No matter where you go in this country you hear our older parents lament, “But my adult children no longer go to church.” This pain is expressed in all Christian churches, but also equally lamented in the Moslem and Hindu community. It is very difficult to look back at all your valiant efforts to raise your children in the Christian faith and then to conclude that all my grandchildren will become secular. They are all very good people who live by very good values but they have relegated belonging to a religious community as completely unnecessary to living a good life.
The generation following church-participating grandparents may still want a few religious things done, such as getting their babies ‘baptzied’ in a church, but there is no prayer in their home life.
We want to pay attention to the human need to participate in the life of a faith community. We know (from all world religions) that when an individual/family does not participate in the life of a faith community, what little faith there may be will wilt and not take root in the following generation. Faith needs to be supported and nourished by our fellow believers. We need to have festivals and specific times of prayer for the faith to be nourished. The common-sense dictum, ‘use it or lose it’ applies so well.
We must also observe that we live in a time of much deconstruction. That is a big word that the philosophers use to indicate that so many of the values and institutions that supported our life and society are crumbling. You may teach your children one specific value only to have it trashed by the next speaker on social media. Values like prayer, fidelity to God and witnessing to our faith in Jesus Christ need to be supported by others. No human being can live a faith-life as an isolated individual. We also need to experience these values being lived out and supported in our social life. The strong values like working for the common good, working to be faithful to God and the Gospel, practicing social justice appear to be on very shaking ground in this culture.
If any of these necessary values are to survive, we must deliberately work to live and support them. No longer can we assume that our children will even want to practice the Christian faith as we have. Nor can we assume that they will work for the common good of our life within this society.
We must teach (and help people to practice) that their faith will not survive unless it comes out of struggle to land on deep convictions and personal experience. No longer can anyone assume that they were brought up Christian/Catholic. It will only survive and thrive if it arises out of personal experience of the very person of Jesus Christ. Each person must hear the call of Jesus Christ within their own lives and say yes or no! Just as our marriages and families will not survive without definite commitment so our faith needs to come out of personal commitment.
In our preaching and teaching we need to call people to a lived experience of Christ. We need to challenge and nourish their faith life and help them to appreciate how necessary it is to arrive at faith out of a lived personal commitment.
This may seem confusing to many born-Christians but a smaller church in the future might be a more dynamic faith community. It will probably be more faithful to the call of the Gospel.
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