Will Our Children Have Faith?

In 1976 John Westerhoff published a book that is remarkably still relevant today. Through the years, he has released revised editions where he adds commentary on how his thinking has shifted, but the fundamental question will our children have faith still stares us in the face.

In chapter four Westerhoff suggests four stages of the faith formation process: experienced faith, affiliative faith, searching faith and owned faith. It was like he was telling my story.

As a child I grew up in church. Every time the doors were open, I was there. I experienced the faith of my parents and the other adults just by being there. At home, I was taught to pray, and I watched my parents read their Bibles.

As I grew, I was given opportunities to participate in the life of the church by singing, helping make sets for VBS, teaching younger kids and more. That is affiliative faith. It was one of the ways I was given a sense of belonging in the church.

Then, as a teenager, I entered a time of searching faith. I started questioning everything. I wrestled with what to me looked like inconsistencies in Scripture. I was unsatisfied with simple answers and naturally tended toward doubt. Thankfully, I had a Sunday School teacher who could handle my struggle (and, at times, less than mature approach). She didn’t always have the answer, but she wasn’t afraid to let me ask questions.

Eventually this searching led me into a personal, owned relationship with Jesus and I entered the final stage of Westerhoff’s faith formation process.

Now I know everyone’s story is different and there is always some danger in mapping out a clear-cut process like this one. But if we want our children, the next generation, to have faith it can be helpful to know why we do.

What if I had a different Sunday School teacher who shut down my questions instead of embracing them? What if I attended a church that wanted children to be seen and not heard? Where would I be today?

I think this process can also be applied to those who did not grow up in the church. I’ve heard many stories where a person comes to faith in Jesus, and everything is wonderful… for a time. They feel a sense of awe and wonder and soak up as much of the faith experience as possible. They want to be involved in the life of the church – and they, perhaps more than those who grow up with a faith background, want to tell everyone about what they have discovered in Jesus.

Eventually the realities of life return to the forefront, and they begin to question if this Jesus-thing is all it is cracked up to be. But on the other side of that doubt is a stronger, longer-lasting faith.

The key for me in all this is learning to recognize when someone we know is in the searching faith stage. It can be scary to hear that our kid or grandkid or the friend we prayed the prayer with is questioning the faith we hold so dearly. But forcing our owned faith on someone in one of the other stages, particularly the searching stage, is counterproductive and harmful.

Jesus wasn’t afraid of Nicodemus’ questions, and he held out his hands for the one called doubting Thomas. Part of our role as those who have come to own our faith is to walk alongside others no matter where they are on the journey.