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 Frontline Ministries’ Founder Chaplain E. Ray Moore, at left, with Mark Earley, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship. Earley spoke at the Exodus Mandate 10th Anniversary Banquet.
The banquet featured a beautiful selection of music performed by Judy Rogers, who writes her own songs based on passages of Scripture and true Christian principles. Much of her music is for children to nourish them with a love of the Lord from an early age, which serves as a Christian alternative to the “music” our secular culture offers.
Exodus Mandate just established the Dr. Robert Dreyfus Courageous Christian Leadership Award and the first honor was jointly awarded to Messrs. T.C. Pinckney and Bruce Shortt for co-sponsoring the well-publicized June 14, 2004, education resolution in the Southern Baptist Convention urging parents to withdraw their children from government schools and provide a Christian education.
The main speaker was Mark Earley, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, who succeeded its founder Chuck Colson. He served as a Virginia state senator for ten years and subsequently as Virginia attorney general for four years. He also worked with the Navigators ministry for many years.
Mr. Earley said that when he was with the Navigators, people might say that they did not feel called to be a disciple-maker. He would respond, “If you are going to have children, then you are called to be a disciple-maker.” Parents sometimes forget that their children are their most important responsibility given to them from God, but Earley reminded the audience that “there is not one square mile of the cosmos over which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘Mine.’” Everything we have belongs to God, including our children. He added, “The reality is that our children will hear conflicting messages from our culture, which is why we must input Christian values.”
Mr. Earley personally likes to read the minor prophet Amos once a month, because it depicts what happens when a culture rejects a Biblical worldview. Just like our own country, the Israelites were consumed with their own prosperity and had become presumptuous, materialistic, and promiscuous. Although they were outwardly pious, God rejected their religiosity, and turned them over to foreign invaders.
In the introduction, Rev. Moore cited a study which found that a majority of Christian students attending government schools were changed to a secular worldview by high school graduation. Mr. Earley quoted a Barnes study which found that 61% of Christians in their twenties, who had gone to church youth groups in their younger years, no longer read the Bible or go to church. The spiritual battle for the minds of our Christian youth in our government schools and secular culture is simply overwhelming.
The sex education being promulgated in our schools has created the greatest divide in government education, according to Mr. Earley. He said, “It’s deeper and wider than the public realizes because they don’t share the same goals. The responsibility for this falls to Christian families.” The liberal government sex education agenda taught in schools permits no compromise for Christians.
The recent deaths of Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy remind us that a great generation of Christians is departing to be with our Lord and Savior. Who will carry the mantle for Christ? Mr. Earley closed by stating “It is our responsibility to pass on to another generation a comprehensive, true Christian worldview, which must be not only ‘taught but caught.’” He reminded the audience that William Wilberforce, who fought so bravely to outlaw slavery in the 1700s in England, lamented even then that Christianity was being neglected in schools in Britain. Consequently, Wilberforce tried to create a Renaissance in Christian education. If we want Christianity in America to survive and flourish, we must emulate his example and educate our children in a Christian worldview, which can only happen when parents accept this mandate from God.
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