American Christians tend to rely on “experts” for the spiritual development of their children, according to new research from Arizona Christian University, a phenomenon which has contributed to declining shares of American young people who possess a biblical worldview.
George Barna, director of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, said in a recent analysis that a mere 58% of American parents believe they “have the primary responsibility for the development of their children,” while only 10% of parents “have any kind of spiritual development plan” for their children. Some 23% of parents, few of which have a robust biblical worldview, assign the responsibility of discipling their children to churches, even as the institutions become “increasingly unreliable sources of biblical worldview training.”
“Very few of today’s parents, who have the primary responsibility to disciple their children, even have that task on their parenting radar,” Barna said. “In fact, more than two years of research show that during their child’s most important worldview development window, the overwhelming majority of parents tend to delegate many basic parenting tasks to ‘experts,’ with increasingly dismal results when it comes to matters of faith and worldview development.”
Elevated levels of outsourcing discipleship to “experts,” who are often teachers or coaches rather than ministers, indeed correspond with declining rates of biblical worldview development among young Americans. Only 36% of thirteen-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds currently believe that “God exists” or is the “Creator of the universe,” while some 61% believe that “Jesus Christ sinned while he was on earth or hold open the possibility he did.”
“If the biblical worldview is not taught in the home and reinforced in other settings, a child will absorb and experiment with the available worldviews and ideas in their environment and the culture around them,” Barna continued. “And the most powerful messages they encounter likely will come from media and entertainment.”
The analysis comes as adherence to Christianity declines in the United States: one model from Pew Research Center found that less than half of Americans will be professed Christians within the next three decades if current rates of young people leaving the faith continue.
Brett Baggett, a pastor of Ekklesia Muskogee in Oklahoma, said in an interview with The Sentinel that outsourcing family discipleship conflicts with Christian doctrine and history.
“The Scriptures are clear that the evangelism and discipleship of children is a duty given by God to the parents, with the father bearing the primary responsibility,” he remarked. “Outsourcing is utterly inconsistent with Christian doctrine, because through his perfect Word, God demands that fathers train up their children for the glory of Jesus, in the ways of Jesus, through faith in Jesus, in order to fire them like arrows into the world for his glory.”
Baggett cited Deuteronomy 6:7, in which God commands Israelite fathers to teach their children diligently rather than “bring their children to Moses or Aaron to be instructed,” as well as Ephesians 6:4, in which fathers in the church are told to train their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” He noted that the passages are not “unclear” but are rather “harder than bringing your kids to programs at the church building.”
“Parents, and particularly fathers, have the responsibility to provide for and protect their children both physically and spiritually,” Baggett continued. “Just as it is the duty of fathers and mothers to feed their children physically, so it is their duty to feed their children spiritually. There are many other duties required of parents, but this seems to be the most neglected in our day.”
Baggett, who recently wrote a book about the value of men leading their wives and children in public and private worship, referenced the fact that church history likewise upholds the value of family discipleship, noting that the English Puritans “would put a father under church discipline if he was not consistently leading his household in family worship.”
“That may seem a bit extreme to us today, but it was not,” he remarked. “Any husband or father not laboring in this is living in unrepentant sin. Sadly the professed church in the West in our day has droves of men outsourcing the spiritual education of the children, which, in reality, is another way of saying these men are living in rebellion to the King.”
Baggett said young adults are “not fleeing the church because the children’s ministry or the youth group did not do a good enough job,” but are instead leaving because “the professed church, by and large, is trying to do what God designed and commanded the family to do.” He added that pastors should “equip the saints for the work of ministry,” meaning they must help parents evangelize and disciple their children in the home.
“May God grant his people repentance, and may family worship be established in every Christian home to the glory of God and for the good of the world,” he commented.
