Barna notes this about parents in his book Revolutionary Parenting that the most influential person in a child’s life is their parents.
i. “The fact that neither government nor schools are the solution to the problem is not a big deal. That’s because they are not the ones responsible for fixing the problem. The responsibility for raising spiritual champions, according to the Bible, belongs to parents. The spiritual nurture of children is supposed to take place in the home. Organizations and people from outside the home might support those efforts, but the responsibility is squarely laid at the feet of the family. This is not a job for specialists. It is a job for parents (pages 11, 12)…But one of the lessons that emerged from the research on which my earlier book was based was that churches alone do not and cannot have influence on children. In fact, the greatest influence a church may have in affecting children is by impacting their parents. The facts have been indisputably clear: In assessing the impact of churches, schools, and parents, it is the latter who have the most dramatic personal influence on a child” (pages, XVII).