Element 4: Family Faith Formation with 3 Generations.
A family is the first community and the most basic way in which God gathers us, forms us, and acts in the world. The family is the primary mechanism by which Christian identity becomes rooted in the lives of young people through the day-to-day religious practices and the ways parents model their faith and share it in conversation, collaboration, and exposure to outside religious opportunities. Through the process of religious socialization, young people with seriously religious parents come to think, feel, believe, and act as serious religious believers, and that training “sticks” with them even when they leave home and enter emerging adulthood.