People were bringing their children to Jesus. . .

What we hear in the Gospels, we see every time parents bring their sons and daughters to the waters

of baptism.  Just as it was 2,000 years ago, so it has been and still is.  This is the primary responsibility of parents to their children -- to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, through the means of grace, so that the Holy Spirit may bring them to faith and keep them in this faith until death.  All other things we do as parents flow from this first priority and responsibility.  That is what we do in baptismal preparation -- teach the parents what their duties and promises are and how this is witnessed within the baptismal rite itself.

Once baptized, the parents continue to fulfill this holy calling by bringing their sons and daughters to church for the Divine Service and for Sunday school and catechism classes.  By bringing them every week to the Divine Service, God's House becomes their familiar home and the place where they know God gives His gifts, sustains His people, and they respond with praise, thanksgiving, prayers, supplications, and offerings.  Sunday school and catechism classes do not replace the parents or take over the job of teaching the faith.  These educational ministries supplement and support the parents in their own primary vocation toward their children.

Confirmation does not bestow gifts or sacramental grace to complete baptism but acknowledges particular points along the journey from the font to the table to the heavenly banquet.  In this point, the Church acknowledges the teaching of the faith and the confession of the catechumen's faith with joy and thanksgiving.  Those who come for this confirmation do not come alone but in the midst of parents, sponsors, and the whole church family -- not simply as witnesses to an event but as those who have also invested in this day.  I have always loved how in Rome and some Anglican churches the confirmand comes forward with parents (and even sponsors) to kneel before the bishop.  It is a powerful picture of people bringing their children to Jesus.  Here the bishop (or in Lutheran case, the pastor) represents Christ.  I find it a much more compelling symbol than our usual practice of the youth coming forward on their own or with a group to kneel at the rail. 

When our youth fall away, it is not simply a failure of the Church and certainly not the failure of the Church to make things fun or exciting or entertaining.  But it is a failure all the way round.  In so many cases, we never took seriously the responsibilities and duties that began at birth, that led to the font, that brought the children weekly to worship, that saw the Sunday school and catechism classes as reinforcements to the parental role at home, and confirmation as the acknowledgement of one step and not a graduation from religious life.  I cannot tell you how many times a parent has come to me in tears as one of their adult children has fallen away from the faith (or from the Lutheran faith).  In many of those cases, the parents failed to bring the child faithfully after baptism and, while church attendance perked up during the catechism years, their children did not learn the weekly habit of the Lord's House on the Lord's Day around the Lord's Word and Table.  The children learned from the parents' example that worship was optional (and prayer) and that church was on the fringes of their lives and not foundational to who they were and are.

I urge parents all the time not to fall into the temptation of thinking intentions substitute for piety, that their children will wake up one morning and want to go to church even though they only went occasionally growing up, or that attending to sports or music or dance or other Sunday diversions does not conflict with their primary purpose and role in bringing their children to Jesus.  If we in the Church preach this and parents hear, I have great confidence that this decline can be reversed.