Worship of God in the church is an act of faith. Worship and faith belong to children, and when these characterize their lives, starting at the smallest age, it is theirs for life. Worship of God in the church is not something that you graduate into once you mature, but the place where God forms the spiritual habits of even his littlest saints.

How do our kids stay Christian? Some version of this question has animated both scholarly and pastoral discussion over the last several years, especially as the great dechurching marches on unabated. This is not merely an academic question, but one that has kept younger parents anxious as they watch more and more of their peers turn away from the faith.
Of course, it is the Holy Spirit sovereignly acting as he wills that keeps people abiding in Christ. And of course, God who ordains the salvation of his children has also ordained the regular means of bringing about that salvation, specifically the word, sacraments, and prayer. But how should the church approach those gifts in regards to the discipleship of its children? And what steps can the church take to maintain its children’s faithfulness as they grow into adulthood?
Several recent works have provided invaluable insight into this dilemma, the most important of which is Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion to the Next Generation (2021) by Amy Adamczyk and Christian Smith. Adamczyk and Smith looked at the religious landscape of North America over the last few decades and came to a simple conclusion: the communities that were most effective at handing down their religion were those that prioritized faith in the family home.
That might not sound earth-shattering, but it corroborated decades of sociological research showing that things like Sunday School, youth group, VBS, Christian camps, confirmation, and youth conferences are either minimally consequential to the maintenance of a child’s faith or in some cases actually counterproductive. Sociologists of religion have known for some time that these programs, while they feel nice, are led by earnest people, and have some anecdotal success stories, are ineffective for passing along the Christian faith. The British educational reformer Charlotte Mason commented in Parents and Children (1897) that Sunday School, then a recent innovation, was a necessary evil. Sunday School was created for parents who were unable to do their “first duty” of instructing their children in the faith and needed a substitute to step into that role for them. The church embracing this model led to decline in faith transmission.
Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies recently demonstrated that secularization begins at home. This was also shown in a 2017 Lifeway study, by Stephen Bullivant in Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (2023), and by Jim Davis and Michael Graham in The Great Dechurching (2023). If kids born to Christian parents are to grow up Christian, they need to be raised as Christians by their parents. All of these books and resources provide parenting guidance. But where does this leave the church?
If secularization begins at home and parental investment is the primary indicator of a child’s future faith, what should the church do? How should it prioritize its resources, especially when many churches heavily invest in programs that, frankly, are ineffective in producing disciples?
Authoritative Parenting
Parents are far-and-away the greatest influence on children’s faith development and retention. Churches should overwhelmingly prioritize in their strategies and resource-allocation (i.e. staffing, programs, volunteer focus) reaching and discipling parents to raise godly children. This is, after all, what parenting fundamentally is: fathers and mothers teaching their children to grow in maturity as they imitate their parents who, in turn, are imitating Jesus.
It’s critical that parents teach the Bible and catechize their children in the articles of the faith, of course, but alone this is insufficient. Christianity is taught, not caught, but how it is taught affects whether kids hold onto it. Parents who successfully inculcate steadfast faith and love of God joyfully demonstrate the importance of their own faith on a daily basis.
Is the faith of parents sincere? Do they value and talk about their faith? Does it visibly inform their decisions? Does faith characterize their regular, daily behavior and conversations, or is it compartmentalized to worship services and being around church people? Do they acknowledge their shortcomings without hypocrisy? Do parents clearly love God? Do they delight in Jesus?
Adamczyk and Smith found parents whose faith is the warp and woof of their lives are the parents who pass along that faith. After all, that concept of a life of faith is what God commands in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9): The words of God will be on your heart, and you shall diligently teach them to your kids, talking about them around the house, when you’re in the car, when you’re getting ready for the day and preparing to go to bed. When kids truly believe that faith matters for their parents, they believe it should matter to them.
The danger for children is parents who believe and either don’t expect anything of their kids on the one hand, or are tyrannical and overbearing about it on the other. Adamczyk and Smith discovered that an authoritative parenting style is most effective at raising children to faithful maturity. This approach maintains high expectations for kids, but in a home and parental relationship that can be honestly described as “warm” rather than rule or discipline-oriented. Being loosie-goosey (they’ll figure out and make faith their own) or overbearing are equally damaging to a child’s faith. As Anthony Bradley is fond of pointing out, kids don’t rebel against joy.  
This is what Davis and Graham found in The Great Dechurching. The kids who held onto their faith were able to have conversations with their parents about faith that were sincere (the parents knew their faith and believed it) and humble (the parents were confident, not self-focused, defensive, or belligerent about the kids’ questions and hesitations about the faith). Parents don’t need to be geniuses or theologians, but should know what they believe, believe it, and be confidently humble.
The church can prioritize childhood discipleship first by encouraging parents to take the airplane-oxygen mask approach. Are parents being taught the faith so that they may have something to believe in themselves? Are parents being encouraged to be diligent in their own discipleship? Are they being given tools to teach and catechize their own children? Are they showing their kids that faith and worship matter into adulthood, not just as concepts, but as committed practices?
Second, is the church providing not only content to parents, but models? Throughout the New Testament the leaders of the church are exhorted to model following Jesus to their congregations. Parenting style is a non-negotiable requirement on pastoral and elder job descriptions. Are the leaders of the church modeling sincere, confident, and humble discussions of the faith? A joyous approach to kids? If the pastors and elders of the church are not doing this, the parents in the church will struggle to as well. Leaders need to model to parents, especially to fathers, warmth, firmness, joy, and patience and take proactive steps to teach that.
Third, is the church encouraging the formation of community and friendships among the adults of the church? Doing this helps ensure that faith is seen as a joyous (friendship!) part of life, not a burden. It provides a community to help encourage one another (keep that oxygen mask on) and communicates to kids that their parents take their own discipleship seriously. If parents take their own discipleship seriously, their kids will as well.
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In June nearly all major brands wrap themselves in the rainbow: there is no easy switch to a less-offensive alternative in many sectors. But a response need not be a targeted punishment of one company to be meaningful. It can be a symbolic rejection of the entire mass consumer lifestyle—and an exercise in virtues that can help free from the constraints imposed by such consumption.

June is upon us, and with it the widespread celebration of “pride.” The left has made the vice that led to Satan’s downfall into the centerpiece of their cult, appropriating a sign of God’s covenant as its symbol. Sodomy is its primary sacrament.
As this evil display grows ever more pervasive, many debate how to protest. I have one proposal.
Aaron Renn reminds us that the right cannot simply mirror the left’s activism tactics — we need ones appropriate for our position and ends. Rather than look at what the left does during June and creating direct alternatives, let’s consider what gives them so much power.
Many claim the corporate embrace of pride should somehow embarrass the left—apparently a corruption or watering down of its original message. This is wrong.
Pride is the celebration of self—and of self-indulgence. It’s only natural that it’s been embraced by large companies pushing mass consumerism.
This points to a natural protest: Buy nothing in June.
My colleague Jon Stokes made the suggestion, building on an initial post by Josh Centers. They did not frame it as a protest or as directly related to “pride” (both are from the prepper world, and described this as a test of preparedness and exercise in thoughtful consumption), but the concept immediately stood out to me.
Consumerism neuters Christians, contributing to lifestyles where they are afraid to take risks, afraid to leave jobs at hostile companies that fund their lifestyles, afraid to take stands that might risk these jobs or professional advancement, afraid to adopt policies that would risk a Christian school’s status in sports leagues, etc. Mass consumer marketing shapes desires, selling not just products we may not need, but a picture of a lifestyle we are supposed to aspire to. And as becomes starkly obvious in June, those pushing this lifestyle embrace vice and reject virtue.
Boycotts may work in a few cases—most notably Bud Light, where the timing, public consumption dynamic, availability of easy substitutes, and regular data on impact all helped build momentum.
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We were told to pursue excellence in all things according to the gifts that we were given for the glory of God.  Leaders today in the church should be identifying such men with unique gifts and encourage them to become leaders not only in the church, but in the world in which we live. Our history is full of great leaders who helped create this blessed nation from which we have benefited so much.  I’m afraid, in a day when we need them most, such men, especially Presbyterians, are missing in action.

The history of Presbyterians who have served in leadership positions in America is rich and ubiquitous; but sadly, it appears now that Presbyterians have left the public square and are missing in action (MIA).
History is replete with examples of the importance of Presbyterians. Rev. John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His influence over many of those at the Constitutional Convention cannot be underestimated. One of his students was James Madison. Horace Walpole, a member of the British Parliament, said of Witherspoon, that America “had run away with a Presbyterian parson.” It is claimed that King George III called the American Revolution “a Presbyterian rebellion.”
At the Battle of Yorktown where General George Washington defeated Cornwallis, it has been noted that all of Washington’s colonels but one were Presbyterian elders.
Whether all of this is true or not, I cannot be sure, but there is no doubt that Presbyterians had a major impact on the Revolutionary War.  Historian Paul R. Carson has estimated that when the number of soldiers in the Revolutionary War included not only Presbyterians, but Puritan English, Dutch and German Reformed, that “two-thirds of our Revolutionary forefathers were trained in the school of Calvin.”
J. Gresham Machen was respected so much as a leading clergyman in the United States that in the early 20th century he was asked to give testimony before a U.S, House and Senate Committee on a proposed Department of Education. John C. Breckinridge, a Presbyterian from Kentucky, who was the uncle of the Princeton scholar Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, was also Vice-President of the United States under President James Buchanan.
Maybe, the most well-respected Presbyterian in American history was the great Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, who was born in the mountains of what is now West Virginia, my place of birth and childhood home.  His courage and piety in war are unparalleled.
I have not even taken time to speak of the Puritans who settled New England prior to the American Revolution.  Although they were mostly Congregationalists, their theology also reflected the Calvinistic heritage.
Indeed today, I am sure that there are many conservative Presbyterians in leadership positions in every sphere of life in America.  I have known a few of them myself including many in the military, in business, and in the civil government.
However, I am beginning to notice a trend. Presbyterians in such leadership positions are disappearing from public life.  They are becoming very rare.  For example, the United States Supreme Court contains no Presbyterians.  Only 24 members of the United States Congress are listed as Presbyterians, and I doubt that any of them are conservative. You have to go back to Ronald Reagan to find a President who identified as a Presbyterian, at least later in life.
Yes, the capture of the Presbyterian Church by liberalism is part of the problem. Conservative Presbyterians and others from Reformed backgrounds are a small percentage of the American religious scene.
However, we should ask ourselves what has happened in the conservative Reformed and Presbyterian world that changed the landscape of Presbyterians participating in leadership roles outside of the church?
We may not need look any further than our young men in the church. Many of them seem to be confused, aimless, and lacking direction in life.  I hear constant complaints about young Christian men in Presbyterian and Reformed churches who seem to have very little drive to excel. They seem unwilling to work hard.  They often take what I call the easy road to avoid the sweat and tears it takes to succeed and rise to high levels of responsibility in accordance with their abilities.  When they do choose a pathway or calling, they often do not persevere.
God gives different gifts to different men.  For a man in a lawncare business, that is an honorable calling.  For those who drive trucks, that also is an honorable calling.  But for those with skills and gifts which could put them in leadership positions in their communities and even at higher levels, many of our young men, especially Presbyterians, are absent.
What has then happened? Radical Two Kingdom (R2K) theology has fenced up our young men into monastic cells inside the church walls. Pietism has chased away our young men from interacting with the world. Amillennialism has no victorious view of the future here on earth before Christ returns. So, many of our young men think, “What’s the use of fighting?”  That’s what our theology is teaching our young men. In my own experience, I went through a period of despair, and came to believe that Amillennialism is incompatible with a robust Covenantalism which is future-oriented.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution acted to secure the blessings of liberty not only for themselves but for their posterity.  Posterity was an important covenantal word among our early forefathers.  They had a long-term view of their work, knowing they would have an impact on many generations not yet born.
The highest position for young men today seems to be reaching the office of an elder in the church, rather than a mayor in the town or even the Governor of a State.
We don’t look generations ahead and believe that we are responsible for the quality of life for those yet to be born. We have become less than conquers, and this attitude of ordained defeatism has been transmitted to our young men.  Our anticipation of heaven has nullified our responsibility to future generations here on earth.
So, a listless floating and a dreamy drifting attitude without purpose has captured many of our young men. I’m glad I was raised in the previous generation where we knew what real manhood was in that we were expected to use our talents and gifts to the upmost. To fail to do this was shameful and dishonorable.
We were told to pursue excellence in all things according to the gifts that we were given for the glory of God.  Leaders today in the church should be identifying such men with unique gifts and encourage them to become leaders not only in the church, but in the world in which we live. Our history is full of great leaders who helped create this blessed nation from which we have benefited so much.  I’m afraid, in a day when we need them most, such men, especially Presbyterians, are missing in action.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.

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