Take a look at this quote from the beginning of his book:
According to researchers, between 70 and 88 percent of Christian teens are leaving the church by their second year in college. That's right, modern American Christianity has a failure rate somewhere around eight (almost nine) out of ten when it comes to raising children who continue in the faith. Imagine the alarm if nearly 90 percent of our children couldn't read when they left high school. There wouldn't be room enough at the school board meetings to hold all of the irate parents.
Doesn't that quote just take your breath away? What is going wrong? Why aren't kids who are taken to church their whole lives making God and the church part of their adult lives? It is the job of the parents to pass the torch of faith on to their children. What are we doing wrong? What do YOU think?
This is obviously very important to me because I am in the season of life of raising my children and trying to pass on that torch of faith. And I don't want to get it wrong because knowledge of, love for, and commitment to God are the most important things for them to learn, with more eternal consequences than learning reading, writing, or arithmetic.
Think on this quote for a while, and I'll share some more gleanings in part II.
