Does Sunday school help or hurt your faith?
How important is it for Christian parents to keep their children involved in church activities and education? It’s difficult to get a handle on a question so broad, but the issue has seen some debate recently. You may recall a much-discussed study commissioned by Answers in Genesis that found that childhood Sunday school attendance did little to keep people from drifting away from the Christian faith later in life.
However, there’s a new wrinkle in the debate, in the form of a Barna survey also examining the links between church involvement as a child and faith later in life. It’s an interesting read; here are some of the conclusions:
How do childhood and teen engagement connect to adult spirituality? The research examined four elements of adult religious commitment: attending church, having an active faith (defined as reading the Bible, praying, and attending church in the last week), being unchurched, and switching from childhood faith.
When it comes to church engagement, those who attended Sunday school or other religious programs as children or as teens were much more likely than those without such experiences to attend church and to have an active faith as adults…. In comparison, less frequent participation as a teenager correlated with less frequent adult participation.
Measures of disassociation – being unchurched and changing from childhood faith – were also correlated with activity before age 18. The highest proportion of unchurched adults was found among those who had never attended as children or teenagers. Weekly activity as a child and weekly or monthly activity as a teen were connected with the lowest levels of disconnection from church attendance.
The study also found that people who were “heavily churched” in their youth are less likely to switch to a different religion as an adult.
All very interesting, although the question is so big, and the nuances of “religious” and “active faith” so varied from person to person, that it’s hard to know how to interpret it all. But at the very least, if you were worrying that forcing little Johnny to attend Sunday school every week was going to damage his faith in the long term, you can breathe a sigh of relief. (The jury is still out about whether or not youth group games of dodgeball inflict permanent psychological and spiritual damage on the participants.)
How do these findings resonate with you? Were you heavily involved in church activities and education, and if so, do you see that experience as one that strengthened your faith over the long term? If you came to the faith without the benefit of childhood religious education, do you think your faith was stronger or weaker as a result?
Many of our teens struggle to find where they fit in church now. Youth groups are more often well designed to fit needs of that particular age, however this can separate the kids from the others in the church body. Then, suddenly they are thrown into “adult” service – if we would make the transition a little easier, it might help some more remain.
If Christianity / our Christian Faith is communicated to our young children as a religion, (as your post mentioned the quote from a study of people who were “heavily churched” in their youth are less likely to switch to other religions), then no matter what, as the young ones grow up, they are more likely to skip all sorts of religions, and especially in our current times now, as the new religion of “super scientific intellectuals” are already attempting to provide all answers to our young ones.
As you will know that all of the major religions are pivoted by sets of laws, rules, regulations. There are no truth in them. That is why our scriptures tell us, Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. Note that Law was given, but Grace and Truth CAME by Jesus Christ; Grace and Truth are on the same side. And the next common question is (even by many Christians); are we to being lawless. No, when we (as sinners) embraced Grace, the Truth set us free, transforming us inside out. This is The Gospel of Jesus Christ. He came to fulfill the Law, of which none of us can. Law has its purpose to show us up as sinners, but Law has NO power to transform us, to save us, and that is why we need Jesus Christ (Grace and Truth) to save us and transform us from inside out.
That is also why the scriptures tell us that God will write the New Covenant “Laws” into the hearts and minds of men. No more following the Laws written on stones, for none of us can keep. As we are transformed from inside out by Grace of God, we don’t need the laws to govern our lives anymore. Notice that as you become a born again Christian, you are transformed from glory to glory, you speed less, you change all your bad habits, one at a time, sometimes overnight, sometimes over a period of time. Does that means we, as Christians will never fall / fail? No. We’ll continue to fall / fail every now and then, for some perhaps more frequently. But whenever we fall / fail, we keep running back to Jesus Christ, receiving His Grace for He had already forgiven all of our sins. Don’t ever fall into the self condemnation and start beating oneself and tries to cleanse oneself by endless confessions. When we behave like such, we are no different from believers of the religions, for Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc as these religions preach somewhat like that; if you had sinned, you must cleanse yourself by following sets of rituals, processes, superstitious things. I live in Asia and there are plenty of wild and weird religious practices because of the varied cultures.
Ultimately, we bring up our children by explaining why Jesus Christ is The Truth, The only Truth, The Way, The Life. It is not about how “heavily churched” a person has been through. It is about a close relationship with Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ alone. Not the Old Testament’s Laws. Yes we can learn a lot from the Old Testament, but Jesus Christ came, so that we have the better promise, the Better Covenant. For Jesus Christ alone was lifted up high by Father God, and seated on the right. Even Moses and Elijah had to make way for Jesus on the mountain top, when Father God spoke to the Disciples.
We pray and hope that what we can impart to our children (we have a little son and a little daughter) is a strong and real relationship with Jesus Christ. We all attend church every Sunday. But as Christian parents, we should keep sharing about Jesus with our children.
The Old Testament reveals the New and points all things to the New Promise, the New Covenant. Pivoting our Christian faith strongly to our Heavenly Father’s Greatest Love for us is far better than hours of religious laws preaching. The story of the Prodigal Son sums up the Love Story. No other religions in the world can preach this > For Heavenly Father God so loved us, that He gave us His One and Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ and whosoever believes shall not perish but inherit eternal life. God bless,
David from Malaysia could not be more right. Everything he wrote could have similarly come from me. I wholly agree that the emphasis should be placed on our relationship with Jesus Christ, with the understanding that we can only be saved by his Grace alone through Faith alone. Nothing else is required. Authentic Christianity is not religion, it’s a personal relationship with our maker. As with other religions, we need not do anything to appease God so he can love us. God has already loved us, even though we don’t deserve it. The terms “Churched” or “Unchurched” are technically not correct if they’re tied to a specific brick and mortar building. The Church is the body of Christ, so anyone who’s an authentic Christian is “Churched”, whether or not they attend a physical building for worship services. We can serve, worship and praise God wherever we are. I wish most Christians would understand what authentic Christianity is really about. We need to really yield to the Holy Spririt to lead us and guide us into the right relationshyip with Christ.
I concur with Bola and David, and will go further to say that “Sunday School” should only be a supporting facet of faith growing activity for young people. God instructs parents that the ultimate responsibility for children learning faith, seeing what faith looks like and emulating faith comes from them. A Sunday School that meets for one hour or less a week cannot do this – it can only provide a forum or atmosphere for young people of similar ages to associate together and express and recount faiths and truths that they are learning at home. You can invest hundreds of dollars into glitzy programming and charming elements for Sunday School class and, while there may be some learning achieved, it cannot substitute what must come from parents or other responsible adults in guardianship of the children’s lives. As a church family, we should all support each other – families, young adults, seniors all – in our faith journeys, as this is what we are called to do per Hebrews 10 and other like Bible principles.