- Exercise? That is what ministry is to the Christian. And parents, churches, and kids who do it together are happier.
A study in The Journal of Affective Disorders in 2023 found that respondents who exercised with their children were happier and had better relationships with them than respondents who didn’t. This was particularly true of those with teenagers.
Now, I am a life-long exerciser and was very interested in this data. But, I am even more interested in the possible spiritual ramifications of studies like this.
For instance, years ago I was doing a radio interview with Kenda Creasy Dean about her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church. She was sitting on a mountain of data and had many insightful perspectives to share with an audience who wanted to know what they could do to keep their kids active in the church once those children no longer lived in the home.
My final question to Dean before we ended our time together went like this: If there was just one thing you would recommend over and above anything else for parents to do with their children if they wanted them to stay active in church for a lifetime – what would be that recommendation?
She didn’t even pause to think about it. “Do something regular with them in service to the needy.”
A couple of months later, I was interviewing Mark Matlock, who had written a volume titled Real World Parents: Christian Parenting for Families Living in the Real World, and asked him the same exact question. He said – “Serve with your kids. It is the single best thing you can do.”
Two experts, two virtually identical answers. And, I have found it to be true in observing parenting styles across the evangelical world. Parents who send their kids to church aren’t nearly as effective as parents who go with their kids to church and who take their church even more seriously by tithing, going to Sunday school, fellowshipping, and thereby making close friendships. But all of these options pale in comparison to families who take their children to church, take that church seriously in demonstrable ways but then take their children with them to serve outside the church and her ministries to mission trips, nursing homes, soup kitchens and other public service projects that demonstrate a love for neighbors and the poor beyond the normal scope of the typical church.
And while I have no real data to back this up, I think I have a hunch why this happens.
Children who have been part of churches that exist basically to take care of themselves and their own internal efforts grow up into adults who frequently reject the church. Sometimes this is a conscious decision, sometimes subconscious. But here is the question these grown children ask: Why serve a church that exists for itself? No outward trajectory, no service, no concern for those outside?
On the other hand, children who have been part of churches who have parents that show them that one of the most important things we can do as people of faith is to take our faith out to abortion clinics, prisons, nursing homes, schools, etc. chock-ful of people who desperately need to hear what the church is offering – well, these are children that stick with the program over decades.
Exercise? That is what ministry is to the Christian. And parents, churches, and kids who do it together are happier and understand what it is like to change the world a little bit by little bit for the glory of God.
Churches and her people that minister together, stay together.
