thing 1 and thing 2

Tonight when I went over to pick up the kids from church, I heard an interesting statistic on the radio as a lead-in to Family Life Today. The announcer asked if we are doing a good job passing on our convictions to our children. The answer – no. Less than 17% of children who grow up in evangelical homes end up in evangelical churches as adults.
Well then. So that means we’re not passing on our convictions? Of course, I cannot pretend that children are not their own people, and therefore cannot make decisions that are different than their parents. But I do think that the majority of these parents ARE passing on their convictions to their children. I think there are two things at work here that make this statistic possible. I’ve been down this road before on several blogs, but here they are anyway.

Thing number 1 (negative): Is there a statistic that tells how many people in today’s evangelical churches actually have convictions? I’ve stated that I think many many of us don’t have crises of faith because we have few real beliefs to be challenged and our Christianity is more a lifestyle than a faith.

Thing number 2 (positive): Could it be that many parents who grew up in evangelical churches and DO have strong convictions have continued in their churches but have not really noticed that the churches to which they belong no longer share their convictions? Could it be that the very fact that their children are not in evangelical churches is evidence that they have passed their convictions on? The statistic doesn’t show whether the children’s absence is because they are in some other church. I think that at least some of these children have gone off to find churches that better reflect their parents’ convictions than the churches their parents currently attend. Didn’t this happen to a degree with Fundamentalists several decades ago?
The frog’s offspring are less likely to remain calm while the water slowly heats to a boil. The children came along after the water had begun to steam and more likely to notice that what the parents are teaching and how the church is behaving are not exactly the same things.
Ok, sorry for the frog metaphor. You can take me out of the country, but not the country out of me.

It seems that I always feel that we don’t look back far enough to truly understand what these statistics are telling us. You will recognize that this is an old rant, I’ve said this countless times. So forgive the redundancy, it just gets brought back to the top.