Childhood church pattern impacts adult life
___VENTURA, Calif. (RNS)--American adults who attended church as children are almost twice as likely to take their kids to worship services as adults who didn't go to church when they were young, a survey has found.
___Sixty-three percent of adults who attended church when they were young now take their own kids to church, Barna Research Group reports. In contrast, 33 percent of adults who did not attend church as youngsters take their children to church.
___"Attending a church appears to be more a function of one's personal experience when young than a sense of responsibility to one's own children," said George Barna, president of the research firm. "There is no difference in the likelihood of attending a church these days among those who were churched as a child, regardless of whether they presently have children of their own or not."
___The survey also found that adults who regularly attended worship services as children are more likely than those who did not to be involved in church-related and other spiritual activities.
___Seventy-one percent of adults surveyed attended church as a child. Sixty-one percent of those who attended in their youth still are regular attendees. But 78 percent of those who did not attend church regularly as kids remain away from the pews now.
___Researchers also learned that adults who attended church when they were children are twice as likely to read the Bible in a typical week as those who stayed away from churches.
The Baptist Standard
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