How many times per week do you do family devotions/worship?

On a scale of 1-10 how important is family devotions/worship?

Television/media use habits: (how much, what type of programming, what type of media)

Extended family relationships (live near gparents, cousins, etc.; quality of health of those relationships, frequency of interaction)

Age at which children made profession of faith

How much time do you spend daily with your children? Just your presence in the home? Not talking to church members or business, but there for your family?
Children will get attention, either positively or negatively, if they are neglected PK's like every other kid may go negative to get Dad's attention if he/she feels "Pastor Dad" is more invested in the church than his family.

How was the gospel presented to your children?
Was it presented regularly?

Do your children pursue Christ fervently as young adults today?

Hospitality within the home? (might fit into home habits)

Prayer withing the home, parents leading children, children taking initiative, and parents individually.

Great questions already. As a young parent, I am looking forward to reading a book that looks to scripture first and then shows how other parents have applied scripture to real life. Sounds great!

And I have some parents of young adult children who might like to take your survey too!

Grace!
Andrea

Hi Ed,
Maybe what the parents primary Goal in parenting was? It seems there are 2 schools of thought in Christian circles. One centers around obedience or first time obediece (i.e. GKGW), and the other centers around relationship (i.e. Loving your kids on purpose). As a parent I've been involved in both, and they are vastly different. It would be interesting to see if the outcomes were the same or not.

Oh and does gender play a role do you think? Around here, daughters seem to stick around while sons dissappear.

When the student was in a youth program, how many times per month did the parent volunteer with the youth ministry?

Did you tell your student about your past sexual immorality as a teen? Yes, No, NA
Did you hold them to a higher standard than you lived as a teenager in this area? Yes, No, NA

What actions are you taking to disciple your children toward Christian maturity?

What support would you like to have from your local church in discipling your children?

Having lived overseas for 8 years and living in a town which is 50% hispanic, I would like to see some questions focused on determining differences stemming from the ethnicity of the family.

Size of family - Any correlation between size and success.

Child's position within the family. First Born vs. middle vs. the baby of the family.

Role of Grandparents - Legacy passing, etc.

What kind of discipline did you use for young children? Spanking/time out/taking away privilege

What about for pre-teen/teenagers?

What did you do that you wish you had not done and vice versa?

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?

How did you address issues regarding sexuality with your children? ie.puberty,dating/courtship

Was the topic discussed openly/individually?

Was it intentional?

At what age did the discussions begin?

Parent's view of child safety (physical and spiritual) VS the risk involved in putting children in situations to be on mission & how they handled the tension at different ages. (preschool, grade school, middle school, high school, college, ect)

Questions to gage and differentiate the highest "mission-focused" adult children within the sample group and crosstabs with answers to the previous question.

Questions and crosstabs for parents with both an adult child who follows the Lord and an adult child who does not.

How do teach your children to be salt and light while not infecting them with the world? (are "good Christian parents" in the evangelical ghetto the reason we can't create missional Christians?)

How much time is spent in prayer as a family?

Are vacation seen as mission or sabbath or just vacation?

Do you give your children the choice to attend church activities, is church optional in your Christian household?

Sorry if this is off topic, but SOS I'm pastoring a dying congregation, a small group of what I consider to be the best folks on earth. I am at my wits end, I so want to see The Lord's Kingdom advanced but I have been so ineffective and am wondering what is the best thing to do. The children(grown now) of our congregation are in other churches, but not with us. Please Help. Trying to put meat on my prayers.

What role did parents play in child/teens friendship/peer group choices?

Where did your family fall in the doctrinal pendelum? (i.e. conservative, moderate, liberal, etc.)

I have asked that question, "What did your parents do?", of solid teenagers in my ministry and everytime I get the same answer: There was a balance of Relationship and Discipleship with parents. Parents did not pick one or the other they did both.

It was also, almost always patriarchal as well. "Dad prayed with me." "I watched dad read his Bible." Scripture supports this truth of the patriarchal influence with their children (i.e. Deut. 6, Psalm 78, Eph. 6, etc.)

I'm looking forward to the results both as a pastor and a dad.

Ed, don't know how to word this, but I'm currently doing a session on ministering to BLENDED FAMILIES. Some of them have very successfully raised kids. Don't want to leave them out. So somehow in marital status, you need to include "married again". OR, give them a chance to indicate if they raised a blended family. Research indicates this will be the predominant family type shortly. How can we include this in the results?

Thanks.
Keith Lowry
BGCT

Some questions that would fascinate me:

Question: Select the option that best describes your typical practice. If your practice changed through the years, describe the practice typical of the time you consider to be most pivotal in your child's spiritual development:
1) My child attended the Sunday morning adult service with me. My church offered no youth programming or my child was not involved.
2) My child attended the Sunday morning adult service with me and was also involved in supplemental church youth events.
3) My child attended a youth service while I attended the adult service.
4) My child went to the adult church service but I did not.
5) My child attended special youth events but I did not attend church myself.

Question: If your child attended (or is attending) college, which of the following best describes their experience.
1) My child attended a secular university and was primarily nurtured through a church.
2) My child attended a secular university and was primarily nurtured through a Christian ministry on campus (Campus Crusade, Intervarsity, Chi Alpha, RUF, etc).
3) My child attended a secular college and seemed to put their faith on hold while in college.
4) My child attended a Christian university and was primarily nurtured through the community there.
5) My child attended a Christian university but was primarily nurtured through a church.
6) My child attended a Christian university but seemed to put their faith on hold while in college.

Question: Did your child undergo a period of doubt, skepticism, or rebellion against God? If so, describe the age it began, the age it seemed to settle down, and what you think led to the crisis and its resolution.

Most of the questions tend to be programmatic and whether parents carved out time, but I would assume that the home run parents went a step further and were able to integrate Scripture into the natural fabric of their child's life, not just the carved out times. So my question would be:

Estimate the amount of time you spent in natural conversations (in the car, at the baseball field...) per week that centered around spiritual discipleship with your child. (Deut. 6:4-9)

Ed, I just finished "Nurture Shock" you might find it interesting as you prepare for your study. It is by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

These are very interesting questions. One more would be Do you have meals together/How often do you have meals together every week? Having meals together seems to be emphasized much in churches today and I just wonder if statistics will show their importance.

How about ...

-Would you characterize your communications with your children as more open (we can discuss anything, anytime that may be appropriate), or more reserved (we seldom bring up topics we consder to be 'touchy' or controversial)?

Also,...

-how about a survey to assess the perspective of the kids who grew up well? Ask them what Mom and Dad did right and what Mom and Dad could have done better. Ask them what they felt their family stood for and discuss how that relates to what Mom and Dad's goals for their family life were. And ask the kids how much it mattered that Mom and Dad lived or did not live what they taught.

Thanks for letting us try to help.

Blessings on your ministry, Ed.

Zieg

Question suggestion: When you started being a parent, did you create an intentional plan regarding what you would do in raising a committed follower of Christ with specific milestones (or did you "just wing it" and follow Scriptural principles as best you could)?

Excellent, excellent suggestions!

Many thanks!

Ed

How often do you and your children pray before meals?

a) We do before every meal we have together.
b) We pray together before most meals.
c) We pray together occasionally before meals.
d) We don't pray together before meals.

I grew up in a very moral but hardly religious home. Now, my wife and I pray with our kids before most meals. I believe this question could be useful because mealtime prayer is a simple and repetitive act of faith that underscores one's gratitude for God's blessings.

How involved children where in other extra curricular activities (Band, Honor Societies, FCCLA, etc.)

Where was the importance was placed, excelling at school, at sports, at the extras, or at spiritual growth?

This should be some great research. I'm looking forward to your conclusions.

Did any of your young adult children go through a time of rebellion before returning to walk with the Lord?

Do you feel the time of rebellion was a result in any way of variations in your parenting style with them?

1) Church involvement - How did your child learn about and become actively involved in the local church?

2) Missions/Ministry - did you participate in ministry projects and missions ventures as a family? If so, what impact did that have?

3) Equipping/Training - What did your church(es) do to help equip and train you as the primary trainer and spiritual leader of your child(ren)? What could have been done better or differently?

I'd add a few more things...
Quantify the prayer life of parents & family prayer time.

Activities level during the week (# of weeknights away from home for at least 1 family member)

finally, and most importantly, did family have a weekly sabbath? (bible study & reflection time with solitude & only minimal faith activities?)

I thought George Barna did something similar in his book Revolutionary Parenting.

Please spend some time looking at Single parent families. I hope these are not too open-ended.

How will you judge what "success" looks like in parenting? Please spell that out.

For Single Parents:
1. How can the local church minister to you better? [e.g. More Parent's nights out, counseling, Divorce-Care, mentoring from other parents,financial assistance, single-parenting seminars, etc.]
2. What 2 or 3 things can you relate to "new" single parents that would help them cope with their situation?
3. Does the church "stress" you out with too much activity? [explain]

I am big on "simple" and doing the minimum because I think it has more impact than doing too much or too many things. In that vein, this is for the Parent who is considered successful:
1. What is your "top 10" (or top 5) list of things you wish you had done as a parent, if you did it again?
2. What are the three most important behaviors we need to teach our children?
3. What are the three best disciplinary approaches you have found? [excluding spanking - foster parents cannot do that]
4. Top 5 books on parenting advice.
5. Top 5 books or seminars on marriage.
6. How many sports did you allow your kids to participate in each year? [explain]
7. How many hours a week did you spend on "church activity"? [are we doing too much churchy stuff that doesn't promote family?]
8. How many hours a week did your kids spend at home with "nothing" to do? [I am concerned we over-schedule or over-parent our kids]
9. How many hours a week in sports, school, etc.? How did you use these things to effectively parent?

That's enough.
Thanks Ed, for all you do.

There is much discussion concerning the traditional youth program and the reemergence of a multi-generational approach. With this in mind, I would like to see questions like:

Did your child worship mostly in Sunday School/youth programs growing up?

Did your child worship primarily with the family when growing up?