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Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

Why Kids Leave the Faith

Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

Focus on the Family

Kids & Family, Parenting

4.41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sadly, many children who grew up in church have turned away from the faith. If you have a child who is far from God, we want to offer you some hope. John and Danny provide a dose of encouragement to parents whose child isn't walking with the Lord. Featuring David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

One of the most common things here at Focus on the Family that parents tell us is I have a child who's far away from God and if you or someone you know is in that, it's hard, it's deep, it can be almost

0:15.3

hopeless. But we want to offer hope today. I'm John Fuller along with Dr. Danny

0:20.2

Werta. He leads our parenting department.

0:23.0

And on previous episodes, Jim Daly talked to David Kinnaman and Mark Matlock.

0:27.8

Both of them are very involved in the Barna group,

0:30.2

and they shared about young adults that they've surveyed and some of those

0:34.1

research findings and here they discuss reasons why kids leave the faith.

0:38.2

I'm speaking to parents and I really want them to be equipped to maybe even change the to kind of top one or two reasons for that disaffection that group in the prodigals what did they say well it's a

0:57.8

range of different reasons the church is anti science the church is repressive the church is judgmental it's hypocritical we see a huge

1:06.0

correlation to and I want to talk about this really just sensibly and humbly like

1:10.6

self-righteous Christianity where we make Jesus all about

1:14.7

following rules and we make you know it's like Jesus is just as concerned with our

1:19.3

self-righteousness as he is in anrighteousness in the world.

1:23.0

There's two prodigals.

1:24.0

Yeah.

1:25.0

The older brother is also a prodigal.

1:26.0

That's exactly right.

1:27.0

And so we see a lot of rejection of that kind of, you know,

1:31.0

older brother Christianity in the stories of these people.

1:34.3

And I just want to sort of say to parents and listeners who are going through that,

1:39.5

we've interviewed people.

1:40.6

It's a heartbreaking piece, but there's also hope and there's this real sense of

...

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