(AgapePress) - A Christian educator is calling on Southern Baptist churches and families to begin protecting children from the decline and decay of our culture by committing to "Kingdom education" -- a lifelong, Bible-based, Christ-centered process of leading a child to Christ, as well as discipling and equipping him or her to serve Christ.

Ed Gamble is executive director of the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools. He says Christian youth in Southern Baptist churches are less inclined to think and behave biblically than they were 50 years ago.

Why is that the case? According to Gamble, there are more than 40,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention -- but only about 600 Christian schools.

"That's not a coordinate emphasis on Christian education -- and that, I think, is the number-one issue in Baptist life," Gamble says. "If we don't take seriously the education of our youth, then we can evangelize the dickens out of everybody we see, and they'll come in the front door and go out the back just as fast."

Gamble says the majority of Christian young people attending public schools are unable to articulate a Christian worldview, and are being affected by the secular culture more than they are affecting it. That is why the Christian educator is challenging Southern Baptist pastors to become serious about Kingdom-educating children.

Gamble says if just 20% of Southern Baptist pastors committed to teaching young people from a biblical perspective in school, the impact on the denomination would be "immense."

"Our Father in heaven owns the cattle on a thousand hills. His arm is not short, and He can do anything He pleases," he says, "and I believe it pleases Him to raise up godly seed, as it says in the second chapter of Malachi.

"I cannot believe that God would ask us to raise godly children -- as He does in Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, and Malachi 2 -- and then not equip us to do that."

Gamble says he is convinced that if Christians will pray and ask God to help them find a way to Kingdom-educate their children, He will do that -- and it will turn the tide in America's culture.

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