Click through the below link to read Trevin Wax’s interaction with a major Lifeway survey that identifies common traits of children who flourish as Christian adults.
A central part of our passion at The Red Brick Church is that our young people will follow Christ all of their lives. We tell our young people, “We want to see you on the other side!” We are planning on meeting at the 5th Tree on the right side of the river. As a part of our goal of seeing children continue for Christ, we emphasize seven points we pray they will never forget.
Given our emphases on seeing our children follow Christ, Lifeway’s recent survey that seeks to identify common traits of children who continue for Christ is of great interest. With reference to that survey, Trevin Wax writes:
Parents, don’t take the biblical proverb “train up a child” and treat it like a promise, assuming that if you do everything right in your parenting, your children will turn out right. Proverbs are general truths, not specific promises. Besides, when we consider the overall context of the Bible, we see how counterproductive it is to try to train our kids to trust in God if what we model for them is that we trust in our training.
But even though we place our hope for our children in God, not in our training, we recognize how this proverb teaches us to take our training of children seriously—both where we guide them andalso how we shepherd their hearts. And part of that shepherding and guidance includes the effect of a family’s culture.
A new LifeWay Research study surveyed 2,000 Protestant and non-denominational churchgoers who attend church at least once a month and have adult children ages 18 to 30. The goal of the project was to discover what parenting practices were common in the families where young adults remained in the faith. What affected their moral and spiritual development? What factors stood out?
You might expect that . . .
Read the rest here.
See also:
Thank you for this link to T. Wax’s article, Chris. I also clicked through to all the other links. Very helpful. I appreciate our very intentional ministry to children and youth. Press on.