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As the old saying goes, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” That’s all well and good, but what if the man has never seen a fish before? Sure, when you’re holding a cold, floppy branzino, you have a vision for it, deliciously seared and roasted over rice. But all he sees is a scaly sea creature on its way to rotting. You see the opportunity the fish offers, but he’s looking for the nearest trash bin.
This is how many parents view the take-home cards we shove in their hands each week at kids ministry pickup time. It’s not that they’re opposed to discipling their kids outside church walls, but they often don’t know what they’re looking at or how to get started. Kids leaders have to decide if they’re going to keep waving the dead fish in front of parents each week or invite them to a dinner where they and their kids can enjoy the delicious flavors of the Gospel.
Discovering the Recipe
So where do we start? We start where we always should: in the Bible. Let’s take a look at a quintessential passage on discipling kids:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. Deuteronomy 6:4-7
As we’re leading families under our care toward discipleship, we tend to focus on verses 6-7. We want to be certain parents understand the call to share the Gospel with their children: Here’s what you should believe, and here are all the ways how I’ll teach you how to love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength. Few would argue that this isn’t an important part of parents discipling their children. However, by making that our jumping-off point for this conversation, we’ve made some pretty big assumptions about the parents in our church.
We assume that the moms and dads we’re shepherding have a strong grasp of verses 4-5. We assume that they do indeed love God with all their heart, soul and might; that the commandments of the Lord are so clear to them that they’re written on their hearts; that they so long to be like Christ that they’re soaking in His Word regularly, spending time speaking and listening to Him as they pray, and trusting the Spirit to empower them for whatever He calls them to. That’s what we want to see in their lives, but we’re making a huge assumption that they know what they need to pull it off.
Parents can’t pass on what they don’t have. They can’t point their kids to a deep relationship with Jesus when they don’t know Him. It’s impossible for them to share a deep and abiding love for a book they’ve never read. They’re incapable of showing their children the joy of receiving grace when their children confess their sins if that’s not a rhythm the parents are familiar with. We cannot simply presume parents’ deep and abiding love of Christ. Leaving the work of discipleship to those who aren’t already disciples is a recipe for disaster for both kids and parents.
Finding the Ingredients
Thankfully, the recipe for discipleship is relatively straightforward and doesn’t require a huge list of hard-to-find ingredients. Think about the humble grilled cheese sandwich. Three simple ingredients (cheese, butter and bread) that just about everyone has access to. Throw them together and you’ve got something that will feed everyone around your table. Similarly, our ingredients for discipleship are easy: Bible reading, prayer and community. Parents need all three in their lives to be faithful disciples themselves, so they can pass along their faith to the kids in their care (in their home or a Sunday school classroom).
We simply cannot be followers of Jesus without diving into the Scriptures that tell us everything we need to know about Him. John opens his Gospel by reminding his readers: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). The Bible contains the very words of God. It’s imperative that we treasure the wisdom He offers us about who He is, who we are and about the world He has given us. So we read, not with the goal to be the most knowledgeable Bible scholar the world has ever known, but so that God Himself is shaping how we see, think, live and respond in life.
We also can’t build a relationship with God without speaking or listening to Him. Show me one meaningful relationship you have where you’re not communicating regularly. The Scriptures don’t portray God as some impersonal, cosmic force. Instead, they describe the Lord as a loving Father. Matthew 6 repeatedly reminds us that God is our Father. Fathers lovingly lead, direct, correct and instruct their children in how to navigate life, but it’s nearly impossible for that to happen if we’re not in a relationship where we’re communicating with one another. Prayer is essential to life with God.
Finally, the life of a disciple isn’t one of solitude. Sure, throughout His ministry Jesus took time to be alone with the Father, but He also surrounded Himself with His disciples, whom He poured into so His ministry could continue after He ascended. Likewise, parents should not isolate themselves. They need other folks in their lives to model discipleship for them, encourage them in their successes and failures, and point them to the Spirit of God who empowers them for the work of child discipleship.
Not All Gourmet
The best way to make a delicious grilled cheese sandwich, in my opinion, is a cast-iron skillet. Melt down the velvety butter before dropping in the sandwich to gently brown and crisp as the cheese begins to bubble. You know you’ve succeeded when the cheese pulls like putty from the bread. That’s making the most of your ingredients.
But you can also feed a family just fine with grilled cheese from a toaster or a microwave. Same ingredients, although perhaps not as filling.
There are going to be days when our discipleship journey resembles that deliciously seared branzino over rice, grilled to perfection. Then there will be days when it feels more like a microwaved grilled cheese sandwich. Some days, you’ll oversleep and miss a quiet time, wake up to a puking kid, have a meeting run over or need to pause your to-do list to care for someone in crisis. Life gets crazy. That doesn’t mean discipleship stops altogether, just that it temporarily becomes a to-go order instead of a sit-down feast.
We want to push parents toward meaningful discipleship over the long haul so they have a steady diet of spiritual food and connection to a community that will help them grow in Christ. We want to be their biggest cheerleaders in success and their biggest encouragers when they fail. Only when they draw near to the Lord and experience His love, provision and care will they truly be able to disciple their kids and fulfill the Great Commission.
