Key Takeaways

• Communio founder J.P. De Gance published a Father’s Day first-person op-ed in The Baptist Paper, one of the most widely-read Southern Baptist publications in America, drawing on the Passing the Torch report to encourage fathers with what the data actually shows.

• Only 17% of fathers see themselves as primarily responsible for their children’s religious formation, compared to 39% of mothers. But the research consistently shows that fathers may be the single most decisive influence in whether children retain faith as adults.

• Children who attended church weekly with both parents are significantly more likely to attend church as adults than those who attended with only one parent. Faith practiced together, not just endorsed, is what transmits.

• A father does not need to be a Bible scholar to shape his children’s faith. Presence, participation, and relationship matter more than theological expertise.

• Marriage is not a separate issue from fatherhood and faith formation. It is the structure within which a father’s influence is most consistently and deeply felt across a child’s life.

The Story: A Direct Word to Fathers, Published Where They Read

The Baptist Paper is not a national platform in the way Fox News or the Wall Street Journal is. It is something more specific and, in some ways, more valuable: a trusted publication read by Southern Baptist pastors, church members, and families who take their faith seriously and look to it for guidance on the things that matter most.

When J.P. De Gance published a first-person op-ed in The Baptist Paper on Father’s Day 2026, he was writing directly to that audience — not with data alone, but with a pastoral message built on data. The tone of the piece is notably different from his other published writing. It is warm, direct, and aimed at the dad who is quietly wondering whether he is doing enough.

His answer, grounded in the Passing the Torch report from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies, is both honest and encouraging: you are doing more than you realize. And the things that matter most are well within your reach.

The Core Finding: Fathers Are Underestimating Their Own Influence

The most important number in the Baptist Paper op-ed is not about church attendance or divorce rates. It is about self-perception.

Only 17% of fathers believe they are the person primarily responsible for how their children learn about religion. Among mothers, that figure is 39%. Fathers, in other words, have largely handed off the responsibility for their children’s faith formation to others — to their wives, to their children’s Sunday school teachers, to the youth pastor, to the church program.

But the evidence in the Passing the Torch report points clearly in a different direction. Children who attended church weekly with both parents were significantly more likely to attend church as adults compared to those who attended with only one parent. Similar patterns held across prayer, belief in God, Bible reading, and the importance of religion in daily life.

The research is not saying that mothers don’t matter. It is saying that when fathers move from the sidelines into active, present, consistent participation in the faith life of their family, the outcomes for their children change measurably. Children are paying attention to whether faith is something their father simply endorses or whether it is something he actually lives.

As De Gance writes in the op-ed: children notice whether faith is taken seriously, whether prayer is natural, whether church attendance is a priority, and whether Christianity appears to shape everyday decisions. Fathers are teaching far more often than they realize.

The Counterintuitive Angle: You Don’t Have to Be a Theologian. You Just Have to Show Up.

Here is the message in this op-ed that many fathers in your congregation need to hear, and that most church programming never delivers clearly enough.

Many dads feel quietly unqualified to lead their families spiritually. They worry that they don’t read the Bible enough, that they can’t answer the hard questions their teenagers ask, that they are somehow less equipped than the pastors and ministry professionals who are paid to know these things. That sense of inadequacy often produces withdrawal rather than engagement.

De Gance’s op-ed addresses this directly, and the Passing the Torch data backs it up. Influence begins much earlier and in much simpler ways than most fathers assume. It is built in the ordinary routines of family life: grace before dinner, bedtime prayer, a conversation in the car about what they believe and why. These practices, accumulated over years, are the primary medium through which faith is transmitted.

Faith is rarely passed on through a single dramatic moment. It is transmitted through hundreds of ordinary interactions over many years, learned around dinner tables, during family prayers, on the drive to church, and in the countless moments when children are deciding whether the faith they hear about is also visible in the lives of the people they trust most.

That is a message of liberation for fathers who have been quietly paralyzed by a standard of spiritual leadership they felt they could never meet. The standard, according to the research, is not theological mastery. It is presence, participation, and relationship.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, J.P.’s Baptist Paper op-ed points to something we see clearly in the churches we partner with: the fathers in your congregation are one of the most underutilized and under-encouraged assets in your entire ministry.

Many of them are present, engaged, and genuinely wanting to do right by their families. They just don’t know how much they matter. They have absorbed a cultural message that spiritual leadership belongs to professionals, that their job is to support what their wives are doing at home and what the church is doing on Sunday. The data says otherwise. And the church is the institution best positioned to tell them.

De Gance also makes a point in the op-ed that deserves careful attention from pastors: marriage is not a separate issue from fatherhood and faith formation. It is the structure within which a father’s influence is most consistently and deeply felt. Research on non-resident fathers shows that the vast majority see their children only a limited number of days per month within a few years of separation from the mother of their child. That dramatically narrows the daily modeling, conversation, and reinforcement through which faith is most often passed on.

Strengthening marriages, in this light, is not an alternative to investing in fathers. It is how a church protects and maximizes the influence fathers are already positioned to have. Communio helps churches build the kind of marriage and family culture where fathers are present, equipped, and encouraged in the ordinary, unglamorous, eternally significant work of pointing their children toward heaven.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches to build marriage and family ministry that strengthens the relational foundations where faith is formed and passed to the next generation.

► Read J.P. De Gance’s full op-ed in The Baptist Paper → thebaptistpaper.org

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do fathers underestimate their influence on their children’s faith? According to the Passing the Torch report, only 17% of fathers see themselves as primarily responsible for their children’s religious formation, compared to 39% of mothers. Many dads have absorbed a cultural message that spiritual leadership belongs to professionals or that their wife’s role is more central. But the research consistently shows that a father’s active participation in family faith life is one of the strongest predictors of whether children retain faith into adulthood.

What does a father need to do to pass faith to his children? The research points to practices that are accessible to almost every father: attending church consistently with his family, praying out loud with his children through ordinary daily rhythms, and having regular conversations about faith at home. Children raised in homes where faith is discussed several times a week are more than twice as likely to attend church, pray daily, and identify as Christian as young adults.

Does a father need to be a Bible scholar to lead his family spiritually? No. J.P. De Gance’s op-ed makes this point directly: influence begins much earlier and in simpler ways than most fathers assume. Children are paying attention to whether faith is taken seriously in the home, whether prayer is natural, and whether church matters to their father. Presence, participation, and relationship matter far more than theological expertise.

What is the connection between marriage and a father’s influence on his children’s faith? Research on non-resident fathers shows that most see their children only a limited number of days per month within a few years of separating from the mother of their child. This dramatically reduces the opportunities for daily modeling and faith conversation. For churches, strengthening marriages is directly connected to protecting and maximizing the influence fathers are positioned to have on their children’s spiritual formation.

How can churches better support fathers in their role as spiritual leaders? Many churches invest heavily in children’s ministry and women’s ministry but have limited strategies for encouraging fathers in their role as the primary spiritual influencers of their children. Communio helps churches build marriage and family ministry that equips men as husbands and fathers, connecting their daily presence and faith practice to the research showing just how decisive those ordinary habits are for their children’s future faith.

Credit: This post draws on J.P. De Gance’s first-person op-ed published in The Baptist Paper on June 19, 2026, and the study “Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations” by the Institute for Family Studies and Communio. Read the original Baptist Paper op-ed here.