There are lots of reasons for this, and I don't plan to make this particular blog posting about all the reasons. I just was thinking about what happens when a family attends church, for example, with young children, and then the children grow up and start to resist going, or at least question it and fall away.
It is not productive or even accurate to have a conversation with them about their church attendance that is focused on salvation or other dire concerns. The whole thing about kids is that they are not supposed to be thinking about death, the end of times and so forth. They have their lives ahead of them, not behind them. (Don't even get me started about the cult crap where kids are raised thinking they have 'past lives' behind them already. I'm talking here about sane mainstream children and families in sane mainstream religions).
Children and teenagers have too much performance and danger stress placed upon them by society already. Pressuring your kids about the need to go to church or something bad might happen to them (either regarding their salvation or regarding future bad moral choices) is not the way to talk to your kids.
First, look at their timetables of activities. Homework and other school or non-school activities take away from peace of mind and true "free time" of kids. Everyone is trying to make over achieving kids. If they are too tired or weary to go to church, yet were raised as church goers, this is the first obvious thing to look at. What shifts in schedules can improve the use of time so that a child does not feel that church is a competing time and energy resource.
Second, start a dialogue with your child or teenager about their personal relationship with God. It's not just as simple as "accepting Jesus as their Savior." It's not like they sign a contract with Jesus and they are now "covered with God," and that church is part of that contract renewal each week! You ought to be teaching your children that they are in constant communion with God, and that God is their true guide through life.
It's easier for me to explain this in relationship to the Catholic Mass than Protestant and non-denominational praise and worship services, so bear with me while I mix metaphors and language from both church cultures.
Children need to understand that God is very hard for humans to hear on a personal basis. God is easily drowned out by the noise of the culture and everyday worries. People who teach scripture and Bible studies, for example, tend to over emphasize how easy God is to understand (it's all there in black and white). That is true, God's word is easy to understand because God's purpose is to make religion and belief in him as understandable to humans as possible. (That's one thing the Muslims have really right for them, as they recognize that their God wants to make it easy for them to worship, not complex and mysterious fraught with rules and strictures). So faiths that rely a lot on Bible study tend to neglect teaching children and teenagers to have a rich prayer life. Prayer is their means to have their personal conversation with God. You can use the obvious ubiquitous cell phone example.
God is like the person you can reach on your cell phone. God is always on the line, so God always hears what you are doing, even if you are not on the phone with him. So the one way listening is always "on." However, do not make your kids creeped out by this example. It's not like God is "watching" when they are in the bathroom, getting undressed, or doing something personal. Explain to them that it's like if they are in the room with sibling or college roommate and the other person turns the other way to give them visual privacy when they change their clothes, or have a personal phone conversation, etc. God is "always there" but God is not focused on the day to day details of a person's bodily functions or acts. So, to recap, tell your child that it is like they have their own cell phone connection with God, and that God is always "on the line" even if they are not actually making a call.
Church is where you learn the lingo that God speaks. Church is where you learn to understand what God is saying when you do pick up that phone and have a conversation with him. So it is like learning the texting abbrevations and the dialect of language that God uses to speak to you when you go to Church. Church ensures that you are learning how to listen to God, when he does speak to you, in a way you can understand what he is actually saying.
Explain that when they are little it is like they are given a toy phone to play with. Eventually they are given a phone that they can use for emergencies when they are out of sight of their parents. And then when they are older they get "big boy or big girl" phones with more features, and they have to learn how to use them. Their conversation with God is like that through their entire lives. Not because God's language changes, but because as they grow up the things they need to talk about to God, and listen to him in return, changes. Little kids have different concerns than big kids, teenagers from kids, young adults or college students from the rest, young single people from the rest, young couples from the rest, young families from the rest, and so forth throughout their lives. A fifteen year old does not need to text message God about his or her retirement plan, IRA or not? The things that each person needs the guidance from God regarding changes throughout their lives. And ongoing Church attendance keeps the person agile in "text" and "dialect" understanding so that they can hear God in return accurately when they do place the call.
This is one of my quarrels with "speaking in tongues" and "channeling the Holy Spirit" faiths. Much as they love God and I'm not one to criticize anyone who proclaims the authentic Jesus, as I pointed out in the scripture study example, confusing the rush of emotion with actual communication from the Holy Spirit is a serious hindering of authentic listening to God. It is like having big calluses on your feet and then wondering why they are no longer sensitive to the touch. Thinking that you are constantly screaming on speaker phone with the Holy Spirit drowns out the small and humble voice of God, and yes the Holy Spirit, when he actually does try to be heard. Thinking that the Holy Spirit just told you something about your neighbor's "bidness" is not hearing what God is saying. That's you getting caught up in having a big megaphone and listening to your own feedback.
So explain to your kids that sure, there will be months or years that you think the sermon in Church has nothing to do with your life, and you wonder why you are going. To use the example, what if the preacher or priest is homilizing about "IRA retirement plans" while you are just thinking about getting good grades to pass your exam and how you are going to spend your summer vacation and what's on your IPOD. But if you stick with being once a week "immersed" in God's language, even if the topic is not 'cool' or 'relevant,' someday when that topic IS of vital importance to you, you will know the texting and know the dialect so you can actually hear what God is saying to you. Explain to your kids that college is an example of that first huge test. Just when they most need to hear what God is saying is when they tend to drop out of attending Church.
Back to the topic of teaching your children that there is a difference between going to Mass, praise or worship service, etc and having a personal prayer life with God. Explain that Church is like a conference call, where everyone is listening to God at the same time to different degrees, about topics that may not be your choosing, but at least you stay proficient in God's lingo. When a child or young adult prays, however, this is their personal phone call to God. Now, don't make them think that they must put things a certain way or God does not understand. That's not true. Tell them God is like the universal speech translator in Star Trek or something, ha. God understands everything that humans say, mean to say, want to say, intends to say. But prayer is like that text message or verbal phone call that your child places to God where the child actually wants to hear the response. It is the response that Church and other worship services of authentic mainstream churches teaches the child and young adult to comprehend. This is what prayer is in its purest form.
Now, the response may be, and for the most part is often the comforting presence of God. That's a subtle thing that is easily missed. Media has made so much of thunderbolts and constant frenetic action that unless God is an action figure zorching someone, kids today don't actually hear him answering their prayers. Kids may be misled (and it's entirely human and natural to do so) into thinking that prayer is either a duty to perform to God or something to do when you need something, and expect either a yes or a no. That is totally to miss the point of prayer and again the cell phone analogy is a perfect example to use to instruct your kids.
Ask your kids this. Out of a typical one hour chat fest with a friend, what percentage of their time is talking to their friend because they "have to" or because they "need something from their friend that will be answered with yes or no?" Your kid will quickly see that they are not chatting with their friends because they "have to" (obligatory prayer) or "need something" (petitionary prayer). Your kid gabs and texts endlessly in order to "hang out" with their crew. Well, a rich prayer life is when a part of your life, even if it is just before bed (night time prayers) or first thing in the morning, or whenever you can, you "hang out with and gab with God." Most of the time God is just going to be "hanging with you" saying "I know what you mean." But once in a while there will be a crucial reply. You might be pondering an important life change, for example. And if you were gabbing with your friend, your friend might go, "Whoa, yeah, but what about this and that problem with what you are saying?" In prayer, God might send a queasiness, or a question, or the Holy Spirit might warm your heart in a certain direction, just as that friend would in a cell phone chat. The thing is that God is very quiet and subtle, and like the foot calluses, if one is all loud in one direction but not keeping up with the subtle and "big picture" lingo of God through Church services, one could very easily miss hearing God's reply in prayer.
So to wrap up, even though we could do a lot more with this analogy, explain to your children that Church is the way to continually "keep in the loop" of their personal dialogue with God, which will evolve during their lives, whether they see that clearly now at that stage in their lives, or not. Also encourage them to have even a minute of their life set aside to personal prayer and explain the broader purpose of prayer as I did here. Understand that a growing young adult may not find "just before bed" as easy a time for prayer as a child once did, for many reasons. Start to encourage your teenager to chose another time during the day for personal prayer and cultivate that before they join the work place or go to college. For example, you could teach your kids to set their alarm clock just one minute early each day and spend that minute saying the "Our Father," asking God to look over them during the day, and maybe a verse from Psalms. If you teach your child to do that while they are still at home, this is a glorious gift that anticipates that their lives will be changing and they can be flexible with their "God time."
I hope you find this helpful, and God bless all parents, and young people, who are making their way through these very difficult times.
