I recently stayed with a Christian family. One child is still living at home, their other two are living independently. Their family’s story includes sibling anger, late diagnosis neurodiversity, multiple school moves, and a particularly painful season with one of their teenagers.
It also includes amazing family memories, others in need who have been brought into their home, their enduring trust in Christ, and supportive churches. These are experienced and godly parents!
A unique role
I was struck again by the unique role of parents. No one else could have walked these roads with their children so consistently. Their church played a great part, as did local Christian friends and geographically distant family members, but the parents had a unique role.
They are the world experts on their own children, just as every parent is the world expert on theirs. No one else can identify so accurately the cause of today’s anger and tomorrow’s tears.
While we might daydream about some other Christian parent raising our child (for our sake as well as our child’s!), we feel deep love for our child, we sense the journey we are on together and we hear the Bible’s instructions that only a parent can fulfil (e.g. Ephesians 6:4).
Sobering statistics
The cold data is as clear as crystal. Our church, its staff and volunteers might have 50 hours a year to invest in my child, perhaps double that if there is a vibrant midweek programme. But, as a parent, I have thousands of hours a year. When my child has a crisis or a deep question, it generally blows into my kitchen, not into their Sunday School class. It happens while they are living with me. I am their doctor, their teacher, their moral guru, their chef and their bank. I feel inadequate in all of these roles.
Three-quarters of UK Christians say they came to faith before the age of 18. When 11–18-year-old Christians were asked what the key factors were in them coming to faith, their top answer (41%) was growing up in a Christian home – this was more significant than their youth group, their friends, and even the Bible.
And yet just 50% of children growing up in Christian homes keep their faith into adulthood. The most striking data for me is that, around the world, churchgoing teenagers do not expect to drop out of church when they leave home. They are often as surprised as their parents by their decision to stop. Are we are raising our children to routinely attend church, or to be disciples of Jesus Christ? It is only when they leave their home church where they belong and feel loved, that they have to walk into a church where no one knows their name. Will they return next week? If they are only long-term church attenders, maybe not. If they are disciples of Jesus, probably yes.
Church-parent partnership
Parents have a unique role, for which they need to be equipped. Many parents don’t know how to pray with their children, how to read the Bible with them, how to have faith conversations with them, or how to talk about the prickliest issues with them. Have we grasped that parents are the pastors of their families, who have not been trained for their vital task?
As a gift from God, our churches can serve exactly this purpose. We can train the parents while partnering with them to disciple their child. As with all discipleship it is going to involve sharing life, not just a routine or habit. Of those young adults from Christian homes who drop out, 88% say that no other adult from church invested in them during their secondary school years. We can change that.
