Dr. Sherry Ifft on why children leave the church, and what teachers can do about it.
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A child sits in school six hours a day, five days a week. That comes to 45 full days a year of someone else shaping him. He gets six and a half days of spiritual training in the same year. His mother has real conversation with him six minutes a day. His father, three.
Then we wonder why he comes home from college wanting nothing to do with the church.
Dr. Sherry Ifft has trained more than 10,000 Sunday school teachers across 100 countries. She also grew up in church, earned the highest marks in a three-year catechism class, and had no relationship with Jesus — which is the reason she does this. Her argument across these two sessions is not try harder. It is that the soil of a child's heart is soft for about six years, that almost nobody plants in it during that window, and that everything after it costs ten times as much.
What follows is the full session, section by section, with timestamps into the video.
“He's being bombarded every day, five days a week.”
Nobody is perfect. But we can do better.
“Relationship, not religion.”
“The kingdom of God belongs to the children.”
“You had the opportunity when he was a child, when his soil was good and pure and anything would grow. But you didn't teach him.”
“You don't give children enough credit for what they're able to do and able to understand.”
“We need to do better, parents. We need to do better, Sunday school teachers.”
“Who is that? It's you.”
“You need God to heal your heart if you're going to be successful in your classroom and not hurt those kids.”
In the order she taught it. Every timestamp jumps into the video at that moment — they refer to the edited lecture-only cut, not the full conference recording.
Called to be a missionary at ten. Home life was bad in her teens; she got angry at God and left the church. She came back at twenty-five while traveling the world with a growing hunger to see Israel — she was led to the Lord in Jerusalem and filled with the Holy Spirit. Bible college followed, then Moscow, where she began training teacher-trainers who would go on to train others: more than 10,000 new Sunday school teachers in three years. Ten years in Russia, six in China, over 100 countries.
Then the reason underneath it. She never experienced the love of God at home, and she never understood salvation — despite three years of catechism in her Lutheran church, in which she earned the highest marks in the class. Knowledge without relationship.
She found her church in Dallas because of a billboard: “Relationship, not religion.”
What she's implying: she is not speaking as a theorist. She is the exact child she is warning you about — churched, catechized, high-scoring, and lost. If it happened to her inside a program that looked like it was working, it can happen inside yours.
Children go all the way through — Sunday school, youth group, summer camps — genuinely loving church. Then they reach university, come home at Thanksgiving, and want nothing to do with the church. Some feel the church was taking advantage of them. Some don't want family time either.
Her conclusion: she doesn't know how any of them survive it without a personal encounter with God and the power of the Holy Spirit to navigate the world. So Sunday school cannot be facts alone. It has to lead into relationship.
If you want to succeed in ministering to children, you have to see them the way God sees them. Parents bring children to Jesus for a blessing and the disciples send them away — treating them as a nuisance, as though Jesus needs protecting from them. Jesus got upset: don't do anything to keep these children from coming to me. Because the kingdom of God belongs to the children.
What she's implying: every structural decision a church makes about children — no preschool class, no Sunday school, children parked in the back of a service they can't follow — is the disciples' instinct wearing modern clothes. The disciples weren't villains. They thought they were being helpful.
She read Deuteronomy 6:1–5: the commands are given so that you and your son and your son's sons keep them. Then the Shema. Then verses 6–7 — the words go first into your own mind and heart, and only then are they sharpened and pressed into your children, talking when you sit in the house, walk by the way, lie down, rise up. “In other words, all the time.”
Then, flatly: “But unfortunately, it's not happening. It didn't happen in my home.”
Verse 20: when your child gets older and asks why all these laws, you tell him how the Lord rescued you — you tell him the miracles God did for you.
The story that lands it 12:28. Her father died of cancer when she was twenty-eight. She was reading the Bible aloud at his bedside, days from the end, and he asked what she was doing. “Are you trying to get me saved?” — “Yeah.” And he said: didn't I ever tell you how I got saved in China? Two German Lutheran missionaries led me to the Lord. She had no idea her own father was a Christian. They never talked about it. They said grace before meals. That was all.
What she's implying:
The disciples ask who is greatest. Jesus takes a little child and stands him in front of the same men who had been trying to get rid of children. “Unless you change and become like this little child, you can't even get into the kingdom of God.”
She brought a volunteer up and had him kneel as the child, keeping him there through the whole illustration.
The interpretive move: in the original Greek this concerns the heart condition of the child, not age or appearance, because God looks at the heart. That heart is loving, forgiving — children forgive and forget easily, adults not so much — hungry to learn, and open.
What she's implying: “become like a child” is not sentimental. It describes a specific spiritual posture, and it names exactly what is lost as a child ages without formation.
From the parable of the sower — we are the sowers, parents and teachers:
The soil is the child's heart. In the first five or six years it is rich and pure because nothing else has been planted. No weeds to pull. No rocks to clear. No tilling. You simply sow faithfully.
Compare the alternatives: a hardened heart like rock, where the seed can't get in and never roots; or a heart already full of roots — the wrong ones, picked up from the neighborhood and from school.
On schools 21:26. She said many public school teachers are not only non-Christian but actively opposed to Christianity, and that what is happening in kindergartens and elementary schools shocks her.
Her instruction to parents: sow the Word before you take them to kindergarten. Teach right and wrong. Teach them to recognize what is from God and what is from the world. Pray Psalm 91 over them every morning. Ask what they learned when they come home. Keep track of what happens at their school. Be a shield of protection.
What she's implying: you are not the only one sowing, and you don't get to choose whether other people plant in your child. You only choose whether you got there first.
Using the kneeling volunteer, she walked the whole arc. This is the spine of session one.
What she's implying: this is not a story about a rebellious kid. Every failure in the chain belongs to an adult — a scheduling decision, an unprepared teacher, a curriculum that stopped at information. The teenager everyone worries about was decided years earlier, by people who thought they were doing fine.
When to start preparing next week's lesson: the moment you finish teaching this week's.
Begin by evaluating what you just taught — was it effective, who was learning, who didn't get it, what would you do differently. Then pray for the children, that it penetrates. Then discuss the next lesson. Ideally one helper per teacher; if teachers rotate, the next person must know their responsibility.
Study the passage — how often? Every day. Know it by heart before you walk in.
Why this actually matters:
Her full classroom prep list:
“You're not going to be perfect. Nobody is. But we can do better.”
Assume the children in your classroom are not learning the Word sufficiently at home. So: teach the whole Bible over a year or two. Have them memorize Scripture and make sure they understand it. And present the gospel every single class. Even small children can learn the steps of salvation — and show them to others.
With toddlers and babies: hold them, let them touch the Bible. This is the Bible. This tells us how much God loves us. Mommy loves you, but God loves you. It gets through more than you'd think — a child learns more in his first five years than in all the years after, because children learn through all their senses and gather information constantly.
Method: get the plan of salvation into five steps, put a picture of a hand with those steps on the wall, and repeat it weekly. Why a hand? It goes with the child everywhere. He can't leave it at church. And don't change your method every week or they won't remember.
The Cuba story 38:34. Roughly 100 children, ages two to eighteen, outdoors. She had trained six teachers and split the group by age. She presented the gospel with Spanish pictorial material — symbols and figures with no faces — and then each teacher went back over it with felt pieces.
One teacher had three- and four-year-olds. A little boy said, “Teacher, I don't understand.” And a three-year-old girl said, “I do. Let me tell them.” She went through every step with the felt pieces: who God is, who Jesus is, creation, the choice given, the enemy's deception, sin and separation, God sending Jesus as a baby who grew up so we would know how to live, the cross, the resurrection, relationship restored forever.
Her point: “You don't give children enough credit for what they're able to do and able to understand.” They may not be ready to accept Christ at that moment, but they can certainly learn how to get saved.
She read a study measuring alone, meaningful parent-child time — explicitly not “wash your hands, go to bed,” but sitting with and communing with a child.
| Per day | Per year | |
|---|---|---|
| Average father | 3 minutes | ¾ of one day |
| Average mother | 6 minutes | 1½ days |
| School | 6+ hrs × 5 days (180 days) | 45 days |
| Church (3 visits/wk, 1 hour each) | ~3 hrs/wk | 6½ days |
She expected a bigger gap between mothers and fathers than three versus six minutes.
Her argument: “How do we learn to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, how do we have a relationship with the Creator of the universe, if we're not even having a relationship with our parents at home?” Meanwhile the child is bombarded six hours a day, five days a week, in a place not teaching him the Bible.
And she brought it back to herself. She didn't have it growing up, so even after salvation and Bible college the habits weren't there. Talking to God wasn't natural, because she had never done it — not at home, not even in Sunday school. “Thank God for God's grace in my life. But how many years were wasted? How many difficult times did I go through?”
Then: “So we need to do better, parents. We need to do better, Sunday school teachers.”
This is the payoff of the entire first session, and it answers the question the disciples actually asked.
She points out that Jesus never says the child is the greatest. The disciples wanted a ranking; Jesus put a child in front of them and said unless you change, you won't even get in — stop thinking about how to be greatest, and change. Then he continues: whoever humbles himself and becomes like this little child, who is trusting and loving and forgiving, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Her application: “Who is that? It's you.” If you're a Sunday school teacher, it's you. If you're a parent, it's you — if you are willing to humble yourself and get on their level, change your vocabulary so it's simple enough for them to follow, and change your explanations and examples so they come from their life instead of yours or somebody else's.
“If you're able to humble yourself to minister to these children, you're the greatest. But to do that, you have to change. You have to be Christlike. You have to show them Jesus in your classroom and in your life.”
What she's implying: the greatness the disciples were competing for is available — and it is located in exactly the work they were trying to avoid. Nothing in the session is asked of the children. All of it is asked of the adult.
Preachers usually chop Matthew 18 into segments, but Jesus is having one continuous conversation about children through verse 14. So the lost sheep is still about children: the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one and rejoices more over it. “It is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost and perish.”
In a classroom: sometimes you leave the ninety-nine to get the one. And you have to get their attention — if they aren't paying attention, they aren't learning anything.
She pointed at her own method as the demonstration. She never stands in one place; if it weren't a raised stage she'd walk the aisles. And during the break she went around asking people what they had learned and what stood out. That was her searching for the one who didn't understand — not small talk.
Attention · Security · Acceptance · Love · Praise · Discipline · God
How a child feels important. Without it he acts out to get noticed — and disciplining that without wisdom rewards it.
Clear rules, lovingly enforced. If you let one child be hurt in front of the class, no child in the room feels safe.
Loving a child as he is, so he believes God accepts him too. Never compare him to a sibling.
Shown the way he receives it, not the way you prefer to give it.
Encouragement. Catch him doing right instead of only naming what he must stop.
Definite limits. A child with no boundaries feels insecure and will break rules to find where they are.
The most important — and unreachable while any of the other six go unmet.
This applies even to children from good families, because nobody is perfect and sensitive children can be wounded without you knowing, since they won't talk about it. She was direct that in the world and in the church there are people who look like great Christians with great families and are living a dual life.
Her own family, as evidence 1:03:56. Her father — whom she loved dearly — was beaten by his own father as a child. He hated it, but children imitate, and habits form. She did not learn until twenty years after his death that he had been beating her brothers. Her four brothers made a pact never to tell her, because their mother was brutal to her with words and they believed her relationship with her father was the only salvation in the house. Because of that relationship she can relate to God as Father. God later healed her relationship with her mother.
“It is what it is in families. Nobody's perfect.” So parents and teachers must recognize there are hurting children in the room and seek the Lord on how to minister to their needs — not just teach a Bible lesson. “This is called children's ministry because we're ministering to the needs of children.”
It is how a person feels important, how self-esteem and confidence get built, and how a young child overcomes early fears.
When it's missing, a child acts out — knowingly does wrong — to get noticed. Common in busy homes: he tugs at his mother's skirt and gets “go away, I'm busy”; his father comes home tired and says “get out of here, you're making too much noise.” So he learns to break something, shout, or kick.
The trap: you want to discipline that immediately. But discipline without seeking the Holy Spirit reinforces it. He kicked to get your attention. You disciplined him. He got your attention. So he'll do it again.
Her story 1:11:43. Her first time teaching in a Christian school, a boy interrupted constantly. She took him to the office to be spanked — permitted then, with parental consent — and he immediately began crying and hid, cowering under the desk. She recognized instantly that this was not a normal reaction and that something was wrong at home. So she didn't spank him. She hugged him: It's going to be okay. I love you, but I don't like what you did. I will always love you, but I don't like that behavior. You don't have to do that to get my attention — just raise your hand or come talk to me. It took time and constant repetition, but that was the line every time.
Her rules 1:12:45:
A child needs to feel secure and comfortable to develop healthy self-esteem. If security is missing, he grows up insecure and timid, or aggressive — and later may turn to alcohol, drugs, or other destructive behavior.
Develop simple rules everybody understands, designed to keep children safe. Correct a rule-breaker, but don't say bad things about him in front of the class. And if he is hitting someone, stop it.
The insight most teachers miss: if you don't stop it, it isn't only the child being hit who feels unsafe — nobody in the room does. You are in charge, they saw it happen, and they saw you do nothing. Their logic: if the person in charge won't handle this, who will? I'll never be safe.
So: have rules, enforce them lovingly, and go to the affected child directly — It's going to be okay. You don't have to be afraid.
Respecting a child as a person and loving him as he is — through which he comes to believe that God accepts him too. A child who feels accepted learns to appreciate himself and others.
The standard is unconditional love, the way Christ loves us. She was honest that this is hard, so pray daily that you're showing love to every child and not favoring one.
The failure mode at home: the adult accepts you when you do what they like and withdraws when you don't.
What not to say: “Why can't you be good at math like your older brother?” Comparison communicates: you don't accept me for who I am or the gifts God gave me.
When you're at the end of your rope: how do I accept this child when I'm so frustrated I want to throw him out? Throwing him out feels like the solution. It isn't. God put him in your class for a reason — for him, and for you. You are growing through it.
Joey and the envelope 1:21:29. A friend's son was expelled repeatedly. No teacher wanted him. The family changed schools; same result. Then a new teacher was assigned him, and the others said: you poor thing, you won't accomplish anything all year.
She stayed quiet and prayed. Then she wrote a note, sealed it, and said: “Joey, you're not in trouble — take this to the principal and wait until he sends you back.” The note asked the principal to hold him ten minutes.
The moment he left, she turned to the class — who were also angry at him — and said: would you help me help Joey? Then the diagnosis: “All he ever hears is what NOT to do. Stop talking. Stop hitting. Sit down. I don't think he knows what the right thing to do IS, because it's always don't, don't, don't.”
So when he comes back, any time you catch him doing something right, say it out loud. “Teacher, look — Joey is sitting in his chair correctly.”
They agreed. They prayed. In less than a week his behavior completely changed — because the emphasis moved off the negative and onto the good. He never had a problem in school again, went through high school, college and university, and became a successful adult. Because one teacher sought the Lord about what to do.
Her diagnosis of the original problem: he was getting attention — just negative attention.
The five love languages: we all give and receive love differently. Some feel loved when told, some when touched, some when someone sits and listens.
You have to be able to demonstrate love in all those ways, which won't always be comfortable for you. “But it doesn't matter about our comfort. It matters about the child's comfort.”
How to find a child's language:
The principle: show love the way he receives it, not the way you prefer to give it.
And the cost, stated plainly: yes it takes time and effort. And no — you will not be a successful teacher doing this if you prepare five minutes before class. Preparing isn't the games. It's reading the Word, praying over your children, and seeking God's direction: God, show me how to get his attention. Show me how to love him. Show me how to discipline him.
“If you love your children enough, that's the price you have to pay. He knows the kid. He knows exactly what's needed.”
Not praise as in worship — encouragement. Like the Russian molodets: good job, well done. She noted the Joey story above was her teaching on this need: a child hearing only negatives, transformed by being caught doing right.
Children need definite limits. A child with no limits feels insecure, because he doesn't know what is allowed.
How it shows up: introverts lock down; extroverts run the room breaking rules to find where the boundaries are. Like a wild horse put in a fence — where are the edges?
Where the blame belongs: “We tend to just blame the child, but most of the time it's because of us.” We weren't clear, didn't repeat, didn't enforce.
Two stories about earning authority 1:32:25.
New York. She worked with emotionally disturbed and juvenile-delinquent teenagers in inner-city Philadelphia and New York. Left alone on a floor with boys aged ten to eighteen in a facility for serious offenses, they attacked her. She says God did a miracle and she somehow walked out through the crowd. She didn't want to go back, but she knew what had to happen: win the trust and respect of the group's leader, or nothing would work.
At gym time he challenged her to basketball, and he was far taller. Instead of showing fear she agreed — but changed the game to HORSE, set shot for set shot. What he didn't know: she could hit three-pointers standing still all day. She won, and didn't mock him — “Wow, you really played well.” From then on he respected her, and she had control in that setting because she had earned it.
Philadelphia. Walking up the steps to a group home, a tall teenager jumped out and shouted “You're crazy!” It startled her badly, and she answered immediately: “Shh — don't tell anybody.” He repeated it, confused. “Yes, I know. But don't tell anybody. It'll be our secret.”
What she didn't know: this boy had been labeled crazy and institutionalized. He felt terrible about himself and didn't know how to change. But because she wasn't afraid and answered that way, his takeaway was: if she's crazy and she went to high school and college and got a job here, then I can too. I'm not going to listen to those doctors.
The point she drew from both: “I had prayed for wisdom, prayed for help. I thought I would need it, inside. I didn't get up the steps and this happened.” — The response came from preparation that happened before the moment.
Your preparation time needs to be prayer. Pray for every child, and pray for wisdom on how to meet their needs. Be surprised how willing the Holy Spirit is to give advice — he is the helper, the counselor, right there with you. Seek his counsel not once a week, but on an ongoing, momentary basis.
If you take care of the other six, it opens the heart for the need for God.
And then be ready. You must be prepared to meet that need in any situation — not only by sharing the gospel every class, but prepared for the moment the Holy Spirit opens a heart and gives you an opening for a conversation that could change that child's life.
Ask God to guard your lips and make you aware of when you're being critical, when your words aren't loving.
| What a child lives with | What he learns |
|---|---|
| Criticism | To condemn |
| Hostility | To fight |
| Shame | To feel guilty |
| Tolerance | Patience |
| Encouragement | Confidence |
| Praise | To appreciate others |
| Fairness | Justice |
| Security | To have faith |
| Approval | To like himself |
| Acceptance and friendship | To find love in the world |
Her application: many children who act out and condemn others in your classroom are living with criticism at home. That's where it came from.
On shame: in the era she grew up in, shame was used as discipline. She equates it with cursing someone, citing James 3 — how is it that with the same mouth you praise God and curse your brothers? It comes from a broken heart formed by experience: criticized constantly, you end up criticizing.
On self-talk: many teenagers and adults don't like themselves, and you hear it in their self-commentary — “What's wrong with you? You're stupid.” Who put that idea there? Somebody did. They're repeating what they heard, and now cursing themselves.
The uncomfortable turn, aimed at the adults 1:46:00:
If you're speaking negative things or carrying negative self-thought, ask the Holy Spirit for heart surgery. You're the parent, you're the teacher. You need God to heal your heart if you're going to be successful in your classroom and not hurt those kids.
She handed out a long list — she said around eight pages — of ways to praise and encourage children using Scripture. The method: put the child's name into the verse and speak it over him.
Why: “We want to say what God says about our children, not what the world says or the devil says.” Scan for something that fits a specific child — the one who's hurting, the one acting out, the one you can't seem to reach — then look up the verse, memorize it, and speak it over him.
On persistence: try different methods. If one doesn't work, don't be discouraged — move on. Even a child who doesn't respond at first will perk up if you keep going, and will grow more interested in the Word.
Her final and, in her words, most important instruction:
The most important thing you can do in your classroom is to show Jesus Christ through your character, your words, and your actions.
The text is John 14. Jesus tells the disciples he is going to the Father and preparing a place for them. Philip says: “Just show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.” And Jesus answers: Philip, I've been with you three years and you haven't seen the Father? When you see me, you see the Father.
It is our job as parents and as teachers to show Father God to the children. That's what Jesus did — he was a living example. A walking, talking, breathing example of Father God. And that's what we need to be in the classroom.
Two teaching sessions separated by a break, presented here as one continuous lecture. Timestamps refer to the edited lecture-only cut.
| Reference | How she used it |
|---|---|
| Deuteronomy 6:1–9 | The command to parents; the Shema; the Word in your heart first, then your children's |
| Deuteronomy 6:20–25 | When your child asks why — tell him your rescue story |
| Psalm 91 | Pray this over your children every morning before school |
| Matthew 18:1–5 | Who is greatest; become like a little child; the heart condition |
| Matthew 18:11–14 | Leave the ninety-nine; not the Father's will that one little one perish |
| Matthew 12:34 | Out of the heart the mouth speaks |
| Romans 5:8 | Rebuttal to “God doesn't love bad boys and girls” |
| James 3:8–17 | The tongue; blessing and cursing from the same mouth |
| Ephesians 6:4 | Provoking children |
| Colossians 3:21 | Discouraging children |
| Philippians 4:13 | Speaking Scripture over a child by name |
| John 14 | Philip asks to see the Father; be the living example |
| Parable of the sower | Sow and reap; choosing good soil; the child's heart as soil |
Called to missions at ten, away from the church through her teens, and led to the Lord in Jerusalem at twenty-five. She trained over 10,000 Sunday school teachers in her first three years in Moscow, lived ten years in Russia and six in China, and has served in more than 100 countries.
The second session of Heart of a Teacher. This page will link to it as soon as the summary is ready.
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