The Trellis: Transmitting Faith Through Community

I have long been familiar with Christian Smith’s research on the outsized role that non-parental adults play in the transmission of faith to our children. I've heard talks on it, read the literature, and even woven it into presentations I’ve given to families. Summarizing the data in a recent Church Life Journal article, Michael Rota and Stephen Bullivant conclude, "When children grow up with many supportive Catholic adults in their lives, that increases their likelihood of remaining Catholic, even holding all the other factors fixed. Grandparents, friends, parents, mentors, youth ministers and other non-parental adults can make a big difference." 

This made sense to me intellectually. But this past fall, when one of my sons came home for his first college break, I saw the important role of religious community play out in real time. Early one Saturday morning, my son surprised me by joining me for a talk at my parish men’s group. Far from suffering through an awkward morning with his dad, he loved it.

Over coffee and donuts afterward, I found myself asking him if he was ready to go.“Just connecting with my guys,” he said with a smile as we walked to the car. He then listed five men by name—men who had been regulars at our Catholic café where he worked, volunteered with the youth group, served as chaperones for a youth retreat, hired him to detail their car, or were parents of his friends. Each man was genuinely curious about his first month of college. And this experience is not unique to my church: whether a family attends a Catholic parish, a mainline Protestant congregation, a nondenominational church, or nowhere at all—the need for a stable, rooted community beyond the nuclear family is universal. 

A Trellis of Faith

Plants show us something similar. When the wind hits a tree, it releases a growth hormone called auxin, strengthening the roots and making the plant more resilient. Without it, even a tall plant becomes brittle and collapses in a storm. Vines do this too: their growing tips reach out for contact, and when they find a surface, they send out more tendrils. Adversity compels them to seek connection—and that very connection becomes their strength. 

It’s a truism to suggest that today’s families of faith are battered by stronger headwinds than ever before. As Rota and Bullivant outline, only 11% of those raised Catholic attend Mass today. While that number is as high as 60% for those raised Evangelical, every denomination faces the unprecedented rise of young people identifying as unaffiliated.But what parents may not realize is that these storms can activate their own spiritual “growth hormones”—a renewed desire for community, friendship, and in-person connection. Like vines reaching for a trellis, parents are instinctively seeking support structures for themselves and for their children’s formation. 

The need for a stable, rooted community beyond the nuclear family is universal. 

Even a cursory glance at today’s landscape of Catholic parish life attests to promising trellis-building trends. In The National Catholic Register, Zelda Caldwell outlines a number of emerging initiatives, including the Trinity House Community Groups sponsored by the ministry my wife and I co-founded. 
Together, these initiatives reflect what the Pillar’s JD Flynn recently characterized as “thick community.” Looking back on his upbringing, he writes, 

And because of that community, I can name a dozen adults whose own Christian faith was influential to me as a child — people who were not my parents, whose Christianity was palpably the animating force of their lives, and who were invested in my life.

Summarizing the trends, Michael Rota told the Register,

If you’re getting together in community and doing religious formation together and living a Christian life together, that’s going to automatically mean that your kids are doing a lot of the things which we know will make it more likely that they’ll really, strongly identify as Catholic.

This insight arguably translates to every community of faith today and highlights the importance of mentors and like-minded peers to raising spiritually resilient children. The presence of committed, faith-filled, non-parental adults often makes the difference between a nominal childhood faith and a lived, enduring one. 

Like vines reaching for a trellis, parents are instinctively seeking support structures for themselves and for their children’s formation. 

Families Need Thick Community

Of course, creating a Christian family culture at home also matters. The quiet rhythms deep within the home—church, family meals, family prayer, chores, hosting others—are the bedrock of giving our children the gift of our faith. But father of five and fellow Trinity House Community Group participant Justin Woodworth unpacked what happens when this is augmented by thick community. “I’m actually sitting with these 20 people,” he shared with the Register, “and we’re all relating about the same problems together, as opposed to just going to Mass together. It’s just a deeper level of getting to know the other families and other parents and to share the same struggles.”

Doing life alongside other families is no longer some vague academic concept for me. Seeing my son—standing in the parish hall, laughing with men who had quietly invested in him for years—brought this all home. Research tells us that faith-filled adults matter to the transmission of religious belief and practice. Community can make a difference. But watching my son reconnect with “his guys,” I realized something deeper: the trellis had already been built around him, one supporting piece at a time.

Soren and Ever Johnson are codirectors of Trinity House Community, a nonprofit with a mission to help families make home a taste of heaven. Parish-based Trinity House Community Groups are active in 15 states.