Hoping for the Best

I recently received a text from a former student, a father of three, who is currently reading my book, Letters from Downstream. He wrote that the book convicted him about his approach to raising his kids spiritually. He then wrote this, “It’s easy as Christians to want hope for the best, but not make the best of every opportunity.” In my experience with parents and churches, he is absolutely correct. So many just hope for the best without being intentional in discovering and implementing the best practices.

I recall meeting a youth pastor years ago who told me when I inquired if he was doing anything to help his high school graduates get plugged into a campus ministry when they went off to college, “Students really needed to make up their own minds about how to live out their spiritual lives in college.” He was hoping for the best. I have met many pastors who assume that young people coming up through their children’s and youth programs would do just fine spiritually once they graduated from high school. They all hoped for the best.

Parents, too, often hope for the best outcome when they take their kids to church and make sure they are involved in the kid’s and youth programs. They often feel inadequate leading their kids spiritually but hope that the church programs will suffice.

Sadly, particularly on the parents’ part, hoping for the best leads in the end to throwing up the “Hail Mary” pass. For non-football fans, this is a desperation throw to the endzone by a team’s quarterback hoping for a miraculous last second come-from-behind victory. Occasionally, it does work, but most often it doesn’t, and the team goes down to defeat. I can’t tell you how many parents I have encountered just prior to the start of their child’s college freshman year that are attempting the Hail Mary to get him or her to take ownership of their spiritual lives after years of hoping for the best. They either lead them around to the various representatives of religious organizations during summer orientation or gather up all the information and present it to their child on the way home.

Hoping for the best when raising your child will likely end in a spiritual Hail Mary pass. It is not a winning strategy, as has been shown by decades of research on the spiritual lives of young people who have been and are leaving the faith in droves after graduating from high school. Yet, what I have observed is that both the local church and parents continue to hope for the best using approaches that clearly fall short of achieving spiritual maturity and resilience in young adults.

As my former student wrote, we need to make the most of the opportunities we have with our children instead of merely hoping for the best. What does that look like? First, helping parents become mature followers of Jesus. For too long we have been content in the Church to have adults coming to church with their kids and then focusing our attention mainly on the kids. What’s missing is the discipleship of adults by the pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11-13), so they are equipped to disciple their own children, as God intends (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 11:18-21). This is the best practice; this is the biblical practice.

For much too long the Church has neglected its discipleship responsibilities in favor of “filling the room” with emphasis on musical worship and preaching. Neither is bad, but just before Jesus ascended into Heaven, his last command was to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). If we make disciples among the adults in our churches, that will radically change the spiritual dynamic in our children’s lives. They will see from their parents’ lives and hear from their lips what it means to love and follow Jesus.

Let’s stop hoping for the best when it is in our power to make the best of the Lord’s guidance through the Scriptures and the leading of the Holy Spirit to equip adults and their children to be lifelong disciples. Let’s stop throwing the Hail Mary when there is a much better strategy laid out for us.

© Jim Musser 2022 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.