For all the bad news about young people abandoning their faith as they leave the home—and, sadly, there is plenty of that sort of news!—today I want to focus on some good news. While the “leaving the faith” trend is real, other long-term studies point us toward another reality: that, as Lyman Stone remarks in this week’s featured article, “what we do at home has an enormous impact on our kids’ future faith.”

Stone assesses three longitudinal studies and observes,

Families who pray and worship together tend to continue praying and worshipping together. The key to successful transmission of Christian faith across generations is not more youth groups or hipper pastors but the Holy Spirit working through the vocation of parenthood as parents take the time to share their faith with their own children.

How we share our faith with our children will certainly vary from family to family. Some families may take a formal or programmatic approach to chatachesis in their home, such as regularly studying the Bible together or using a family devotional. Others may have a more informal take on it, passing along faith in regular practices like normalized prayer at meals or bedtime, attending church together, bringing the kids along when serving others, discussing sermons or Sunday school lessons together, and so on.

What type of approach best fits your family? How do you desire to grow in impacting your child’s current and future faith through family habits? However God leads you, take heart: Your impact on your children will be long-lasting. As they grow into their own spiritual lives as adults—and even if their faith journey has ups and downs or periods of doubt—the Lord himself will never leave them or forsake them.