Standing in the Gap

Last weekend, our firstborn turned 18. Just like they said, I blinked—and it happened. Thousands of imperceptible changes, over millions of seconds, turned a newborn into an emerging adult. I had long anticipated this transition with some trepidation, wondering if it might crack my heart into a million pieces.

What I didn’t anticipate was that my daughter’s coming of age would coincide with a seismic shift in society itself. American culture, politics, and even our faith communities seem to be undergoing a kind of collective adolescence—chaotic, disoriented, and often painfully raw. Typically, children mature at a faster rate than culture changes, which allows parents and mentors to offer stable guidance from their store of life experience. But over the last decade, that equation has flipped. Everything feels unstable. And far too often, adults feel just as disoriented as the young people we’re trying to guide.

For my husband and me, who have spent 25 years in ministry among college students, having a graduating senior feels like a full-circle moment. We’re joining generations of parents of faith in the long, uncertain prayer that the seeds we’ve planted will bear fruit—maybe now, maybe years from now. We believe with all our hearts that a living relationship with Christ is the truest path to flourishing. But we are not naive about the road ahead.

The “big leap” we used to prepare for—sending our children out the front door to college—is no longer a singular moment of transition. Whether heading to school, hanging out with friends, or attending church, our daughter now moves in and out of environments where genuine faith is thinly reinforced and often scarcely visible. It’s not a sturdy canyon to leap across. It’s a landscape being slowly eroded from every side.

I remember what it was like when I graduated high school. My church offered a program just for us seniors, preparing us for the challenges to faith we’d likely encounter in college. It was 1998. We each received a massive book—A Ready Defense by Josh McDowell—filled with apologetics for every possible challenge to Christian belief. I brought that book to college and leaned on it throughout my four years. That program, that approach, worked well for me.

But it doesn’t work for most students now.

Today’s youth face spiritual disorientation long before they leave home. They carry questions they can't quite articulate, shaped by a culture they don’t yet understand, and yet one that has already deeply formed them. The answers found in traditional apologetics often don’t even match the questions they’re asking. It’s like handing them a map to a country they’re not traveling to. The clarity and stability I had at 18 has been replaced by anxiety and chaos for this next generation. 

From what I’ve seen, it starts in the tween years. Kids are slipping out the back door of home and church—even while still sleeping in our beds and sitting in our pews. They’re physically present, but spiritually absorbing more from the world outside than from the environment inside. This isn’t about rebellion or deconstruction. It’s about counter-formation. We cannot outrun it. And we’re not keeping pace. We’re not evolving side-by-side, sharpening faith and culture in mutual tension. We’re watching a breakdown. The steady erosion of culture has become a flood. And though I trained for a storm, I never trained for a flood.

Most parents, regardless of their faith, long to be the primary influence in their child’s life. We want to surround them with trusted adults and form a web of care and guidance. But that influence is slipping. What once felt like the exception—families losing connection with their kids—is now alarmingly common.

We can name many contributing factors, and yes, the digital world plays a huge role. As a rule-follower by nature, I prepared the best I could. I followed the guidelines. I studied the data. I parented with intention. And still, it often feels like a game of Jumanji—new rules, new dangers, and a new board—none of which I agreed to.

So I want to say this clearly: The single greatest challenge of our time is the spiritual mission to our children and families in a chaotic context. The dismantling of everything we have known is both a challenge and an opportunity. 

Many ministries have historically focused on the family, but what I’m describing is different. This is not just about equipping individual homes. It’s about a communal response. We need an all-play. A new movement. Like the PTA rallying a whole community to care for a school, we need people of faith to rally around every child, every family, every generation—not just our own.

We have spent so much energy trying to grow churches and fill plates that we didn’t see a generation quietly slipping through the cracks. These are the very children we once dedicated to God in our sanctuaries. And now they are not just slipping out the back door—they are falling through the hole in the floor.

It is not about insisting on saving our failing systems and dying tools. It is a journey of surrendering together our expectations about what this will look like and staying on our knees in prayer. 

May this great need be a turning point that allows us to release our human strategies, fear, and attempts to control outcomes. As a long-time college pastor I can tell you that this backfires with young adults every time. 

The cry of my heart is to gather other parents and faith leaders and say, “Not on our watch.” We need to return to our spiritual resources and become more acquainted with our spiritual authority in the name of Jesus. This authority is not like that which the world has, rather it brings shalom and goodness into this broken world, generation after generation. 

Who is with me? 

Adapted from Lisa Haller Liou's original post on “Woman on the Front Line,” January 25, 2024