Every week after Sunday School, I try to figure out if our kids have learned anything. Do they understand the stories they heard? Do they know the characters? Do they know God's love for them? Do they understand anything about sin or forgiveness or praise? Usually, I get reports about coloring and friends and blank stares when it comes to the Bible. My ears perked up last week when Penny, who is almost 6, mentioned Jacob. I was all set to get the picture Bible and review the story from Genesis when it came out that Jacob was a kid in her class.
There's a part of me that wants to outsource our children's spiritual education to our church. My once-daily habit of "quiet time" has mostly fallen by the wayside due to the incessant demands of getting our whole family ready to walk out the door at 8. I stumble when I try to explain forgiveness or sin in terms our children might understand. We do pray before meals and before bed. We do talk about God and Jesus. We don't do "family devotions," though we do sing "church songs" in the car. But I worry that as my kids grow up and become more independent, they will fall away from the tenuous connections I've offered to God.
And so when I saw the book Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (Zondervan), by Kara E. Powell and Chap Clark (both at Fuller Youth Institute), I immediately wanted to read it. It is less directly applicable to parents of young children than I had hoped, yet it still offers both a big picture foundation for passing along faith that will "stick" with our children and many practical suggestions for how to do so. Powell and Clark combine their personal experience as parents, anecdotal evidence from conversations with college students from Christian homes, and analytical research about what makes faith last to offer a comprehensive and very readable book that both encourages and challenges parents as we attempt to pass along our faith to our children.
On the practical side, Powell and Clark offer suggestions like incorporating children into faith-based family decisions such as giving money away. They recommend praying deliberately and consistently for your children, emphasizing character over achievement, and talking openly and honestly about faith with your child, giving room for their doubts and questions as "students who feel the freedom and have opportunities to express their doubts tend to have more Sticky Faith." And they emphasize the role not only of parents but of the church at large; they advise finding mentors for your child and call upon the entire church to better involve and include youth in the life of the congregation.
Powell and Clark also acknowledge the difficulty inherent in passing along the faith: "40-50 percent of kids who graduate from a church or youth group will fail to stick with their faith in college." And while they hope their suggestions will change those numbers, they are also quick to recognize, "There is no simple list of steps you can take to give your kids a faith that lasts. Part of what makes parenting so demanding is that easy answers are rare." Throughout the book, they return to the theme of trusting God with our children even when they seem far away from him.
But at the end of the day, one of the biggest measures of whether our children will know Jesus is whether they have watched us know Jesus. That doesn't mean we need to be perfect Christians who never lose our tempers and always demonstrate patience and love. It means we need to be transparent about our humanity and our salvation in our habits, our attitudes, our actions towards our kids, and our actions towards others. Their findings reminded me of a study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts about reading habits in America in 2007. The study showed that the highest predictor of reading habits came not from whether or not parents read to their children (though that was a key factor), but whether or not parents themselves read in the presence of their children. In Powell and Clark's words, "It's who you are that shapes your kid." When it comes to faith, our kids need to see us doing it—reading the Bible, praying, going to church, forgiving other people, and living lives of love and service to God.
Sticky Faith is ideal for parents of kids in late-elementary and middle school, although it is applicable for parents with children of all ages. Much of the advice Powell and Clark offer could also apply to "spiritual parents." I hope there are many teenagers coming to know Christ even if they aren't meeting him via their biological parents, and their leaders could benefit from the words in these pages.
I'd like to read Sticky Faith again in a few years so that I can put some of the recommendations into practice. For now, I'm grateful for the exhortation to follow Jesus in ways my kids can see and touch and understand every day. I'll keep peppering them with questions when they come home from Sunday School. But I will also try to make my own faith more visible to them. Kara Powell dedicates this book to her mother, "who modeled Sticky Faith for me every morning, coffee cup in one hand and Bible in the other." I hope one day I can have kids who say the same of me.
Sticky Faith is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.
