Recently the Barna Group and the reThink Group teamed up to explore how having a child influences a parent’s connection to a church or faith community. Here are some highlights:

How parents say having kids affects their connection to a faith community:

• 50% did not change involvement
  >> Most common among Northeast and West USA, atheists/agnostics (90%), non-Christian religions (70%), and among college graduates
• 20% increased already active involvement
  >> Most common among lower income homes and Hispanics
• 17% began attending after a long period of not going
  >> Most common among Republicans and political conservatives
• 5% became active in a faith community for the first time
  >> Most common among Midwest USA, Catholics, and Hispanics
• 4% became less active
  >> Most common among single parents, never married parents, and Asians

For full analysis on the study, read the Barna Group’s full report.

What I love about this study is it is a great example of why we can’t assume all people are alike or even that all subcultures are alike. Not every parent is affected the same way by having kids. And what is probable for college-educated atheist parents in the Northeast isn’t necessarily probable for a lower-income Hispanic parent in the Midwest.

Statistics like these are incredibly useful in letting us compare our sociological observations with scientific trends. They are a sounding board. However, one of the most important things you can do is learn the unique probability of the community that you are called to reach. Rather than surveys and polls, the best way to do this is listen, ask questions, get out into your community’s different cultures, and listen some more.

If you can understand the microstatistics of your community’s niche, then you can better understand how you can turn the bad statistics into good statistics.

For Discussion:
- Describe the types of cultures that your ministry reaches.
- What do you do to better understand these cultures?

Reggie Joiner of The reThink Group discussed the importance of family at Catalyst’s second pre-lab. Here is what he said:

Most of us (attending Catalyst) have been influenced by the church. Yet although some of us have been influenced by the church, we have all been influenced by our family.

God uses 2 entities – church and family – to teach the gospel to a child. If you can influence a family, you can influence in an exponential way.

1. We are influenced by family.
2. Somewhere along the way we develop a picture of what we think family looks like.
   A church may use a stock photo of a family, but it likely is an unrealistic representation of a family.
3. If we hold to tightly to an ideal picture of family, we set families up to be disillusioned.
   Things don’t work out the way we thought they would.
4. God never gives s a picture of an ideal family in the Bible.
   God isn’t trying to give you an ideal picture. He is trying to tell a story through your family and my family. God is trying to unpack something that is much more bigger than family, bugger than church, and much, much bigger than a nation. Your calling as a leader should not e to get families to conform to a common picture. Your calling is not to build better families. Your calling is not to build a bigger church. Your calling is to lead people into a relationship with Christ. Our purpose is not to build better families but to use that family to influence the world.

Two ways to influence families:

1. Present an ideal, “better” picture of how families should be.
2. Encourage families to cooperate with the story God wants to tell in their lives regardless of their mistakes.

Parents don’t need a better picture; they need a bigger story. Never forget that the approach and mindset we have in ministry towards the family can disillusion them or give them hope. An ideal picture can make you feel like a failure. But reality is God has chosen to use us.

God is at work telling a story of redemption in your family. Never buy into the myth that your family has to be picture perfect. God doesn’t use perfect pictures. He uses broken people. Give us a generation of leaders who are authentic and broken.

Moses had a bigger story approach in Deuteronomy 6. When you have a bigger story approach, you:

1. Imagine the end.
2. Fight for the heart.
3. Make it personal.
4. Create a rhythm.
5. Widen the circle.

Somewhere along the way, the church has to switch from a Sunday mindset to a daily mindset. A church has 40 hours a year to reach a kid, but the parents have 3,000 hours.