Retention Is the Metric

Ryan Burge ran the Pew Religious Landscape data on where religious adults actually come from, and the answer is mostly religious households: about 77 percent of people raised with a faith keep one, while only 26 percent of those raised with none ever adopt one. He calls retention the most important metric any church or denomination has, and he is honest that no formula reliably produces it.

Both edges of that cut in Iowa. Keeping our own children is doing more work than we usually admit, and the secular household has an inertia of its own, which is why reaching unchurched Iowa families is slow work instead of failed work.