Interesting Statistics

For someone in Family Ministry, these stats are pretty mind-blowing. These quotes come from Barna's Raising Spiritual Champions:

“We discovered that the probability of someone embracing Jesus as his or her Savior was 32 percent for those between the ages of 5 and 12; 4 percent for those in the 13 to 18 age range; and 6 percent for people 19 or older. In other words, if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.”

“By the age of 13, your spiritual identity is largely set in place. Thousands of people decide to embrace Christ as their Savior each year, but from a statistical vantage point the number of Christians is not increasing – the new believers are essentially replacing the Christians who died or those who renounced their faith in Christ. My tracking of religious beliefs and behavior for more than a quarter century has revealed that the spiritual condition of adolescents and teenagers changes very little, if at all, as they age.”

It makes sense: God designed the family to be the primary training ground for values and knowledge of God. God's sovereignty can obviously break the pattern, but the pattern simply reflects the way he designed faith to work. It is meant to be a family thing.

It makes Deuteronomy 6 that much more significant. We need to take every opportunity to live, share, explain, and apply the gospel to our kids.

I guess this also makes Children's Ministry potentially the most successful missional ministry in the church!