Discipleship Partners
EMPTY! Review, Triumphal Entry, Discipling Parents, and Flesh Wounds
Hey gang! Our state (and much of the midwest) had a nasty few days into and over the weekend dealing with severe thunderstorms, a handful of tornadoes, and a whole mess of rain. So I traded my writing anxiety for weather anxiety for a few days. It was a nice change of pace. All that to say, I hope you enjoyed a newsletter-less Friday last week as much as I enjoyed my Friday without writing.
This week, we’re wrapping up our march through How to Teach Kids Theology. In this chapter Sam and Hunter (we’re moving to first names after eight weeks, sorry for being so casual guys!) move their conversation away from church and into the home. They begin by highlighting the truth that most of a child’s discipleship doesn’t happen inside the walls of the church, but in their own home with their family.
Even if your family gets their annual perfect attendance pin for Sunday School, and your church is holy enough to give kids an entire ninety minutes of instruction, that’s less than 80 hours of time spent in a classroom each year. Compare that to all the time they spend at home each week, and it’s barely a drop in the bucket. So, if we want our ministries to be building disciples that love and serve Jesus, we’ve got to find ways for them to grow outside of our classrooms on Sunday. In short, churches MUST partner with parents for this discipleship to be fruitful.
Partner, they argue, is the right word because both parties need each other. The church needs parents to ensure that theological training/discipleship is happening consistently outside of Sundays. The church simply doesn’t have enough time in front of kids to give them a full picture of the gospel. The church needs help! Parents need the church’s community of encouragement and depth of understanding and guidance that only it can provide. It’s difficult for either parents or the church to be effective without the other. We need this symbiotic relationship.
The church then provides encouragement and equipping. Parents need to be reminded that they’re called by God to model their faith before their children. They spend more time with their kids that anyone else, and therefore have more opportunity to pass along the truth of the gospel to them. It’s easy for parents to lose sight of this, to get discouraged about their efforts, or feel like they don’t have what it takes to do the work God has laid before them. So we encourage them, reminding them that God has given them his Spirit, and will empower them to do this work.
Encouragement is important, but it’s only half the recipe. We also have to equip the parents in our church. They need to know and understand what it is that they’re passing along to their kids. The need tools in their tool belt that they can use to do the work of spiritual formation in the home. These tools should be accessible (easy to find and understand), doable (clear and easy to follow), and measurable (easy to track and examine fruit). They walk through each of these pieces and provide valuable sets of questions to help you evaluate whether your current framework meets these standards.
The reality is, it doesn’t matter if parents are at a church with all these systems in place if they don’t have a faith of their own to pass down to their children. You can’t give away what you don’t have. We must encourage our parents to love, follow, and serve Jesus faithfully themselves. Parents need to live a life of faith before their children, sharing their suffering and failure, demonstrating their trust in Jesus, showing their own deep commitment to word and prayer, etc. Our kids need more than empty words, they need to see our own changed hearts and lives.
Our children need to see this lifestyle of faith consistently. “Consider smooth stones in a calm creek. They aren’t shaped by sporadic blasts of water but by a gentle, consistent stream of water over time. Our children are shaped in the same way.” We should consistently be reaching for a low-grit sandpaper, and only dragging out the hammer and chisel occasionally. Parents will see more growth from a month of daily conversations seasoned with grace and love than from a quarterly lecture about everything that needs to change.
Finally, they encourage ministry leaders to find ways to train and pour into these parents so that they’re ready to engage and disciple their kids well at home. This section is incredibly practical, including resource lists to point parents to, ways to hold family issues before your congregation, and how to encourage parents toward a focus on word and prayer. Most of this doesn’t require a huge budget influx, but will require some thoughtful calendar planning and inclusion within what your ministry values within your vision/values. They’ve not asking you to blow up anything you’re already doing, but instead inviting you to consider ways to leverage your voice in the lives of your parents to point them toward this work of consistently shepherding their kids.
It’s easy to gloss over this chapter as just a call to engage parents, but I’d urge you to take this part of the project seriously. While what happens in your classrooms on Sunday mornings is certainly valuable, without reinforcement and diving deeper at home, real change is going to come much more slowly. It’s nearly impossible to overemphasize the importance of Jesus-loving parents who are intentional about sharing their life and faith with their kids. Ministry leaders MUST find ways to encourage and equip parents toward that work of faithfully pointing their kids to the Savior they so desperately need.
Huzzah! It’s been a fun ride, but there’s something about finishing a book and learning some things that feels great. I never intended to write an eight-week book review, but thanks for reading along all the same. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you and your ministry, and Sam and Hunter’s book is on your radar as you wrestle with how to build your ministry, train your team, and pour into your parents. Keep fighting the good fight as you keep your hands to the plow of ministry wherever the Lord has you. See you here next week.
EMPTY! Review (Kids Ministry, Books)
“While the resurrection story is central to our faith, it’s a story most Christians are so familiar with that it becomes easy to breeze right by the empty tomb. We’ve heard the story so many times that we don’t stop to consider this picture of God’s abundant love and mercy that he offers through his Son’s life, death, and resurrection. We could use a fresh entry point to remind believers how massive this moment of sacrificial generosity and overwhelming grace actually is.” Our pal, Joshua Cooley, has a new kids book out that uses an interesting idea to help kids wrap their head around the resurrection. Does something being empty always have to be bad news, or is there a possibility that something empty might actually be good? Check out my full review of his latest over on the blog.
Triumphal Entry (Kids Ministry, Books)
“Darkest Night records the last week of Jesus’s life, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the sealing of his body in the tomb. It includes the story of the darkest night in history—the night of Jesus’s death and burial. Matthew, Mark, and Luke record that at the moment of Jesus’s death, darkness covered the earth.” Full disclosure, I haven’t laid my hands on this new book from Marty Machowski yet, but since Easter is right around the corner I wanted to go ahead an highlight it for you in case you’re looking for some devotional content at home or at church. I LOVE this beautifully colored cover illustrations, and the idea of shifting from darkness to light from Palm Sunday through Easter week is a cool idea. This blog post highlights how they envision this book being used, and includes the first story (The Triumphal Entry) for you to preview. I haven’t met a Machowski book that wasn’t terrific, so I imagine this one will be worth your time.
Discipling Parents (Student Ministry, Kids Ministry)
“If we’re serious about making disciples, we need to get serious about parent discipleship. Youth ministry is great, small groups are essential, and Sunday sermons matter. But if we’re ignoring the role of parents in shaping the faith of their kids, we’re missing the most critical piece of the puzzle, and we are starting to see the pieces fall out.” This piece from Zac Workun fits perfectly with the our discussion of the final chapter of How to Teach Kids Theology up above. Sometimes it’s good to hear similar things from different voices, so here’s another exhortation to provide meaningful encouragement, training, and community for your parents so that they’re able to press into the God-given work of discipleship at home with their kids. Zac gives a biblical argument about why caring for parents is essential to ensuring that family discipleship is taking place, and follows it up with some practical advice on how to get the ball rolling.
Flesh Wounds
Welp, we’re heading into day three of online school here in Louisville thanks to all the flooding that comes with a city nestled next to a river after 12+ inches of rain. We’re fine, and hopefully the water will begin to lower in the next day or two, but our last couple of days with everyone home have been peppered with our boys threatening one another as battles rise up over noise levels during homework, unfair Switch turns, and who gets to lay on which part of the couch. It’s all very serious. Thankfully, no one’s put an eye out quick like this, but it’s not off the table yet. Hope your week is smoother and drier than ours!
Grateful for this each week!