Ben Alltimes discusses peer pressure and the reasons why so many children from Christian families do not go on to become believers
Sadly, many children from Christian families end up ‘falling away’ from the church and rejecting the faith of their parents. The reasons for this may be many, but why are we so reluctant to talk about – much less face up to – one of the seemingly most common ones; the effects of non-church friendships on church children?
For a long time I’ve been perplexed by the large number of children from Christian families who do not go on to be believers as adults. But although sadly this is a widespread phenomenon, the subject is a bit of a taboo in evangelical circles. We might go as far as asking others to pray for our ‘prodigal’ children, but we don’t generally like to dwell on the reasons they left. And as painful and as sensitive as this issue is, maybe we owe it to the current generation of parents to spend some time prayerfully grappling with this issue in the hope that lessons can be learned that will help the church.
Who is to blame?
Most of us are only too aware of our failings and inadequacies as parents. I’m sure that few parents whose children have left the church haven’t experienced a pang of guilt and wondered whether they could have done a better job of raising them. The good news is that no parent need live in condemnation, since none of us is ultimately to blame for our children’s choices. From a human perspective every child is responsible for their own decision whether to follow Christ or not. From a divine perspective faith is a gift of God and even the best Christian home and upbringing cannot guarantee the salvation of any child.
Having said this, parents do have an important role to play in bringing up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord. We would be sinfully mistaken to think that the salvation of our children depended on our efforts, but we would be equally wrong to think that it had nothing to do with us and the choices we made.
Contrary to what some might think, it is not unspiritual to consider the ‘human factors’ that draw children away from church. If there is something in the way they are brought up which is causing them to leave in droves, then surely we have the responsibility before God to identify the problem, confess it and perhaps radically change the way we do things.
Kids under pressure
The ‘human reasons’ why kids leave the church are manifold, but one of the biggest ones I’ve noticed over my many years in church is the influence of ‘peer-pressure’ and non-church friends on children, particularly in the school environment. This truly is the elephant in the room – or perhaps playground – that is rarely talked about or analysed by Christians.
The answer to this is certainly not to cut our children off from all contact with non-believers and ‘wrap them up in cotton wool’. Of course we want our kids to be equipped for life in the ‘real world’ and we want them to develop social skills. We are rightly concerned about becoming exclusive, or shutting ourselves away in ‘holy huddles’ or adopting a sanctimonious ‘us and them’ attitude towards non-believers. And yes, many church children do (by God’s grace) manage to come through the school environment as Christians and witness effectively to their friends. Praise God for every one of them!
But let’s ask ourselves some searching questions: Do we acknowledge that schools and non-church friendships are likely to present a massive challenge to us as we try to bring up our kids in a godly way? Are we actively praying about this? Have we thought through our family policy/approach to our children’s friendships? Does our church provide teaching and guidance on this? Or are we just ‘trusting God and taking things as they come,’ assuming that non-church friendships are largely innocuous and that our families and churches will always enjoy the biggest influence over our children’s hearts and minds?
The reality is that as church kids reach their teens their non-church friends often exert a very significant influence over them. At this time many parents notice a growing competition for their children’s time and affections being waged between their friends, their family and their church. Many parents would see nothing wrong in this at first. After all, isn’t it a normal part of being a teenager? But then they start to notice a waning interest in church and a greater enthusiasm for things of the world and for the approval of their (often worldly and foolish) peer group. They try to counter this, but they are fighting a losing battle. The hearts of their children are already lost and probably have been for a long time. It is only a matter of time before they leave the church that has become for them a restrictive and embarrassing relic of their early childhoods.
Parents under the influence
None of us want this to happen, but do we unwittingly sow the seeds for this, particularly in the primary school years?
In largely middle-class churches we often seem to unthinkingly follow the patterns and ways of our unbelieving friends and neighbours when it comes to our lifestyle choices and values. We want our children to be popular and encourage them to have a wide circle of friends.
We ferry them around to an ever-increasing number of birthday parties and after-school activities. We allow them to go to sleepovers and school trips. We encourage them to take up hobbies, to excel at sport or in mastering a musical instrument. We pack them off to Scouts and cello lessons. When they are a bit older we expect them to ‘fulfil their potential’ academically, to attend a good university, to get a good job that enables them to pursue their dreams.
There probably isn’t anything really wrong with any of these things in themselves, but we need to be careful that we aren’t unwittingly promoting a subtle, hidden form of worldliness and passing it on to our children. The answer perhaps isn’t necessarily to stop our kids’ involvement in these things, but to recognise the inherent risks they present and to think more spiritually, prayerfully and intentionally about the choices we make for our families, rather than unthinkingly following the pattern of this world.
Making time to talk
Wouldn’t it be a great thing if parents of kids who had left the church were to counsel parents of younger children about the challenges they faced, the mistakes they made and the lessons they learned? It would take a lot of humility and would perhaps cause some tears, but it would surely be a helpful thing for the church. Wouldn’t it be good if Christian parents got together to discuss and pray about the influence – or potential influence – of schools and non-church friendships on their children?
Yes, our kids need to be saved by the grace of God and no lifestyle choice we make for them will cause them to be converted. In all this we are not trying to lay the blame at the door any parents, heap guilt upon them or make wrong assumptions about their parenting. But for the sake of the current generation of children growing up (for now) in churches can we at least have an honest, gracious conversation about why so many of our children are leaving, in the hope that we might gain wisdom, and that by God’s grace more of them would go on to adulthood as believers in the Lord Jesus?
