Part II -- Are Our Kids Too Busy on Sunday Morning? Part III -- Characteristics of a New Ministry to Children |
What if I told you there was a well-researched and statistically proven program that can:
Is there such a program?
Yes, there is.
And it is supported by research from Duke University, Indiana University, The University of Michigan, The Center for Disease Control, Barna Research Group, and the National Institute for Healthcare Research.
How much would a program like this be worth to you?
What if I told you it was free, and only took about 2 hours a week.
Take a look at the list again.
It's not a dream.
The program is called "active church participation."In study, after study, after study, children who actively engage in a faith community on a regular basis are rewarded with SIGNIFICANTLY reduced likelihood of problems and risks, and significantly improved odds of a happier, healthier, longer life. These studies show the same results for adults as well.
To increase the odds of receiving these results, you can't wait. According to a Barna Research Group study, adults who attended church regularly as children are nearly three times as likely to be attending a church today as their peers who avoided church during childhood (61% to 22%, respectively). In other words, parents who truly want the best for their children should get their children involved at church now and regularly.
Our secular culture has taken up preaching "parents (as) the anti-drug," promoting D.A.R.E. programs, school uniforms, afterschool programs, and athletics as solutions to various ills. And yet, a whole host of problems plaguing young people have only become worse over the last 30 years. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Sunday School attendance has fallen over that same period. The latest tremor to rock the "what works" lobby has been several studies that indicate D.A.R.E. and its 700 million dollar budget doesn't work.
In a search for "what works," researchers keep turning up "active participation" in a "faith community" as the one consistent potent factor in raising up children in the way they should go. It's time for the Christian Church to speak up on this matter, beginning with our own Christian parents.
To paraphrase Jesus,
"What parent, knowing that it is bread that really works, would give their child a stone?"
To view the sources of these statistics, visit www.sundaysoftware.com/stats.htm
Neil MacQueen is a Presbyterian minister, Christian education consultant, and Christian software designer.
This article may be reprinted provided that the author and website source of the statistics (www.sundaysoftware.com/stats.htm) are included.
Continue Reading This Series:
Part II -- Are Our Kids Too Busy on Sunday Morning?
Part III -- Characteristics of a New Ministry to Children
|
(and some of it quite amazing) |
Information gleaned from the Barna Research Group, http://www.barna.org/
Of those who said they led an active faith life, 83 percent said their faith is growing deeper, as opposed to 38% who defined their faith life as less active. 73% of "active faith lives" said they were "very happy" with their lives. Only 57% of agnostics and atheists said they were "very happy."
Etc...
" Two out of three (67%) unchurched adults call themselves Christian. (2000)
" One-third (35%) claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today. (2000)
" About 4 out of 10 unchurched assert that their religious faith is very important in their life. (2000)Taking Children to Church (2001)
" Adults who attended church regularly as a child are nearly three times as likely to be attending a church today as are their peers who avoided the church during childhood (61% to 22%, respectively).
" Roughly seven out of ten Americans adults (71%) had a period of time during their childhood when they regularly attended a Christian church.
" Just less than two out of three adults (63%) who were churched as children take their own children to a church, which is double the proportion among adults who were not churched and who now take their kids to church (33%).
" Adults who attended church as a child are twice as likely as others to read the Bible during a typical week; twice as likely to attend a church worship service in a typical week; and nearly 50% more likely to pray to God during a typical week.
Probability of accepting Christ, segmented by age
" Children between the ages of 5 and 13 have a 32% probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their savior.
" The probability of accepting Christ drops to 4% for those who are between the ages of 14 and 18.
" Those older than 18 have a 6% probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their savior.
Young people who said that religion is important and who worshiped regularly had a significantly lower rate of cohabitation when compared to peers who did not consider religion important and attended services seldom or never. The cohabitation rate of those who never attended services was about seven times higher than those who attended several times a week. Young people who were more religious had higher rates of marriage than their less religious peers who often substitued cohabitation for marriage.
Sample or Data Description: Families in the Detroit area
Arland Thornton, William G. Axinn, and Daniel H. Hill, "Reciprocal Effects of Religiosity, Cohabitation, and Marriage," American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 98, Number 3. , 1992. Page(s) 628-651.
Regular church attendance during adolescence frequently predicts a less promiscuous adult life. "Never married women who did not attend religious services as adolescents are more than twice as likely to report having two or more recent sex partners compared to those who did attend services regularly."
Sample or Data Description: 3,378 single women
Source: Stuart N. Seidman, William D. Mosher, and Sevgi O. Aral, "Predictors of High-Risk Behavior in Unmarried American Women: Adolescent Environment as Risk Factor." Journal of Adolescent Health.Vol. 15, Number . , 1994. Page(s) 126-132.
Religious Teens Have More Positive Outlook
Study Finds Link Between Church Attendance, Enjoyment --
High school seniors who consider themselves religious have significantly higher self-esteem and hold more positive attitudes about life than do their less religious peers, according to a new study.The research, part of the University of North Carolina-based National Study of Youth and Religion, revealed a statistical association between religion and higher self-esteem among 12th-graders who went to religious services at least once a week or who professed deeply held spiritual views, said study director Christian Smith.
"We found that of the 13 variables we examined about attitudes, only one was not significantly related to some dimension of religion in a positive way," said Smith, a professor of sociology. "This was contrary to the belief held by some people that religion is associated with psychological neurosis or dysfunction. These findings seem to suggest the opposite -- that religion is associated with a constructive outlook."
Researchers found that the 31 percent of all 12th-graders who attended services weekly and the additional 30 percent who said religion was very important to them were significantly more likely than nonreligious students to enjoy life, think their lives were useful, feel hopeful about their futures, be satisfied with their lives and enjoy being in school. http://ia.thebostonchannel.com/sh/family/stories/family-181936420021204-111245.html
Benefits of Church Attendance in Poor Communities
Students from poor neighborhoods who attend church are also less likely to engage in violent behavior, says Byron Johnson, director of the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, which sponsored the Regnerus/Elder study.
In a recent study, researchers Mark Regnerus and Glen Elder Jr. demonstrate that when youth from low-income neighborhoods attend church, their academic performance improves.
The study, commissioned by the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, relied on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the relationship between religion and academics in nearly 10,000 students. Regnerus and Elder found that the poorer the neighborhood, the more church attendance helped kids to improve academically. The findings held true even after controlling for obvious influences like a student's relationship with parents.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/006/8.60.html
Also from Barna Research, "Basic Understanding of Evangelism" Study (1994)
" 9 out of 10 American adults (86%) cannot accurately define the meaning of the "Great Commission."
" 7 out of 10 adults have no clue what "John 3:16" means.
" Barely one third of all adults (31%) know the meaning of the expression "the gospel."
" Only 4% of adults could define the "Great Commission," quote John 3:16, and define "the gospel."
Top Ten Reasons to Attend a Church Service
" #1 the theological beliefs and doctrine of the church
" #2 how much the people seem to care about each other
" #3 the quality of the sermons that are preached
" #4 how friendly the people in the church are to visitors
" #5 how involved the church is in helping poor and disadvantaged people
" #6 the quality of the programs and classes for children
" #7 how much you like the pastor
" #8 the denomination the church is affiliated with
" #9 the quality of the adult Sunday school classes
" #10 the convenience of the times of their weekend services
" At least half of the unchurched audience found each of the following to be compelling reasons to return to church: learning more about God, getting religious training for their children, improving their personal understanding of the contents of the bible, meeting other people, and discovering ways of handling daily challenges more appropriately or effectively. (1995)
Experiencing God
" Enjoying or appreciating worship is not synonymous with experiencing the presence of God. Nearly two-thirds of regular attenders say they have never experienced God's presence at a church service. (1997)
" 48% of regular church attenders have not experienced God's presence in the past year. (1997)
EXCERPTS from a 2001-2003 Barna Research Study
on Children's Ministry, Churches and Faith Formation
Read the full report and/or order the Barna Reasearch book at http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PagePressRelease.asp?PressReleaseID=153&Reference=F
Research Shows That Spiritual Maturity Process Should Start at a Young Age
November 17, 2003
(Ventura, CA)- Three years of research regarding ministry to children has revealed many surprising outcomes, according to a new book by researcher George Barna. In discussing that volume, entitled Transforming Your Children Into Spiritual Champions, Barna indicated that the wealth of research not only changed his personal perspective on the importance of ministering to young children, but also clarified why churches struggle to have significance in our culture.“Adults essentially carry out the beliefs they embraced when they were young,” he explained.
Reaching People When They’re Young
Barna’s research discovered that a person’s lifelong behaviors and views are generally developed when they are young – particularly before they reach the teenage years.
First, a person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age nine. ... fundamental perspectives on truth, integrity, meaning, justice, morality, and ethics are formed quite early in life. After their first decade, most people simply refine their views as they age without a wholesale change in those leanings.
Second, a person’s response to the meaning and personal value of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection is usually determined before a person reaches eighteen. In fact, a majority of Americans make a lasting determination about the personal significance of Christ’s death and resurrection by age 12.
Third, Barna showed data indicating that in most cases people’s spiritual beliefs are irrevocably formed when they are pre-teens.
“In essence,” the researcher noted, “what you believe by the time you are 13 is what you will die believing.
.....research revealed that adult church leaders usually have serious involvement in church life and training when they are young. ......One implication is that the individuals who will become the church’s leaders two decades from now are probably active in church programs today.
Families and Churches Working Together
...Barna stated that the research underscored the importance of families, not churches, taking the lead in the spiritual development of children. “In situations where children became mature Christians we usually found a symbiotic partnership between their parents and their church,”
...Barna’s firm concluded that churches experiencing great influence in children’s lives were motivated by the realization that children are of special significance to God. Consequently, those churches employed a long-term, multi-pronged strategy that they tirelessly executed to facilitate the spiritual growth of children.
...at a typical Protestant church, more than four out of every ten people ministered to during the week are children, yet seven out of every eight ministry dollars are spent on adults.
.....but the more important resource is the commitment of adults to the spiritual wholeness of the children – which means sacrificing some of the emphasis upon the ministry to adults.”
Book Challenges Prevailing Notions
The researcher admitted that the outcome of his studies produced a significant turnabout in his own views about ministry. “Since I became a Christian two decades ago, I have always accepted the dominant notion: the most important ministry is that conducted among adults. But the overwhelming evidence we have seen of the huge impact in the lives of kids and the relatively limited changes in the lives of adults has completely revolutionized my view of ministry. I have concluded that children are the single most important population group for the Church to focus upon.
Read the full report and/or order the Barna Reasearch book at http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PagePressRelease.asp?PressReleaseID=153&Reference=F
D.A.R.E. Doesn't WorkPublished: Tuesday, February 16, 1999
Author: Kendra E. Wright
Source: San Francisco Examiner
DRUG CZAR Barry McCaffrey announced last week a plan to cut drug use in half by 2007. His goal - getting mentors and role models more active in the lives of kids - is laudable. But drug education and prevention will never succeed as long as D.A.R.E. - the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program - is ensconced in 70 percent of our children's schools. Over the last five years, studies have been conducted for the federal General Accounting Office and Justice Department and for the California Department of Education. They describe how D.A.R.E. and other anti-drug programs fail to reach the teenagers most at risk of drug abuse. Joel Brown of Berkeley-based Educational Research Consultants was hired by the state Department of Education to conduct one of the most extensive qualitative studies of drug education programs to date. He found that D.A.R.E. and other programs may actually be hurting our kids. Brown's conclusions - eloquently articulated for him by the teens he interviewed - were so disturbing that in 1995 the state education agency buried the report. (The findings became public in 1997 when published in the prestigious Education Evaluation and Policy Review Journal.)http://www.familywatch.org/library/de.002.html
Update: Some D.A.R.E. programs have been dropped by local communities. Others have been revamped. The jury is still out.
Invited article for the Reformed Review, 2000, 53 (2), 119-126.
ON ASSESSING PRAYER, FAITH, AND HEALTH
David G. MyersSeveral new studies find the religiosity-longevity correlation among men alone, and even more strongly among women.8 One study that followed 5,286 Californians over twenty-eight years found frequent religious attendees 36 percent less likely to have died in any year after controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and education. Another followed 3,968 elderly North Carolinians for six years. It found that 23 percent of those attending religious services at least weekly had died, as had 37 percent of infrequent attendees.9 A "National Health Interview Survey" followed 21, 204 people over eight years. After controlling for age, sex, race, and region, nonattenders were 1.87 times more likely to have died than were those attending more than weekly.10 This translated into a life expectancy at age twenty of eighty-three years for frequent attenders and seventy-five years for infrequent attenders.
http://www.davidmyers.org/religion/faith.html
Indiana Univ funded study of youth
Showed that non-religious students were twice as likely to use drugs, alcohol and engage in binge drinking.http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/religion2.htm
Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences on a study conducted in N. Carolina by Duke.
Findings: Depressed patients with higher intrinsic religiosity scores had 70% more rapid remissions than patients with lower scores. In this study, greater intrinsic religiosity independently predicted shorter time to remission. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report in which religiosity has been examined as a predictor of outcome of depressive disorder.Findings: Persons who "prayed or studied the Bible at least several times/week" were 58% less likely than others to have alcoholism in past 6 months (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.22-0.78, p<.01 after controlling for age, sex, race, SES, and health status); no difference was found for life-time rates. Those who "attended religious services weekly or more" were 71% less likely to have alcoholism in past 6 months
http://www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org/pastreports.html#attendance
From The Psychiatric Times...
Dr. Larson, president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research and adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Duke University Medical Center and Northwestern University Medical School.
National Institute for Healthcare Research (1999), surveyed almost 14,000 youths and found that the analysis of six measures of religious commitment and eight measures of substance abuse revealed religious commitment was linked with less drug abuse. The measure of "importance of religion" was the best predictor in indicating lack of substance abuse. The authors stated, "This implies that the controls operating here are deeply internalized values and norms rather than…fear…or peer pressure."
A study of the religious lives of alcoholics found that 89% of alcoholics had lost interest in religion during their teen-age years, whereas 48% among the community control group had increased interest in religion, and 32% had remained unchanged (Larson and Wilson, 1980). Alcoholics often report negative experiences with religion and hold concepts of God that are punitive, rather than loving and forgiving (Gorsuch, 1993).
Furthermore, a relationship between religious/spiritual commitment and the non-use or moderate use of alcohol has been documented. Amoateng and Bahr (1986) reported that, whether or not a religious tradition specifically proscribes alcohol use, those who are active in a religious group consumed substantially less alcohol than those who are not active.
How significantly might religious commitment prevent suicide? One early large-scale study found that people who did not attend church were four times more likely to kill themselves than were frequent church-goers (Comstock and Partridge, 1972). Stack (1983) found rates of church attendance predicted suicide rates more effectively than any other evaluated factor, including unemployment.
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p001078.html
The researchers studied data gathered through Monitoring the Future, a nationally representative University of Michigan survey of 2,478 high school seniors. Among specific findings were that especially religious youths were less likely to smoke, drink and use drugs and more likely to start later and use less if they started at all, he said. They went to bars less often, received fewer traffic tickets, wore seat belts more, took fewer risks and fought less frequently. Shoplifting, other thefts, trespassing and arson also were rarer.
"Religious 12th-graders argued with parents less, skipped school less, exercised more, participated more in student government and faced fewer detentions, suspensions and expulsions," Smith said.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is funding the four-year study, which began in 2001. Among the researchers' goals are to identify effective practices in the religious, moral and social formation in young people's lives and to foster informed national discussions about the influence of religion on adolescents.
http://ia.nbc5.com/sh/health/stories/health-167448820020918-140938.html
October 28, 2002
WASINGTON (RNS)--Teenagers who attend church, have strong religious beliefs and participate in church-sponsored youth activities are more likely than their less-religious peers to avoid risky behavior, according to a new study.
The report, released in late September by the National Study of Youth and Religion, studied U.S. 12th graders and found a strong correlation between religion and avoiding delinquent activity.
"The report demonstrates that religion among U.S. 12th graders is positively related to participation in constructive youth activities," said the study's principal investigator, Christian Smith. Smith, a professor and associate chair of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where the study was based, and his researchers examined data from Monitoring the Future, a national survey of U.S. high school students. Religious seniors, the study found, are less likely to "use, sell or be offered drugs." While 61.3 percent of non-churchgoing 12th graders reported using illegal drugs in the previous year, only 38.5 percent of those who attend church frequently said they had. Tobacco and alcohol use was lower among religious teens as well. Only 11.9 percent of frequent churchgoers said they used cigarettes, while almost three times as many of their non-churchgoing peers smoke regularly. Half of those who rated religion as "very important" had never been drunk, compared to 30.5 percent of those who said religion is not important to them.In addition, the study reports, religious teens:
___Are safer behind the wheel.
___Are less attracted to danger and risky situations.
___Are less prone to violence and criminal behavior.
___Have less trouble in school and with their parents.
___Are more involved in sports, community activities and volunteer work.
___While the researchers said there is a strong link between religion and positive, healthy behavior in teens, it is difficult, they wrote, to "determine the direction of cause and effect between religion and risk behaviors and social activities."
___Possible factors in the link might be the influence of religion itself or that some families are predisposed to avoid risky behavior and engage in religious activities.
Church Attendance Improves Community Volunteerism among Young People
The relationship between religiosity and community engagement extends beyond voting to other aspects of civic activity, such as volunteering -- 73% of 18 to 24 year olds who attend religious services every week have volunteered with a community or religious organization in the past few years, compared to 40% of those who attend religious services less frequently.
Quoted from the National Assoc. of Secretaries of State, Voting Survey, Attitudes Among Youth. http://www.stateofthevote.org/survey/sect4.htm
Teaching the Bible with Computers
A great idea that gets results!
www.sundaysoftware.com
