One Sunday I sat around a
table with some dear friends who all have adult children. The conversation turned to the subject of
children in the church who were raised in Christian homes and who no longer
attend church. This was not a concern
with them not attending “our” church, but the fact that these particular young
adults weren’t attending anybody’s church.
Let me state that my concerns here are not universal for this
generation, because many of them are as solid in their faith and Christian lives
as any who have lived before.
This was not a conversation solely about a
certain generation, but about families and children we all knew. This was about our pain, the pain of parents
who dearly love their kids, prayed for them, taught them, challenged them,
brought them to church, gave them the best education we could (and for some
that meant Christian schools and Christian colleges). Now, it seemed that some of these kids were spiritually
wandering, living immoral lives, or in outright defiant denial of the Faith.
I am aware of articles and books about this
present generation and how a growing number of their number have decided to
stop going to church, let alone how many of them have never come at all. All
kinds of folks are weighing into the subject, and some are trying to come up
with the formula of how to design the church experience to bring them
back. I tend to avoid these kinds of
solutions as they always seem to support the predispositions of the one writing
for how they think a church service should be conducted, such as how
contemporary worship is being rejected for more liturgical and traditional
worship, etc.
As I travel around the country and meet some
old friends and my generational peers I am often told of the pain my friends
are experiencing as they yearn to see their own children not only come to faith
but to stay in it. My friends yearn to
see their adult children be the godly people their parents have hoped to raise. They yearn to see the next generation taking their place of leadership in the
church, no matter how it worships or where it meets.
I wish I had the wisdom to analyze the
problem accurately and the brilliance needed to show parents the magic words,
method, or strategy to bring their kids back to the Lord and the household of
Faith. I confess that I don't. I do have some questions, and
some thoughts which I will share with you.
I also know some of these kids are never coming back, but my sincere
hope and prayer is that even if happens after my present generations dies the
seeds that were planted in them will bear good fruit.
There are various reasons adult children who
have been raised in the church stop going, and stop believing. Those are two different categories but
sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
As we look at any problem we often look for someone or something to
blame. Whose fault is this; the adult
child, the parents, the church, the culture, the age, the Devil?
I don’t intend to relieve anyone of their
guilt, if they are in fact guilty. If we
as parents have failed we have to own that, and repent, and ask for God’s
forgiveness and we need to ask forgiveness from our kids. If the church has failed, collectively or
individually, then those institutions need to own up to it and seek for
renewal and revival. If it is the
culture and the spirit of the age then we need to understand it and learn the
methods of dealing with it. We can take
it for granted the Devil is involved, but we know Jesus has defeated him. We just need to learn his tricks and fight
him well.
Who is responsible for adult children of
Christian parents leaving the faith and the church? Well, first of all, they are. This is a hard reality but if our children
are not truly saved then they will go to eternal judgment. There aren’t any protective parents that can
prevent it. If they reject Jesus, if
they deny Jesus, then he also will deny them.
It doesn’t matter if they were baptized as infants, baptized as a
believer sometime in their childhood, or prayed the sinner’s prayer in your
hearing. If they are not truly saved,
then they are not truly saved. It is
foolish in my opinion to keep consoling them with comments like, “I know deep
in your heart you really do believe.”
That might be a parent’s wish but it is not the fruit of their lives,
and it is by the fruit we discern good trees from bad.
I want to be pretty up front with that, and
with them, because in an analysis of our parenting some of us may have been too
indulgent, and too excusing, of and for our kids. When they stand in front of Almighty God the
parent won’t be there to make excuses for them.
Their choices are their choices and they eventually will have to own
them for themselves. One of the best
things all of us can do for our children is to help them understand that, as we
should have done many times in their lives.
There is no doubt some of us have made our
children stumble. There are so many ways
we as parents can and have screwed up.
Often trying hard to be wonderful parents we have instead set up our
kids for a pretty big fall. How might
we have failed?
Our
parent’s generation seemed to struggle with emotional detachment, being harsh
and making their love conditional, and sometimes living a fundamentalist,
legalistic, yet hypocritical life; full of self-righteousness while denying the
realities of their own materialism, racism, and various other sins.
Our
generation (Baby Boomers) became too permissive, certainly with ourselves. Our children have seen us in our addictions,
our lusts, our anger, our own kinds of hypocrisies while they have seen us go
to church but it not seeming to make us very different from people in the world. Many times we backed off from pushing our
kids too hard, and we indulged them at almost every turn. It was almost as if we and everything in the
world revolved around them and existed to make their life happy and
fulfilled. Our self-indulgent
congregations reflected our own family life-styles and desires.
To complicate matters our children entered
into a world that does not reinforce absolutes, seems to deny eternal or even
temporal accountability. They entered
into a world of intensive and manipulative appeal to the sensual, to
self-centeredness, to libertine indulgence without seeming consequence.
Many
of our children who deny the faith are materially successful. They have the social skills, they have the
education, personal discipline and ambition.
These things without Christ are worldliness, but deceptively so, and we parents
have too often let them get away with thinking that their progress even without
Christ was okay with us.
Many of our children have a social
conscience, and their peers reinforce the notion that this in and of itself is
what makes a person moral, and it also makes them feel superior to anyone who
does not care as passionately for their cause(s) as they do. In an ironic twist the Baby Boomer generation
that tried not to be judgmental with their children created a new
self-righteous generation. The passion of their compassion is often without any
kind of absolute moral compass, they are swimming hard but it is often out to
sea and not toward home.
Religion and dogma are too binding for them,
cutting them off from their peers, bringing feelings of embarrassment upon
them. To take the step of radical
commitment to Jesus in full understanding of his exclusivity and his claims of
solitary access to the Father can be too isolating for many of them. They don’t want to be more religious and yet
less passionate about justice causes, they don’t want to lose the option of a
self-focused lifestyle in exchange for the hassle of time demanding church
life, church personalities, and church conflict and drama.
Some of our grown kids have and will
struggle with simple rebellion against their parents, and God. Some of them will struggle with addictions of
drinking, drugs, pornography, sexual encounters, and the body indulgence of
sports, athletics and exercise. Some of
our kids will struggle with their own educational and material success. These things are not new to human beings. Nevertheless, any or all of them of them are
the thorns and weeds that grow up to choke out real faith.
Now, the good news: We have the weapon of prayer, and we must not
stop using it. The Word will accomplish
that to which it was sent and good seed in good ground will bear much
fruit. The Lord knows those who are His.
The battle is not over yet, and we may die before we see the outcome, so we
have to put our hope in God’s faithfulness and not in the power of our worrying
to make things change. Failure and
brokenness are God’s tools to break the pride and obstinate hard hearts of men
and women, and even if it scares you to see your kids go through it, sometimes
that is the only way they will reach heaven.
Your tears are not in vain, but don’t weep
in despair. Keep trusting in Jesus to do
the work. Receive his forgiveness if
and where you have failed. Have
confidence in the Gospel you know your children have heard and understood. Stop apologizing for your faith or your call
to them to come to Christ. Be ready to
welcome them home, and assure them of that, while you remind them with
gentleness, love, and consistency that they ain’t yet where they need to be.
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