Two good articles that will help you think about the next generation:
The first is Trevin Wax interviewing the author of a new book on second generation Christians.
The biggest mistake we make, I think, is the assumption that if we simply “get the right system”, we’ll produce perfect kids. Nobody quite says it like that, but we behave this way. We punish ourselves with guilt when a kid walks away from the faith. And every year there are new methods of recovery promising to stem the decline. These can be good, but ultimately we have to come to grips with the idea that every child born inherits a sin nature. Even Christian kids, especially Christian kids, will wrestle with sin and must have an encounter with Jesus that is fresh and original.
In my own experience and in interviewing 2nd Generation Christians, I found the same story: high expectations of perfection. Kids in the church are often told, “After all you’ve been taught, how could you do this?” The answer is that those kids sin because they are sinners.
So a gospel culture accepts, as a reality, the inevitability of sin in the next generation and therefore helps kids growing up embraces their own brokeness. It teaches the same message of salvation, regeneration, and sanctification as if is news. This is a culture that gives it’s people the tools to deal with sin when it comes, not guilt that tries to bury it when it happens.
The next is from a young author who pokes holes in the common construction that the first generation establishes the gospel, the next generation assumes it, and the third generation loses it.
In other words, the generation before me won some things, assumed others, and lost others. My generation, in the context of that milieu, will also win, assume and lose other things. And I need to learn the historical specifics so as not to perpetuate mistakes myself, and to adopt a long-term view of the week-by-week ministry I conduct.
http://solapanel.org/article/talkin_bout_my_generation_part_1/