Shocking Survey: Most Christian Parents Rely on the Church for Kids’ Discipleship, Avoid It at Home
A 2021 Barna Group survey has revealed that a majority of parents believe discipleship is solely for the church, not the home.
According to the shocking 17 September report, 51% of American Christian parents surveyed “expected the church to take the lead.”
Only 49% of parents considered teaching their children about reason, faith, and Biblical Christianity to be their responsibility.
When contrasted with the advice of children’s ministry leaders, the numbers are a disaster.
A massive 95% of those disagreed with the majority of parents, asserting that “discipleship does begin at home.”
Barna described the division among parents and ministry leaders as a “tug of war.”
The findings reflect another concerning trend, which shows 86% of parents “feel under-equipped” to teach their kids the Bible and basic theology.
There’s a deep challenge here, Barna stated.
“If children’s ministry is going to be healthy, pastors must help both parents and their ministry leaders find common ground.”
Shared Vision
Discipling children should be a joint effort. For example, the Gospel is lived out in the home, alongside the Church, not just taught on Sundays.
Teaching kids about the Gospel “cannot be outsourced entirely to one or the other,” Barna advised.
“Both need clarity about their roles—and a shared vision for partnership.”
The gap between the church and home needs to be bridged, they warned.
One way to help parents do this, Barna said, is by taking another look at utilising “mentors, teachers, and other adult friends, who can help out.”
“Kids who have the benefit of other spiritual mentors in their lives,” they asserted, “are more engaged in Scripture, more connected to the church community, and more eager to live out their faith in everyday life.”
Barna then concluded by instructing churches to do better at equipping parents with the tools to disciple their kids.
There is clearly a desperate need to “clarify the parent, church, wider community’s role in spiritual formation,” Barna explained.
For instance, the church could encourage “parents to embrace their primary role, by teaching them how to have everyday faith conversations.”
Families, Barna continued, should be encouraged “to practice their faith together in everyday life—serving others, praying as a household, and applying Scripture in real situations.”
This is “so the next generation grows resilient and ready to follow Jesus in the world beyond church walls.”
Barna also suggested keeping kids and adults together at church. Stop generational segregation. Doing so disconnects kids from the broader life of the church and makes mentoring them harder.
Put simply, properly discipled mums and dads will be better prepared to disciple their kids.
The Domestic Church
Another interesting footnote: Barna’s findings seem to confirm that at least 51% of Christian parents are confusing discipling kids in Christ with discipling kids into the church.
The difference between the two is chasmic.
To quote Kieth Green’s aging phrase, “Going to Church doesn’t make you a Christian, any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.”
Discipling kids can be hard.
I know because I’ve helped homeschool five.
In the end, Barna’s insights are nothing new.
They point back to the Puritans, who understood that every home was to be a little church.
“A family is a little Church, a little commonwealth,” said William Gouge in 1622.
“It is a school where first principles and civics are learned; whereby men are prepared for greater matters of Church and State.”
Or as Charles Spurgeon preached in 1875,
“Men are as much serving God in looking after their own children, and training them up in God’s fear, as they would be if they had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”
This includes “minding the house and making their household a church for God.”
“It is a grand event when a family is saved!” Spurgeon cheered.
“Oh, if households enter into Christ, the very bells of Heaven may ring again and again and again with a joy that has many joys within it!”
___
Image courtesy of Adobe.
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that’s very tricky When the Catholic church has more schools in America than the whole entire rest of the world combined the. you would expect that parents were well prepared to teach they’d children. discipleship ,would.t you ? But instead you see the response ,which you might expect from stare schools that aren’t allowed ,by moral authority for rule of law ,the same law that bans nativity scenes from public display since the 1960s , from memory ,you know after 1966 when Spanish Catholic California
legalised the creation of the Church of Satan under freedom of religion ,the first state on earth to grant Satan all of the protections of the law ,as say the Catholic Church itself , and no one ,not one Authority has ever to my knowledge made the least attempt to overturn that legislation ,in fact not long after the UN made it global by rule of law .
Well to my knowledge everyone I know who was educated at a Catholic school(my family extended and almost all of my acquaintances etc ) received almost zero discipleship training or education so there you go .
Education and outcomes .
Freedom .To do as thou will but to do no harm as Satanism says 101 .
allegedly .