Handing Down a Heritage of Faith - It Matters

For the coming week and a half, on my other blog - Grandmas with Heart, I'm posting about how it is the parent's and grandparent's "job" to hand down the faith. Please share these posts with the parents and grandparents in your ministry.

Several years ago Larry Fowler wrote a book, The Question Nobody Asks about Our Children, which took a look at how often children are at church. He said there are 168 hours in a week and research shows typically children are at church for one to three of these hours. If children only attend church every other week - as so many do, they are only there for one to three hours of 336 hours. 

The Pew Research Center's Study on Religion in America, backs this up; their study shows, "The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages." 

It is clear we are not able to rely on the one to three hours out of 168 to 336 hours our grandchildren/children are in our churches to hand down our faith. We have to become serious about focusing on the other 165-167/333-335 hours which provide opportunities to impact children. This means we have to focus on handing down a heritage of faith to our grandchildren/children and are not able to just rely on the church with the mind-set, "It's their 'job'."

You will find the rest of this post at the following link.