Getting your Kids Through Church Without Them Ending Up Hati , livre ebook

Lion Hudson - Rob Parsons

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

64 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

How to raise kids with a healthy view of Christians, the church, themselves and God. It is every Christian parent's fear: what if my child falls away because of something I did, or said, or was? Rob Parsons is extremely reassuring. His pragmatic, candid approach provides both parenting advice and guidance for parents about their own spiritual development. Rob identifies five traits which can quench faith in your child: busyness, cynicism, hypocrisy, judgementalism and over-familiarity (your children never know when they should take off their shoes). He teaches that disappointment is an inevitable part of growing up. There will come a time when they are disappointed with Christians, the Church, themselves and even God. We should teach our children how to love God even when things fall apart. Do not hide your children from the world: instead, help them to discriminate. Above all, provide them with a vision or what they can be and can achieve. Peter became a fisher of men.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	Lion Hudson
Date de parution	01 avril 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780857211156
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A great and wonderful book. I wish I d read it years ago.
- Dr R T Kendall
If you care about your children s experience of church this book is essential reading. Buy one for yourself and one for the youth worker!
- Krish Kandiah, E XECUTIVE D IRECTOR : C HURCHES IN M ISSION , E VANGELICAL A LLIANCE
This book caused me to laugh and cry, worship and pray, and to be both thankful and penitent. This is vintage Rob Parsons - biblically wise, wonderfully witty, totally engaging, and full of the warm-hearted grace of God. I loved this book and its vital message. You will too!
- Dr Steve Brady, P RINCIPAL , M OORLANDS C OLLEGE
I can say from hard-won experience that this book hits the spot. Rob Parsons touches the real issues we need to face in showing our children what God s love looks like. He gets to the heart of how to live authentically in front of our children; he shows us how to avoid the trap of trying to look respectable while missing reality in our relationships; and he offers practical ways to prepare our children for life in the real world.
- Revd Ian Coffey, S PEAKER, AUTHOR, HUSBAND, FATHER AND GRANDFATHER
Rob Parsons honest, wise and practical insights will help parents guide their children through the bumpy waters of growing up in their local church.
- Nola Leach, G ENERAL D IRECTOR , CARE
All of us want to be the best parents we possibly can be for those kids of ours, but every one of us knows that at some point we are failing them and we are failing God. This book is for people like me that know they need help.
- Steve Clifford, G ENERAL D IRECTOR , E VANGELICAL A LLIANCE
This book is the best investment a Christian parent could make.
- Gavin Calver, National Director, British Youth for Christ
When should parents read this book? When the pregnancy test kit turns blue!
- Katharine Hill, AUTHOR AND SPEAKER
Rob Parsons is an inspiration. His books and his talks are always full of wisdom, humour, powerful stories and telling applications.
- Revd Nicky Gumbel, V ICAR , H OLY T RINITY B ROMPTON
This is a brilliant book that will encourage and help Christian parents and anyone else with a heart for teenagers. If we were to apply its lessons I believe thousands of youngsters would stay the course and keep loving God.
- Revd Lyndon Bowring
Could save a generation of young people being lost from the church.
- Matt Summerfield, E XECUTIVE D IRECTOR , U RBAN S AINTS

Copyright 2011 by Rob Parsons and Care for the Family.
The right of Rob Parsons to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in the UK in 2011 by Monarch Books (a publishing imprint of Lion Hudson plc) Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England Tel: +44 (0)1865 302750 Fax: +44 (0)1865 302757 Email: monarch@lionhudson.com www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 0 85721 053 1 (print) ISBN 978 0 85721 115 6 (ePub) ISBN 978 0 85721 114 9 (Kindle) ISBN 978 0 85721 116 3 (PDF)
Published jointly with Care for the Family, Garth House, Leon Avenue, Cardiff CF15 7RG; www.careforthefamily.org.uk.
Distributed by: UK: Marston Book Services, PO Box 269, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4YN
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790. Quotatiom marked NLT taken from taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Acknowledgments

I don t want my kids hating God because of me.

1 God has No Grandchildren

2 Avoid the Jelly-Mould Syndrome

3 Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

4 Create a Sense of Belonging

5 Over-busyness

6 Cynicism

7 Hypocrisy

8 Judgmentalism

9 Overfamiliarity

10 Get Them Ready for Disappointment with Others

11 Get Them Ready for Disappointment with Themselves

12 Get Them Ready for Disappointment with God

13 Get Them Ready for the Real World

14 Give Them a Vision

A Final Word

Notes

Afterword
Acknowledgments

A big thank you goes to everyone who worked on the book with me, especially Jon Matthias, who worked on it from the beginning. Thanks also to Mark Molden, June Way, Steve Williams and all the team at CFF, and to Michael Bates, Lyndon Bowring, Paul Francis, Kate Hancock, Jon Mason and Owain Williams.
My agent Eddie Bell of the Bell Lomax Agency did his usual brilliant job together with his colleagues Pat, Paul, June and Jo. Many thanks also to Tony Collins and the team at Monarch.
Special thanks to my wife, Dianne, who gave me her usual wisdom, insights and patience while I was writing.
As ever, the book wouldn t have seen the light of day without the work Sheron Rice did - once again, much appreciation to her.
Some names in the text have been changed to protect confidentiality.

This book is dedicated to Mark Molden and the team he leads at Care for the Family, and to Paul and Jane Francis - thank you.
I don t want my kids hating God because of me.

S ome years ago Wayne Cordeiro, the pastor and author of the brilliant book Leading on Empty 1 , was asked to meet with a group of American church leaders. Most were around forty years old and all had churches with over 3,000 members. On the second day of the conference the organizers asked these leaders a question that caught many of them off guard: What do you fear the most? Cordeiro says that as each took a turn at answering, tears began to flow and several couldn t even finish what they d started to say. One admitted that he didn t know how much longer his marriage could sustain the pressure of his job. But it was another leader s answer that got Wayne Cordeiro s attention. His greatest fear?
I just don t want my kids growing up hating God because of me.
I ve thought so much about that church leader and what he said. I care about the local church. My wife, Dianne, and I have only ever attended two churches in our whole lives and one of those is a plant from the other. We are in that church almost every Sunday. I used to be involved in the leadership there, but I left that role to concentrate on my work with the charity Care for the Family. When I resigned I said to the congregation, I m sure you ll do better without me than with me. They did. I love that place.
And I care about church leaders. During the First World War some soldiers who were sent home from the front were given the title honourably wounded . Many of the church leaders I meet are honourably wounded . The pressure - physical, emotional and spiritual - combined with the constant energy-sapping criticism has taken its toll. I know that church leaders aren t perfect, but we dare not take them for granted. One of the greatest privileges of my life has been the opportunity to speak with thousands of leaders across the world and try to encourage them.
But as I reflected on this man s words my heart went out to him not just as a church leader, but even more as a parent. I hope that this book will be of help to church leaders; however, I have written it for all kinds of mothers and fathers.
When asked about his greatest fear, the church leader at the conference could have mentioned any one of a hundred fears to do with his job: that his church wouldn t prosper, that the funds wouldn t come in for the building programme, perhaps that one of his deacons would change his mind about retiring! But no: his first thoughts were for his children.
Why the fear that they might hate God because of him? Was he a monster at home? I m sure he wasn t. Did he not provide for his family? I have no doubt that he did. Did he not love his children? I am sure he would have given his life for them.
I think I understand the reason why many parents have felt that fear, because the spectre of it has terrorized my own heart. It is that the experience of being brought up in a Christian home and being intimately involved in the life of a local church, with all the pressures that can bring, could damage the seeds of faith in our children s hearts. Our fear is that the exposure they have to Christianity will cause them to have little love for God or his people.
There is no pain like parental pain. 2 So wrote psychologist John White. If he is right then it is because there is no love like parental love. We can treat our husband, wife, friends or colleagues so badly that it is possible they will stop loving us. But most parents find it hard to imagine anything their child could do that would cause them to say, I just don t love her any more.
C. S. Lewis wrote, Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. 3 All over the world I meet parents who are in pain for their children. On the surface it can be hard to understand why. These young people (and sometimes much older ones) may have excellent jobs and a good set of friends, and perhaps be happily married with children of their own. More than that, they are loving sons and daughte