Light Duties

When a young family is looking for a new church, a typical requirement is that it has "something for the kids". If they don't see a children's program advertised on the church's website, they might not bother visiting at all. It's easy to assume that a church with no kids program thinks church is only for adults, that children only become a person once they are grown. There can be very bad reasons for a church not to have a kids' program.

Just as some churches might reject children's ministry for bad reasons, a kids' ministry can be done for faulty reasons. Or for good reasons, but in unhelpful ways.

It turns out the Seventeenth Century Westminister divines weren't just writing to pastors and theologians. Right at the beginning of their documents, they address fathers and mothers. In the great crisis they were facing, they appealed to parents. Mums, if you ever think what you're doing doesn't matter much, these men thought differently.

For references, see the article on the website.

Most of us do not feel qualified to help our children come to know Jesus. We're used to deferring to experts in other things, so we seek out the experts in this too. Sometimes we respect God's word so much that we don't want to mess it up. But we won't protect the specialness of the gospel by staying silent until the kids are old enough to really appreciate it. In doing that, our silence would actually be teaching our kids that the gospel is not worth talking about. As G.K Chesterton famously wrote, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly".

Suggestions for helping our children with Jesus' words.

Following on from last episode when we talked about how children are not a hindrance to abiding in Jesus, we consider how we can still feed on God's Word in the busy days of raising very young, very dependent children.

Our knee-high children are not a spiritual tripping hazard. Some thoughts on why we struggle, what might help and what doesn't.

Being joined with Jesus is our foundational duty in Christian motherhood, but it isn't something we do alone. It just so happens that the nature of motherhood makes loving Jesus' people a very easy thing to drift from.

What is the one thing which makes all the difference in raising kids for God?

God's Bible is the only way we can know and give the good we owe in motherhood. But it's more like a hike in a National Park than checking off a shopping list...

Being seen doesn't make something more real or more important.

Our benchmark in motherhood is not just avoiding harm, but actively pursuing what is good.