The Three I’s of Home Discipleship

Originally published at Youthworks.net on 12th May, 2020. © Youthworks 2020.

Timothy Paul Jones, one of the prominent voices in the field of Family Ministry, quips that there are some jobs that are too important to leave to professionals. Such as, dating your wife.

“Suppose I call my wife this afternoon and announced, “Honey, guess what? Remember how you asked about a date tonight? Well I hired a professional dater to take you to dinner and a movie. Yes, that’s right, dear: a professional! He’s much better at dating that I am—plus, since I’ll be at home watching Star Wars, we won’t need a babysitter. Have a great time!”
Now, if such an evening seemed even remotely interesting to my wife, let’s just say that she and I have more problems than any date—professional or otherwise—can possibly fix!”

With reference to the discipleship of children, Jones’ point is this; that just as a husband is the right person to date their own wife, parents likewise, simply by the fact of being the parents, are the right people to be the primary disciplers of their children.

The reasons for the primacy of parental, or home, discipleship is theological, sociological, and immediately practical. Theologically, the Bible affirms the household as the primary location of discipleship (Deut. 6:1-9; Eph. 6:1-9; Col. 3:18-4:1; cf. Ex. 12-13). In both the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, households were larger and more diverse than the assumed nuclear family norm of modern, Western society (for example, note the inclusion of slaves and masters in the household codes of Ephesians and Colossians). Nevertheless, there is an expectation that those living under the one roof are primarily responsible for each other’s discipleship, especially parents towards their children.

This also makes sense sociologically and practically. A typical child will spend more time per week under the influence of the adults in their household than in most other spaces, especially in regards to church programs. Therefore, parents and guardians have an major influence over the physical, psychological and spiritual development of their children.

The Three I’s

As I’ve written previously, the Coronavirus pandemic has created a unique opportunity for churches to develop their equipping of families for home discipleship. While many churches are using some excellent digital resources for the children and families in their community, there is an increasing realisation from both church leaders and from parents themselves that they cannot simply rely on the usual church programming to take care of the discipleship needs of themselves and their children. This is a wonderful, though oftentimes daunting, recalibration of the family’s perspective of discipleship away from ‘the professionals’ and back towards the household.

Some of the families in your church will be gurus at home discipleship. They have good routines, a variety of resources and a willing heart to pass on their faith to their children. Some families will be completely green. They may themselves be new to the faith, or presumed that discipleship happens at church, just like coaching happens on the sports field. From my experience, most families in churches, including my own, are somewhere in the middle. They are aware of the parental and biblical expectations, but more acutely aware of their own failure to live up to them as they fumble along as best they can.

Here are three quick tips for all families as they engage in home discipleship.

Disciple Intentionally

Parent’s are the primary spiritual influence on their children. The only question is whether this influence is going to enhance a child’s growth in the knowledge, love and obedience to Jesus, or dampen it.

As the truism goes, ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. Parents who want to have a positive spiritual influence on their children must put time into intentionally planning for the times in which this influence is going to occur. Organising set times for family prayer and Bible reading is key, though this rhythm will look different for everybody. Many families find that a mealtime is helpful. My family have usually found that sitting on the couch together, just before bedtime, has been ideal.

Other intentional activities can include creating playlists of songs that the family knows from church, kids programs and youth groups to play in the car or at home. Parents prioritising participation in their own church’s online gathering (whatever that looks like in their local context) will also shape the intentional spiritual development of their children.

Disciple Immersively

While intentional, dedicated times of home discipleship are not the only times that will shape their spiritual life. There is a danger that if the thoughts and worship of King Jesus are relegated only to these times, teaching our children the Christian faith will become one of many compartmentalised aspects of life that has little bearing on the rest of my day.

Moses, by contrast, encourages the Israelites to make household discipleship a holistic, immersive, practice. He encourages the community to keep God’s word on their hearts and speak about them “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deut. 6:7). Jesus is Lord over all creation, and Lord over every area of our lives, not just our Bible reading, prayer and church gatherings.

Families who help their children think Christianly about their sport, their school work, their environment, about sickness, health, emotions, finances, hobbies and media choice will be shaping their child’s discipleship in this immersive way. The book God and Me by Penny Boshoff is a great resource for parents of toddlers and preschoolers to help build the foundation of immersive faith.

Disciple Incrementally

A number of years ago I thought it would be beneficial for my physical health to get into running. However, as the child who volunteered for ground duties on athletics carnival days in order to avoid participation, I knew I needed help. So, I used a Couch to 5K app to build up my ability. The routine set by the app starts off with increments of one minute running followed by one and a half minutes of walking in between which, to be completely honest, almost broke me. But with incremental changes every couple of days (over many, many, many weeks), running five kilometres is now very achievable.

Many of the families in our church are currently weak in their home discipleship but can be built up in strength through incremental ‘training.’ As ministry leaders, now is a great time to be speaking to individual families, take a home discipleship pulse check and equip them with ideas to make the incremental changes which will build their stamina in leading the spiritual development of their children.

For those just starting out, begin with eating a meal together and saying grace beforehand, or finding an age-appropriate Bible or Bible Storybook, and reading one chapter over the week. For those who are a little fitter, stretch them with other questions and resources that they could use on a more regular basis.

Those of us in church leadership may be, by virtue of our vocation and training, the ‘children’s discipleship professionals.’ However, that doesn’t mean we are the right person for the job. Parents have that qualification by virtue of them being parents. Our role as church leaders is to remind, equip and encourage parents towards this end. Equipping parents to disciple their children intentionally and immersively, with incremental steps, will help build strong and, by God’s grace, long lasting faith in our children and teenagers.

If you would like more advice and training on how best to equip parents for this task, you can reach out to the Ministry Support Team. You could also consider booking in training for your ministry teams or families to explore this topic in more depth.