Your Family Is Not Enough for Your Child

Why God designed Christian parenting to need the intergenerational church

Last week was the launch day for a new book from Youthworks Media, Parenting in God’s Family, Volume 2. 🎉 📚 🎉

I had the opportunity to contribute a chapter to the project on (no surprises here!) ‘Intergenerational Discipleship’.

Most chapters in the book cover really important topics on key themes and concerns for Christian parents. Chapters like:

• ‘Reflections on motherhood and work’ by Harriet Connor

• ‘Neurodivergent families can’t do it all’ by Kate Morris

• ‘Grace-filled conversations about faith and culture’ by Jenn Phillips

• ‘Simple habits for mental health’ by Alexis Hudson

However, what I was asked to contribute was a chapter on why your family is not enough for your child. No matter how amazing and how Christian you are as a parent, you are not enough for your child. And this is exactly how God designed your family to be. God designed your parenting to need the intergenerational community that is the church.

Here’s a short excerpt from my chapter.

I fear that too many of our churches are, in fact, not families but rather pseudo-communities. Church is another event that we and our children attend, rather than a family to which we belong. We expect that church will provide some spiritual nourishment and pleasant chit-chat with nice-enough people. We appreciate that our children like the kids’ program most of the time and seem to get on well enough with their peers and leaders.

What we don’t expect is to be so deeply embedded in the lives of the others at our church that this congregation of brothers and sisters in Christ holds a significant claim on our time, care, attention and affection in a way that relativises the relationships that we have with members of our own household. However, by God’s good design, this is exactly what we and our children need from the church, and what the church needs from every member of our household.

You can celebrate with us by ordering your copy now from Youthworks Media.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Christian parents have a special task set before them: they must direct their children in the way God would have them go, being living examples of faith and trust in both smooth and rocky times. What might that look like in practice when deep suffering comes, when technology consumes, when identities and perhaps our entire planet are under attack, when having children at all seems so far away?

This second volume of Parenting in God’s Family goes deep into topics that concern Australian Christian parents. The 21 authors bring biblical wisdom and their different first-hand experiences together to show how parents today can apply God’s word to the joys and challenges of parenting. This volume also steps outside the home to look at parenting in relation to church, community and the wider world.

Produced by the Growing Faith community and filled with exclusive articles not available online, this book is an excellent companion that Christian parents will read and keep close at hand.