Thomas Smyth, The Mission of Parenting: Raising Children Who Love the Mission of God. Madison, MS: Log College Press, 2019. Originally published in 1846 as “The Duty of Interesting Children in the Missionary Cause.” $4.99, paperback.
But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?” – Matthew 21:15-16
Thomas Smyth (1808-1873) was an Irish Presbyterian minister who labored at Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina from 1834 until his death in 1873. He published The Duty of Interesting Children in the Missionary Cause in 1846 to encourage, convict, and promote the work of missions, not only in the adults of the church, but also to show the necessity of cultivating the knowledge and practice of missions in the hearts and minds of the children of the church. (i)
In this short booklet, Smyth is immensely grieved by the disinterest of his generation in the work of and a lack of participation by adults in missions. His solution to the problem is simple yet biblical – to promote and grow the missionary work of the church, he writes to parents that,
It is therefore our manifest duty to bring up our children in a missionary spirit, and in a missionary practice. (2)
The lack of teaching and participation in the work of missions by parents will be a seed planted in the hearts of their children, and that seed will grow into a tree which produces no fruit for God’s kingdom and only serves to produce an adult who has little care or any desire for participation in the advancement of the gospel to the heathen nations.
Smyth will use the term “heathen” and “heathen nations” throughout this booklet, and it is a term that I find to be helpful even if it is a bit jarring to modern sensibilities. Smyth saw the necessity of missionary work not just in the nations around the world who have not heard the Gospel, but also among those in the United States who had not heard and been saved by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a particularly important reminder to the modern American church – the Gospel can and ought to go to the ends of the earth, but we should never forget that the Gospel must also go into our communities, neighborhoods, cities, and schools. The missionary work of the Gospel is not just a foreign work, it is also, by necessity, a local work in which Christians ought to take part.
Even though Smyth is dismayed by the lack of missionary zeal in the church of his day, he is more concerned in this book with raising up the next generation of Christians to become the missionaries of the Gospel that the church needs today. He lays out his charge to parents in the three short chapters of this short book with each chapter pertaining to a particular action involved in raising children who love the mission of God. First, Smyth will discuss the duty of parents to raise their children with a view towards the necessity and practice of missions. Second, he will discuss how to interest children in the missionary cause. Finally, he will discuss the efficiency of children’s ministry efforts. Chapter one is best summarized by Smyth’s conclusion:
It is AS CERTAINLY SINFUL to neglect to bring children up in a missionary spirit, and a missionary habit, as it is to bring them up without any knowledge of God or of his law, or of any moral duty (6).
Christian parents would (hopefully) never imagine neglecting to teach their children about the law of God, but how many parents forget to teach and cultivate a missionary spirit in their children? The best way to cultivate a child’s heart towards missionary service is to engage them in it. Smyth notes,
[the child’s] heart will be like a garden, which must either be filled with weeds, or with sweet flowers and fruit. A child so employed [learning what needs to be done for the heathen at home and abroad] leaves but little room for the weeds to grow in his garden (6).
Chapter two is centered around the question of how to interest children in missions. In this chapter, Smyth gets very practical and pointed. He will argue that parents who desire for their children to become interested in missions must be interested in and participate with missions themselves. Smyth adds,
If you, then, who are parents, enter heartily into this work, so will your children; but if you are practically, really, and at home, indifferent to it, so will they be. LIKE PARENT, LIKE CHILDREN!!! (10)
Parents must not go about this work and hope that their children might become interested in missions. Far from it, parents must indoctrinate them, here a little, there a little, and “in this mold of the gospel they must be fashioned.” (11) But in this missionary emphasis and indoctrination of children, Smyth wisely and precisely reminds the parents of the true purpose in missions
THE PERSONAL SALVATION OF OUR CHILDREN OUGHT OF COURSE TO BE OUR FIRST AND GREATEST OBJECT… In order to enable children to take heartfelt interest in Christian missions they must unquestionably be taught that it is their first duty to become true Christians themselves… And we must persuade them without delay to receive Christ, to give themselves to Christ, to be saved by him, and to serve him (16-17)
Chapter three focuses upon the subject of the efficiency of juvenile missionary effort. Parents are to equip, prepare, and support children in their missionary efforts, but do their efforts really matter? Are they really an effective means for the propagation of the gospel message? Smyth answers affirmatively,
When the church realizes [the agency of children will yet be found “mighty through God”], and acts upon it, and calculates and relies upon the efforts of the young, then will she find herself strong enough to fulfill her great commission to preach the gospel to every creature, and then shall every knee bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (23)
Smyth ends this short work on a mighty trumpet blast of conviction and a call to action for parents from a Christian mother,
I fear that many of us think that parental duty is limited to labors for the salvation of our children; that we have prayed for them only that they may be saved; instructed them only that they may be saved. Infinitely important, indeed, it is, that they should be saved. But if ardent desires for the glory of our Redeemer and the salvation of souls glowed in our hearts like an inextinguishable flame, our most earnest prayers, from their very birth, would be, that they might not only be saved themselves, but be instrumental in saving others. (3)
It is not just the duty of the parent to work towards and pray for the salvation of their children. Parents must also prepare and promote the work of missions in the heart of their children in the same spirit as Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:27-28 “For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I have made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD.”
Although short, this book contains a wealth of pastoral insights, practical advice, biblical wisdom, and convicting blows which will convince any pastor, teacher, or parent to begin emphasizing the work of missions in their children and congregations. Smyth offers a simple and realistic call to churches who lament the decline of missionary zeal in the Presbyterian church and wonder how to build up the work of missions. The way to build up missions is to build up children to become missionaries themselves, both at home and abroad. Children should be given every opportunity to support the work of missions in local congregations through prayers, raising money, writing letters, serving locally and abroad, and be indoctrinated into the belief that missions is not a secondary work, but a primary work to be done by the church.
This serious work does not begin with the children, but with the parents. Pastors, equip the parents of your congregation for the work of missions. Emphasize their work and necessity. Make opportunities for parents to display the work of missions to their families. Parents, make opportunities for missionary service in your family. Do not be hearers of the word only, but doers. If your churches do not have opportunities, find other families and make them. Show your children the importance of a missionary spirit by cultivating one in your own heart. May God bless the work of missions in His church by cultivating a heart for missions in the families of His church, and may God use this small book by Thomas Smyth as an instrument to reignite the flames of missions in the hearts of the church.
