of our children any less worthy of being saved?

Maria Shriver, the first lady of California, was recently asked about her accomplishments during the first 100 days as the governor’s wife. "I kept my kids sane and normal," was her reply. "No matter what I did, whether I stayed working or was a full-time first lady, that had to be my priority," she explained. "It is one of her beliefs that if you don’t get the mom thing right, not much else matters," Sacramento magazine reported.

One of the things that Shriver and her famous husband Arnold Schwarzenegger did for their children was to install a hotline into the governor’s office just for their kids. "A lot of government leaders have a hotline to the National Guard; Arnold has a hotline just for the kids. Our 10-year-old son uses it numerous times," Shriver told Sacramento. "Arnold said, ’Shouldn’t there be some limits on the hotline?’ I said, ’No. There can’t be any limits on the hotline.’ You want your kids to feel that even though Dad has changed jobs, they’re still the focus of your world."

Would that Adventist congregations had that attitude about their children.

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