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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Parenting in God’s family - with Harriet Connor & Kat Ashton Israel
What is Christian parenting? How do we do family Bible time well?
How can we prioritize church, even when it’s hard? Navigating social media with teens?
And how to parent teens who are doubting, drifting or deserting?
Parenting is joyous, magical, tiresome, boring, stressful and complicated.
Harriet Connor is editor of ‘Parenting in God’s family: Biblical wisdom for everyday issues.’ (https://bit.ly/4eJgars). Kat Ashton Israel is a contributing author.
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It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele. And today, Parenting in God's Family with Harriet Connor and Kat Ashton, Israel. It is joyous, magical, tiresome, boring, stressful and complicated. We're talking parenting and parenting in the family of God.
Speaker 1:Years ago, when I was a reasonably young parent, I went to speak to my minister and I gave him some feedback, critical feedback, on his ministry. I said to him you've taught me lots and lots and lots about how to go out with someone, how to date, how to get married, but you've taught me nothing about how to parent. I didn't grow up in evangelical faith and now I'm a parent and I feel lost. And he acknowledged that the criticism was fair but said I was just trying to work it out. And I thought well, here am I, now starting out in pastoring, and I want to try and do better, and even my ineptness on this topic would be better than nothing. So I want to try and speak into these issues, and I mean even though no one would be bold enough to say I've arrived. And look, over the years I've nibbled here and there, but I haven't said anything like as much as I potentially could have.
Speaker 1:And so I'm super pleased to see this new book out Parenting in God's Family and 16 parents writing with their wisdom on this topic biblical wisdom for everyday issues. The editor is Harriet Connor and she is here with us along with Kat Ashton Israel, who's written several of the chapters. Harriet edits Growing Faith, an online magazine for Christian parents, and has four kids Growing Faith, an online magazine for Christian parents, and has four kids, and Kat is a mother of five, two of whom are young adults and the other three still at school. Harriet, as I was reading this, I mean I didn't grow up with evangelical parents as role models, and you didn't either.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that drives us to think very hard, doesn't it? When we don't necessarily have a. We've got a blank slate, as it were. So yeah, I've spent about 10 years trying to think about this topic, and that's why I write really, because I'm trying to wrestle and work it out to think aloud and hopefully, as I come from the Christian worldview, from the Bible to the task of parenting, hopefully that's helpful for other people to see where I get to with my thinking.
Speaker 1:Now, what have people said to you? When you said I've written a book on parenting, they said oh wow, you must be a super parent.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, you used the word lost, and that's certainly the place where I started from too. Yes, I started my thinking at a place where I felt very lost about how to raise children as Christians, so it started as a prayer in my prayer journal. You can actually see the prayer turn into a Bible exploration, beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation. So I've never claimed to have arrived, and I don't think any of us would, and that's certainly why I've reached out for help.
Speaker 1:So what is Christian parenting?
Speaker 2:A lot of people do start with the gospel, but I think we also need to start with Genesis. We need to think about our place in the world. So I have made a tentative definition of what I believe Christian parenting is. So I think Christian parenting, to begin with, is about receiving children as gifts from God which can be quite countercultural and then showing them God's fatherly love. Christian parenting is done by parents who know God as their father, and that shapes us. We are being parented, fathered by God, at the same time that we are raising our own children, and I think Christian parenting is, then, about taking responsibility for our children's apprenticeship. I really like that concept of an apprenticeship in life and in faith. So it's not just teaching them how to be Christians or how to read the Bible and pray although that's a really key part. It's also helping them to learn how to grow up in the world and be part of this world that God has made.
Speaker 2:And I think the final really distinctive thing about Christian parenting is that we are aware of our human limitations. We know that we're not perfect. We know that we're not perfect. We know that we're not perfectly wise and we're not in control. We're not in control of our children's world or, ultimately, our children's decisions. So Christian parents know their human limitations and so we run to God as our father and we introduce our children to their perfect heavenly father, knowing that we will never be perfect. And part of that is also introducing our children to their spiritual family in the church. Again, we acknowledge that as parents we just simply can't do it all ourselves. We really need the support of our brothers and sisters in christ. So that's my tentative definition of christian parenting I offer that to you we all do it differently yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think um when people hear that I have five children almost always they say say oh, wow, you know, I've only got two I've only got three.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you do it. It's amazing.
Speaker 3:And can you give me some tips, is often I don't know if people say this to you as well but I think, well, I can't. I mean, you know, there's wisdom that can be offered, but every child is so different, Every parent is so different. Every parent is so different. Every family and all those relationships within the family is so different. So yeah, we all bring really different things.
Speaker 1:What are the different styles of parenting, Harriet?
Speaker 2:This has proliferated.
Speaker 1:Because you can make some generalisations.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's true, in recent times they've really multiplied the sort of parenting styles that people talk about. But there is a more historic classification of parenting styles from about the 60s, and that sort of people still do refer to this sort of grid. I guess it's a grid and on one axis is warmth and on the other axis is firmness. So what we're aiming to do is find a balance where we are warm and firm with our children. So a parent who's all warmth and no firmness might be called a permissive parent. A parent who's all firmness and no warmth would be called an authoritarian parent, which might have been more common in the past. So we're aiming for somewhere in the middle where we have all warmth and affection for our children, unconditional love and support and knowing them, loving them, wanting the best for them, but at the same time we know that part of loving them is also having firm boundaries around acceptable behaviour from our love. So warmth and firmness, and we would call that authoritative parenting.
Speaker 1:Authoritative as opposed to authoritarian.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Okay, you've got a metaphor of tube, volcano and funnel.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first chapter of the book is what is Christian parenting. The second chapter is the basic styles and stages of parenting. So you can read more about it in the chapter. But to give a picture to each of those things as time goes on, we could maybe say the permissive style is like a volcano, where there are no boundaries. It's very wide at the bottom, but then perhaps as children head to their adolescent years, if you've had no boundaries they might try to rebel. And suddenly parents might find they're clamping down, they're desperately holding on, they're trying to make rules, but it may be a little too late. So that's sort of like a volcano. And what do volcanoes do they?
Speaker 1:blow up.
Speaker 2:We could say the authoritarian style might be like a tube where it's just rigid the whole way up and it doesn't give as the children grow and mature. So what we're actually aiming for is more like a funnel, where we might start quite tightly in control, but then we recognise that our children are growing, they need independence and we're loosening our control and letting them step up.
Speaker 1:Our children are going from Giving them more and more control over their life.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right, they're just moving to independence.
Speaker 1:Tell us about some of the choices you've made to reflect that funnel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1:Well, you can jump in here, Kat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Technology, I think, is something that's on a lot of parents' minds, and so when you know, when children are small, they may not have access to any technology, ideally, and then, as they get older, you know maybe they're watching TV or using an iPad for only particular games. As they're older still, you might decide to give them a phone. I know with that with my children. They got their first phone in high school and it was locked down hard you know, they could call us.
Speaker 3:They could call people, um, maybe send messages, take photos, not much else, and then, as they've got older, demonstrated, uh, their own levels of responsibility and earn our trust. Then gradually that becomes a sort of funnel situation where we open it up a little bit more and they have a bit more freedom in that area.
Speaker 1:And they're coming to you all the time saying everyone else has got freedom here All the time, and I don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, All the time, all the time, and you know it's not always true but sometimes it is. My children didn't have access to social media until well. Some still don't, but the older two didn't until they were at least 16 or older, that was.
Speaker 1:I could imagine some fairly aggressive conversations in your kitchen about that. Tell us about them, yeah that's right, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, different children have responded differently to that, but certainly, yes, we had some very robust discussions about what that should look like and we held our ground and you know it was a negotiation. We actually paid my oldest daughter and my second child to not have social media Right.
Speaker 2:That was an incentive as an incentive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we agreed an amount that from the age of 13, being the age that they legally are allowed to join Facebook, instagram, things so from the age of 13 until 16, we paid them an amount per year, to be collected at age 16 as a lump sum, and then if they wanted to go beyond 16, there was an extra bonus. One child took the bonus, one child didn't, so far.
Speaker 2:But it worked out really well because at that age you know 16, 17, 18, they're often looking for a big chunk of money to do something special.
Speaker 3:Anyway, you know, saving for a car or going out.
Speaker 1:So how much is that? Tell us what's the going rate up in the Hills District.
Speaker 3:We offer them $250 a year for the first three years.
Speaker 2:And then, so you know it wasn't.
Speaker 1:It was significant to them, I think that's the key thing and I know I have heard but actually I mean when you hear about the mental health complexities that come from social media. $250 is cheap, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think we will need to up it with my next child Inflation, Inflation exactly. And I know of other families who do it with less money and others who do it with more. So you know, it's got to be significant to the child and I think it's been helpful because when they're in a conversation with friends and the friends are saying, oh, I can't believe you're not on Instagram, it helps the kids to be able to say oh, my parents, you know they're a bit strict.
Speaker 3:this is what they're like, but they're giving me all this money, so it sort of, you know, just helps them out of a tight spot a bit. I think that was probably the main benefit, and then, yeah, by the time they're ready to receive that money hopefully they can spend it on something that probably we would have had to fork out for anyways.
Speaker 2:Would you say that at the end they could look back and say, yeah, my parents really loved me in that decision, like, could they see the firmness came from the love and the warmth.
Speaker 3:I think so. My oldest has certainly said that she's glad she wasn't on social media as a younger person. Yeah, second one. I'm not so sure how glad he is, but yeah, there's no resentment actually.
Speaker 1:That's good it's been quite positive.
Speaker 3:We'll definitely do it with the next three children Right.
Speaker 1:Let's talk teenagers and prior. Well, actually no. Before we get to teenagers, just getting to church as a family because with little kids let's talk getting to church as a family, because with little kids they're sort of getting to church. I mean, I look around and I see people taking long breaks from church. What's your?
Speaker 2:prescription. It is hard. I think getting anywhere with small children is very difficult. Yeah, something always goes wrong at the last minute and you can't find this or that or the baby needs changing. I think perseverance is really key here, that if you sort of if you fall off the horse at this point, it's very unlikely that you're going to get back on later. So I think we just need to set a priority in our family that this is what we do on the weekends. This is obviously, you know, there's winter. Often people don't turn up to church in winter because sickness is just going around and around. The more children you have, the more it sort of drags on and multiplies. But apart from sickness, I suppose there are many other things that might get in the way of us getting to church. But we just need to keep prioritising that and that's just what we do as a family.
Speaker 1:How do you suggest or what would be helpful for a pastor to say? I mean, because if somebody's not at church regularly, then, if you like, the pastoral relationship is a little bit frayed, you know. But how can others encourage the young family in?
Speaker 2:that space.
Speaker 1:What would have been helpful for someone to say to you or you've said to somebody else?
Speaker 3:Well, we've been really blessed in the churches we've been in and people have said to us we're so glad you're here, you know we'd come in late.
Speaker 1:So affirming the positive yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think, just recognising that you know when you're a young family. It is incredibly stressful at times and really really difficult, and so just coming along and being part of the church family is a huge blessing and part of your ministry as well.
Speaker 1:What about when the little kids don't want to go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a tricky one. I think it's always helpful to ask why, because it could be something simple, as that smart shirt you tried to put them in is itchy because it's got a tag. I mean, you never quite know what's going on in a child's mind. So once we uncover the reason, it could be a variety of reasons and we can sometimes help. We can give them things to bring. We can give them a notebook to write in. We can bring toys or snacks always helpful snacks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's great to talk with your minister honestly about how things are going and if they could help by setting up a little corner with a few books in it or just, I think, noise, for example. Young children are very noisy Most of the time. The church loves that noise. I've never been in a church where people dislike the noise. But you think they don't like the noise. I think the parents are very sensitive and they feel they're being disruptive, but the congregation are usually sitting there thinking isn't it nice to have kids in the building and so that can be spoken? You know, make noise. We want you to be here, we want you to make noise, and I think the hard thing is that the more you go to church and the more you connect with your spiritual family, the more people there are that your kids know and trust and they might be able to help you at church If you're busy with the baby and the toddler's running off.
Speaker 2:That way, if you've been regularly enough, there will be these spiritual aunties and uncles and grandmas who can chase the toddler for you because they know them and they trust them and they'll go off to. If there's a kids' program, they might go off more easily because of perseverance, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, with all of our children there would have been a time when they didn't want to go out with the other children, but you just keep turning up and you just keep suggesting it and slowly they sort of get drawn up into what's happening in church with the other children and it becomes part of who they are as well.
Speaker 1:So, kat, what about when the teen doesn't want to go and I want to go to soccer or rugby league or whatever it is on AFL on a Sunday morning or birthday party? How do you navigate that?
Speaker 3:Tell us your wins and your losses, right, well, broadly speaking, we have always said we'll be at church on Sunday, so we've never committed to a sport or an activity that's routinely on Sunday. Having said that, doesn't soccer always have a pre-season on a Sunday morning or this sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So I think we went through a season of AFL where we said we'll let you play the 11.30 game when it's at home, ie one kilometre from our church, but not when it's away and you can't play the 9.30 game at all, unless it's school holidays and you can play all the 130 games yeah, and so, um, that was the way we negotiated it and I do remember there was I mean, that was a tough call for him at the time uh.
Speaker 1:But when we were then a year or so later having an arm wrestle with his sister about a birthday party and we said no, he came up to us and said good call Mum and Dad. Yeah.
Speaker 3:For holding the line yeah, just sticking on, keep going, yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you've said, it's about negotiation to some extent, but holding that non-negotiable of this is our expectation of what we do as a family, depending on the church you're in, you might be able to go in the evening, and we've done that occasionally.
Speaker 3:If the kids say they've had a birthday party, that's their best friend and it's just them and one other person invited and you know it's a really special occasion, Then we've said, well, you can go to that, and then we'll go to the 4pm service, whereas normally we're there in the morning. Yeah, with teenagers it is increasingly difficult, and I know of many parents who find that eventually their teenagers have refused to attend church.
Speaker 3:Excuse me, yeah, and that has been the case with us, with one of our children. Yeah, I have a real heart for those parents who, and the pain, I think my heart is for ensuring that those parents feel seen in their pain and grief of their children falling away and that they really feel a sense of the church family still around them in that grief.
Speaker 1:What's your advice to the parent who's? I mean? There's a 14-year-old, 15-year-old, and they're figuring these issues out for themselves and they're rejecting the faith of their parents.
Speaker 3:It's really hard. It's a really hard space to be in as far as people can, I think, persevere again, as Harriet said, with church. You know, if they won't come to the service, maybe they'll go to youth group. If they won't come to the service, maybe they'll go to youth group. If they won't go to youth group, maybe they'll meet up with some Christian friends that they've had in the past, or with the youth pastor. Maybe they'll watch something helpful on TV or on YouTube that you can share with them, or listen to Christian music.
Speaker 3:You know, you do sort of find you get to a point where you feel like you're grasping at straws a bit. I think my advice would just be to seek support. Seek support in the church family. It's a really common experience and I don't think it's really talked about as often as is warranted. The more parents I speak to, the more I hear the pain that people are in with their children falling away, and I think it's also a real challenge for people's faith at times.
Speaker 1:I mean, the retention rates are something like 66% of kids from Christian families are still in church, whereas a third have dropped away. So we're talking really one in three kids at the moment, and that statistic's been pretty consistent for 10 years or more, and so we've got one in three kids a parent is in anguish about.
Speaker 3:So keep going. Yeah, it's a lot of kids, isn't it? And it's a lot of parents who, you know, held that new baby in their arms and just had these hopes for them.
Speaker 1:And more than anything else, I want them to know love, trust and honour Jesus.
Speaker 3:That's it more than anything else. I want them to know love, trust and honour Jesus. That's it more than anything else. So I think this is something I'm thinking a lot about at the moment and talking to parents and seeing that it's a big challenge to faith, because you know it's easy.
Speaker 3:Well, it's not easy, but we can often come to a place with big issues like predestination, where we can go oh okay, I don't really understand that, but I'm okay with it. You know, I can sort of put it on the shelf and accept that I don't understand those big issues and you know election and this kind of thing, but I can put it aside. And then that person who has fallen away, who you desperately want to be in heaven with you, is your own child. You know someone that is just so precious and dear to you and sort of pulls the rug out from under you a bit and makes you really look at those really tough issues all over again, and so yeah, I found that personal challenge has sort of shaken me to think well, is God enough by himself, or do am I sort of clinging on to this hope of the faith of my children, which is not something I can demand of God?
Speaker 3:so that that's a real challenge, I think as well. This kind of experience shakes our identity as parents, you know we know on paper of course we can't make our children have faith, but I think, you know, we do have this tendency towards thinking, well, if I just do this, or if I just make sure the children are in church.
Speaker 1:Or if I just had done this and I'm now consumed with regret and remorse and about failures of decisions I made 10 years ago.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think that makes relationships at church can be quite difficult as well because of the regret that people feel, or, you know, we might feel like we're being judged we see other people who we think, oh, they're parenting really well and look at their children coming into church. Yeah, so there's a real onslaught of guilt, I think, which we shouldn't have, because our children's faith is their own and it's in God's hands, not ours.
Speaker 3:So, we shouldn't feel guilt when our children fall away, and we shouldn't feel pride when our children are Christians. We should just feel gratitude and sadness when they don't, and grief is right. But yeah, trusting God, calling on him, that's my advice, I guess.
Speaker 1:How have you made family Bible time work in your family?
Speaker 2:That's probably something. Again, it's not really to do with the funnel, but in the sense that things do change and mature over time as your children grow. We have a fairly simple rhythm to our day that after everybody's had their shower we gather for Bible time, usually on our bed.
Speaker 1:In the morning.
Speaker 2:No, no, this is the evening In the evening After dinner. Okay, yeah, and everyone's had their shower, then we come back to Bible time.
Speaker 1:So how old are your kids at the moment?
Speaker 2:So we've got quite a range which can make things quite tricky, from nearly 15 down to four Right. So Bible times are not like quiet and focused. Sometimes we're just like the four-year-olds, climbing over everybody and, you know, swinging. Yeah, it's not sort of what you might imagine a nice quiet, calm, focused.
Speaker 1:Bible time is. No, I'm not imagining it's nice and quiet, I'm just imagining everybody's tired and fractured. Yeah, but we're there, we're all together.
Speaker 2:Even the cats come because they know like everybody's there. So they sort of come meowing what's going on. So we're all sitting there and of course this is on the ideal night. Some nights my husband might be away, or you know, we're home late and we just read a children's Bible, one story from a children's Bible. I'd love to get to a point where we're reading the text of the Bible together, but again it's tricky when you've got a 15-year-old and a 4-year-old and then we say the Lord's Prayer and then everyone adds we take the same rotation of turns every night. You can add your extra sort of personal prayers after we say the Lord's Prayer together. So that's our family.
Speaker 1:But it is a tradition. What have you done, kat? Because I mean, when you say that that was interesting, you said children's Bible, because I got so sick of children's Bibles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got quite a few on rotation, because you do get tired of them.
Speaker 1:And so I think now, looking back, our youngest child, we pitched everything over his head because we pitched at the oldest children you know, yes, it's a tricky one. And so I think he struggled to keep up with what we were doing, and I remember thinking, if we were more competent parents, we would have two syllabuses here, yes, or some parents read the Bible with each child before bed. What about you, Kat?
Speaker 3:Well, similar to Harriet actually.
Speaker 1:So my oldest child is now 20 and my youngest is eight and still at home. Yes, they are all still at home, Yep yep.
Speaker 3:So yeah, big age gaps, and we've kind of gone the same direction. We tend to read a children's Bible, often get the youngest to. Well, he loves to read it out, but it can be a bit tedious. It is difficult now with one of my children not wanting to be a part of that, so that's made things more difficult and it's just made our Bible times more sporadic. Christmas and Easter are times when we can really reliably bring that back in, and so we have readings that we do and ornaments that we hang up and all these traditions that we've built up around those special seasons. So yeah, for people who are finding it difficult, I think those are fantastic inroads times. To start, yeah, children's Bibles does seem to be, and we sort of have not pitched it at our oldest. We've done the opposite to what you've said.
Speaker 2:And of course then I think oh, if we were more competent parents, we would have my oldest passed out and the second one's missing out, and you know what have we done? Yeah, but you have the family that you have and your children have the parents that they have and we thank God for that.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in and sharing that with us. My guests on the Pastor's Heart today Harriet Connor and Kat Ashton Israel. Harriet is the editor of this book, parenting in God's Family there's a link to that in our show notes below and Kat Ashton Israel has contributed several of the chapters to that. My name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
