Key Takeaways

• Decision Magazine, the flagship publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, published a feature on the Passing the Torch report from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies — calling it among the most comprehensive examinations of intergenerational faith transmission to date.

• Children whose parents actively share their faith at home are roughly twice as likely to adopt and maintain that faith as adults. When both parents attend church regularly, 41% of their children do the same, compared to 29% when only one parent attends.

• The Passing the Torch findings are not isolated — they stand alongside 30 years of converging research from Barna, the National Study of Youth and Religion, a 1994 Swiss government study, and Vern Bengtson’s multi-decade Longitudinal Study of Generations — all pointing to the same conclusion.

• The report offers specific, actionable steps for both parents and pastors — from making faith a regular topic of family conversation to actively engaging fathers and supporting strong marriages.

• The challenge is significant. Each new generation enters adulthood less faithful than the last. But the data equally suggests that intentional parental practices can interrupt that trend — and the local church is the most capable institution to help families do it.

The Story: A Historic Platform Takes Notice

When Decision Magazine covers a study, the significance extends beyond the findings themselves.

Decision is the flagship publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association — one of the most widely read and trusted evangelical publications in the world, with a readership built over seven decades on the conviction that the gospel changes lives. When Decision’s editors assign a story, they are telling millions of evangelical readers: this matters.

On June 12, 2026, Decision published a feature by Sarah Holliday on the Passing the Torch report, the joint study by Communio and the Institute for Family Studies drawing on data from more than 60,000 Americans raised in Christian traditions. The article, situated under Decision’s Marriage and Family, Children, and Faith categories, framed the report as both timely and historic — placing it alongside decades of supporting research that converges on the same conclusion.

Parents are the front line of faith transmission. And the local church is the institution best equipped to help them lead.

The Core Finding: Decades of Research. One Consistent Answer.

What makes the Decision Magazine coverage distinctive is the context it provides for the Passing the Torch findings. Rather than treating this as a single new study, Sarah Holliday situates it within a body of research spanning more than 30 years — and the convergence is striking.

A 1994 Swiss government study found that when both parents attended church regularly, 33% of children became regular adult attendees. When only the mother attended, that figure fell sharply — with a significant majority abandoning religious practice altogether. The father’s involvement, it turns out, is not supplementary. It is structural.

The Barna Group’s 2001 research found that adults who attended church as children showed lifelong effects — echoing the biblical principle of Proverbs 22:6. Sociologist Vern Bengtson’s multi-decade Longitudinal Study of Generations found roughly 60% continuity in religious transmission when parents combined strong personal faith with warm relationships, particularly with fathers. The National Study of Youth and Religion found that teens whose parents modeled faith through home discussion and active church involvement had an 82% chance of remaining religiously active as young adults.

The Passing the Torch report adds to this foundation with the most comprehensive dataset assembled to date, and its central finding aligns with everything that came before it: children whose parents actively share their faith are roughly twice as likely to adopt and maintain it as adults. Faith embedded in everyday routines — conversation, ritual, visible commitment — becomes part of a child’s enduring identity. Faith practiced privately, kept separate from the rhythms of family life, does not transmit with anywhere near the same reliability.

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Problem Isn’t Each Generation Losing Faith. It’s Each Generation Starting With Less.

Here is the reframe the Passing the Torch report introduces — and that Decision Magazine surfaces clearly — that should change how every pastor thinks about church decline.

The dominant narrative around declining religious affiliation assumes a falling-away pattern: people who once had faith gradually lose it over the course of their adult lives. But the report challenges that picture directly. Most of the decline in American religious life is not people becoming less religious as they age. It is each new generation entering adulthood with less faith than the one before it.

The problem is not attrition. It is transmission.

This distinction matters enormously. If the problem is attrition, the solution is retention — better programming, stronger community, more compelling worship. But if the problem is transmission, the solution is formation — equipping parents to pass faith intentionally, strengthening marriages so families have the relational health to practice faith together, and building church cultures where faith is embedded in daily life rather than reserved for Sunday.

As the Passing the Torch report states plainly: research shows that most of the decline is intergenerational. Rather than people becoming less religious over their adult lives, each new generation enters adulthood less faithful than the last one.

That is a solvable problem. And the report’s authors, J.P. De Gance and Jesse Smith, are clear about where the solution begins: with parents, supported by pastors, equipped by communities of faith that take this mission seriously.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Decision Magazine coverage represents something significant: the Passing the Torch report is now reaching the breadth of the evangelical world, from Fox News to Billy Graham’s flagship publication — and the message is consistent across every platform.

The report offers a specific, practical roadmap for both parents and pastors. For parents: be a role model for faith, prioritize strong marriages and parent-child relationships, make faith formation a joint effort, build religion into everyday family life, and make faith a regular topic of conversation. For pastors: guide parents, not just children, as part of religious education; support strong marriages and co-parenting relationships; actively engage fathers; create space for community; and invest in youth ministry.

These are not abstract ideals. They are actionable priorities — and the local church is the most natural institution in the world to help families pursue them. When a church invests in the marriages of its congregation, it is directly increasing the likelihood that faith will be transmitted to the next generation. When it engages fathers more deeply, it is shaping outcomes that research has now documented across multiple decades and datasets.

The report’s summary is honest about the difficulty: it is an uphill battle, and parents are on the front line. The challenges to maintaining strong religious commitments in a secularizing culture are formidable. But the data is equally clear that intentional, consistent, community-supported parental practices can interrupt the trend — and change the trajectory of a family’s faith story across generations.

Your church can be the community that makes that possible. The research, now featured in Decision Magazine, gives you the evidence. The tools exist. The only question is whether your church will act on it.

Take the Next Step

Read the full Decision Magazine feature on the Passing the Torch report — then download the complete study to share with your leadership team and the families in your congregation.

► Read the full Decision Magazine article → billygraham.org

► Download the Passing the Torch report → communio.org/passing-the-torch-report

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Sarah Holliday for Decision Magazine, published June 12, 2026, and the study “Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations” by the Institute for Family Studies and Communio. Read the original Decision Magazine article here.