4-14 Window

Here's an excerpt from and a link to a great article on 

 THE “4/14 WINDOW” 

Child Ministries and Mission Strategies∗ 

Dr. Dan Brewster 

The “4/14 Window” 

Some years ago, Dr. Bryant Myers, Director of World Vision’s MARC Ministries, made an excellent presentation to the EFMA Executive Retreat. The title was “The State of the World’s Children: A Cultural Challenge to the Christian Mission in the 1990’s.” Bryant painted a sobering picture of the numbers and conditions of children and youth throughout the world today, and noted some of the implications that this huge and often suffering people group presents to mission strategists today. But the most significant portion of his presentation was the stunning graphic below, which shows that in the USA, nearly 85 percent of people who make a decision for Christ, do so between the ages of 4 and 14! 

Recently, important confirmation that this is true, at least in the USA, has come from the well-known Church researcher, George Barna. In a new book, Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions,1 Barna presents results of extensive research related to faith decisions in the US. 

Barna reports that most 13 year-olds in the US, 93 percent consider themselves to be Christian, though only about 34 percent of these really have an understanding of what it means to be a Christian.2 However, if people are going to become a Christian, they are far more likely to make that decision by the age of 13 than after that age. Barna states that: 

…the probability of someone embracing Jesus as his or her Saviour was 32 percent for those between the ages of 5 and 12; 4 percent for those in the 13-18 range; and 6 percent for people 19 or older. In other words, if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.³ 

Barna urges us to “Consider the facts. People are much more likely to accept Christ as their Savior when they are young. Absorption of biblical information and principles typically peaks during the preteen years. . . . Habits related to the practice of one’s faith develop when one is young and change surprisingly little over time.”4 

“The implication of these findings is clear,” says Barna. “Anyone who wishes to have significant influence on the development of a person’s moral and spiritual foundations had better exert that influence while the person is still open-minded and impressionable – in other words, while the person is still young.”