The Parent Factor

By Melissa Hambrick

On Nov. 22, 2002, our son Sean was born to us—two stunned and amazed parents. Two days later, we dressed him in the tiny going-home outfit we’d so carefully chosen. The nurse wheeled me out the hospital doors as Bill pulled up in our ultra-sensible Volvo with multiple airbags.

We put Sean in the extensively researched-for-safety car seat, and away we went, hurtling into this foreign world of parenthood.

Waves of responsibility rushed over me. We had made a human being, I thought. I’d never even kept a plant alive. Now we had been charged with not only keeping this tiny human safe, but also making him a valuable member of society. How could 8 lbs., 7 oz. feel so heavy?

When Bill and I married 10 years earlier, it was almost an unspoken agreement that we’d go to church. He was a Presbyterian with grandparents who were Salvation Army ministers; I was a there-whenever-the-doors-were-open Southern Baptist.

But our church attendance was sporadic. We were busy, career-minded up-and-comers. We loved our Sunday morning bagels and newspaper time. We were both “good people,” but had grown away from our faith in our teenage and college years, and that absence of faith continued into our 20s.

That all changed in February 2002 when we discovered we were pregnant. Now, we were bringing a life into this world, and with it came a whole new set of responsibilities. Our values began to change, as well as our attitudes toward church.

We started attending the church where I grew up. It was automatic acceptance—we didn’t have to work too hard to get to know everyone. But we were in the door five minutes before service and on our way to brunch as the last chords of “Just As I Am” echoed on the organ. Still, we were in church, we told ourselves.

Then Sean arrived.

One Sunday morning as we buckled our new little guy into his car seat, Bill and I looked at each other and knew it was time to find “our” church. We knew we needed to get plugged into a church that would be a great place not only for our son to grow up, but for Bill and I to finally “grow up” spiritually, as well.

A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

Our story is not unique. In his watershed title, Surprising Insights From the Unchurched (Zondervan), author and church researcher Thom Rainer says that one out of three formerly unchurched persons came or returned to the Church for the sake of their children. And in a 2000 Family Digest article, Wade Clark Roof, author of Spiritual Marketplace (Princeton University Press), notes that more than two out of every three Baby Boomers steeped in a religious tradition dropped out of their church during their teens or early 20s. Of those who leave the church, one in four returns; most come back because they are now parents, Roof says.

As president and CEO of MOPS International (Mothers of Preschoolers; MOPS.org), Elisa Morgan regularly sees the spiritual impact of parenthood.

“About 30 to 40% of the moms that come to MOPS don’t yet know Jesus, and are hungry to know Him,” Morgan says. “Some have known Him in the past and are returning very intentionally to rediscover and redefine and then invent for their new family what their beliefs will be. But others are first-time believers.”

The season of having a child and raising a family is when parents form their values, Morgan explains. “We have values as individuals and as couples, but they start to change when there’s a child involved. Values like kindness, sharing, celebrating a tradition, believing the best about people and not being prejudiced are formed in this season. Young couples and new parents are searching for where they’ll go to form and verbalize these values.”

Young parenthood, she says, is an “identity transition”—a window of opportunity for evangelism when people are more open to spiritual truth. It’s also an opportunity for churches.

“Today’s parents are trying to be more preventative and are returning to institutions like the Church to involve their children in something outside themselves,” she explains. “A decade or two ago, parents looked at how the Church could fix their kids. I think we’ve moved from that. We’ve taken back more responsibility into our own home, through things like home-schooling. Now, parents think, ‘I’m going to be my child’s spiritual growth component—but I sure want the help of an institution.’ ”

NEW FAMILIES, NEW CHALLENGES

But to attract these families to a church for the first time or after many years, ministry leaders need to understand the unique stage of life today’s young families are experiencing. They’re facing anxiety about their new roles and responsibilities. They’re career people making a huge life transition, juggling two jobs and a new baby. They’re looking for answers.

And today’s young parents don’t look like those of 30, 20, or even as little as 10 years ago. They’re single moms and dads, blended families, adoptive parents (many with international children) and unwed parents.

As an unwed mother-to-be, Molly Rawn saw her values and perspectives change dramatically when she learned she was pregnant. “Expecting a child changed the way I viewed everything,” says Rawn, now mom to 15-month-old Collier. “While I was already examining my relationship with God, it took becoming pregnant to really jumpstart that process. It was no longer just about me, my relationship with God, or my salvation—it was about my child’s relationship with God.”

A few months after their baby’s birth, Rawn and Collier’s father began attending St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock, Ark. (st-marks.com).

“I was really nervous about how we’d be viewed,” she recalls. “But everyone we met there was very supportive of us trying to figure out our relationship with God, each other, and our desire to raise our son in the Church, regardless of what happened with us. When we married, our priest truly celebrated with us because he knew how far we’d come.”

MOPS’s Morgan has a firsthand understanding of the needs of non-traditional parents. Her own family is somewhat of a test kitchen. Married for 26 years, Morgan has two children, both adopted. Morgan is sandwiched between single moms—her mother was single and raised her, and her daughter is a single mom.

She encourages churches to under-stand the needs of non-traditional parents before trying to reach them.

For example, single parents can’t leave their child with a spouse and go out. Most single moms are usually working full-time to make ends meet, and most are economically and socially strapped. They feel left out because they can’t participate, or don’t have a partner to participate with. They’re carrying a lot of responsibility on their shoulders.

“When a single mom checks out your church, don’t ostracize her into a group by herself. Integrate her into a family—her children need to see examples of two-parent households,” Morgan says. “Think about services to her that other partners would normally provide to each other, like oil changes, gas and grocery gift certificates, or even help out her kids at Christmas to shop for gifts for her.”

What all new parents, traditional or not, don’t want to face is a room of unwelcoming faces or platitudes without action. What they do want and need is practical fulfillment, an emotional connection and a spiritual foundation.

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