51% of Parents: "Discipleship is not my job"
The church has 1.5 hours a week to pick up the slack?
I sometimes wonder why I started this Substack.
But more often than not, I get the validation I need. Today is a validating kind of day.
Children are like sponges: they soak up whatever is around them, whether that’s scripture or Daniel Tiger sing-alongs. They imitate the adults in their lives, aspire to become like them, ask questions needing answers. Discipleship of children seems naturally then to occur in the place where kids are for most of the day, namely, the home.
Discipleship meaning:
Engaging in apprenticeship to Christ through
an embodiment of His mission and
an understanding of His teachings
In simpler terms: becoming like Christ.
Parents are almost certainly the best equipped to do this kind of work. The structure of a nuclear family is a perfect place for teaching and forming the character of children. Exploration of faith is not easy or simple. But it seems to me that the eighteen or so years that a child in your care is the best opportunity to assist in faith exploration. Not to mention, you have all of this time after your children leave you to continue the process of discipleship.
But then … life. Dishes. Homework. The part where you are supposed to mold your kid’s eternal character while also remembering to pack a lunch.
Barna, the Christian polling people, released a study today: 51% of U.S. adults think church is the primary place for discipleship. (Which makes sense, insofar as “church” is already the place where you go for coffee in the lobby and to get asked awkward questions about your prayer life.)
Parents, however, are divided. Half (51%) expect the church to take the lead, while nearly as many parents (49%) believe it’s their responsibility. Many parents also admit they feel under-equipped—86 percent say their children learn spiritual lessons at church that they themselves cannot teach.
The results of Barna’s study are eye popping. If it is the case that the process of forming your child into a person of faith is entirely in the hands of your church, we might suggest spending more than 1.5 hours a week there.
Do the math: your child spends about 0.89% of their week at church. Which means 99.11% of the time they are…well, not there. This is not great if church is the only place doing the shaping of our faiths. It’s a bit like expecting someone to get fit by jogging to the fridge once a week. If we are talking about whole-person transformation into people of faith, that is… surprising?
Yet 51% of adults are okay with the primary source of the most important part of life being elsewhere. We apparently believe can effectively outsource our greatest responsibility and supplement it.
Now, if this were about education, then I might say it makes sense. If your kids are in public school, then yes, outsource away! But at 7 hours a day for five days, that’s 35 hours of learning. Put another way, it’s 21% of your kids time. If your kids are like mine, they spend 40-50% of their week sleeping. If 21% goes to school, that leaves me, the parent, with 29% of their waking hours. And realistically half of that is spent looking for missing socks, so for me, it’s more like 14%.
So let’s say that indeed I’m too busy or ill-equipped to disciple my children. Does it make sense to rely predominantly on the church?
Maybe the answer is yes because you are satisfied with 1% of the week being about character formation in Christ. Or maybe the answer is—every moment your kids are with you should be a form of discipling.
I don’t think we should let ourselves get away by saying we are ill-equipped to disciple. If that is the case, we ourselves should consider whether our faith is actually something we understand.
If you have faith, show it. Turn the 1% into the 29%. Because kids are sponges. And the question is not whether they’ll soak something up, it’s whether you’re going to pour whole milk or dirty dishwater. I promise your church is just going to give them Mountain Dew.