A university graduate now, she is most perceptive about my work as a pastor.

Knowing what their parents do or have done for a living can't always be expected of American children. Sue Shellenbarger, Work & Family columnist for the Wall Street Journal, recently described her nine-year-old son telling a friend that "Mommy types for a living."

Later she began clarifying through "work stories" so he understood that she wrote. Her column was highlighting how a "continuing 10-year University of Chicago study of 250 young adults shows that many teens don't understand the career paths open to them or the steps needed to travel the path of their choice." The point being that many parents simply don't convey to their children what they do at work.

Take that tendency out further. From telling family work stories, let's consider expanding to family history stories to telling the stories of our extended family and ethnic clan to the telling of the history of our nation and the world.

For years the U.S. educational system has been castigated, and not without cause, for failing to effectively teach students basic history. But who else hasn't lived up to their history-teaching expectations? You guessed it—parents and the churches, too. After all, when you're talking history stories of the world, the Bible is the textbook.

God in the Bible instructs us as parents to teach our children in detail about His great moral ethic—i.e., His laws. He also requires us to tell them the stories of the true history of man. Including, for instance, the meaning of the memorial stones the ancient Israelites were to carry out of the bottom of the Jordan River as they crossed into the Promised Land shortly before Joshua fought the battle of Jericho (Deuteronomy 4:6-8; Joshua 4:4-7)

To teach our children the stories of history—parent, clan and tribe—requires that the adult generation see clearly the value of history itself. Often over the years I have asked my congregations if they enjoyed studying history in school. Always the majority did not.

This seemed odd to me at first because I had several superb teachers who helped me grow to love history. Then it dawned on me: There must be very few good history teachers. No wonder we fail to grasp its significance to the meaning of our lives!

Eminent historian and late, great British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill pegged the purpose of history: "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see."

History's stories carry prophetic implications.

Knowing their family history gives children a sense of heritage and direction for their futures. After she told him the stories of her writing career, Sue Shellenbarger's son, in his early teens, now asks her how he can also prepare for and find his own interesting and challenging life's work.

Industrial wise man Max DuPree in his 1989 book Leadership Is an Art describes the telling of the history of families, clans, nations and even business institutions as "tribal storytelling."

"Every family, every college, every corporation, every institution needs tribal storytellers," he wrote. "The penalty for failing to listen is to lose one's history, one's historical context, one's binding values."

Sharing values that bind sure beats the alternative—lives and families coming unglued!

"Tribal storytellers, the tribe's elders, must insistently work at the process of corporate renewal," Mr. Dupree wrote. "They must preserve and revitalize the values of the tribe."

Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles are the family's "tribal" elders. How good a tribal storyteller are you? How well do your children know your personal and family history? How well do you know it? Turn off the TV, shut down the computer, gather the children around and tell the stories of your tribe.

And how well have you been taught the true tribal stories of the Bible? Or even the true history, for instance, of the popular holidays of modern Christianity? Along with Islam, Judaism and the other world religions, traditional Christianity has not proven a particularly truthful tribal storyteller.

The Bible is the record of the ultimate, divine, tribal storytelling. Again, turn off the TV and computer, blow the dust off your Bible and read for yourself the foundational stories of every tribe of mankind in the world today. You will be surprised.