Raising Children in Faith

"I'm not qualified for this." I hear that from mothers more than any other sentence.

They assume raising children in faith is a job for someone who knows the Bible better than they do. So they hand it to the church and hope an hour a week will do it. Then they're surprised when it doesn't. In my work with women here, I've found the opposite is true: this job is made of much smaller pieces than parents expect, and you're already holding most of them.

Children learn faith the way they learn a language

Not in lessons. By living in a house where it's spoken.

Think about how your child learned to speak. You didn't sit them down for grammar. They absorbed it from thousands of ordinary exchanges, most of them under ten seconds long.

Faith travels the same way. Which is good news, because it means the ordinary moments you already have are the lesson.

They're watching how you handle trouble

This is the part no lesson replaces.

When money is short, when someone's ill, when you've been treated unfairly, your children are learning what you actually believe. Not from what you tell them to believe. From what you reach for first.

That's not a reason to despair. It's a reason to let them see you pray about the hard thing, out loud, in front of them. And to let them hear you say sorry when you were wrong, including to them. A parent who apologises teaches more about grace in thirty seconds than a whole term of lessons.

Small and often beats long and rare

Five minutes at the same point each day will do more than an hour attempted on a Sunday afternoon and abandoned by the third week.

Attach it to something that already happens. The end of the evening meal works well, because everyone's already sitting down. Most of raising children in faith is simply deciding when, and then keeping it.

Keep it genuinely short, especially with the little ones. Stopping while they still want more is a far better problem than stopping because they've switched off.

Where does this instruction come from?

It's older than the church. In the instruction given to Israel in Deuteronomy 6, parents are told to talk about God's commands at home, on the road, at bedtime and in the morning.

Notice where that happens. Not in a classroom. In the ordinary movements of a day, which is exactly where you already are.

Answer the question they actually asked

A large part of raising children in faith is fielding hard questions. Why did God let that happen? Is it true? Why do we believe this when our neighbours don't?

Three things help here.

• Take the question seriously, even when it's inconvenient. A child who learns that hard questions aren't welcome at home will take them somewhere else later.
• Say "I don't know" when you don't, then go and find out together. They learn that faith survives an unanswered question, which is one of the most useful things they'll ever learn.
• Don't answer more than was asked. A small question usually wants a small answer.

Why we give girls particular attention

Much of our work is with girls and young women, and this is one of the reasons.

A girl who grows up being told she can read and understand the Bible herself becomes a woman who can stand on her own feet in her faith. Her questions were answered, so she doesn't assume faith is something other people explain to her.

And in time she's the one teaching the next household. If your daughter has never been told that the Bible is hers to read, and not only to be read to her, that's a conversation worth having this week. Our guide on a simple way to read the Bible at home is written plainly enough to do together.

Raising children in faith isn't a job you do alone

Parents carry this with a lot of guilt, and most of it's unnecessary.

You were never meant to be the whole of it. A church, an aunt, a teacher, a mentor: children need more than two people. Part of what we try to build is that wider circle around a family. You can see how our discipleship work supports families if you'd like to know what that looks like in practice.

Frequently asked questions