In venturing out from the familiarity of the established church environment to start again and re-imagine church, one of the core issues for Danelle and I to consider was how we would look after our children away from Sunday schools, kid’s ministries and youth groups. It’s a question overseas missionaries have been facing for years, but for most in the western world it just seems normal practice for children to learn about faith through the various mechanisms in church.
While these different ‘aids’ can be helpful and can assist parents with the discipleship of their children they can also be used as a substitute for godly parenting and thoughtful engagement with the faith development of our own kids. I am grateful that over the last few years I have been able to participate deeply in the lives of my children as they have grown to know Jesus. They are still only 6 & 4 years old but it has been great to see their faith develop and a real, albeit childlike, love for God emerge.
It was a short time ago that it dawned on me just how vital our input and role modeling is to the children we raise. On a Monday morning after making the kids breakfast I let them know I was going to spend some time in my study ‘talking to Jesus’. They have seen me do this each day and it is just part our routine now.
My 6 year old daughter Ellie, asked ‘Daddy can I talk to Jesus with you some day?’
‘Sure honey’ I answered. ‘Finish your breakfast, grab your Bible and come in!’
I began wondering what to do and how to teach my 6 year old daughter to speak to Jesus…
She arrived five minutes later with her ‘Bible for Little Hearts’, a children’s book with one verse per page. As she sat on my lap we read two verses and discussed together what they were saying to us. We then took some time to pray for the people we know. She would pray a sentence, then it was my turn and so on. After that we would stop in quietness for a minute or so and ‘listen’ to Jesus, seeing if we could hear the voice of the spirit speaking to us. (Inevitably Ellie hears God telling her that he loves her!) The whole process took just 3 or 4 minutes, but I found she came back quite regularly in the mornings to sit with me and ‘talk to Jesus’.
Then a morning came when I was heading out for breakfast and I couldn’t spend the time with her. She was concerned, wondering what she would do, when I heard her say ‘Its ok dad, I know what to do now. You can go’. As I walked out the door I saw her sitting in my office armchair with her Bible open reading a verse of scripture. It was wonderful to see that she had ‘got it’ and didn’t need me there. But the most encouraging bit was yet to come…
When I got home that afternoon my wife told me that shortly after I had left, her little brother Sam came in and asked if he could speak to Jesus too. So, knowing what to do now, Ellie placed her brother on her lap and began to teach him the same process I had gone through with her. They read scripture, prayed for friends and listened to God. She was discipling her 4 year old brother and teaching him how to encounter Jesus. I was reminded again that discipleship is not rocket science. (Danelle secretly took the photo below!)
I realise the teenage years are still a way off and they are always testing times, but my conviction is that the time we invest in our own children’s discipleship is the most critical time of all. We may be privileged to be part of churches with excellent programs or we may have other adults who love our kids and lead them to Jesus, but at the end of the day the biggest privilege and the greatest responsibility still rests with us.
The dislocation we have experienced as a family has actually been the catalyst in helping me discover the joy of investing in my own children. I know there are some who worry for us, that we lack the resources of a larger church, but quite honestly, I am confident that the best people any child could have to help them on a faith journey are the ones who love them most!
That was a great post. Very encouraging for us to read, and for you also I imagine.
Thanks for that hamo!
Good post, Hamo. I also reckon its in the stuff of life that the kids learn the most about Jesus. We have a growing list of prayer requests as part of our grace before dinner (missionaries, sponsor kid, that sort of thing). Sometimes ‘thanks for the food’ gets missed. It’s giving the kids a wider world view as well.
P.S. problem is if the food gets cold when they all want a turn!
thanks for this post Hamo. I have been wondering these questions for myself, and have felt strongly for a while now that it is time for Christian families to stop “contracting out” discipleship of our children. We are a small church too, and don’t have Sunday school etc. I like your simple model, and I think my little one will enjoy that when she learns to talk!
Its amazing what we stumble upon by accident isn’t it?
I don’t claim any great wisdom in all of this! i just happened to be there at the time.
But then again, maybe that’s part of what it takes…
that’s precious – and I can’t escape the “make disciples” lesson in that as well. I make a disciple who makes a disciple and so on…and it really should be THAT easy and THAT “quick”. beautifully and profoundly simple
Hey mate – the same questions have been running through my head for obvious reasons, but what you said about what you do with the kids was a real challenge to me. I’ve a feeling I’ve been a little lacksadaisical in this area – and now with Sunday School no longer on the horizon it’s time to step up to the plate. Thanks heaps
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great encouragement… thanks mate
Every single night before bed my dad would do devotions with me and my brother. I still remember those devotions TODAY. I was only 4 but there are some things that you never forget (or learn)
I meant…there are some things that you learn and never forget. 🙂
And some things you learn to forget!
true…true… 🙂
This is such a major issue to me, yet I really didn’t discover this idea of the parents being the primary spiritual providers until my last church. We were there for six years, and I think Doug harped on that theme at least once a month when releasing the kids to Super Church. I have truly tried to do this more, and homeschooling certainly helps, but it’s still an area I need more work in, especially during the summer, since we’re obviously not homeschooling. Thanks for the encouragement, Hamo.
This is a good point Hamo. Parents can often be the prime disciplers of their children and we often struggle and sometimes offload that responsibility to “the church”. However, there’s an old proverb that says “it takes a whole village to raise a child” and so ideally children and young disciples for that matter should have other key people that reflect Christ in their world.(I’m not saying that your kids don’t have but I have seen parents that want to take sole resposibilty for their kids by isolating them from other influences)
On a different tack as I read this I was reminded of a David Meece song I think it’s called
My Father’s Chair.
Good on ya
thanks for sharing this story hamo
it was inspiring
and I dont’ even have kids!?!
You are so right Terry!
And we are glad for our ‘village’. My only hope is we don’t let the village become the main source of our kids faith dev.
Good stuff, Hamo. Allow me to think out loud…
Certainly the temptation to underestimate and undervalue children’s spiritual comprehension is high. But, as God reveals to us time and again in His Word, parents ARE the chief spiritual teachers of their children. This is a scary prospect since our children watch us all the time and soak it all up like a sponge. If we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, our children learn to do the same. If we say with our lips we love Jesus, but don’t love Him with our life, our children learn to do the same. If we say we love our neighbour, but demonstrate with our actions that we couldn’t care less about our neighbour, our children learn to do the same.
The wonder of Jesus is that his teachings are profoundly simple. It is not our physical or intellectual maturity that allow or prevent us from understanding the essential truths that Jesus was trying to convey in his teachings, it is our spiritual maturity that allows us to understand or “see” what Jesus is teaching us. I readily submit that I have met some 7-year-olds who are more spiritually attune than some 70-year-olds. In my endeavours to teach about the Kingdom of God to others, I am quickly discovering that if it is a teaching that a child cannot learn from then that teaching is not from Jesus.
[…]Just as parents do not abdicate responsibility for their children’s education when they send them to school, neither does “the church” bear the primary responsibility for our children’s spiritual upbringing. That rests with the parents. Daunting as that challenge may sometimes be, it holds the promise of a shared journey in which child and parent alike become a mutual blessing in truly learning from God through one another.
Our friend Hamo from Perth, Australia, vividly shares this simplicity in a recent post, telling about a revelatory experience with his daughter, Ellie. Hamo writes:
“It was a short time ago that it dawned on me just how vital our input and role modeling is to the children we raise. On a Monday morning after making the kids breakfast I let them know I was going to spend some time in my study ‘talking to Jesus’. They have seen me do this each day and it is just part our routine now.
My 6 year old daughter Ellie, asked ‘Daddy can I talk to Jesus with you some day?’
‘Sure honey’ I answered. ‘Finish your breakfast, grab your Bible and come in!’
I began wondering what to do and how to teach my 6 year old daughter to speak to Jesus…”
A quiet smile and a nod of the head to Hamo for this post and to Terry for making us aware of the beautiful song in the video below, entitled My Father’s Chair by David Meece.
Read the rest of Hamo’s wonderful post.[…]
Nameless, Faceless Love: What Do We Do With The Children?
Hi,
As a minister with a 4-year-old daughter and nearly-3-year-old son, and without much church support for them, I found this story moving and inspiring. I happen to be preaching this weekend on prayer, so I hope you don’t mind but I’d like to incorporate part of this story into one of my sermons. I hope that’s OK with you. I will credit you!
Thanks for that. As a parent of young kids myself its an issue I care a lot about.
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