The Probability of Accepting Christ Is Highest Among Kids Under 14
The
following article was written by the Barna Research Group. The Barna Research
Group, Ltd. is an independent marketing research company located in Ventura,
California. Since 1984 it has been studying cultural trends related to values,
beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. This research was funded solely by Barna
Research as part of its regular tracking of attitudes, values and behavior.
Future data releases of this nature may be obtained for free by subscribing to
The Barna Update, a free bi-weekly e-mailing of new data drawn from Barna
Research Group studies. To subscribe, enter your e-mail address in the Barna
Update subscription field. Visit their website at www.barna.org. (Ventura, CA)
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me for the kingdom of Heaven
belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14, NIV)
His words are being fulfilled in American society according to new data
from the Barna Research Group of Ventura, California. The company’s nationwide
surveys have determined the probability of people accepting Christ as their
savior in relation to a person’s age. The data show that if a person does not
accept Jesus Christ as savior before the age of 14, the likelihood of ever doing
so is slim.
Based on a nationwide representative sampling of more than 4200 young people
and adults, the survey data show that people from ages 5 through 13 have a 32%
probability of accepting Christ as their savior. Young people from the ages of
14 through 18 have just a 4% likelihood of doing so, while adults (ages 19
through death) have only a 6% probability of making that choice.
While this information is consistent with other Barna studies over the years
that have shown that a large majority of Christians accept Jesus Christ as their
savior before they reach the age of 18, this is the first study that has
calculated people’s probability of accepting Christ at different life stages.
The data also challenges the widely-held belief that the teenage years are prime
years for evangelistic activity.
The study points out that children and
adolescents are most impacted evangelistically by family members, peers and
their youth group (e.g. Sunday school, mid-week faith-based youth activities).
In fact, the years prior to age 12 are when a majority of children make their
decision as to whether or not they will follow Christ.
The data were
analyzed by George Barna, president of the firm that conducted the research. He
indicated that the information must be carefully interpreted. "The statistics
are eye-opening because they show how little evangelistic impact we are having
in America upon teenagers and adults. However, that does not mean that teenagers
and adults cannot
be reached with the gospel. It simply challenges the
approaches currently used to reach those individuals. Consider that churches
spend the bulk of their evangelism-specific resources on adults, largely through
events and collateral materials. However, the most effective evangelistic
strategies tend to be intensely relational and are less frequently emphasized
by
churches. It could well be that if churches upgraded their evangelistic
strategies and reallocated their resources, the probability of teenagers and
adults embracing Christ as their savior would rise."
The study clearly
notes, however, that the greatest evangelistic window currently available is
among young children, which led Barna to discuss other possibilities for
churches to consider.
Among the potential shifts mentioned were:
*
refocusing teen ministries from an evangelistic thrust to a discipleship
emphasis;
* better preparing parents for family-based evangelism;
*
investing greater resources for child and adolescent ministry;
* establishing
closer partnerships between churches and parachurch ministries geared to child
evangelism;
* implementing more effective evangelistic strategies among
teenagers;
* and encouraging and equipping young people who have accepted
Christ as their savior to share their faith with peers.
Barna also
mentioned that his firm’s research "has consistently shown that between the ages
of 18 and 24 we lose a very large percentage of young people who had been
regulars at church. Recognizing the phases of faith maturity that kids go
through and developing the content of our ministry to kids in light of those
stages might improve the ability of churches
to retain young people, rather
than to have to win them back once they enter parenthood."
Survey
Methodology
The research was based upon three separate surveys among
adults, each involving more than 1000 interviews, plus two separate surveys
among people 18 and under, both involving over 600 youths. The estimated
sampling error for each of the adult surveys is +3 percentage points at the 95%
confidence level. The estimated sampling error for each of the
youth surveys
is +4 percentage points at the 95% confidence interval.
The aggregate database for this research thus includes more than 4200
completed interviews, providing data with an estimated sampling error of less
than two percentage points at the 95% confidence interval.
Accepting Jesus Christ as one’s savior was determined by asking survey
respondents if they have ever made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is
still important in their life today. If they indicated they had done so, then
they were asked a follow-up question regarding what would happen to them after
they died physically. Among the seven
options provided was "when I die I will
go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as
my savior." Respondents who selected that option from the seven alternatives
were included in the category of those who have accepted Christ as their
savior.
All of the interviews were conducted from the Barna Research
Group telephone interviewing facility. People in the 48 continental states were
eligible to be interviewed and the distribution of interviews coincided with the
geographic dispersion of the U.S. adult population. Multiple callbacks were used
to increase the probability of including a reliable distribution of
respondents.
