Parents Need to Invest in their Children

2/3 of the students active in our youth ministry walk away from their faith within a year of graduating high school.

OUCH! Those of you familiar with youth ministry know this to be a problem across the country. In fact, our numbers would be viewed in many circles as pretty exceptional.

So I looked for commonalities in the piles. Initially, I thought the kids who were most involved in youth group, church activities, leadership development efforts, or discipleship programs would be more likely to end up in the "Still Active" pile. I found this not to be the case. Those kids were just as likely to be in the "Walked Away" pile. Those things seemed not to be indicators of a teen's long-term spiritual commitment.

What became evident really quickly was the effect of parents on the faith-development process. I realize that this entire process is a bit subjective and nonscientific, but what I discovered was enough to indicate a real pattern.

We lose 25% of kids who have 2 Christian parents and Dad takes the spiritual lead.
We lose 50% of kids who have 2 Christian parents and Mom takes the spiritual lead.
We lose 66% of kids who have a Christian Dad only
We lose 75% of kids who have a Christian Mom only
We lose 90% of kids who have no Christian parents

So 10% of the kids who have no Christian parents - the "outreach" kids - stick with it. I contacted those kids and asked them all the same question, looking for patterns. Without exception theire was one common factor with the 10% who stuck around. They all had a spiritual mentor - a surrogate spiritual Mom or Dad. A spiritual mentor.