Good News For Family Life
We wanted to say a big thank you for your support, so decided to do something different – check out the video below.
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This post is coming to you a little late this week, but we think we have a reasonable excuse…
On Saturday we were very excited to welcome to the world our second son, Boaz Henry Thomson. He came 15 days early and is a lovely little bundle of squidge, weighing in at 6lb 11oz (so more than a pound less than Reuben!) There were many answers to prayer with the labour and he seems to be establishing well with feeding so, if you get chance, do give thanks to Jesus for his kindness to us.
Please accept our apologies if things are a bit slower on the blog over the next few weeks – we’re going to be pretty busy with a bit more than usual actual parenting, rather than writing about it.
We do have some exciting posts lined up already however, so hopefully we’ll be able to keep things going. These early days of sleep-deprived, hormone-excess fuelled extremes do throw up some interesting and wonderful times, so we’re sure there’ll be lots we’ll be wanting to share with you.
Watch this space, and thank you for your support!
It’s been a while since we’ve done a round-up, so here are 5 really great blog posts we think you should read.
30 Things You Can Do This Summer To Deepen Your Kids’ Faith by Natasha Crain
A great read at the beginning of the summer. This post includes lots of ideas for how to engage your kids in fruitful conversations about their faith. We’ve only recently discovered this blogger, but we think she has some really helpful things to say. Her blog is all about raising Christian kids’ in a secular world – apologetics for parents and for kids.
Moms, Jesus Is The Hero Of Your Birth Story by Victoria Wilson
I (Cathy) am getting closer to giving birth by the day. The baby is due in just 3 weeks time. Reuben’s birth was traumatic. This time I’m hoping for a more peaceful, natural and shorter birthing experience. This blog is a great reminder that whatever our birth stories, Jesus is the hero of them. Here’s an excerpt:
“The next time you’re in a playgroup and the story swap begins, know you can tell a better story. You’ll have a wonderful opportunity to testify to your weakness and Christ’s strength. Speak to the groaning of creation and the longing for a Savior. Share the ultimate example of life coming out of death and suffering in the cross. Birth is a ready-made opportunity to talk about Jesus.”
Who Needs a Tough Father by Krish Kandiah
A helpful post addressing the criticism that Dads so often receive in today’s society. It’s hard to be a dad. It’s even harder to be an adoptive or foster dad – but it’s something which is so worthwhile.
Why Christians Should Embrace Pokémon Go by Matt Adcock
Like it, loathe it, or know little about it, what we cannot deny is that Pokémon Go is currently sweeping over our culture like a wave. This article gives some reasons why we should embrace Pokémon Go. Wherever you land on this one, it’s probably worth landing there in an informed way, because if your children are of a certain age they’ll almost certainly be engaging with this cultural moment. This article is a good place to start.
How To Raise A Low Media Child by Mindy Wood
Not a Christian resource but very helpful all the same. If you feel your child is having too much screen time (now that you’ve got them obsessed with Pokémon Go!), then this article gives lots of helpful advice on how we can encourage little children to play independently and thus be less dependent on screens. This is a skill we’d certainly like Reu to develop over this next year while we’re preoccupied with little baby Thomson.
Let us know how you find these articles in the comments below. Please point us to any other articles on Christian parenting that you’ve found particularly useful!
You may have noticed that this week, for the first time, we didn’t manage to publish a new blog post. Life got very busy and we just ran out of time – sorry about that! Normal service should resume next week.
We wanted to take this brief hiatus to issue an invitation. As you may know (if you’ve followed the blog for a while), we’re expecting the birth of our second child in the next month or so. As such, we’re trying to be realistic about what the implications of this might be on the blog, and we know that we might struggle to get a post written each week. Rather than see this is a problem, we thought we could use it as an opportunity.
That’s where you come in to it!
We’d love to welcome a number of different contributors to the blog over the next little while through a series of guest blog posts. We already have a number of people lined up, and we’re super excited by some of the posts that we’re going to be sharing before too long.
Could this be you? Do you have something that you could contribute to the blog, to help us and our readers think about gospel-centred parenting from a different angle? Perhaps you have a story to tell or an experience to reflect on? Maybe you’ve been thinking about a particular aspect of parenting from a Christian perspective and you’d like to share your thoughts? Have you been struck by a particular Bible passage, or an aspect of the character of God, and how that can shape and direct the way you see parenting, or the way you parent?
If you have an idea for a blog post, why not get in touch? Either contact us on scott@gospelcentredparenting.com, fill in the form below, or if you know us personally, get in touch.
We’d love to hear from you.
We love God, and we’d love our children to grow up knowing him and loving him themselves.
There are so many things that we’d love to teach them – we could write a list of 100 things we want our children to know about God but most of you would stop reading before the end and in any case we still wouldn’t have exhausted everything.
Instead we’ve picked 5 things. Not the 5 most important, just 5 key things.
Our children learn about God through all sorts of means: through the Christian community that we’re part of; through what they learn in kids’ church activities; through what we read with them in the Bible; through our conversations as we go about life; through watching our lives… we could go on.
But here are 5 of the things that we hope our children learn about God through all of these means.
There’s pressure all around children (and adults!) in this world to “be” something. Pressure to perform in a certain way. Pressure to be funny. Pressure to look a particular way. Pressure to be smart, or sporty, or popular.
It’s easy for children to feel weighed down by people’s expectations of who they should be, and to feel they have to live up to certain standards in order to be accepted.
The liberating reality of the gospel is that God doesn’t expect us to come to him with anything in order to accept us. He wants us to come to him as we are, warts and all, and what’s more he LOVES us as we are. Jesus has done all of the performing that we need, and has borne our inadequacies in his body on the tree. What a weight off their shoulders!
God accepts our children. Nothing will get in the way of that. And in that context of full and free acceptance, God wants our children to flourish. He wants to work in them to deal with self-destructive and other-people-hurting habits, thoughts and attitudes so that they can flourish. He does this for their good, and for the good of those around them.
What’s more, he’s created them with abilities and passions that he wants them to run with, to his glory.
Our children don’t need to set aside their ambitions, passions and gifting in order to be Christians. Rather, they can see that God has given these things to them to use for his glory, and so they can go about seeing how they can best develop and nurture them to use them for good.
Again: what a weight off their shoulders. They don’t need to prove their worth through what they achieve in life. Their worth is defined and maxed out in their unimpeachable standing as adopted children of God. So rather than seeking to prove their worth through what they can achieve, they can use their talents and gifting to bring God glory, not themselves.
It’s a guarantee that our children will one day come face-to-face with suffering and adversity. We all do. We want our children to know this, to expect this, and to be able to cope when it happens.
We want them to have a Biblical theology of suffering that doesn’t offer trite and easy answers.
We want them to weep in the face of suffering, just like Jesus.
We want them to be able (even when they don’t understand God’s purpose in suffering) to lean on their knowledge of the good character of God and his hope for this world to get them through.
We want our children to know that our God is a God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who for eternity have existed in a relationship of love.
Why is this so important? Because out of this flows everything.
Why did God create? Not because he was lonely – because our eternally love-giving God wanted to extend this love to more, and to invite others in to the community.
How did God create us? In his image. Part of our very identity is our need for community, because we’re made like our community-God.
Why did God save us (aside from drawing us in to enjoy the loving Trinitarian community of God)? He saved us to bring us into the community of the church– we want our children to see church as a wonderful blessing that flows from the very nature of God.
We could go on, but we want our children’s vision of God to be deeply Trinitarian, and all the richer for it.
There’ll be numerous voices in culture that will speak in opposition to the Christian worldview – that’s becoming more and more apparent. It will be tempting for our children to think that God is killjoy – that he’s unnecessarily limiting what people can do.
There will be some things that culture will accept as perfectly normal that the Bible does not – our children will grow up in that climate and will inevitably imbibe some of it. The danger is that they may then see God’s restrictions as him being a killjoy.
We want our children to see that God is the source of all joy. He created humanity not to stop us having fun, but so that we could experience life to the full. Sometimes what he says won’t seem to our children like life to the full. But we want them to have a deep sense of how God is for them – he wants them to have a deep and lasting joy. So even when they don’t understand why God has said something, we want them to have a deep conviction that God is good, he is for them, and he is in pursuit of their joy, not out to kill it.
So there we have it. 5 things we want our children to learn about God. Do any of these resonate with you? What might you add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s been a momentous week for Great Britain. By a relatively small margin, Britain voted to leave the European Union. No one can be sure exactly how this will work out. At the moment, the only thing that we can be certain of, is that nothing is certain.
Having children (one in utero) has made us feel all the more keenly this sense of uncertainty and insecurity. We simply don’t know what the future holds for them. But as Christians there are some comforts we cling to at times like these.
We thought we’d post a few encouraging thoughts of how the gospel can give us hope and confidence for our children’s future when all seems unsettling. It’s not exhaustive and it isn’t filled with caveats and political musings – that’s intentional. Please do feel free to comment and we could start some interesting and edifying discussions. Cathy studied international politics and modern history at uni, so this sort of debate is right up her street. But simply a political debate about Brexit is not the purpose of this post.
So, onto the encouragements…
Throughout time and history God has been in control of all things. He has seen nations and empires rise and fall. He has seen rulers come and go. Nothing surprises him and nothing happens outside of his purposes. There have been many moments like this in history – where the future seems uncertain and scary, oftentimes for God’s people themselves. But God’s unfailing character, his steadfast love, his faithful rule and his purposes in human history remain the same. What a comfort!
“O LORD, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations?“
2 Chronicles 20:6
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
Romans 13:1
God is kind and generous. He loves to give us good gifts and he works in the midst of our circumstances. His working for our good doesn’t always mean we get the easy route – quite often the opposite is true! But in all things he does work for our good. He’s demonstrated that he is good in countless ways: through creating an amazing universe for us to inhabit; by revealing himself to people throughout history through prophets, miracles, the bible and ultimately Jesus; by giving Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins – making relationship with God and forgiveness possible; and by promising that he will recreate the universe in perfection in the future. If he’s got the masterplan covered, then we can trust he’s got this covered too. He is good and can be trusted.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28
God is not some cosmic watchmaker who winds up the clock of the universe and then steps back and is uninvolved. God is relational. He is intimately involved in what is going on in the world. He hears and answers the prayers of his people, and he wants us to live peaceful and quiet lives in the nations where he’s put us. He wants us to seek the good of the places that we live. He wants our political environments to be conducive to religious freedom and civil liberties. He wants this to be the case so that everyone will have an opportunity to hear the message of Jesus.
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
1 Timothy 2:1-4
How encouraging is this!
So whatever the future holds for our children in the changes to come for Great Britain, for the European Union, and for the world we can live with hope, trusting our heavenly father with the future. Because in the end he’s sovereign, he’s good and he cares. And ultimately he loves our children far more than we do.
Our baby boy turned two last weekend – how did that happen?
These days are so precious. So often we wish we could put these smiles, these giggles, these slobbery kisses, these first clumsy sentences, these wide-eyed looks of wonder, these “firsts” in a little box for safe keeping. Our boy is so trusting, so cuddly, so affectionate, so dependent, so cute – so childlike. We’ve lost count of the number of times people have told us to “enjoy him” now before he grows up, because the time flies and they don’t stay tiny for very long.
Already he’s grown up so much, and there’s so much that we’ve forgotten. If it wasn’t for video clips, photos and blog posts of milestones then we would have forgotten even more. As we sort out his old clothes ready for baby number two, we think “how was he ever that small?” And as we watch him sleep in his cot, face crunched-up on the mattress and breathing deeply, we think “I don’t ever want you to grow up, I wish you could stay this small forever.”
But let’s face it, the days where our children can fit their entire body on our laps, or have dimples in their chubby hands, or squeal with excitement when they see us come through the front door are limited. It’s sad, but c’est la vie! The natural thing is for children to grow up into adulthood and to perhaps one day have babies of their own – and then we get the joy all over again! But this time with grandchildren.
But as Christians we can have even more of a consolation than just hoping for grandchildren one day. We believe that all people are immortal, that we have eternal souls, and that we all live forever – how mind boggling is that!
As C.S. Lewis once wisely said in his book, ‘The Weight of Glory’:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
How extraordinary! Our little blonde toddler will not just hopefully one day be a man; able to structure nuanced arguments, develop a career and shepherd his own family – but he is immortal! Our consolation and our hope is that our little boy’s heavenly glory will exceed any worldly ambitions that we can have for him – for God willing, if he trusts in Jesus, one day he will be transformed into the very image of Christ.
“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
1 Corinthians 15:50-52
Wow – how that changes our perspective! It gives our son (and us all) immeasurable dignity and purpose. And it helps us to remember that as we go about life doing ordinary human things, we are either helping or hindering our boy to get to his heavenly destination. What a responsibility, but what an amazing privilege too! It radically redefines our view of parenting. (Though let’s not forget – it’s all ultimately down to God’s grace, not us!)
But this gospel truth that we are eternal beings works deeply in our own hearts too. So, as we watch our little boy sleep in his cot, face crunched-up on the mattress and breathing deeply, we may be tempted to think “I don’t ever want you to grow up, I wish you could stay this small forever.” But then we remember that while this is a lovely stage, staying like this forever is not truly want we want for him. Thanks to Jesus, what is to come is immeasurably better.
Until Cathy was pregnant we didn’t realise quite how many different opinions are out there on parenting.
Take just one area of a newborn’s life as an example – how they are fed milk. You’ll find that there are not just two approaches (formula or breast milk), but stacks of them: on demand; attachment parenting; strict routine; tandem feeding; political agenda… the list goes on! I
mean really, how much is there to say on the topic of feeding a baby? Loads, it turns out.
Becoming a new parent is daunting – it’s not only the countless number of decisions you have to make on behalf of your little dependent, but add to that the criticism and comments of people around you about those decisions and it’s enough to make anyone nervous. These comments aren’t usually meant to be unkind, but nevertheless they can hurt. It turns out that this isn’t restricted to when you first become a parent. The decisions go on way beyond that. So it’s fair to say that the opinions of others and the pressure to get this parenting malarkey right can induce a fair amount of guilt.
As we say these things, we feel the pang of guilt that we’ve failed to live up to our own expectations for our child’s development/diet/hygiene etc, never mind anyone else’s! We haven’t even mentioned the times that we snap at our child in anger, are inconsistent with him out of laziness, or are grumpy with each other after a hard day. Parenting really is a minefield!
So what do we do when the inevitable happens and we cannot meet the parenting standards we feel we should reach? There are three possible options:
Let’s explore this further.
Recently we were reading a facebook status that the “Part-Time Working Mummy” (a writer) posted. It was a sentiment that some of our facebook friends had liked, shared, and generally felt comforted by. What she has to say is clearly appreciated by a lot of people – at the time of writing she had 44,508 likes on her Facebook Page (versus our 130!). Here’s the quote – please note that it had some explicit language so we’ve toned it down a bit and picked out some excerpts:
“So we are only into day 3 of ‘back to school’ and I’ve been a ‘[rubbish] mum’ repeatedly since Monday.
This weeks epic [mess] ups have included:
Leaving 2 coats worth £60 on the pavement because I was too busy trying to convince a 2 year old it’s ok to [wee] in a bush before we got back in the car […]
I gave Betsy no dinner money then remembered at 2pm when I was gorging on my own lunch at my desk so I had a melt down that she would either starve to death or be bullied for being poor.
Felt extra punctual and got the kids to school nice and early today – to remember on arriving I’d totally forgotten to collect my nephew on the way as promised.
I’ve done my usual – felt guilt, a load of rage and the usual feeling of being a totally [rubbish] parent; but then I thought…
A [rubbish] parent doesn’t feel like they’re failing because they’ve not read their child’s school book every night of the week or practised their spellings and there’s a chance they could have done better in that test if you had of.
A [rubbish] parent doesn’t sit in a meeting with a lump in their throat because they just couldn’t get the time off work to wear a high vis vest and help on the school trip to the zoo.
[Rubbish] parents don’t feel shame because their kids have eaten macdonalds more than twice in a week because they were just too exhausted to even think of what to cook for tea let alone make it.
All these things that make you feel like you’re being a [rubbish] parent actually means you’re an amazing parent – because you’re doubting yourself.
[Rubbish] parents don’t doubt themselves[…]
Instead of losing my [mind] which I was on the verge of doing I just thought [stuff] it – and took my babies to the park then we ate massive Ice creams just before tea.
As I sat there with my double honeycombe sugar waffle beast with a flake I decided […] so what that it’s been another week of kid drama – as long as our babies are fed, clean, loved, happy & not the spawn of Satan most of the time we must be doing something right – let’s not be so hard on ourselves.”
As you read that, no doubt many of the examples will have been a bit close to the bone – they were for us. So how do you comfort yourself when your parenting seems to go belly up?
Did you notice how this Mum comforted herself? It was using options 1 (feeling really guilty when confronted with her failings) and 2 (comparing herself to others as a remedy to feeling like a failure) from above.
Before you squirm in your seats and press the ‘X’ button on Scott and Cathy, the self-righteous and judgmental blog post writers, let us reassure you that this is a case study of our hearts too. We find it all too easy to comfort ourselves in exactly the same way – wallowing in guilt or comparing ourselves to others – often we do one immediately after the other! Condemnation and comparison comes too naturally to us, it’s the instinct of our hearts. But is there a better way?
In Romans chapter 6, Paul describes the battle that goes on in the life of the Christian. Here’s the passage and we’ll comment on it below:
“5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin – 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
It’s dense stuff isn’t it, but at the heart of it are some simple (and wonderful) truths. Here’s what he’s saying: we are united to Jesus. Our union with him is so tight that it means that what is true of him is true of us.
So Jesus died – we died with him. We could have a whole different blog exploring the implications of this. But in this section the implication is clear: “our old self was crucified with him so that… we should no longer be slaves to sin“. At the cross, Jesus dealt the killer blow to the mastery that sin has over us. We no longer have to give in to sin. We aren’t slaves to it. We have a new nature, and a new power – by the Holy Spirit living in us – to help us to stop sinning.
At this point you might be thinking “How is that good news? That just makes me feel even more guilty when I do mess up!”
Stick with us.
In Romans Paul is also very realistic about the Christian life. He makes it clear that while we are no longer slaves to sin, there is also a part of our hearts that still sends us towards sin’s cruel jaws. There’s a battle that goes on in the Christian heart that we don’t always win – sometimes we do give in to sin. That’s why Paul has to urge us to “count yourselves dead to sin”. He wouldn’t have to remind us of this if the battle with sin was a foregone conclusion. So we have to reason with ourselves, and remind ourselves that we can live differently. He says “do not let sin reign in your mortal body” – implication: there’s a choice – the battle with sin is part of the normal Christian life.
So there’s two bits of good news to this. One is that the battle you face as you seek to parent in a gospel-centred way, aren’t unexpected. The times you mess up aren’t don’t mean you’re not a proper Christian. This is part of the reality of the Christian life.
But the second bit of good news is this: you can change. You’re union with Jesus means that sin no longer has mastery over you. Inadequacy as a parent can gradually change over time. Our old self was crucified with Jesus, we live with him – change really is possible! Cling to that as you bemoan the reality of your parenting today.
But what good news does the gospel speak to us when the guilt of not living up to expectations weighs on us?
The ‘Parenting Law’ that we fail to live up to will be different for each one of us. It is a system that we have each invented to measure ourselves against. The commandments include our preferences for the nutrition, development and behaviour of our children; they include other people’s expectations and opinions of us; they will include some godly morals; and most impossible of all – they include a desire to be self-sufficient and perfect in our own eyes.
We will fail to live up to it. Sometimes we’ll really be crushed by the fact – we wanted to keep the law! Other times we despise the law and want to throw it out the window – let’s eat a double honeycombe sugar waffle beast with a flake! We’ll grovel in self-pity, we’ll excuse and justify our actions, we’ll criticise others, and we’ll believe that doing these things will make us feel better. But they won’t.
It’s interesting that the “Part-time working mummy” felt the need to share her experience on social media. What we think she was looking for is for other people to acquit her of her guilt. For other people to tell her that her actions were justified, that she is a good mum, that she can still be accepted in the parenting world.
When we mess up, we crave acquittal. We want to be declared “not guilty.” We want to be loved and accepted again. But there’s only really one opinion of us that truly matters – and there’s only one acquittal which can truly make us feel clean, forgiven, accepted and loved unconditionally. It’s the opinion of God. Hundreds of likes for a status on facebook may feel comforting, but it doesn’t bring true and lasting comfort. But we have good news – God loves to declare people “not guilty.” There’s nothing that God loves more than a broken person coming to his son Jesus for forgiveness, and whoever comes to Jesus for forgiveness will always be given it. That’s where Paul’s line of reasoning gets to in Romans. In chapter 8 he says this:
“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
There is an alternative option to condemnation and comparison! There is a soothing balm for our soul when we’re bruised by our own sense of inadequacies. Jesus is our remedy!
As Christian’s we are free to own our sin. When we are confronted by our failings (whether superficial or major) we can own up to it. We don’t need to deny it. We don’t need to be crushed by it. Not only is it an expected reality of the Christian life, but God sees it, justifies us in the midst of it and offers us grace and acceptance rather than condemnation. Then he slowly, by his Spirit, changes us.
We don’t need to shift the blame. We are sinners and we are broken.
But we have a saviour!
Jesus has delivered us. He has set us free from the law of sin and death. How? By living a perfect life in 100% obedience to God’s moral law, and dying in the place of messed up people, as our substitute.
Jesus received God’s judgement in our place and we go free.
We’re forgiven, but not just that, we are given all of Jesus’ perfection. When God looks at us, he doesn’t see sinful people – he sees people clothed in the perfection of his son. There is no condemnation for us – only love, acceptance, hope and freedom! What good news!
So, next time we feel the pang of guilt because we did something we’re ashamed of, let’s not feel condemned, let’s not excuse our behaviour in a comparison game, let’s run to Jesus.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
– Hebrews 4:15-16
This week we thought we’d do something a little different, and direct you to four great blog posts that we’ve read recently and thought you might like! We’d love for you to comment with any posts we’ve missed that you think we should read.
Parenting: The Joyful Impossibility, by Paul David Tripp
We love so much of Paul Tripp’s stuff. This is a great post which wonderfully reminds us of the need for God’s grace in parenting – both for us and for our children.
Worst Case Scenario
, by A Certain Brightness
As you may have read in our “About Us” page, we were heartbroken to suffer two miscarriages last year. We lost count of how many times we read this post during some of the darkest times during that period. It was a battle to not let dread fill our hearts or blanch the colour from our picture of the future. This gospel-centred post encouraged us to look up to him who is faithful, even as our eyes brimmed with tears.
What A Comedian Taught Me About Parenting, by Kevin DeYoung
This light-hearted post reminds us to savour the fun and the joys of parenting young children.
First Time Moms: 5 Reasons to Relax, by The Gospel-Centered Mom
Another humourous post to finish – this is a great post if you are a first-time parent (or know someone who is). Don’t worry, what you’re feeling is normal! It’s light-hearted, honest and accurate.
We’ve probably all heard of the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”. Most of us quite like it as a sentiment.
Becoming a new parent suddenly sheds light on how useful and necessary to survival your parents and friends are… for respite; for bringing food round after the birth; for being supportive and kind when you’re hormonal, sleep-deprived and in your pyjamas. The support that friends and family can give (for those of us who are fortunate to have these people around us) is deeply appreciated. In the days and weeks after our first child was born, we relied on family and friends in a way that we had never previously done so before. We were in a state of shock! As such, we were very thankful for the cake, cups of tea and company (well, most of the time!).
The midwife, health visitor and doctor constantly asked us during pregnancy and post-partum appointments, “Do you have good support around you?” and “Do you have family and friends close by?”
Now that we have a child, we know why. We definitely needed them. And though the kind of support we need changes over time, the need never goes away.
So yes, a village. A support network. Family and friends are definitely super helpful when raising a child, at least that’s definitely the case for us. And we’re so thankful for that help.
But does the same thing apply to the church? Do we really need the church to help us raise a child? How does that relationship work?
Something we found when reading resources on Christian parenting was that the main focus was on the family unit for evangelism and discipleship of our children. We’d want to commend this outlook – we would definitely say that family unit is the primary place where a child should be discipled.
It seems that these books are trying to correct a tendency for Christian parents to outsource discipleship to church youth leaders and Sunday school teachers. But our reflection is that the New Testament view of church is something much more holistic, much more inclusive, and much more collective. The family unit doesn’t seem to be the central feature of the New Testament – Christ and his bride, the church family, is. By church we’re not talking about an institution, but the people of God. God’s family. The community of believers.
There are (apparently) 100 uses of the word ἀλλήλων “one another” in the New Testament. These are commands given to the church family about how they are to live together. If you were looking for themes about what they are largely about, then loving each other, and the importance of unity in the church rank pretty high. Here are some examples:
Be devoted to one another in love (Ro 12:10)
Regard one another as more important than yourselves (Php 2:3)
Bear one another’s burdens (Ga 6:2)
Speak truth to one another (Ep 4:25)
Encourage and build one another up (1 Th 5:11)
Be hospitable to one another (1 Pe 4:9)
Be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving to one another (Ep 4:32)
In the glory days of the early church here’s how this happened:
”They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer[…] Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
(Acts 2v42; 46-47)
The community of believers were hanging out together, reading the Bible together, praying together and eating together.
Every day.
So what were the children up to?
Presumably they were involved too.
Assuming that the church community is a place for children, and assuming that God’s plan for his church is the regular fellowship of Christians… what does it look like for our children to be loved, encouraged, served, accepted etc by the church? What does it look like for us to do these “one anothers” for other people’s children?
Here are a few practical ideas.
Invite other people’s children into your life. Have a whole family round for lunch, or take another child from church swimming when you’re already going. Plan to invite another family from church along to an activity you’ve got planned – maybe going for a walk, or visiting the local museum. Organise a group to come round and watch the latest sports match, and invite some of the older children from church to join in. Arrange to have coffee once a fortnight with one of the teenagers in church who shares some similar interests with you.
Why not think about something you could do this next week to get to know some of the other children in church? Writing this has prompted us to think about how we can, with God’s help, be better at this too – we’ve come up with some practical steps that we’re going to take.
As all this happens, children have the opportunity to witness Christian community in action, and to experience the “one anothers” taking place.
One of the things we love about our church is how our weekly mid-week meeting seeks to include children. Each week we start at 6pm so the children can eat with us and be involved for the first half of our time together. Sometimes this is slightly chaotic, but it’s great to feel we are getting to know the children, and that they’re part of the church community. This, alongside an intentionality to share life outside of more “formal” meetings, means that the children are increasingly becoming part of our church community. How could you do this with people at your church?
In all of this, here’s the crucial ingredient: as you do these things, be intentional to chat to the children. Don’t just settle for children socialising with children, and adults with adults. Chat to the children. Get to know them. Find out what’s important to them. Find out what they hope for, what they fear, what is going on in their lives right now. Understand them. Share age-appropriate things about your life too. And as you go, speak the truth of the gospel into the situations they face – both the joys and the struggles. Show them how the gospel is impacting the way you go about life, and the way you respond to situations. Pray with them.
In John 13:35, Jesus is addressing his disciples for one of the last times before he goes to the cross. What he says here is really significant. He says this:
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
What’s he saying there? He’s saying that one of the primary ways that onlookers will see that we love and follow Jesus is this: by witnessing Christian community in practice. By seeing us loving one another.
What is true for our neighbours, colleagues, friends and relatives must also be true for our children.
We want to expose our children to the nitty-gritty of church life. We want them not solely to be farmed out to children-specific church programmes (though they have their place), but to be involved in the inter-generational, cross-cultural, socio-economic-divide-crossing network of relationships – to witness us doing the “one anothers”, and to be on the receiving (and ultimately giving!) end of them too.
We want them to see us self-sacrificially serve and love one another, just like Jesus.
We want them to witness our church family speaking deeply into one another’s lives about how the gospel impacts every area of life.
We want them to see that when we fall out we respond in a godly way as we extend grace and forgive one another, just like Jesus.
As they do, they see and experience a powerful apologetic for the gospel. And when they (Lord willing) become believers, they grow and are discipled in Christian community. They develop a robust, deep and broad view of how the gospel shapes every area of life. All of this takes place as our church families play their part in the raising of our children.
In writing this we’ve seen in ourselves a tendency to gravitate towards speaking to and spending time with adults when around church family. We really do believe, however, that we have a wonderful opportunity to invest in the lives of the children in our church, and so will be seeking to increasingly take these opportunities in future.
So these are our thoughts. The family unit is the primary place for the discipleship of our children. But the church can and should play an exciting and important part in displaying and proclaiming the gospel to our children, and raising them to be those who love Jesus and see how his kindness and grace wonderfully impacts everything.
What do you think? Why not share in the comments below your positive experiences of this, and ideas you have for how this be worked out in practice?
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