I would like to share with you a survey that was done by the Search Institute1, titled “The Most significant Religious Influences”. In this survey teenagers were asked to identify what factors influenced them to have faith. These were the results:
- Mom
- Dad
- Pastor
- Grandparent
- Sunday School
- Youth Group
- Church Camp
- Retreats
Did you notice who was ranked first and second? If you had taken a guess as to who was ranked first and second, who would you have said? I bet it wouldn’t have been mom and dad that you would have picked. Well, it’s true. Parents are the biggest influencers on their children’s faith. Something that was even more interesting is that parents are two to three times more influential than any church program.
So parents have the most influence over their children having faith and yet most parents are underutilising this influence greatly. I’m sure there are many reasons for this. Most often, however, it is because they feel that they are not able to do the job so they leave it in the hands of the church.
In one of my previous blogs (“Whose job is it anyway?”) I argue that teaching God’s Word to children should be a partnership between the parents and the church. However, I feel strongly that it is my job, as a qualified Children’s Worker, to help equip parents to do the job that God has called them to do. So this blog is my first, of hopefully many, that is going to attempt to do just that. So let’s get started.
The best place to start is with Family Devotions. You may already be doing Family Devotions at home with your children and that’s great. Keep it up. On the other hand, you may see the importance of doing them yet feel like you don’t know where to begin. In this blog I would like to give you some tools to help you get started with, or to improve on, your Family Devotions.
Tool 1: Modelling
Why do we do the things that we do? Think about, for example, when you open your Christmas presents. Do you open them on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? Why is that? Most likely it’s because that is the way your parents did it when you were growing up. My point here is simple; we do the things we do because it is the way it was modelled to us. I know that there are exceptions to every rule. But for most of us, our children are growing up in a similar way to the way we grew up. Some of those things are good and some are not. This can also be seen with family devotions. If your parents never did a devotion with you when you were young, the chances are good that you haven’t done a devotion with your child, or at least it has been a struggle to do them. But we can change that. If we start to have family devotions with our children, God willing our children will have family devotions with their children one day and so on.
Tool 2: Be consistent
When it comes to having a Quiet Time, or Daily Devotion, one of the biggest battles is being consistent. My husband, Kyle and I started reading the Bible to our oldest daughter when she was about 3 months old. I know that she probably didn’t understand what I was reading about. But it helped us to establish a good routine. Now 7 years later, every night after bath time, we read a Bible story to both our daughters before they get into bed. There is no question about when/ if we should do it. It just happens. It has become such a good quality time with them that if we don’t read to them, for whatever reason, they are highly disappointed.
First, determine how many days a week you are going to commit to. When you are first getting started it probably isn’t the best idea to aim to do a Family Devotion every day. Instead aim to do it only a few times a week. Otherwise, you may not be able to keep up with it and then you will quickly feel disheartened and be tempted to give it up altogether. Once you have a good routine in place, you may then decide to increase the number of days you do this.
After you have decided on which days you will do your Family Devotion, you need to choose the best time that will work for you as a family. It could be first thing in the morning over breakfast or it could be the last thing at night before bed.
A good way to get your children involved in this process is to print out a weekly calendar and get your children to put a sticker on every time you have a devotion together.
Tool 3: Keep it short
A great principle to use with a Family Devotion is: “Less is more”. If at 3 minutes into the devotion your child is listening and engaged, but at 4 minutes they are fidgety and restless, then your devotion should be 3 minutes long. Keep it short!
Tool 4: Keep it simple
Most of the time people feel like they have to use some sort of devotional material in order to have a Family Devotion. As useful as devotional material can be, however, some times they can be an obstacle. Let me explain. Some devotional material can be in depth and may take long to complete, so we are tempted to rather not do anything at all when time is tight or we are feeling tired. There may also be times when you don’t have any devotional material and you feel that you can not do anything unless you do, so you again opt for doing nothing. But I want to encourage you to get stuck into God’s Word. All you need is your Bible. So go ahead and invest in a good Children’s Bible. It will be one that your children will be reading for years to come. You may even want to have more than one so that you can switch from one to the next as you finish it. This will also keep your child from becoming bored with reading the same stories over and over again.
As important as reading the Bible is, we need to also be applying God’s Word into our lives. So another thing that we try to do is say a one liner after every story. So something like, “David listened to God, we should also listen to God” or “King Saul wasn’t doing what God wanted, we must always do what God wants”. Just a very basic concept after we have read the story, something that we can learn from the story. This application will be simple or more complicated depending on the age of your child.
Tool 5: Make it fun
Try to make your Family Devotions fun. Making it fun is especially important the younger your child is, so that you can keep them interested in what you are trying to teach them. Most children’s Bibles or devotional material will have some great ideas of things you can do with your child to make the story come alive.
Tool 6: Involve them
The next tool will be to involve your child in the devotional time. When you are reading any children’s story, you will show them the pictures and you will ask them some questions. Do the same with your children’s Bible. So for example with the story of Creation you could do something like this: “Look at all the animals that God made, let’s see if we can name them. What is this one?” You may also want to ask them if there is anything in the story that they didn’t understand.
When your child is at the stage where they have just started reading, get them to read the Bible story for themselves and ask them questions about the story as they read. You can also take turns reading the story, so it doesn’t become boring for them. This will be a good way to help them to start learning the importance of reading the Bible for themselves. And as they get older you will need to change the type of Bible that you are using to make it more age appropriate.
As I mentioned earlier, we need to be applying God’s Word into our lives. As your child gets older, another way of involving them is to encourage them to see if they can apply the story to their own lives. They may not always get it right. And please be sure to correct them, in love, when they are wrong. But over time this will build up their own confidence in being able to handle God’s Word for themselves.
Again, you can also use some sort of devotional material. This is a great way to get them involved and it makes it fun for them too. This will also need to change as they get older so that it is age appropriate.
The last way you can involve your children is by getting them to pray. Most people struggle in their prayer lives and don’t like praying out loud in front of others. How wonderful will it be if we can raise up a generation of believers who are always on their knees. (For more about Praying with children read my blog)
Tool 7: The Church
As I mentioned earlier I believe that a child’s spiritual growth is a partnership between the church community and the parents. So don’t be afraid to use your church community. Ask other parents what they are doing with their children, or even ask some of the grandparents what they did with their children when they were little.
Most churches give the children an activity to take home with them after the lesson. Go through it yourself and see if there are any activities or questions that you can do with your child. Otherwise, you can just simply ask your child what they learnt about during their children’s program on your drive home. You can also speak to your Children’s Worker and ask for their advice.
Tool 8: Don’t give up
No one is ever going to be perfect with their devotional time. There will be times when life gets in the way of your Family Devotions and you will be tempted to give up. Don’t be “all or nothing” when it comes to your Family Devotional time. Even if you have missed a few days, or even weeks, in a row, don’t give up. Pick up your Bible and start afresh.
As I am writing this blog, I have been reflecting on the way we do our Family Devotions at home. Although we have managed to be fairly consistent there are many things that we can improve upon and I am sure we will continue to improve on for many more years to come.
In this blog we have looked at some tools to help you get started with your Family Devotions. It is important that we are modelling Family Devotions with our children so that one day God willing they will continue doing them with their own children. First, we need to set up a good routine and be consistent in that. Next, we should keep it short and simple while aiming to have fun. Do your best to involve your child. Remember that your child’s spiritual growth is a partnership between you and the Church, so seek advice from others within your community. And lastly, don’t give up, you will never regret it.
Thanks for reading my post. I hope you found it helpful. Please send me any feedback, comments or questions that you may have. I would also like to hear if there are any topics that you would like me to deal with in the future. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Bye for now.
