by Ken Morgan | Feb 12, 2025 | Uncategorized
Mum was the first of our family to become a believer. Over the next couple of years, we kids each made faith commitments. It took Dad another year or two. This is my family’s story, which, according to research by Thom Rainer, is an example of the most common pattern for unchurched families coming to faith. This pattern, combined with earlier research by Starke and Finke, helps us understand why ministry to families with young children – especially preschoolers – is one of the most fruitful areas of mission focus for local churches. Based on my work over the past 25 years with a couple of hundred churches, I estimate around 80% of local churches identify families with little kids as a primary mission focus. Nowadays it’s unusual for find a church that’s not running a playgroup, mainly music or similar. For some churches, these programs form the centrepiece of a fruitful mission pathway. For others, it’s a lot of effort just to provide a community service. How do we understand the difference? Let’s dive into the research. In their groundbreaking work on the sociology of religion, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke found that religious conversion is most likely to occur in a context where a person has made a geographical move and has experienced a change in their social position: new place, new friends. In the western world there are a couple of life stages where these changes are common. In the US and UK, young adults leave home to go to university – a change in location and social position all in one go. It’s why ministry to university students is particularly fruitful in these nations. In Australia, young people have more diverse patterns of transition to independent adulthood. But it tends to...
