Experts around the country are trying to track the number of college-aged students who grew up in church, yet are walking away from God after they graduate high school.  The estimate is between 70 and 80 percent.  That statistic is scary and sickening!  The idea that anyone (especially children that I love dearly) would turn away from the only source of absolute goodness and love and instead pursue something lesser and hope for happiness in someone or something else brings me great sadness and motivates me to do everything I can to help our families beat this statistic.

Though the reality is that our kids have to make their own decisions, I hope that they will experience God in a tangible way in our homes and in our church so that they have plenty of opportunity to see that God is good, that his plans for us are incredible, that following him is anything but boring, in fact it is the fullest life they could ever dream of, and everything else in their experience would pale in comparison to life following Christ.

I long for Brookview to be a church community that partners with the family to help them grow in their ability to walk with Christ together.  My hope is that families would be involved in ministry together and they would see themselves as having an ability to reflect God in a unique way.  I pray that our homes would be filled with spiritual conversations where we are drawing each other out and talking about what faith lived out looks like.  And I dream that as parents we would be living out an active faith in front of our children.

This is not an easy thing to do and I don’t have all of the answers for how to do it, but I do know that parents on their own and the church on its own aren’t as powerful as the two forces combined together, so we’re going to take some steps in that direction and see what happens!  Will you partner with us and hang on for what I know will be an awesome ride?

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to this power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-22)