Before We Go, Let’s Tell Them Why We Stayed
- Maggie Wallem Rowe
- Jul 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 16
So the faith doesn’t fade with us—but flourishes in them.
(Fun news! FOBR – Friends of Barb Roose—are joining us here for the first time, as well as my new “co-workers” from the 2025 Speak Up Conference in Grand Rapids last week. Please make them welcome!)
AUDIO LETTER
THE PHOTO APPEARED in our family chat thread just hours ago.
A sandy-haired man in a ball cap rests a moment from his task of disassembling an ancient piano that can no longer be repaired. Once the musical instrument is dismantled, it can be removed from a former storage room in the shuttered educational facility. A ministry to abused women will move into that space. My eight-year-old grandson, dark hair covered by red Phillys cap, focuses intently on the tool his daddy has taught him to use.
How will the generations following us know what works if we don’t model it for them first?
My daughter’s family of five left their home in suburban New Jersey this week to work with The Philadelphia Project—a nonprofit offering hope and service to the residents of The City of Brotherly Love. Along with a small team from their church, our kids are partnering with Philly churches to serve in mercy ministries and provide construction help for those in need.
My adult kids have practical skills, but I wonder how much the grandkids— 12, 9, and 5 — can actually accomplish?
As I write, I’m catching up after a packed five-day trip to Grand Rapids where I was on the faculty of Speak Up 2025—a stellar national conference for Christian communicators. Honestly, I thought I was there to serve the 250 conferees while others joined us virtually. My job, or so I believed, was to equip and encourage, coach and critique, shepherd and sharpen those present.
But I was only partially correct.
The opening keynote sounded the conference theme: “So the Next Generation Will Know.”
“He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children,6 so the next generation might know them— even the children not yet born— and they in turn will teach their own children.7 So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.” Psalm 78: 5b-7
The focus of the conference was on the future, not solely the present.
On the ones we love and serve, not ourselves and our skills.
On our children and grandchildren. Those not yet born and those whose names we may never know, but whose lives will be shaped by our choices.
Speak Up’s opening keynote speaker, author Bruce W. Martin, challenged us to invest in futures, defining futures as that which “an investor contractually agrees to buy or sell at a set future date, hoping for a return on their investment.” God, Bruce commented, is the ultimate investor in futures—ours. We steward the gifts and resources we’ve been entrusted with for the benefit of those who come behind us.
Beloved Bible teacher Barb Roose, whose thoughts on the tragedy in Texas I shared here last week, pointed out that the gospel is to be lived out, not leveraged for personal gain.
“It’s about God’s vision for our lives, not our need for validation. Are we telling our stories to be heard, or for others to hear from God?”
Tell them we must.
To develop a sturdy faith of their own, our children must move from the devotional practices they’ve inherited from us into a conscious, confident faith of their own. For many, this movement is not a straight line, but rather a journey full of questions and crisis.
In the new book Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead Ends, co-authors Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague write that many adults will struggle in the muddle of the middle years, what they call “Mid-Faith.”
“However we arrive at Mid-Faith, this stage. . . shatters many of our earlier faith illusions and brings pain. There’s no way to reset the clock, no way to unsee all we’ve seen or put Pandora back in her box . . . The path of faith inherently includes seasons that feel like the death of faith.”
Friend, if you have loved ones in a mid-faith crisis, please know that they don’t need our lectures nor our suggestions of books to read or spiritual authorities to consult. They need us to listen without judgment while lovingly accepting their right as adults to work through the process.
And they need our stories—the truth of the lives we’ve lived as we’ve personally grappled with the mystery and complexity of our faith.
“If we don’t talk about our mistakes,” says Barb Roose, “how will future generations know of the awesomeness of our miracles?”
The generations behind us learn how faith works when we model it for them first. One day, they'll be on their own.
And as for my little ones working alongside their parents in Philly this week? It’s not about what they’re doing as much as what’s being done in front of them.
Mature believers have weathered storms, walked through valleys, and clung to God through seasons when answers were few and hope felt thin. And still—we stayed.
Not because it was easy, but because He was faithful.
The generation rising now faces a world louder and more confusing than ever. They need more than polished platitudes or neatly packaged answers. They need our stories—the raw, real kind that show how grace held us together.
They need to see that faith illuminates the dark, that hope survives the storm, and that our walk with Jesus is more than words—it’s a way of life worth following. Let’s be the ones who speak up to tell them how we kept the faith, and why it’s worth holding on to.
Before we go, let’s tell them why we stayed.
copyright Maggie Wallem Rowe, 2025
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