If you are serving in children's ministry you have most likely read Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions by George Barna.  If you haven't, you need to read it ASAP.  In his book he talks about the probability of people accepting Jesus Christ as their savior for a lifetime relationship.  His research puts the probability at:

32% for children between 5 and 13 years old,
4% for children between 14 and 18, and
6% for people 19 years and older.

In other words, attracting younger children to a church to learn about the love of God will have 5 to 8 times the impact of attracting the same number of older children or adults.  His finding is basically this: if you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior by the time you’re 13, the chances of you ever doing so are very slim.  Similarly, he says your spiritual foundation is in place by age nine and is unlikely to change after that.
 

Whether you are a children's minister, volunteer, or parent it's easy to see that Barna's research concludes what the Bible has already taught for years!
 

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."  Proverbs 22:6
 

If you are a Christian reading this, I don’t see how you can ignore these stats.  Children in our church represent the greatest opportunity to win souls for Christ.  I pray that this will encourage you to keep up the good work and reach kids for Christ!

My favorite quotes from the book

I had been seduced into believing the great myth of modern ministry: Adults are where the Kingdom action is. (p. 12)
 

In this book, I will focus upon understanding and affecting the lives of children in the heart of the youth cohort (i.e., children in the 5- to 12-year-old age range). This group, some 31 million strong, represents nearly half of the under-18-year-olds in the country. That's almost equal to the population of the entire state of California. Why focus on this particular slice of the youth market? Because if you want to shape a person's life--whether you are most concerned about his or her moral, spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional or economic development--it is during these crucial eight years that lifelong habits, values, beliefs and attitudes are formed. (p. 18)
 

A series of studies we conducted regarding the age at which people accept Christ as their Savior highlights the importance of having people in Jesus into their heart as their Savior when they are young. We discovered that the probability of someone embracing Jesus as his or her Savior was 32 percent for those between the ages of 5 and 12; and 6 percent for people 19 or older. In other words, if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim. (p. 34)
 

In other words, by the age of 13, your spiritual identity is largely set in place. (p. 34)
 

A large majority of young people believe that they know every major story and principle on which the Christian faith is based, and thus they feel secure in their understanding of Christianity. Consequently, more than 2 out of every 3 13-year-olds argue that they are closed to learning new biblical insights or correction regarding erroneous perspectives. Second, we find an astounding level of consistency between the religious beliefs of adults and children. This has two implications. Initially, it suggests that whatever beliefs a person embraces when he or she is young are not likely to change as the individual ages. (This is a variation on the "first impressions die hard theory.") (p. 37)
 

As you ponder how to invest your personal resources of all types of time, money, experience, ability, facilities, expertise and so on, keep in mind that there is no better investment than nurturing our youngsters for an eternal payback. (p. 42) ...this ones great to get more $$ for your budget!
 

Having devoted more than two decades of my life and all of my professional skills to studying and working with ministries of all types, I am now convinced that the greatest hope for the local church lies in raising godly children. (p. 49)
 

Where is the battlefront today? Is it to be found in the fight for the rights of the unborn or the call to outlaw homosexual behavior? Does it lie within the struggle to get adults to spend more than two hours per week at church of the hope of getting people to read the Bible every day? Will it be found at the heart of the culture wars, which pit biblical morality against the garbage imbedded in a lot of the movies, television and music to which we are exposed? Is the line in the sand drawn to separate those who selfishly work to accumulate resources for personal pleasure from those who seek to distribute resources more equitable? No, I believe the battlefront is found in the minds, hears and souls of our children. (p. 50)
 

Various studies have confirmed the results of some of our data: By the age of nine, most of the moral and spiritual foundations of a child are in place. From the time a child is born until he or she is in the early primary grades, the child is voraciously consuming cues and lessons related to each of the developmental dimensions. It seems that by the time he or she is nine; the child shifts mental gears and begins to use the cues he or she receives from that point forward to either confirm or challenge an existing perspective. It also appears that by the time the child has reached this age, it is much more difficult to change an existing view than to form a new view. (p. 58)
 

Our national surveys have shown that while more than 4 out of 5 parents (85 percent) believe they have the primary responsibility for the moral and spiritual development of their children, more than two out of three of them abdicate that responsibility to their church. (p. 78)
 

One of the lessons that wiser parents than I have learned is to remember that God cares a lot less about what we achieve that draws applause from the world, how many consecutive profitable quarters we led the corporation to amass, how clean and organized we kept our home or how many educational degrees we piled up than how we raise our children. (p. 89)
 

Conducting this research proved to be more difficult than expected for the following reasons: (1)virtually every church has a children's ministry; (2) families are a crucial segment of the population base for most churches; and (3) almost every congregation asserts that ministry to young people is an important aspect of its mission. However, when we examined what a church does and how it evaluates the efficacy of its work, we found that most churches simply go through the motions. (p. 97)
 

As a personal observation, I believe that if the pastor does not include the ministry to children as one of the top church priorities, the chance of that ministry reaching its potential and having a significant impact on the lives of the church's children is severely reduced. (p. 105)
 

There is no perceived value to using shortcuts or saving money when investing in the spiritual development of their children. (p. 116)