A Conversation
Years ago, I asked a seminary professor for guidance for raising our infant daughter in the Christian faith. I had personally known a pastor’s kid who wandered from the faith. “Good question,” he said, but he didn’t know of resources to help me. But affirming my challenge, he set me on a quest where I learned this struggle was not limited to pastors’ homes. Many Christian households saw children fall away. So, my journey grew to include homes in my congregations where I tried to help parents like us raise our children in the Christian faith.
That quest led me to develop a map to guide homes and congregations for raising children in the faith. I chronicle that journey in Family Discipleship with Christ: A Map of God’s Promises for Congregations and Families (Concordia Publishing House, 2026). Today, as I talk with seminary students, along with pastors, parents, and congregational leaders, I use it to help them.
The dialog below illustrates this teaching, which is also called “family discipleship.”[1] A young seminary student is asking questions about it to get some insights for his quest.
Professor, I understand you are researching and writing about helping parents raise their children in the Christian faith. We have a young son and want to learn as much as possible. Can you offer some guidance?
Yes. First, start with recognizing you are not called to be a perfect parent but a Christian parent. You trust in Jesus who died and rose for sinners. In my book, Family Discipleship with Christ, I tell a story about a mother named Abby raising two girls in the faith. She confessed to her pastor that she had guilt over her failures in parenting her daughters, Eileen and Alex. Pastor responds with pronouncing God’s forgiveness. Then there is the comment:
This message brought comfort and confidence by focusing on her core identity [as a baptized child of God] instead of her actions. This good news was also why she wanted Alex and Eileen to know Jesus. That is why she had them baptized and brought them to church and Sunday school. Could she have done more with the resources she had? Maybe. Yet the most important lesson she could teach her children was not being a perfect parent through her actions but being a Christian parent who trusted in Jesus’s forgiveness. She, too, was God’s child as she raised God’s children in her home in the Christian faith. They were all learning to trust in Jesus.[2]
With Christian parenting, begin with God’s promises in Christ to you and your child. Then you can freely look to God’s good guidance for fulfilling his calling to parents.
Thank you for reminding us of that, professor. We need to remember to keep Jesus at the center both for us and our children. You mention God’s guidance. Where is a good place to start?
You’ve probably heard the passage, “Train up a child in the way that he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6).
Yes. It is a pretty direct statement. It would be great if that were always true. But I’ve seen so many kids I grew up with going to church, even in my own family, who fell away.
Your experience is common. Many young people are departing from religious faith. Research shows this.[3] But we need to ask, what exactly is meant by “train up a child”? And who is responsible for doing this? Research also sheds light on that.[4]
Good questions. Professor, what are the answers?
This passage—along with many others about faith formation of children[5]—assumes the home is responsible. This is clear throughout God’s word. Parents are to oversee the training of a child. We also know from educational theory that such training is a “full-bodied”[6] formational experience.
What do you mean by “full-bodied” formation?
This happens through daily life with a particular orientation. Full-bodied formation comes with habits, expectations, and natural conversations which focus life toward a particular “vision of the good life.”[7] When a Christian home sets aside time for daily worship, reads Scripture, prays together, and the parents center life in Christ, the training up of a child in the word and promises of God takes place. It does not require a particular type or makeup of a family—the lady I described earlier was “spiritually single.”[8] She too could do this.
That was not the emphasis where I grew up. We were a Christian home and went to worship and Sunday school and youth group, but for religious teaching our parents brought us and dropped us off. We didn’t think of faith being taught in the home. It wasn’t something my parents knew about.
It is great your parents took you to worship and supported your religious education by pastors and teachers. That is very important, as is spending time with peers in youth group. But these are not the daily “training up” that is assumed in Proverbs 22:6. Deuteronomy 6:7 tells what this looks like, “You shall teach [God’s word] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
So how can I do this in my home and as a pastor who help others with this?
First, realize God has given authority and responsibility to parents to do this. Pastors and congregational ministries also have responsibility, but it is in service to the primary role of the child’s household. This requires intentionality. Three powerful influences must be addressed: (1) your own home, like most others, did not form you this way, (2) seminaries do not typically teach pastors to equip the home for this work, and (3) congregations can get set in patterns of over-emphasizing formal education to hand down the faith to children.
I can relate to that. But based on the current outcomes I can see we must learn to do this, no matter how challenging it is.
One effective way is to start with young families. In premarital counseling, pastors can teach couples to begin a habit of daily worship in their home. In pre-baptismal counseling, they can again teach this faith formational practice when children are added to the family. They can also form groups in the congregation where fellow parents in God’s “household of faith”[9]can support one another in their common callings.
Please share what that looks like, both faith formational worship in homes and parenting support in congregations.
Briefly, formational devotions in the home are where family members meet consistently at a set time for a daily habit of Scripture reading, application, and prayer. Pick the time that works best for your family, but stick to it. Like weekly congregational worship, it is important to have an order that is intentional for shaping the Christian life. I use one based on the core of the church’s catechism. We speak the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, which helps form us in lives of repentance, faith, and Christian living. We also take time to sing, have an age-appropriate devotion, and pray for the needs of the day. This is how we experience faith-formational daily worship.
We should try that. It does not sound too difficult.
Yes and no. It is a simple practice, and it can be done in about fifteen to twenty minutes. But if you have not been formed in this habit previously, it can be a significant challenge to consistently practice it. You will need to work at it. Life has many distractions. And the devil does not want you to do this, so he will tempt you not to. The sooner you develop the habit, the better. When young children grow up this way, they are formed in and desire the routine.
What about the parenting support group?
That can be easier to do. Parents need and want support. If you have a monthly time for families to gather for fellowship, learning, and prayer together, it is a great way to teach and encourage family discipleship.[10]
Anything else?
Just remember it starts with God’s promises to you and your children. As I shared, you are not called to be a perfect parent but a Christian parent. And the most important lesson you can teach your children is that being a Christian is trusting Jesus’ promises both for you and your baptized children.[11]
Thank you for sharing that. It is a great way to think about teaching faith in Jesus to our son.
Just remember, with Christ there is always more grace!
[1] Family discipleship is defined as, “Christ’s gifts nurturing faith in God’s children through the partnership of home and congregation” (https://concordiafamily.org/mission-vision).
[2] Introduction to W. Mart Thompson, Family Discipleship with Christ: A Map of God’s Promises in Congregations and Families (Concordia Publishing House, 2026), 2.
[3] “From Search Institute studies in the mid-1990s to Barna, LifeWay, and Pew research in the twenty-first century, it is clear that Christian faith practice in the United States has decreased significantly among young adults. Between 60 to 80 percent of children raised in the faith fall away by early adulthood. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s 2017 study of millennials and young adults indicated that only one in five children raised in the church are still active as adults.” Thompson, Family Discipleship with Christ, 35.
[4] Longitudinal research that assesses outcomes for religious transmission to children shows that faith formation occurs primarily by parents through natural conversations in the home. Church-based youth education may appear successful in the moment, but long-term outcomes tell a different story. See Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation (Oxford University Press, 2021).
[5] Deuteronomy 4:9–10, 6:1–9; Proverbs 1:8–10, 6:20–24, 13:1, 13:24; Psalm 78:4–8, 127:3–5; Matthew 19:14; Ephesians 6:1–4; Colossians 3:20–21; 2 Timothy 1:5.
[6] See James K. A. Smith’s description of education as “formation” in Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker Academic, 2009), 17 ff.
[7] “The ideal picture of human flourishing.” Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 26.
[8] A Christian whose spouse does not practice the faith.
[9] Galatians 6:10.
[10] For formative family worship ideas, congregational family discipleship groups examples, and more, see Thompson, Family Discipleship with Christ: A Map of God’s Promises in Congregations and Families.
[11] Acts 2:39.
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