It was a simple exchange, standard for a typical, one-day pastors' seminar. But it haunted me the rest of the week.

"How's the family? How are your kids doing?"

"Oh, fine. Well-they're not doing much spiritually."

"Yeah. Well, I can identify with that."

My friend is a pastor, like me. We hadn't seen each other in more than fifteen years. It was good to greet each other again, to see how each of us had changed and in what ways we had remained remarkably the same.

Now, it turned out, we have a new commonality. We have given our lives to preaching and Bible study. We have shared the gospel with other people's kids and now with singles and young couples and students the age of our own children. Yet we both have the gnawing, nagging feeling that our own kids haven't taken it very seriously.

Over sandwiches at lunch we talked about it-about grandkids, about divorce, about disappointment, but also about pride and loyalty and openness. No parent is reluctant to regale hearers with tales of offspring's ...