Down the Generations

In the parish of Swanvale Halt is a housing estate we find it hard to have much contact with. A couple of years ago a family both of whose children were baptised in the church moved there, and came to Messy Church frequently along with a family who lived around the corner and who they knew well. I began to think there might be the germ of something worthwhile in this, I wasn't sure what - a home group perhaps, from which something might grow. 

The mother is a young woman who I perceive real potential in: again, I'm not really sure why or what, she just has a sort of strength and definiteness which suggests she might have something important in her, whether in church matters or generally. I've been trying to have a proper chat about where she thinks she and the family is spiritually for some time and I began to suspect she was putting it off because there was something she didn't want to say. 

I wasn't wrong: that something turns out to be basically 'I and my husband don't really believe anything but we think it's important for the children to have some religious knowledge so they can decide'. I hear this quite frequently and am not sure what to make of it. I think that if they actively and positively didn't believe anything they wouldn't be bothered about exposing their children to faith and perhaps I should say so. It's frustrating because I can see their own children saying exactly the same in twenty years, and if there is still a church in Swanvale Halt at all it may well be me that hears them saying it, the result being that in family after family faith never moves away from the childhood level and never actually affects what people do. It's better than nothing, but not a great deal better, and I wonder how to approach it.