You’d be surprised how straightforward it is to begin helping your children think through their faith and deepen their discipleship. It’s one of those things that can sound overwhelming, but once you start, it’s actually much less intimidating than you’d think.
Like many things with children, it helps to start when they are younger. Even if you only manage to do something once or twice a week, if they grow up recognising that intentional discussion about what it means to follow Jesus as individuals and as a family is part of family life, then you’ll find it much easier to develop as they grow older.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be suggesting ideas and resources that might be helpful for you. They are suggestions… and they might be helpful. Families are unique things, and what works for one may not work for others.
One tried and tested method over the generations has been to follow a simple question and answer format, that lays out the main realities of Christian belief and life in age-appropriate ways. Following this has many advantages. The first is it requires very little preparation. At the end of a meal, pick the book up, and read the next question… talk about it… read the answer and maybe look up the suggested Bible references… there might be follow-on discussion. Pray. And then clean up after the meal!
For older children and young people there are a number of great resources that follow this format and that have stood the test of time. They have worked for generation after generation, and loads of Christian families still use them today. You might, for example, want to work through the Heidelberg Catechism. The advantage here is that there are plenty of resources that help you work this through at different levels. Its available as a pdf here. And you can buy additional books that will help you unpack the answers (e.g. Kevin De Young, The Good News We Almost Forgot).
OR
You could use ‘To Be A Christian’, which is the resource we use at DTP. Advantages of this would include the fact that this is already in use at MIE, and so we are becoming familiar with it. I teach to it week by week, so there is plenty of opportunity to get a handle on it, and to gain confidence in using it. It forms the basis of the Catechism Cat Q&A we use in services, so your children & young people will recognise what’s going on! And it is self-consciously Anglican, so fits really well with how we do Church. You can get it for free here: To Be A Christian
BUT
If you are starting out with little ones, the best resource of this kind is: ‘My First Books and More’ by Carine MacKenzie and Philip Ross. This is the book we give families when they bring their children for baptism at MIE. And for the first four or five years, it’s pretty much all you’ll need! You can get a copy here.
