I am a happily married mother. Most days, I wake up before the sun, and even with all three kids in school I spend the majority of my waking hours on tasks related to their needs. I pack lunches and help with homework and arrange playdates and drive to soccer practice and clip fingernails and toenails and purchase far too many fresh white socks on a regular basis. I pray with my kids and sing with them and read with them and eat with them. It is a full and largely pleasant life marked by plenty of tedious tasks and plenty of laughter.

It is easy to bemoan my situation, and I spent plenty of time complaining to God during the early years of diapers and sleepless nights and sick days and snow days. It is also pretty easy to chastise myself for complaining, because I know how blessed I am to have this husband and these kids. I know I shouldn’t take the joys of each day for granted.

Marriage and children make it easy to complain, easy to give thanks, and easy to remain focused solely upon the concerns of the five people who comprise my immediate family.

But what I have only begun to understand recently is how marriage sets us apart as a family. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried. As Isabel Sawhill wrote recently for the New York Times:

“For every child lifted out of poverty by a social program, another one is entering poverty as a result of the continued breakdown of the American family. If we could turn back the marriage clock to 1970, before the sharp rise in divorce and single parenthood began, the child poverty rate would be 20 percent lower than it is now. Even some of our biggest social programs, like food stamps, do not reduce child poverty as much as unmarried parenthood has increased it.”

Baptists are on the decline in America. New research finds that Baptists have lost a quarter of their market-share, and this is likely going to continue (or even accelerate).

Darren Sherkat’s new book Changing Faithgives a detailed examination of why Americans switch religions. Tucked into Sherkat’s book is one of the most important changes in American religion of the past forty years: the decline of Baptists.

Sherkat uses the General Social Surveys to examine the patterns of switching religions in the USA. He finds that since the 1970s, Baptists in the U.S. have declined by a quarter, from 21 percent of Americans to only 16 percent.

The good news for Baptists is that they’re loyal. Seven-in-ten of those raised Baptist are still Baptist as adults. Compare that to similar Christians. Their loyalty is only around 60 percent—at best.

The major problem for Baptists is simple: the 30 percent who leave are not being replaced. Overall, Sherkat estimates that Baptists have had a net loss of 13% due to people leaving and not being replaced. Similar churches, however, have seen double-digit gains. Sectarian Protestants (e.g., pentecostals and smaller evangelical denominations) have had a 19% increase from switching. Nondenominational and similar churches have done even better, with a 77% gain from switching.

Baptists, like all religions, are losing members who are leaving religion altogether. But this isn’t the major source of Baptist losses. Among those who have left a Baptist church, only one-in-five are no longer religious. The other 80 percent of former Baptists have simply moved to similar Christian churches.

“This is the story of my life. I am now 24 and I am dying from AIDS. One of my greatest fears is that when I die, no one will come to my burial.”

These are the words of Chantha, a beautiful, 24-year-old Cambodian woman who was sold to a brothel at the age of 13. She had been raped and beaten hundreds of times over the past ten years. And now she was dying.

“This is the story of my life. When I was 24, God rescued me from an 8-year addiction that almost killed me twice. One of my greatest fears is that when I die, I won’t have used my new life and story to the fullest for God’s glory.”

These are my words. I grew up in a beautiful home in Midwestern America. I had little care in the world, except for one ache of self-doubt that started as a pebble and ended up a mountain of regret, shame, and pain. But God. And now I am fully alive.

Two stories. Equally powerful, each with the potential to impact people for good. The first, toward intense compassion and a desire to make the wrong, right. The second, toward hope, that God really does reach down from heaven to save the broken and lost.

We all have a story — our story. As Christians, it is our claim to fame.

“Just wait until you hear what God has done for me!” we can begin. “Once upon a time…”

And so it starts.

Along the narrative line are one or more, “But God!” and then a conclusion, which proclaims,

“God’s work in progress, but on the way to heaven!”

When working in tandem with the Spirit of God, our story is the most powerful tool we have to impact our not-yet-Christian friends for Christ. In her best seller, Out of the Saltshaker, Becky Pippert explains, “We do not simply give the gospel, we are the gospel.”