Parenting with a Purpose

I will never forget the conversation I had with a young boy I was ministering to at church camp a few summers ago. I was walking with a fellow student who was concerned and wondered why his friend had never taken the next step in his faith. I remember taking a walk with him and finally getting the courage to ask him what was holding him back in his relationship with God. His answer has haunted me to this day, especially when it comes to how I parent my children. His answer was: “My parents don’t take this seriously. Why should I?” Why would I go to church if I am not going to take this seriously? What was holding his parents back from taking it seriously? Did they know the impact of how they approached things was affecting their children? Will they realize it before it is too late? 

It is like other conversations I have had with parents who have seen children raised in the church turn away from the faith and to different lifestyles. Those conversations came from church members who rarely attended, engaged minimally, and had still claimed there was nothing more they could have done to lead their children in the faith. While that may be true, there are some aspects of parenting that really must be done with a purpose when it comes to parenting in the Christian faith and effectively leading a family. 

Lead By Example 

This aspect of parenting has been played out a bit in the examples I have already given, but in a true sense, these little people are walking around in our homes learning how to be people, how to be Christians, by our examples. If my definition of a Christian is attending a Sunday morning worship service, then how can I ever expect my kids to be anything more than a Sunday morning Christian? When we are raising our kids, they learn how to interact with others from us. They learn how to communicate (and how we communicate) from us. They learn what a marriage looks like, they learn what family roles look like, how a husbands and wives express love to each other, how to pray to and praise God, etc. 

Make Relationships a Priority 

This is an important aspect of raising children because we want our child to come to us when they question something or something bothers them. We want our children to come to us with Bible questions. If our children or grandchildren have a lesson at school about evolution, we want them to be comfortable enough with us that we can discuss it. If our kids are asked a tough question by a friend about what they believe, we want them to be able to come and discuss that with us. 

Now, another aspect of that is our children having a good relationship with their youth leader. Realistically, our kids are going to spend a couple to a few hours a week at church with their youth leader. It’s not realistic that a youth minister can provide all the biblical teaching young people need in the couple of hours per week. A youth leader should be supplementary to parenting. Both of us should be working together for the betterment of our church and children, and that is what makes having a good relationship with them so important. 

Jesus Comes First 

This is the last aspect I wanted to touch on when it comes to parenting because I think this ties all the other things together. If Jesus comes first, then our children will see that. If church is a priority for us and our families, our will recognize that. One of the biggest examples of this was when I was growing up and playing on a travel basketball team. My parents had a stipulation in place that if we were going to be traveling on the weekends, we wouldn’t miss church. Therefore, we would find a church in the area that we would be visiting and attend there. Through this experience, my parents taught me an invaluable lesson: Jesus always came first, no matter what.  

Parenting isn’t easy. Leading isn’t easy, but that is essentially what parenting is. The most important lesson we can demonstrate to our children and grandchildren is our steadfast commitment to Christ. May the words of Paul to the Corinthians be true of us, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1 NKJV). 

Christian is a 2018 and 2021 graduate of Kentucky Christian University. Christian is a deacon at Dry Run Church of Christ in West Portsmouth, OH and does fill-in preaching and teaching in the area. Christian also serves as a Substance Use Counselor being the hands and feet of Jesus to those who do not know Him in the Portsmouth area.