God’s people have always placed a high priority on passing the faith from generation to generation. Both the church and Christian parents have always been called to co-disciple children and teenagers in order to develop life-long faith. So how should we respond when a significant portion of the younger generation is either growing up without any Christian faith or rejecting it after they graduate?
Imagine a church whose preacher delivers faithful expository sermons and whose elders provide trustworthy care over their members. But that church’s children walk away from the faith after high school. What good is it to grow a large church only to lose the next generation?
This isn’t a new dilemma. In 1917, Frank Otis Erb reflected on the contemporary church’s efforts to reach the younger generation: “The democratic spirit led a revolt against absolutism everywhere, religion and intellect not excluded. The final and authoritative doctrines of the church were fiercely assailed by Voltaire and his friends, not least because they were final and authoritative, and those who held them were denounced as ignorant, superstitious, or hypocritical. Freedom of thought was not only demanded but asserted.”[1] His analysis of the church’s struggle to pass the faith to
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