The following is a transcript of the video above, edited for readability.
It's not just theory. It's practice. It's habits that matter. And if we don't have habits in our lives that allow for us to slow down and have times of reflection on what really matters most, then it's not surprising that our own children aren't going to value those things. For example, if most of our time is spent on distraction, if it's easy for us sitting at the dinner table to take a call, you have this chaotic scene of sitting around the dinner table and it's all just a farce that we're all sitting around the dinner table because one of the kids is on the iPhone, the other kid is playing a video game, and the mom is on the phone talking to somebody about school tomorrow, and the dad is checking his email. And this is all at the dinner table. There is absolutely no way you can have anything serious, much less the seriousness of the Christian faith in the family, as long as we are distracted as we are by so many trivial things.
Now, it's not that we don't use those gadgets. It's not that we don't value the trivial. The trivial has its place, but it's just that. It's trivial, or at least let's say it's secondary. If the primary thing, namely knowing that your kids are regularly, daily developing habits, not just by themselves, but together with the family also, of thinking through the faith, praying through their faith, understanding who God is, working through his word, if that isn't a part of the daily life of our families, then it's not surprising that 60% of those who are raised in evangelical churches today will be unchurched by their sophomore year in college. That's the new statistic.
60%, more than half of those raised all of their lives in Bible-believing evangelical Christian churches will not be in the church by their sophomore year in college. And my question is, were they ever in church? Really, the church and was there really a big difference between a non-Christian home and a Christian home? I mean, these are tough questions that I as a father and my wife as a mother, husband, and wife, we have to ask ourselves all the time because it's great to do the theory. It's at the level of practice where this really does become tough. But we have to value it more than we value the other things that we put on hold.
For more information about Michael Horton, visit: www.whitehorseinn.org
For more information about Christianity, visit: www.christianity.com
(Article first published January 8, 2013)
