At the 2022 International Conference on Missions, my sister and I led a workshop titled “They Want Our Kids.” Here’s the handout we used. The handout is a limited bullet-point list of some things going on in the public schools (and even in some Christian schools). Of concern are hot-button culture issues as well as religious practices. Certain indoctrination and assignments/exercises have been going on for decades; many of us just didn’t notice.
In the workshop we met parents who were savvy. (A few had even taken their kids out of school a few years ago already.) But we also had attenders who were shocked at some of what was said. Interesting that one couple had brought their two teens—and these kids were nodding throughout the session. It wasn’t news to them!
Later in a lunch chat with three teens, all talked of the push at school for students to go to the “safe place”—that is, the office of the school counselor or “diversity director” or similar—in the event of anxiety/depression. These teens said it isn’t directly stated that students should talk to these instead of to their parents, but it feels implied, especially with encouragements like, “It’s OK not to tell anyone else. But you can come to this safe place …” The “safe place” terminology was intriguing to me. At a market near our event, one clerk had a sign in front of his station that said, “I am a safe person.” (I guess all you have to do to prove that a place/person is safe is to declare it? And what is the definition of safe in these scenarios? Are we really to expect safety 24/7 in this world? Gotta think more about this one.)
Feel free to use the handout for discussions with a group of parents or kids’ teachers at your church. Sharing it digitally will be the most helpful; you can link through and discuss the additional pieces together. I encourage you to resist the temptation to keep digging into more and more dark examples. That leaves you feeling overwhelmed, too beat down to take action. A few zinger examples should be enough to signal that we need to spend LOTS of time with the final section about spiritual truth and protection.
