Say no more, Ross, I know the drill: Do X, Y, Z and Everything Will Come Out Perfect In Every Way Just Like Us. (And if it doesn’t, It’s ALL Your Fault — “Secret Sin (TM)” and all that.)

To be honest “Focus on the Family” was very good in this area till they decided to try and “win” the culture war and ran the rest of their ministry off the rails 15 or so years ago. — Ross

Or as IMonk put it when they released that “Open Letter from 2012″ shortly before the election, “Until fear of homosexuals drove them off the cliff with their constituency in the car”.

To the question what about a teen who doesn’t want to go to church, would you make them? We ran into that one hard with our oldest. We had to consider his viewpoint because it was valid. Our large evangelical church somehow managed to have 3 different youth ministers during his 4 years of high school. The 2nd minister was there his middle two years, and all I could get out of my son was “I don’t like him,” when asking him why he didn’t want to go to church. It came down to us having to respect our son’s opinion and letting him do his own thing which included visiting other churches with his friends in various denominations, but often it meant letting him stay home. His senior year, he started dating a girl out of the blue from a different church and has been going to her church for nearly 4 years.

The years he was out of church had me praying and trembling, but always encouraged by God’s faithfulness to send Christians into my son’s life. He had over 50% Christian teachers in his large public high school which I believe was a God thing. We didn’t let his non-church participation become a wedge between us.

Maybe there are times when making the child go to church is the best thing, but especially when their desire to drop out is not in the context of rebellion, we should do our best to figure out where it is coming from. That is part of respect, as I see it. There may be people who as youngsters were abused by clergy who sent their parents a similar message but were never heard. Not that I’d go looking for abuse where it isn’t, just saying it’s a crazy world we live in, and our kids need to be listened to.

Growing Kids God’s Way was / is a program / class for parents that was promoted as “follow this and your kids will turn out as good Christians”. This is how it was marketed by many and many of the graduates claimed this. There are a non trivial number of drop outs and most of the enthusiastic graduates’ kids were still pre-teen as far as I could tell. So I’ve always felt that there was a lot of self selecting going on when the praises of the program were being sung. And I personally saw no difference between the kids who’s parents when through the program and those that did not.

I got the impression from Anita’s post that the program worked for her. Great. But I felt like we were being invited to a version of the “Stepford Wives” when we were being recruited. Or maybe Amway.

Since we were “recruited” and declined 14 years or so ago there has been a lot of controversy over the methods taught and the person running the program. Lots of people in his organization have resigned over the years.

But my basic problem with GKGW and many other Christian approaches to kids is they have a formula to solve all issues. They don’t seem to read the bible and come to the conclusion that we are all unique individuals with individual needs.

To be honest “Focus on the Family” was very good in this area till they decided to try and “win” the culture war and ran the rest of their ministry off the rails 15 or so years ago.

Oh, well, I’ve talked to long.

Why wait? What is it about children of any age that says they should not have some responsibilities or be considered a contributing part of the family? Why wait to start listening and talking honestly to our kids until they are already rebelling?

My parents expected that I would use critical thinking and decision making skills from an early age, while they were still intimately involved in my life, and allowed me to fall down when I was still close to the ground and they were around to pick me up. It gave me a sense of my own ability to make good decisions, and an idea of the consequences if I make bad ones. It also supported continued communication with them, which was vital in the teen years, and something many other teens around me seemed to lack.

My daughter just turned five, and I already allow her to make many decisions, and experience the results (good or bad) and am there to listen to her when she wants to tell someone about the results. I don’t understand why this would stop working later on unless I get into some big fight with her where I take some absolute stand on something that she is dedicated to.

Why not take our kids thoughts and feelings seriously? We may not agree with them, and when we don’t we need to tell them honestly *why* we don’t, but if our only answer to them is “you are wrong to feel that way…” they will soon stop telling us how they feel and what they think, and this will make parenting much harder…. no mater the child’s age.

The largest numbers of leavers from churches are teens. I have a son who is 14 who I do not have this issue with, but one thing I am prepared to do if he no longer wants to go to church is sit down with him and explore reasons and options.

Does he have any friends at church? Does he have any friends that go to another church? Does he have an interest, (instruments, sound recording, sports, that could be fostered through a ministry at church.)

I remember 30 years ago that I didn’t want to go to church on a particular Sunday. They said “OK” and didn’t make a big deal of it. That way, it never became a source of conflict.