Sticky Faith for Families: How to Equip Parents

Over and over in the Bible, we see God's command to parents to pass on their faith. In this episode, Amber talks about the two modes of faith transformation: intentional and unintentional discipleship. 

How do we get faith to stick? Listen to practical tips on how you can encourage, equip and resource parents. 

Products mentioned in this episode:

The Family Time Sticky Faith Event, available at: https://amberpike.org/shop and https://store.renewanation.org/.

The Family Cookbook Devotional

Intentional Children's Ministry

Family Ministry

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Gather round, Kidmen leaders, and be encouraged and equipped as you build the kingdom. Now here's your host, Amber Pike. One of my favorite verses for parents is Psalms 145.4. We're going to start over because that was already not good. Welcome back to the Kidmen Huddle. One of my favorite verses for parents and the command God has given them is Psalm 145.4. It says that one generation shall commend your mighty acts to the next. This is what we as parents are supposed to do. We are supposed to tell our children, our generation to the next, about how awesome God is, both in the Bible and in our own lives. Over and over, we see the command of parents to pass on their faith. Now, you know my history. I spent 20... and counting years in children's ministry. I believe children's ministry is very, very important. I believe that the church needs to do a good job of discipling boys and girls. I have a lot of opinions on how that should be done, but I will say that over the course of my ministry career, I spent too much of my time and attention discipling the kids. instead of equipping mom and dad for their role. Now, really early on, I found out, I realized all this command, how we are supposed to do family ministry because mom and dad are commanded to disciple boys and girls. Yes, they're the primary influencers, all of this, right? When in the early 2010s, when family ministry was really gaining popularity, yes, I was on board. I was trying to equip and resource mom and dad to disciple, but I did a lot of things wrong. I wasn't strong enough in my approach, and I definitely left out the training aspect. I was trying not to offend. I was trying to gently train and encourage when I needed to be more forceful. Over the years, I perfected how I resource parents. Definitely go and check out some of those podcasts. There's a resourcing do's and don'ts. You need to go listen to that. But I was not equipping them to disciple the way that they needed to outside of resourcing. There are two ways that parents are fulfilling this command to pass on their faith with intentional discipleship and unintentional discipleship. And we, the church need to be equipping mom and dad to fulfill their role as disciple maker. So, I'm going to talk about these two ways, these two types of discipleship that mom and dad should be doing because we want faith to be passed on so that it sticks in our kids. These are, we're boiling it down to the simple ways that you can begin to equip and encourage parents to disciple. So, intentionally. Well, How are we intentional about passing on our faith? Well, that means that we are first and foremost reading the Bible together. A Lifeways statistic says that only 29% of parents are reading their Bible with the kids. We literally have God's message to us, and parents aren't taking the time to read it with their kids. 29%, even if you're bad at math, is not a good percentage. God breathed. The Word of God is God-inspired. God breathed His message to us. Why are we not intentionally reading that to our kids? We know that the Bible is given for teaching correction, reproof for training in righteousness, that it is going to equip us for what God wants us to do. The Bible is amazing, and we need to be reading it with our kids. So, how are you encouraging parents to spend time in God's Word with their kids? Same thing with praying. Prayer is so important. The Bible talks over and over about praying, about listening when we pray, about going to God, giving Him thanks, all of those wonderful things involved with prayer. How are we equipping parents to do so? My husband, I've said it before, I'll say it probably a few more times again, he is my sounding board because he was not raised to be kid-geared. He is not a teacher of children like I am, and I kind of take those things for granted. Well, like, of course you would pray with your kids. And he's like, yeah, but maybe not all parents know how. Young parents, young Christian parents especially, they might not feel comfortable praying out loud in front of their kids, leading their kids in prayer. They feel like they might mess up. We sometimes, children's ministry leaders, I think we take for granted and we assume that moms and dads know how to do these things, like reading the Bible with their kids, like praying with their kids. So sometimes you need to kick it back old school and here are the basics. Here's how we do it. Don't assume that every parent knows how to do that. So how are you equipping parents to pray with their kids? Another intentional faith-shaping foundation is going to church. Our families need to be at church together. There should be a time of corporate worship when kids are worshiping with mom and dad, not just in their separate age-graded service. I'm all for children's church. I think it's great. I think it's important. But I also think worshiping with the church body should be a priority at least a couple times a year. It needs to happen. There needs to be times when that's happening. So church leaders, how are you equipping mom and dad for this intentional discipleship, where they are reading the Bible together, where they are praying together and making church a priority. So this looks like A, some training, B, encouraging, and then C, resourcing. So what are you sending home for them to do this? When we are looking at resourcing, Not all of the resources we can send home are actually getting families in God's word together. So you have to be really careful about what you're sending home. Is it actually helping to grow a family's faith or is it busy work? Is it actually getting families in God's word together with God's word being central, primary, the key component of this thing, or is it just kind of tacked on? I'm seeing this a lot lately in resources where the scripture passage is just kind of added. It's just kind of tacked on. And the bulk of the devotion is actually some human's thoughts. They might be good thoughts, but man, given the choice between human thoughts and God's word to us, Which one should we be prioritizing? Definitely check what you're sending home. I buy sample versions first. And by sample version, I mean I order a copy for me on Amazon and I look through it. And a lot of things are making it to my box of shame. My box of shame is a box of resources that are either not scripturally accurate or they are just so weak and fluffy. There is absolutely nothing to it. No point to send it home.

UNKNOWN: 7:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 7:27

More stuff makes it into that box than ever makes it home to families. So just kind of two things that I will mention to you. If you're looking for something experiential based that is in God's word together, the family cookbook devotional, you're in God's word, you're reading scripture, but then you're going to make something yummy. And then something that I don't want to give my full endorsement yet because I have not gone all the way through it, but something that we are working through as the Pike family and I'm enjoying it is the biggest story devotional because it is short. It is sweet. It is here's scripture. Here's a question about it. That's it. That's not like a big passage to read of someone's thoughts. But I haven't gone all the way through that. So just consider this as a disclaimer. I've not made it all the way through. And I want to do that before I give my full endorsement, but so far I like the setup of that. And then I'll give you guys a little spoiler. There's a resource I made for my church families this past fall that is scripture-based. There's a little tiny blurb, like three sentence, three tiny paragraphs connecting it. Maybe it's historical background. Maybe it's some thoughts to keep thinking, but at a scripture base with a couple of questions and an intentional prayer prompt, this is going to be turned into a resource. Hopefully this year that comes out with Renew Nation. The name is under works, but that's coming and I'm excited. So that's intentionally passing on knowledge. As parents, now we have the unintentional style of passing on your faith. This is that Shema as you go, as you walk along the road, as you lie, as you get up, as you sit at mealtime, yada, yada, yada. Our kids are seeing how we live. So the parents in your ministry need to be living out their faith. It needs to be real and vibrant for them so that their kids can see it. Because yes, we need that time where we are sitting down and we are reading God's word together, but then our kids need to see that their faith is real. So I'll give you a couple of practicals with examples. I am super old school. I am like a geriatric millennial, I think, and I still like CDs. And I have a CD player in my kitchen. The button is like worn down and it's starting to glitch on me. And I'm a little concerned because I don't know that they still make under the cabinet CD players. I hope they do. So I constantly have a worship album in that CD. Every once in a while, I switch it up and there's some show tunes, but it's worship music or like the only secular music that I still listen to is Hanson. If you guys were fans of boy bands in the 90s. But 97% of the time, there's a worship album in there, and I kind of fixate on who I'm loving to worship alongside of at the moment. So for a while, especially leading up to a conference, it was the Phil Wickham worship album. I think it's the I Believe one, and it was just on there on repeat over and over. And my daughter... gets to go to concerts with me every once in a while. My mom is my concert buddy. We go, we're, you know, near big cities. So lots of great concerts come to us pretty inexpensively. And I've taken my daughter a couple of times. And so we went to a Phil Wickham concert. And I did not sit her down and be like, all right, let's practice these songs before we go so that we can worship along. Didn't do that. But we got to the concert and she's got her party hair. We braided her hair so it was all like crazy. And she felt like big stuff, right? Going to a night concert with her mom and a Grammy. And she was able to worship along to these songs. And she's like, oh, I know that song. I hear it in the kitchen. Time and time again, we have had this with my daughter. We have some friends who sing music at the camp that I used to go to, Jonathan and Emily Martin. You should go check them out. Their music is beautiful. She's got the most amazing voice. And one day I had it out on the front porch, which is my favorite office to work at. And I had some music on and she goes, oh, that's one of your kitchen songs. And she was singing along. Worship music is an everyday part of my life. It is on nonstop. And my daughter... My son too, but he's not like the sing-along type. But my daughter has picked up on this to where I'll catch her humming along to the songs. I will catch her singing them. She knows the lyrics to a lot of them because it is just part of our lives. Worship is a great thing that can be caught as you go to children. So how are you equipping parents to worship and make worship an everyday part of their lives so that their kids are seeing that and then doing that on their own? Maybe you are supplying worship albums or playlists. Playlists are completely free. You can make one on Spotify, then make a QR code for it, go into Canva, make a postcard, send it out. Some people get even cooler and they make somehow like a barcode kind of QR code thing and they can make it into like a keychain and they send it out. There's tons of ideas. Can you do that for your families to where worship can be an everyday part of their life? Another example of the stop and go, or the as you go, sorry, I got my words mixed up because my next thing is stop and pray. How are you equipping parents to when life happens, their first response is to stop and pray. This is faith being lived out and we need to equip families to live out their faith when it happens. So recently we had a medical emergency in my family. We were sitting finishing dinner this past week and we got the call that my father-in-law was having a medical episode and was in the ER at his home. And long story short, he was having a stroke and we had to step in and take care of things and it was a little shaky, right? That's a big deal. So we stopped as a family and we prayed. Now, in the midst of the crazy, right? In the, oh, I need to take care of this. Like, it was, we didn't really know what was happening. And then when we figured out what was happening, we knew that we needed to step in and we had to go get him to bring him up to the city hospital because the county hospital was not taking care of him. And it was that like mad dash to pack bags, get out of the car, drop them off at Grammys. I didn't get home till 4 a.m. the next morning, you know, craziness. But prayer is important. And that should be our first response. Though it's often not, we have to work at that, but we wanted that with our kids. So we stopped what we were doing and we prayed for Papa. How can you equip, encourage families to have that same response to when life happens, good or bad? Next as you go is to parent and discipline through the lens of scripture. This feels weird. I'm just going to tell you, unless you were raised this way, it feels really weird. It is so much easier as a parent to just kind of fuss at them and say, well, because I said so. We don't lie because mom doesn't like lying. But if we are training ourselves to parent and discipline through the lens of scripture, that changes how we are parenting. It is showing that our faith is real, that God's word matters, that his truths are the ones we want to live by. So you just told a lie, child. Why is that wrong? Why are you being punished? Because God's Word says, da-da-da-da-da. How can you equip parents to discipline through Scripture? Maybe this is a cheat sheet of Scripture references. Maybe it's a training on how to do this. Maybe you're talking about behavior and how to respond according to God's Word. It feels weird for me As a mom, I know when I first started doing this with my son when he was younger, it felt really weird. It felt awkward. It's likely going to, unless you were raised with this type of parenting. It feels weird. So how can you equip and encourage them to do that? I know that's why lying is wrong, because of God's word. But when I take the time to articulate it to my child that way, it changes everything. In order for a parent to have an as-you-go form of discipleship, their faith needs to be real. You cannot pass on a faith you do not have. So when we are thinking about how we can equip and encourage and resource parents to pass on their faith, we need to make sure, even though it's not an us issue. This is between them and God a heart issue, but we need to be doing what we can do to make sure that parents have been discipled, that they have a faith so that they can pass it on. So, are your parents being fed spiritually? Are they strong in their faith? Do they need growing? Do they need resources just to grow them, not just in how they're going to parent, how they're going to disciple? How are you pouring into them spiritually? So, is the sermon teaching from God's word? Are there small group or Sunday school options to where they can grow in their faith? Are there resources available to help a parent in their faith so that they have something real and vibrant to be able to pass on? You might as a children's minister not feel like this is in the scope of your job description, but if we want to disciple the kids, we have to start by discipling the parents. If we want mom and dad to be passing on their faith to be discipling their kids, we have to make sure that mom and dad are okay spiritually. This is a whole side of this family ministry component that I missed when I was leading in the church. I wasn't focusing on moms and dads. At my last church, I knew parents were not being fed spiritually because the pastor was not preaching according to God's word. I knew this was a problem. And I never came up with a good solution or the time to work on a solution to change that. So you have to make sure your parents are being fed. So we, church leaders, want to equip and encourage parents to pass on their faith to tell of God's mighty acts to their children intentionally and unintentionally. So how do we do this? So many different ways. There's so many options. I really want to encourage you to have a training event. This, again, it is the part that I messed up on as a children's ministry leader. I will call it my biggest fail. I never once had a sit-down training event. Now, I did do a parent Bible study. I did send home videos. I sent home resources. I sent home articles. I, you know, rah-rah from the newsletter, email, social media, all of those things. But I never did a hardcore intentional training event. Now in the situation that I'm in, I'm not on church staff. I am a volunteer. I'm a volunteer leading the children, and I just kind of assumed the power of reaching the families too. So I've completely changed my approach to children's ministry, especially in this volunteer role. I'm not doing events just for kids outside of VBS because I love VBS. But all of the events that I'm doing are events that are equipping mom and dad. So the family events that I'm planning for my church, there is a teaching piece, a kind of go alongside of me as you're leading your kids that I'm like here for support. And then there is the resourcing piece component with it as well. So this past week, we did what I called Family Time Sticky Faiths. It was a pancake breakfast, and it was so much fun. We made pancakes, obviously, and by we, me, and then my mom helped because my mom's awesome. So I made up a bunch of pancakes, had, you know, syrup, chocolate chips, blueberries, milk, juice. We have coffee there. And families came during the Sunday school hour, so during a time when we were already meeting at church, and they had pancakes. And then I pulled up on the screen this verse, Psalm 145, for that one generation shall commend their works to the other to tell of God's mighty deeds. And I talked about what sticky faith is. Now, this is kind of like a double play on sticky, because if you have had or seen kids with pancake syrup, they're going to get sticky. The table is sticky. Their arms are sticky. Somehow it's like all over their hair sometimes if they're little. Pancake syrup is sticky. But we want faith to be sticky, too. We want parents to pass on their faith in a way that it sticks with their kids. See the play there? Yeah, very clever. I thought so. So during the event, as they're eating their pancakes, I put up on screen and then, you know, verbally instructed parents to go through a series of questions. Because sharing our faith with our kids is how it sticks, right? But do you know so many parents have never shared their testimony with their kids? They've never openly, intentionally shared, hey, this is how I became a Christian. This is why. This is what God means to me. This is my favorite Bible story. They don't talk about these things because it feels weird or awkward or they don't bring it up. So this event was designed to have conversations. And Time for the kids to share too, to let it be a conversation, not just one-sided, but a back and forth of things. So I had a bunch of different questions that they would talk about. When did you become a Christian? Tell me about it. What is something that you've learned recently from God? Have you ever heard God speak? That one was really fun because younger families, younger Christian parents, especially struggle to hear God speak. This is probably one of the things that just consistently my kids, church kids, my own personal kids have struggled with. How do I hear God's voice? So that was a fun conversation. And I would kind of pop around and talk about, you know, the different things with the different families. But I just led them through conversations. And let them have conversations together, talking about what is your favorite account in the Bible? What's something amazing that you've seen God do? Question after question, all designed for families to talk about their faith. Now, there was the training aspect where I was telling parents, hey, you're supposed to do this right here. You're commanded to do this. Here's an example. We're doing it today, but now go home and do this. And then I sent them home with these cute little recipe cards that have scripture verses all about God's mighty acts. It talks about how great he is and encouraging them to go home and read these because that is how faith sticks when we are reading God's word together. So it was honestly a really easy event. Pancakes are easy to do, right? Not a lot of prep work. Honestly, I only had to go shopping for milk and juice and blueberries because I have like the jumbo Sam's Club bags of pancake mix. And we're a smaller church, so it's not like I was feeding 800. But pancakes are easy, right? You get a couple of griddles. You can make eight pancakes at a time, get a team, a couple ladies. You're putting some slides on the screen to engage in conversation, equipping and encouraging families to do this at home. So how can you, in whatever context you are, help parents make their faith stick to their kids? this sticky faith concept, what can you do to equip parents to both intentionally and unintentionally pass on their faith? I want to give you just a couple of ideas that might help you as you're thinking through this. You need a plan. So maybe you want to grab my Kidman Planner that's going to help you plan out these things. What are you doing? What are you sending home? How are you training? Maybe you want to check out this Sticky Faith event. It is on my website, amberpeck.org, and it is going to be on the church.renewnation.org website really, really soon. Also, this whole concept of training our parents, there are two books that you need to read, Intentional Children's Ministry and Family Ministry by Dr. Josh Mulvihill. These two books are going to help you understand why it is the command of mom and dad, not the church, and how we get them to do so. Definitely go check those out. There's going to be links in the show notes for all of these things. I'll even put the link for the Family Cookbook Devotional. It's another great one. It would make a great gift that goes home, especially if you're doing a food-themed event. But you can't just hope parents are doing this, that they're passing on their faith. They might not know how. They might feel uncomfortable to do it. They might... want to, but need someone to give them the push or the encouragement or the training or the resources to do so. Your job, no matter what position you hold in church, whatever your title is, is to equip mom and dad so that they are discipling at home because it is their job as number one disciple makers. You are called to disciple kids, to teach them about God, to tell of his mighty acts. But mom and dad are the primary ones who are supposed to be discipling their kids. So we need to come alongside parents and do so. If you want to do this, if you have questions, please reach out. The Family Ministry Academy is another amazing resource that will train you to do this. And I say this as someone who used to teach in an online academy about family ministry. And now I realize that my view is too narrow and I missed out on some things. Eternity is a really big deal. And we want to make sure that our children are being grounded in God's word, that their faith is theirs and it is strong and it is real, that they choose to become lifelong followers of Christ. So we've got some work to do. I would love to hear how are you equipping moms and dads? How are you seeing faith be sticky in the families at your church? And remember, what you do matters.