Supporting Families with Home Discipleship

“I want to support what families are doing at home. Not overloading them or pressuring them but… they are the ones reading the bible with their children while I can’t.”

That’s what I’m hearing from lots of children’s ministers, as COVID restrictions continue to prevent face to face ministry. This time has highlighted (again) the importance of church leaders effectively partnering with parents in raising children to know and love Jesus. 

It makes sense to support parents in raising their children to know Christ. Usually leaders don’t need to be convinced why, and that’s before we consider what the bible says about equipping each other towards maturity and unity in Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13), the shared responsibility of teaching the next generation (Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Psalm 78) and encouraging each other with the Word (Colossians 3:16).

Sometimes, however, leaders feel unsure about how to meaningfully support parents. There are so many reasons: some leaders are much younger than parents, some are parents themselves and feel like they are ‘not good enough’ to offer advice to others, some don’t want to put any pressure on parents to ‘do more’ when life is already so busy. Then there is what to actually do… what to offer, how much, and what to do when it works for some but not for others.

There’s no silver bullet but here’s a few suggestions:

1.      Genuine support is not about having all the answers but being alongside others in the journey of discipleship. As a parent, I can tell you that I get tired at times of being the one who needs to bring the energy to family prayer time or bible reading. It’s really lovely when someone else asks how it’s going or shares a new idea or prays for me. Usually this might be part of the conversation at morning tea after church or at bible study, but during lockdown, it’s got to be an intentional phone call or personal email (phone calls are better).

How could you be getting alongside the parents in your congregation?

2.      It’s good to give people options as every family is different, with a different mix of ages, stages, maturity and different degrees of comfort with discussing faith. Sharing new stuff like podcasts or resources like Kids Read or Kids Pray, or reviewing new books can be really helpful to keep home discipleship on people’s minds as something valuable and important. It might be possible to share this around with other leaders or members of the congregation and giving them the opportunity to share what they do and what it looks like for them.

Do you have a resource-sharing culture for families in your churches? Are there times in the service or ways you could share ideas (facebook group, weekly emails)?

3.      It’s good to give choice but sometimes it’s good not to. Often serving and loving one another means laying down our own preferences for the good of others. So, while my family might prefer to do bible reading a certain way usually, there is also benefit in setting that aside for a time so we can participate in something the whole church is doing together. There is great encouragement in knowing that others are reading the same passages on the same days and the accountability motivates me when I might otherwise let things slide. We’ve found that churches that do the 555 home discipleship challenge all together see this benefit, and it is a blessing to everyone in the church, not just those at one particular stage of life.

Could your church try something ‘all in’?

4.      Encourage personal bible reading as a valuable habit. While it’s great to encourage families to be reading God’s Word together (and praying and singing), sometimes this is not really a viable option. Perhaps there are children or youth with parents who refuse to talk about faith of any type, perhaps parents juggle shift work and regular time together as a family is rare, perhaps the family is dealing with other significant pressures (like a serious health condition). In these cases, the best thing you may be able to do is be gently and regularly encouraging the young person to be reading and praying on his own. This continued support could make all the difference. Encouraging personal bible reading is also something to help parents direct their teenagers to as they head towards independence.

Is encouraging regular personal bible reading part of your vision for young people in your church?

5.      Provide links to others within the church family. This one is particularly for families with teenagers, as parents watch their teens look beyond the family for role models. Within the church family, we can become ‘aunts’, ‘uncles’, ‘brothers’, ‘grandparents’ to each other’s children and youth, stepping in to point them to Jesus. Often we want this within our congregations but it is hard to establish and it takes time. Church leaders can facilitate this by setting up semi-formal networks of support and encouragement. These could be prayer partners, unofficial godparents, families that agree to share a meal once a month to intentionally encourage each other in this area. It could be connecting people who are at similar stages or very different life stages. The value is in sharing the burden, not going it alone, and benefiting from the energy and experience of others.

Are there networks of relationships within your church families where children, youth and parents can be encouraged?

Working out what is best in your context can be tough, and it’s good to pray, discuss widely and find out what people are already doing. It’s always better to try something than be paralysed with fear or indecision over details.

There may also be wisdom in not introducing too much new stuff during a time of stress and uncertainty. If families in your congregation are not used to church leaders encouraging and resourcing home discipleship, then now might not be the moment. The first step may be starting small with building relationships of trust with parents. Call and say hi, start getting to know them more, ask what you can be praying for them.

Success doesn’t look like a perfectly organised system of homemade devotions to perfectly match the sermon. It doesn’t mean everybody uses everything you send out. Success is loving those specific families in front of you, doing your best with what you’ve got, faithfully pointing people to Jesus through the Word, and praying about it and for all involved.