We’ve all heard it. I’ve heard it said of me. “Raised in the church”. But I don’t like it. And there are a couple of reasons why.

1: When we say people were ‘raised in the church’, we imply that the church is a building where people are raised. If you were raised ‘in the church’, does that mean you grew up going to a building? That has to be what it means, because until you are baptized you aren’t a part of the church (Acts 2:47). And when you are added by God to the church, you are added to Christ’s body (Eph. 1:22-23), and then YOU are the church (1 Cor. 12:12-27). There can really be no such thing as being raised in the church…unless of course you’re only talking about being in the womb of a Christian woman!

2: When we tell someone they were raised ‘in the church’, it leaves the wrong impression of salvation. If you were raised in the church, why become a member? Aren’t you already a member? Do you have sins that need to be forgiven? Or are you just simply being baptized because that’s what you do? I had that problem, which is why I remedied it a couple of months ago. I didn’t really count the cost of conversion. I didn’t really know of any sins I had that I was repenting of when I decided to be baptized at nine. There wasn’t really a change in me when I put on the “new man” because, after all, I’d been raised in the church. Nothing changed at all, except now I got to partake of communion!

There are a few ways we can remedy these issues. For the first issue, we can all (me included!) stop saying that someone was raised in the church. They weren’t. We weren’t. We can tell our children, friends, co-workers, etc. that we grew up going to worship. That we habitually attended Bible classes as children. That we were raised to fear God. But not that we grew up going to church–because by the way, we don’t do that either! We are the church, all the time, everywhere. And the church–the people who make up Christ’s body wherever you assemble– they are raising the children, or at least we ought to be prayerful that they will. We should always pray that our children will be raised by the church…by faithful Christian men and women who will take an interest in their spiritual well being.

That leads me to the second problem. If we’ll stop giving the impression that people were raised in the church, they’ll understand they aren’t automatically saved. When they venture into the years where they’re accountable for their sins, we should talk openly about them. It’s not going to be easy. I’m sure none of us enjoy confessing our sins. But our children (and please, please hold me accountable for this one day) need to know that we know we aren’t perfect (they’ll already know we aren’t!). They need to hear us talk about when we were converted and how. They need to hear about our struggles. They need to know what sin is, so they know when they have it and what they can do to get rid of it. But they don’t need to grow up thinking that because they grew up going to a building that they are somehow saved. That because they grew up going to a building that they are automatically close to God. They need to hear about our personal relationships with God. They need to know we have sinned and continually struggle with it. They need to know that Jesus is the reason we can and should worship our Maker.

Please understand when I say I am guilty of so much of this. I am guilty of referring to myself as one who has grown up in the church. I am guilty of keeping my sins to myself, instead of “confessing them one to another” (James 5:16). However, I am thankful that I was raised by the church. I am thankful for people like Tim and Libbie Orbison, Steve and Alisa Watson, Steve and Jamie Harless, Lonnie and Jacque Jones, Lisa Corder Carper, and my amazing grandparents. These people raised me to fear God and keep His commandments. These people taught me what Christian living should look like. And while I grew up in the pews next to them, those pews didn’t raise me. The church did. These people did.

Let’s be careful about the impression we leave on our children and on those outside of the church. I’m sure we all know what we mean when we say it, but let’s be careful that we don’t give the impression that the church is a building, or that you can grow up sitting in a building and automatically be a good Christian. It’s about more than that.