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Children, Marriage, and the Church
Posted by Bowden McElroy in Church & Missions
It’s no secret that churches in America are losing 18 to 30 year olds.
The teens in our youth groups leave home for college and within a few years they are missing in action. Conventional wisdom has been ‘don’t worry about it; they’ll come back when they start having children’.
At least I think that’s the popular view; I’ve certainly had many older pastors tell me the church always benefits when children appear in a marriage and we suddenly discover our MIA’s.
I think conventional wisdom is wrong.
People are marrying later: the age for a first marriage is 27 for men and 24 for women. (Shouldn’t that tell us something that sociologists and demographers are writing about how old people are at their “first marriage”?)
A report from the Pew Research Center suggests the link between marriage and parenting isn’t present for many couples.
“…just four-in-ten (41%) say that children are very important to a successful marriage, compared with 65% of the public who felt this way as recently as 1990.”
Those older pastors were right twenty plus years ago. You got married, had children, and then became involved in church, PTA, and little league because it was all a package deal. If marriage and children are no longer part of the same package, then isn’t it reasonable to assume the whole deal has fallen apart?
If we’re going to reach this age group, we have to see that they are staying single longer, cohabiting more frequently, and are less likely to view children and parenting as an important part of marriage. Ignoring them and waiting for a return to church when the kids come along is no longer a viable option.
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I’m guessing for most folks who frequent Impact, “Ignoring” has never been a viable option. We have a parent-led youth group and our goal is to encourage our youth to serve as a mentor to a younger person. Accountability is a wonderful thing, and as the relationship develops both parties are strengthened by one another. In addition, we don’t shy away from doctrine, indeed some of the greatest events in Scripture were performed by people at a relatively young age. We short change our youth when we think their only desire is for pizza and dodge ball every time they meet (although we do that too). One reason why they’re missing in action is because after arriving on the college campus, they’re now fodder for every whim and philosophy because they weren’t discipled in their local church. Bottom line: it’s not their fault so much as it is ours.
When Satan was able to convince mainstream people that cohabiting was okay, he won this battle.
Why? Because the Baptist church doesn’t allow cohabitors to be members. This means they don’t feel welcome. Thus, they don’t bring their kids. Thus, they don’t go to church.
Simple.
John,
How about a little more information on your mentoring program? Do High School students mentor Jr. Highers? Do adults mentor college students? I’d really like to know how this is structured and how it’s working out.
Bernard,
Re: the Baptist church doesn’t allow cohabitors to be members. Sure we do. We just don’t always know about it.
Youth work is important, but it sounds like Bowden’s post is about reaching young adults 18-30. It’s a different challenge – and a tough one for all the reasons mentioned.
I’ll throw out a radical idea: how can we encourage young adults to not delay marriage so long? That would head off a lot of problems that take root in the 20s.
Of course they would need to be real, lasting marriages and not youthful infatuations. But it worked for many generations. A lot of our problems started when we started delaying marriage.
Good observation Bernard…In many churches, you are correct…in other situations, I think Bowden is correct…or at least we pretend not to know…”don’t ask, don’t tell” applies to more than one subject.
Patrick…what’s a good marrying age? If we were talking about another area of young adults getting married, I’m sure there would be others saying that the countless problems faced by young adults and their families happens because they married too young…
I don’t have an answer, just raising the point. Go back not too many years and most people married in their early twenties, had kids not long after, and seemed to do ok most of the time. Divorce rates were lower, more people went to church and were more active, and the assorted societal ills we deal with now were much less common. Maybe there is a connection?
For a young male in particular, it is a tall order to remain sexually pure for 10-15-20 years after reaching puberty – but that’s what we’re asking them to do by endorsing delayed marriage.
I believe Paul said it is better to marry than to burn. Lots of young men are burning in our culture. Marriage sooner rather than later might help them.
That’s why I moved my marriage date up a full year!
And that was the verse too.
Bowden–I’ll do a post on it sometime, this darn thing called work keeps getting in my way today.
Patrick,
Always remember, correlation is not the same as causality. There may in fact be a positive correlation between marrying young and staying in church; but it doesn’t necessarily follow that encouraging people to marry young will cause them to stay in church.
And even those who are choosing to marry are choosing to delay child rearing; it’s my argument that becoming a parent – not getting married – is what brought people back to church.
My point is this: I think a lot of people who dropped out of church would re-enter the community BECAUSE if was the right thing to do when you became a parent. Conventional wisdom was that there was no need to be intentional about reaching them because they would be back as a matter of course. That no longer applies.
So… how to we become intentional about reaching 18 to 30-year-olds?
Well, Bowden, it’s hard to do when the vast majority of the ministries are designed to satisfy their grandparents.
As to the marriage issue … we could do it the old southern, mountain way. Just turn 14 and marry your cousin.