If you haven't heard the news, the youth of the church are not becoming the men & women of the church. Multiple studies show that most teens who are active in church lose their faith within a few years of leaving home. It's not the "bad" kids, but the "good" ones, the ones leading worship and going on mission trips, yours & mine, that graduate from church as they graduate from high school & college.

What's the problem, and how do we fix it, for our own children & all those in the church?

That's the question that many leaders & parents are wrestling with in the church today. A few years ago youth pastors and parents Steve Wright & Chris Graves wrote ReThink, a book that sent shock waves through the evangelical community. In ReThink they persuasively argued that business-as-usual youth ministry was not the answer to the failure of the church to see the youth of the church through to maturity. Now, their in new book ApParent Privilege they say that business-as-usual parenting is not the answer either.

The book starts out with the testimony of a father:

We truly believed that if we could find a good youth program and keep our children active, then they would continue to serve Christ... our two adult children now in their thirties are no longer walking with Christ... I wish that someone would have told us that the responsibility of discipling our children was ours, not a pastor's. I wish we would have known.

That, in a nutshell, is this book: your church, your youth program, your children's Sunday School teachers or youth ministers have neither the ability nor the responsibility to grow & mature your children's faith. Only you do.

But how? That is what the book deals with, giving both a theological foundation and lots of practical advice. He starts by laying out that, despite appearances, most teens really do listen to their parents and desire a mentoring relationship with them. He then moves on to a Biblical theology & foundation of parenting, and what should make Christian parenting unique and distinctive from what is commonly practiced in our culture. There are also practical chapters on how the church can help parents, specific tasks and tools for parenting, the role of fathers, and encouragement for parents dealing with a prodigal.

ApParent Privilege is well-written, thought-provoking, and practical. Every parent and church leader will gain both healthy perspective & sound advice by reading it. ( )