If your neighbourhood is anything like mine, you may have noticed the virtual absence of babies and young children. Sure, there are some, but I’m more likely to see people walking their dogs than a mom or a dad pushing a baby in a stroller or out for a bike ride with one of their kids.

Our society is changing—and probably not for the better. At one end of the age spectrum, couples are having fewer children, if they’re having any at all. In 2003, Canada’s fertility rate—the average number of children women will have in their lifetime—stood at 1.53. It has been hovering around that level for years. And the impact is being felt even now.

Fred Hirfst, executive director of the Federation of Independent Schools Association, says this “shrinking pool” is why he foresees little or no growth in B.C.’s independent school enrolment, despite the disenchantment of many parents with the public system.

During the last five or six years, he says, public schools in the province have lost upwards of 36,000 students, while independent schools have “increased by maybe by 5,000 to 6,000. Twenty-nine thousand students simply disappeared.”

It’s the opposite story at the other end of the age spectrum as more and more baby boomers head into their golden years. So put the two together—a shrinking birth rate and a ballooning number of seniors—and the implications for all of Canadian society are serious.

That includes the Church. Will there be enough young people to fill the positions vacated by aged pastors and priests, church planters, denominational leaders, missionaries and so on? What might it mean for the Christian witness, since it’s well known that children are the most receptive of all age groups to the gospel message?

For some churches, these are not new questions. But the way things are going, these sorts of issues could become more serious and more widespread.

Yet there could be an offsetting factor. Writing in USA Today, demographer Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, argues that the decision of many “progressive secularists” of the 1960s and ‘70s to eschew parenthood means they “will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of people who did raise children.”

In other words, writes Longman, “an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families”—values that are closely wedded to religious orthodoxy.

That phenomenon may help explain why abortion remains controversial so many years after it was legalized. As James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has argued, “It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents’ values.”

Obviously, there is no guarantee that the Church will benefit to any great extent from this. Much depends, as it always has, on how well churches and parents can communicate their faith to the next generation.

If they fail to uphold orthodoxy, then it is not inconceivable, for instance, that today’s churchgoing children could leave and align themselves with a religion that more closely reflects their values, such as Mormonism or Islam.

Years ago, churches were challenged to re-invent themselves to stay relevant to a liberal-minded “youth culture.” The coming challenge may be to appeal to their conservatism.