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I have not seen the research that was used for the Parker article but would not be willing to discount it(the research) to much. I have been working with youth for several years and have seen several research articles during that time that point out that most children brought up with in “evangelical” churches have walked away from the faith. Different studies have put the number from 74% to 92%. In fact I just found a Pew Forum survey from 2008 that states 57% of “evangelicals” answered the survey that “many religions lead to eternal life”.

I do believe that we as Christians are missing a great opportunity to impact the next generation. I see part of the problem is that for the most part we have handed the current generation of youth over to the secular schools (around 90% of church kids) to educate them and then we try to unteach them what they learned all week in school and reteach them the scriptures in a couple of hours a week...if you can get them to attend church, Sunday school, and youth group. Most of the kids that I have worked with in youth groups see the contradiction of having their parents send them to school where they learn that there “is no God” and then the same parents bring them to church on Sunday “to learn about God”. We are raising up a generation that wants the truth but are getting mixed messages from the church, and the schools are claiming to be teaching from the truth.

Our focus needs to be on raising up godly children in the way scripture instructs us...not by just offering “game time” and calling it “children's church, youth group, kids club, etc.”

Sorry if this seems long winded...but as a father of seven that wants to see all of my children make it to heaven when the time comes...this is very close to my heart.

I would never discount your point that we should be educating our own children. For whatever reason, evangelical Christians chose public schools decades ago and have pretty much hung with it...probably for financial reasons.

However, the point about wanting to review the research is sound. There really have been problems with both the research methods and with the definitions of various terms in past research that I’ve looked at.

I’d just feel more comfortable knowing what I really was dealing with so far as the research is concerned. It’s not as if I’m so confident in Kathleen Parker that her word on the subject should be the final word.