Shema Initiative: Practical suggestions

Friends are current church staff driven model is not working. A recent survey of several hundred committed church going teenagers showed that up to 50% percent of them either put their faith on the shelf or walked away from it completely during their college years. Prior research has yielded similar results.


Consider this: the average youth might have the opportunity to attend 52 worship services and roughly 40 Sunday school classes and youth group nights. With 80% participation that comes out to roughly 2 hours a week for the year. Two hours…if a family spends 15-30 minutes a day praying and doing devotions they have just matched that amount of time, not taking into account the many hours of possible informal faith sharing parents can have with their children. The Vision of our Christian Education ministries is to nurture and grow Disciples of Christ through lifelong discover of the bible. I am telling you now, if it's just up to your church staff, we will fall short of this vision…


Chad are you saying it's entirely up to me to make sure my child becomes a follower of Christ? Are you saying I have to be the resident pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian?

I most certainly am not saying that. I am saying that the faith formation of children and youth is like a puzzle, and parents you are the pieces in the middle. Study after study shows that parents are consistently the most influential presence in young people's lives, not friends, not the media, and not the pastor and church staff.

I know that can be a scary thought parents, and that often times we don't feel qualified, but consider this…If you decided that your family needed to be healthier you wouldn't wait until you have trained for and completed a marathon before doing things as a family to be healthier right? In the same way you don't need to wait until you feel that you have become a spiritual giant (which will never happen…) to begin sharing the Christian faith with your child…


Consistently pray and have devotional time with your children. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work to do it every day but commit to do it when it does work…find a pattern.

Show your children how your faith is a part of your everyday life (even if it's in small ways). Let them catch you reading the bible, share with them about how you experienced God during the day and ask them to do the same.

Finally, this idea about children's and youth discipleship does not diminish the role that that church staff plays, it makes it more effective. We are additional pieces of the puzzle and we are faithfully, diligently and prayerfully trying to fill that role as God intends us to, now more than ever. So…Whenever it's feasibly possible BRING YOUR CHILD TO CHURCH ACTIVITIES!!! My lovely wife was forced to go to youth group when she was in high school (yes you can make you high school student do things…try threatening to take away their cell phone), and now she is grateful they did. I am not saying that your child can't be involved in activities that conflict with Wednesday night activities, I'm saying that the various church activities have to be a priority, and your children have to know it's a priority.