Passing Down Christianity and Adult Children
Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering a Biblical Vision for Lifelong Discipleship comes out in a month. I’m excited about my first book, which is being published by Baker Books. You find it for pre-order for 40% off with free shipping at BakerBookHouse.com, and also on pre-order and discounted on Amazon and Westminster Books.
Ryan Burge has a good article examining weekly religious service attendance based on birth cohort — how frequently people born in a five year period (e.g. 1950-1954) attended religious services at different stages of life. He tests a common theory called the “life cycle effect”, which says that kids are raised religious, drift away from religion in their chaotic young adult years, return to church when they have their own kids, and then once their kids move out either stick with church or walk away from it.
Most pastors have seen the latter possibility play out time and time again. I know I have. When parents are in church for the sake of their kids they leave once their kids are “done”. In most of these cases I’ve observed that both children and parents subsequently walk away from the faith.
Burge notes that the Silent Generation’s regular attendance increased as they aged, that Baby Boomers and Gen X increased in attendance as they exited young adulthood and became parents, while there is no comparable increased attendance for Millennials (young generations haven’t reached that stage yet). Older Baby Boomers tended to stick with church once their kids were grown, while younger Boomers and Gen X decreased their attendance once their kids were grown, with the decrease getting sharper with each subsequent birth cohort.
Where does this leave us? Well, there are two related pivotal moments in a Christian’s life where the church can act to encourage sustained faith and participation. The first is when entering young adulthood and moving out of direct parental influence. That time is certainly chaotic and full of upheaval, and church attendance and religious observance often gets demoted in importance, especially if the student is moving. The church can intervene in two ways. First, by its adult leaders (pastors, elders, mentors) proactively maintaining a relationship with the student. Whether they stay home or travel, by taking the lead in that relationship and encouraging ongoing connection to the church, roots in the faith remain intact. Amidst the chaos of that phase in life is a constant, which is the care of their church family.
The second way is to provide concrete recommendations on other churches for the student to attend if they are moving. When members move away from my church I always provide a list of 4-5 recommended congregations near their new home. For college students I do the same, plus recommendations for solid campus ministries. For those enlisting in the military, I provide chaplain contacts. If I know any pastor or church leader or mature Christian where someone is moving, I pass make an introduction. You can’t control how people will handle this information, but you’re ensuring that geographic transition can maintain a continuity of faith and relationship. Minimizing the drop-off in this stage has long-term generational effects in handing down the faith; the shorter the drop from childhood to young adult, the less ground needs to be made up later, and the shorter the drop off when that birth cohort’s own kids graduate.
The second pivotal moment is for the parents whose kids move out. Chronologically this is the same moment as the first point, but focused on a different birth cohort. Calling it a “moment” is a bit misleading, since it really is about addressing parenting and parental trajectory. One of the reasons that there is a drop off from parents when their kids graduate is because the parents were only invested in the church as another social extracurricular. They view it not as something that they need, but something that is helpful for their kids only in an early stage of life. There’s only so much a pastor can do to convince unconvinced and uninterested people that they need the gospel and the regular worship of the church, but that is the first thing the church ought to strive for with young parents. By addressing this need and importance before their kids graduate, churches help eliminate that moment from being a spiritual fork in the road for parents.
There are two corollaries to this worth pointing out to parents. The first is that kids can smell insincerity a mile away. If parents only return to church because they want their kids to be Christian, the kids will know that their parents’ hearts are not in it. Urging parents to invest in their own faith for the sake of their kids is a way to appeal to their motives and showing that their strategy only really works if they personally pursue Christ in the community of the church.
Second, adult children still watch what their parents do. When kids move from childhood into the chaotic era of young adulthood, they are very much aware of what their parents value. They might not consciously note it, but if in a time of upheaval and reevaluation of their priorities they see that their parents moved on from church after they grew up, the adult children will conclude that their parents never really valued faith in the first place. And that conclusion will be a strike against them remaining rooted in the faith. Even though parents don’t have the same authority over their adult children when it comes to faith, they retain influence. Kids graduating might be a turning point in their faith walk, but it is not a turning point for whether parents affect their kids’ faith.
