Over at Growing Faith we recently published a series of articles about how the children of believers belong to God’s family.

First, Jocelyn Loane looked at how the Bible views the children of Christians: not as non-Christians, but as Christians-in-training.

Next, I explored how this influences our view of children and the sacraments of baptism and communion.

Finally, Ann Cunningham and I asked the question: What can we do if our children want ‘out’ of God’s family?

I hope you learn as much from reading these articles as I did from writing them!

Have your children ever asked you what rabbits and eggs have to do with Easter? How did you answer?

Perhaps you said something about new life—rabbits are famous for having lots of babies, and eggs are where little chicks come from. Perhaps you said something about Easter coming at springtime in the Northern Hemisphere—when new life starts to bud and bloom after winter.

Rabbits and eggs are indeed ancient, pre-Christian symbols of fertility. But does that have anything to do with Easter? Isn’t Easter about something else—not birth, but death and resurrection?

If we take a closer look at the Bible’s own symbols, it’s clear that actually, the ideas of birth, death and resurrection are closely linked; they are all symbolised in terms of humanity’s relationship to the earth. Following this imagery, the Bible portrays resurrection as a kind of second birth. While the Bible does not use the symbols of rabbits or eggs, you could say that Easter is all about birth—new birth.

Many children (and adults!) are visual learners, so helping them not just to hear the Bible’s words, but to see its symbols and images, is a powerful way of connecting them to God’s truths.

Keep reading over at Growing Faith, a Christian online magazine for parents. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

This week our third son started Kindergarten (his first year of school). As I lifted his stiff new backpack onto his shoulders, I asked how he felt. ‘Heavily armoured … and overloaded’, he said. Somehow he felt both protected and burdened.

When the time came for our son to leave with his teacher, he went through the gate with a wave, still bouncing despite the weight of his bag. I waved back with a brave smile, hoping and praying that he would bounce back out just as happily at the end of the day.

To carry or not to carry?

I’ve stood waving and waiting at the school gate for six years now and have witnessed many different interactions. On the first day of school, most parents offer to carry their children’s heavy load of new books and equipment—some kids accept the help but others want to carry their bag alone. After the first day, when the school bags aren’t quite so heavy, most parents leave it to their kids to carry them.

One mother I’ve seen is more of a ‘Sherpa parent’ (yes, that’s a thing!). As soon as her children walk through the gate each day, she swoops in to relieve them of their backpacks. Conveniently, she has two children—one backpack for each shoulder. On the days when a child comes out holding a musical instrument or school project, she swiftly takes that too.

It makes me wonder: should parents carry their children’s backpacks? I think the backpack is also a symbol—of all the loads that our children carry in life. As parents we face the constant dilemma: should we step in to help, or should we leave our kids to it?

Keep reading over at Growing Faith, a Christian online magazine for parents. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

You could say that Jesus didn’t really need a human family. After all, he had God as his Father (Luke 2:49) and his disciples as brothers and sisters (Matthew 12:48–50). As an adult, Jesus never married or had children of his own. Maybe God could simply have sent an adult to carry out his mission of salvation.

But we all know that’s not how the Christmas story goes. God chose for his Son to be born into a human family, raised by a mother and (adoptive) father alongside half-brothers and sisters.

The Christmas story starts with a family. But why?

In 2020 I started working for Growing Faith—a Christian online magazine for parents. Read the rest of this article on their website here. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

Across the developed world, mothers are getting older. Many women choose to delay having children so they can first lay a foundation of financial or relational security, or to pursue a career or personal goals. Other women never intended to be “older mothers,” but end up in that situation due to infertility, delayed marriage, or unexpected pregnancy.

I certainly never planned to have a baby later in life—I was too afraid of the risks. I knew that conceiving at an older age would increase my chance of miscarrying or experiencing complications during pregnancy and birth; I knew it would increase my baby’s chance of a congenital abnormality. I took it to heart when my mother once commented, “A woman’s body is designed to have children in her 20s.”

The way it worked out, I only just scraped into the “ideal” window for having children—starting at 28 and finishing (or so I thought) at 34. But this year, at age 39, I’m pregnant again and have come face-to-face with my fears.

In the early stages of my pregnancy, I expected things to go wrong; I didn’t even tell some of my closest friends I was pregnant until the second trimester. Now that the baby appears to be healthy and growing, I’ve discovered new things to worry about. I’ve lain awake at night calculating what age my husband and I will be (ancient!) when our baby finishes high school, gets married, or turns 40. I’ve caught myself looking enviously at younger pregnant women who seem to have much more energy (and far less gray hair!) than I do.

In the midst of my fears, I’m trying to recover a godly, balanced perspective. Here are three truths from Scripture that can encourage women like me who, whatever our intentions or ideals, find our medical records stamped with the words “geriatric mother.”

Update: A healthy baby boy joined our family in early September.

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Last time we saw that our children are our apprentices, following us as we follow Jesus to maturity in life and faith. Discipling children is about forming or shaping their heart, mind, goals, habits, character and behaviour into the likeness of Christ, who is the perfect image of God.

Disciple-making at home requires us to be both idealistic and realistic. Firstly, we do need to have ideals to strive for: we need to keep looking to God’s word and to the Word, Jesus, to remind ourselves of what kind of people we are aiming to be and raise.

But we also need to stay realistic, knowing that we and our children will regularly fall short of those ideals. Family discipleship must be built on a foundation of grace: 

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Now let’s look in more detail at how parents can disciple our children.

I recently started working for Growing Faith—a Christian online magazine for parents. Read the rest of this article on their website here. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus left his disciples with the Great Commission to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19). The early Christians prayed and worked to spread the gospel outwards to the ends of the known world; but they also took responsibility for passing the gospel downwards to the next generation.

But who exactly is responsible for this downward disciple-making—is it the church or the family? The Bible—in both Old and New Testaments—makes clear that it is parents who bear the primary responsibility for discipling their children. But in our modern world we don’t always live this out.

A recent report into the exodus of young people from our churches concluded: ‘The missing ingredient in the discipleship of children today appears to be the family. As a result the church has increasingly begun to operate as the primary means of spiritual development of youth and children, as parents have begun to relinquish or “outsource” that role.’

So what exactly is discipleship? What is our role as parents? And how can we go about it?

I recently started working for Growing Faith—a Christian online magazine for parents. Read the rest of this article on their website here. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

I have learnt a great deal from the families in my church—and when I say families I don’t just mean parents and their young children. There’s Kath, in her forties, who brings her elderly grandfather to church. Kath’s twin sister, niece and uncle have also started coming to church regularly. Together with Kath’s immediate family, they now take up almost two rows.

Then there’s Ern and Fay, both over eighty, who always sit near the windows where the sun streams in. At first, I assumed they were a married couple; actually, they are brother and sister, both of them widowed. Finally, there’s Margaret. She’s an older single divorcee, but most weeks she’s accompanied by her teenage granddaughter.

The extended family groups in our church usually sit together, but there’s always room for one more. Kath is like an aunty to several of the young children in the congregation; Margaret’s granddaughter moves around, often sitting with one of the other families with teenage girls

Churches need natural families, because they can show the church how to be a family; but natural families also need the church—no family can or should be spiritually self-sufficient.

For this reason, churches should affirm natural families, but also encourage them to see themselves as part of the wider household of God, ready to embrace those members of the church who come alone.

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