What is Parenting Toward the 30%?
Studies have shown that 70% of Christian raised young adults walk away from their faith shortly after graduating from high school. That means that only 30% continue their walk with Christ as young adults.
We are informing people about this problem, and challenging parents of preschool, elementary, junior high and high school students to intentionally prepare their children for the ultimate day when they graduate from high school—a time when they will be on their own, and will be responsible for their own decisions. Will they be among the 70% that walk away from God, or the 30% that stay in a relationship with Jesus Christ? What are you as parents doing right now to prepare them for that ultimate day?
Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it." What does it mean to "Train up a child in the way he should go?" As a parent, what steps can you take now, when your child is young, to prepare them?
Young Adults of Worth Ministries is bringing awareness to the issue, and we are challenging parents to intentionally train their children starting at a young age, in "the way they should go." We are calling them to parent in a Biblical way, not just on Sunday mornings, but all of the time.
We hope to help you in this journey, by providing Biblical guidance on what you can do to increase the chances of your child ending up in the 30%. No one can give you a magic formula or a guarantee; however, God gives us lots of parenting principles in His word. He does let us know what it means to "Train up a child in the way he should go."
Below are recent articles from our blog to help you parent your child toward being part of the 30% that continue to walk with Christ as young adults.
Did Jesus really tell us to hate our parents, spouse, children, siblings and even our own life? If you read Luke 14 you will see where Jesus says this. That is very strange. It doesn’t seem to align with Jesus’ message of love, forgiveness and mercy. It’s hard to believe that Jesus would direct his followers to hate anyone. Let’s look at Luke 14:26 in the King James version to see what Jesus really said.
Recently, I purchased an item hoping to foster eyelash growth and eliminate mascara. With anticipation, I began applying my new purchase! After about a month of use, my excitement had waned. There was no visible eyelash growth. My eye lashes had started falling out. I obviously wanted more eyelashes, which did not appear. The expensive endeavor never produced the desired result of longer, fuller eyelashes which was supposed to start happening with the first application of the product. Each of us has been blinded by something. Is it an unfulfilled expectancy, or a “needed” buy?
Why should we fear God? It seems counterintuitive that we would since God is loving, merciful, generous, forgiving and good. If God is all of those things, it would seem that we should not fear Him. So why then would scripture tell us to fear God?
Disciplining our children is hard. It is something we don’t want or like to do. If you enjoy it, something is wrong, as that is not the example of discipline our heavenly Father shows us. God is our example and He is the only one we should follow. God is our heavenly Father, and we are His earthly children. We should discipline our children in the same way that God disciplines us. We should not shy way from doing it, as it is our parental obligation to ensure our children are raised correctly. In that way, they will respect their parents, and have a proper view of God, our heavenly Father.
Jesus used the concepts of salt and light a number of different times to refer to the role of His followers in the world. Salt has been critical in life and civilizations, but why is this mineral so much more critical to life then other minerals found around the world? It is estimated that there are more then 14,000 different uses for salt! There are cooking, cleaning, health and many other benefits to using salt. All the uses I could find online are positive and beneficial. So let’s look into why Jesus said we are to be like salt.