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helping children find faith

Ed Drew

Date posted: 14 Jul 2026

A church leader told me the story of James, a young man who had grown up in his church, going through all their groups, attending regularly. James headed off to Uni with suggestions of churches to try there, his home church satisfied that they had fulfilled their role.

Each holiday James came home having not got involved in a church. He had started going to the student group but then drifted away. The church leader admitted feeling angry with James for not playing his part, but he had to think again because he had seen this pattern repeated in the lives of several other young adults leaving his church. He concluded that James had never actually been part of the church. James knew how to be part of a church age group, being taught, being cared for, and hanging out with his peers, but he did not know how to do church – for example, by serving and by being in fellowship with people across generations.

helping children find faith

Ed Drew

Date posted: 6 May 2026

A senior child psychologist recently did a poll of the 150 young people being cared for by his department. Each young person had a regular 45-minute appointment, sat on a sofa as one of the clinical professionals asked questions and listened carefully to their answers.

These young people were asked whether they had another adult in their life who they felt they could ask to sit with them in a similar way for 45 minutes to listen to them. Only five said they did.

helping children find faith

Ed Drew

Date posted: 4 Mar 2026

The cinema was quiet. Families were coming to terms with the death of the hero. But the story was not yet over. With a crash, the stone table, where the hero had been murdered, lay cracked in two. Never again could anyone be punished on it, for their own or anyone else’s betrayal. In the silence, the little voice at the back of the cinema whispered: “Dad, what does that mean?”

This is still the question we can keep answering as we show our children and young people their slain hero in the Easter story.