“Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve long been a numbers guy. Numbers just stick in my head. Random numbers. And they don’t go away. Sometimes it’s pretty handy like at my former church, before I was really using a cell phone all that much, when I had almost half the phone numbers of the members memorized. Because I’m a numbers guy, I love looking at data. It doesn’t matter too much what the data is, but sociological research data is some of my favorite to digest, especially when it’s on a topic I care about and from a research outfit whose methodology I trust. I’ve had the chance recently to review some research from the Barna organization into the world of people who are spiritually curious. Let me highlight a couple of things I’ve noticed along the way.

We live in the midst of a culture that is ravenously hungry for the supernatural. Not all that long ago that would have sounded to many like a funny thing to say. And by, “funny,” I mean entirely wrong. In the wake of 9/11, a group of atheists who had mostly existed in obscurity suddenly got really, really popular as many concluded that the problem with the world was religion generally rather than just a relative handful of violent, radicalized followers of a single religion. They made what seemed to be a big cultural splash. They attracted lots of headlines. They got lots of public speaking engagements. They wrote some books. It became cool for people to publicly depart from their previously held faith position. Many Christians panicked. It was an interesting season.

A little more than 20 years later, though, it has become clear their big cultural splash wasn’t nearly so big or lasting as many thought it would be. It was more like throwing a pebble in the ocean. The secularist utopia (which, ironically, literally means “no place”) many of these leading atheists and their followers boasted was just on the cusp of finally arriving to fully and completely jettison the scourge of religion around the world…or at least in a handful of western nations that were already secularizing at a rapid pace, never actually arrived. The world today is, on the whole, more religious than ever. The “nones” are a declining demographic, and a culture weary and famished thanks to the philosophical and theological emptiness of secularism is looking for something with more substance to it than that.

Now, make no mistake, the numbers don’t show some kind of a cultural renaissance of Christianity (although, as we talked about a few weeks ago, there are reasons to think that isn’t an entirely unlikely outcome of our current cultural trajectory). To quote from Barna’s research summary: “Though formal measures like religious affiliation and church attendance have declined, spiritual openness and curiosity are on the rise.” And again, “Across every generation, we see this desire to grow spiritually, belief in a spiritual dimension and belief in God or a high power.” This is especially true among the members of Generations Z and Alpha.

To put some actual numbers behind that, almost 82% of the country responded to the question of whether or not there is a spiritual or supernatural dimension to life with either a firm, “yes,” or an “I think so.” Another 12% said that while they don’t think so, they are at least open to the possibility. If you are doing the math, that about 94% of the country that is at least open to the possibility that there is a spiritual or supernatural dimension to life. That is, they aren’t naturalists. They aren’t even particularly committed secularists. They are spiritually open. They want to grow spiritually to the tune of 74%. Eighty percent believe in the existence of God or at least some kind of higher power. In other words, while we might have sampled secularism as a culture, we found it wanting and now are searching for something more fulfilling.

Those numbers were intriguing to me all by themselves. From the standpoint of pastoring a church that is committed to Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations and growing God’s kingdom, these numbers are enormously encouraging. Nearly all of the people who are within our sphere of influence are open to the possibility that there is more to life than they are experiencing on their own. This is true for your church too, wherever you happen to be.

How you approach those spiritual conversations matters a great deal. If you come across demeaning or intolerant or arrogant or generally not graciously curious about them as people, seeing them instead as evangelistic objects, the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere, and it’s probably going to be short. But if you’ll come in with humility, gentleness, compassion as ready companions for your conviction, you just may find that you’ve made a new friend who is willing to at least listen to what you have to say.

Later on in the report, the authors shifted gears to talking about some of the research Barna did into the spiritual backstories of the people who participated in the survey. Nearly everyone has some sort of a spiritual backstory. Even no spiritual backstory is in a sense a spiritual backstory. But for most people – 82% to be a bit more precise – grew up with some kind of religious faith. More than that, 75% identified specifically with Christianity.

This is the part of the report that really caught my attention. One of the questions they asked was about the nature of the experience people had who identified as having had some sort of religious upbringing. There were ten possible answers including things like, “growing up, religion was an opportunity to connect with God,” “…the right thing to do,” and “…a source of belonging.” The responses came from people in five different categories. These were spiritually open, practicing Christians, spiritually open nonpracticing Christians, spiritually open non-Christians, spiritually closed Christians, and spiritually closed non-Christians.

That last group would be folks who aren’t Christian and aren’t interested in any sort of spiritual or supernatural nonsense (as they might call it). They don’t follow Jesus and don’t care much about Him either. For responses that reflected a generally more positive past experience with religion, people who were spiritually open were typically very well represented. For instance, more than half of spiritually open, practicing Christians said that growing up, religion was an opportunity to connect with God. For most of the responses, spiritually closed non-Christians were not well represented.

There was one glaring exception to this. Responding to the statement, “growing up, religion was an obligation; I didn’t have a choice,” 40% of spiritually closed non-Christians said that was properly descriptive of their experience. That was more than double the rate of response to every other prompt save one (“growing up, religion was not practiced, just a label”), and even that one only garnered 24%.

The conclusion here is pretty obvious. As parents, forcing religion down our kids’ throats is not a wise strategy if our goal is to see them adopt and develop for themselves a faith that is at least somewhat reflective of our own. Now, it is unavoidably true that kids don’t always want to go to church. I remember growing up and wanting to sleep in on the occasional Sunday morning. And, as parents, it’s okay to say to your kids, “Get up, we’re going to church.” Asking them to respect your authority and your faith traditions is an okay thing to do.

But the respect has to go both ways. Don’t assume your faith onto them. Don’t pressure them to espouse certain beliefs simply because you do. Don’t force them into spiritual disciplines as if those will make better Christians out of them.

Instead, invite them to explore spirituality with you. Live out your faith before them in ways that let them see and experience by example the worthwhileness of your faith commitment to Christ. Make sure you have them in a church that has a good, welcoming, affirming, Gospel community where they can build positive relationships that encourage them naturally in the direction of faith. Ask them good and curious questions about what they believe and how they came to form those beliefs. And, if they start to drift in another direction, show them the respect of honoring their choice, loving them anyway, and working to maintain the kind of positive relationship that will keep the door open for spiritual conversations in the future.

One other thing. The research also invited respondents to reflect on the positive (or negative) nature of their relational experiences when it came to their religious backgrounds. Half of the people who were identified as spiritually open, practicing Christians remembered a spiritually faithful grandmother or mother who played a major role in shaping their faith in the present. Only a third of that same group remembered a spiritually faithful father who had an impact. I don’t think that means that dads aren’t as important as moms in terms of shaping the faith of their children so much as it is a sign that there just aren’t as many spiritually faithful dads period.

On the contrary, the evidence would seem to indicate just the opposite: that dads are one of the most important factors in the spiritual development of their kids. Among those who noted the impact of a faithful father on their spiritual journey, only 7% were spiritually closed non-Christians. That was a lower percentage than for any other positive relational experience category with the singular exception of having friends who shared their religious beliefs (3%).

The conclusion here is again obvious. Spiritually closed non-Christians were vastly more likely to not have a spiritually faithful father or father-figure modeling the faith for them in positive ways, and vastly more likely not to have a group of friends who shared their faith. They were forced to live on a spiritual island, and eventually they sailed away with no plans to ever return.

Dads, you matter in the spiritual growth and development of your children. A lot. Kids will generally take on the religious identity of their mom, but they’ll only ever be as devoted as they see their dads demonstrating. If you don’t really care about it, they probably won’t either. And they can tell really easily whether or not you really care about it.

Church, whatever you can do to create positive relational climates where young people want to gather to be able to pursue their own faith growth and development alongside their friends as they fellowship, play, serve, work, and worship is worth doing. This doesn’t mean that kids and youth ministries are an essential for every single church. There are some God calls intentionally to be effective in other directions. But in the vast majority of cases, if you want a growing church, you need families and children.

Data is your friend. The most recent data out there suggests that we live in a spiritually open, spiritual curious culture, and that if we raise up faithful men and create attractive environments for kids and youth, we will have a pretty profound impact on the future of faith in our country. Let’s get busy.