Back in Oct. 2001, Wayne Mueller lead a leadership retreat in the great state of Washington. I video taped that retreat and just recently converted it to DVD.
At that time Rev. Mueller was the administrator for WELS Parish Services. As part of the retreat he shared synod wide statistics. While the data is a few years old, I'm sure the current trends would only be varied by a few percentage points. Here's what was presented:
64% of the babies that are baptized get confirmed.
34% of the confirmed attend worship at least once a month by age 20.
(38% of Lutheran Elementary School confirmed attend worship at least once a month by age 20)
17% of WELS baptized babies become regular attending WELS members by age 30.
Spiritual habits are formed in a person between birth and age 6.
Parents' spiritual habits are formed with their first child, regardless of the spiritual habits formed when growing up.
59% of all WELS children are Sunday School educated only.
Combine these stats with the "Why Youth are Leaving" study and the CHARIS study on our Lutheran Elementary Schools. What do you see?
To me this just shows the importance of ministry to families and their children and that the way it is being carried out today, as a whole across the synod, isn't very effective.
There are more effective means than what we are currently doing.
I am convinced one of them is Bible Song Sunday School.
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2 comments:
So does this boil down to the Bible not being taught/reinforced in the home?
That's part of it. Overall I think it's people of all ages not being close to God via Bible.
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