Discipling Kids You Don't Parent: What's Your Role?

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In this episode, we explore how to guide children spiritually when you're not their parent. Whether you're an aunt, uncle, or church member, learn how to influence kids' faith while respecting parents' authority and maintaining your God-given role. Discover ways to build relationships, pray intentionally, and offer wisdom when invited.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends. Today's question says, what do you suggest for non-parent family members who talk to children about Jesus with the parent's permission? It's really hard. It feels hopeless, and sometimes even your advice hurts. Like you say screentime overusage is bad and even lists the reasons. But I have no control over the kids' TV rules. My heart really goes out to this questioner because this is a difficult situation to be in, and I understand it to a degree because those of you who are faithful followers of the Foundation Worldview Podcast, know that I myself am not a parent, that my experience with children is in the classroom as a teacher, it's as an aunt with my nieces and nephews, and it's as a member of a local church. And so I understand I do not have the same authority in children's lives as their parents do. And so it can be discouraging, and I know many listeners of this podcast are parents, but I'm sure that even many of you are in similar situations as you watch your siblings raise their kids or you look at others in your local church or just other children within your sphere of influence, you look at the way that the parents are parenting and you think, man, I am not the primary disciple maker here. How can I make a difference with what God has called me to as my role as an aunt or as an uncle, or as just somebody within the local body of Christ? And so that's what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at what can we do as we're thinking through other children that God has placed in our sphere of influence, who not are not directly our biological or adoptive children.

For those of you I haven't met before, my name is Elizabeth Urbanowicz. I'm the host of the Foundation Worldview Podcast where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview.

Now, as we think through this question of what our role is in the lives of children who are not our own, it's really important for us to understand our role and what our goal should be in that role. So if we misunderstand our God-given role in any area of life, we end up hurting ourselves and everyone else in the process. We see this happening in many facets of life today. When we look at public education in the United States, we see that our federal and many times even our state and local governments view the public school as the primary educator of the child. That it's the teachers and the administrators who know what is best for the child. Where this is overstepping the boundaries that God has given the government. That yes, it's okay for governments to run schools so long as they are understanding that they are coming alongside the parent. And the parent is the primary one with the responsibility to educate their child. We also see this overstepping happening sadly in many churches, that many churches have seen that parents are not doing a good job of discipling their children. And so rather than coming alongside parents and doing life on life discipleship and teaching them how to disciple their kids well, they just say, oh, you know what? Well, we'll take the hour that we have the kids and we'll be the primary disciple makers. And this is an overstepping of God given boundaries for the church as an organization that yes, the body of Christ is helping disciple parents discipling those within it so that parents are discipling their children. But we're seeing the fruit of this, of what happens when churches overstep those boundaries rather than seeking to equip parents. And so we need to be careful that we're not doing the same thing. That we are not overstepping our God-given role, whether it's as an aunt or an uncle or a Christian educator or a church ministry leader.

Because as someone who is not the parent, whether we are a relative or a member of the church or a friend or an educator, our role is to love God and love others through supporting the parent and interacting biblically with the child. I'll say that again. As someone who is not the parent, our role is to love God and to love others through supporting the parent and interacting biblically with the child. Our goal in this process cannot be to completely transform the parent's parenting, to raise the child in a different way or to somehow maneuver our way in to become the primary influence in the child's life. That that is not the role that God has given us, that we are to love him and love others through supporting the parent and interacting biblically with the child.

I've even seen this in my own life that someone who I was discipling who was not a child, who was a teenager, actually came from a home where their parents were not really interacting with them biblically. And I wanted to, in many ways just step in and change things. And while I could faithfully disciple this person within the role that God had given me as a sister in Christ in this teen's church, I could not go in and just circumnavigate what the parents were doing. And so I really encourage this teen, even if what your parents are doing is not what is best, you still need to honor them. You still need to respect them. You still need to submit to them. Now, you're not going to submit to something that's not biblical if your parents tell you to do something that's not biblical, but you are still called to respect and to honor your parents. So we need to make sure that we are recognizing our proper place in this child's life.

So how can we do this? How can we love God and love others through seeking to support the parents and interact biblically with the child? Well, the first thing that we need to make sure that we're doing is building relationship with the parent and child. Now, especially if this is a sibling and then a niece or nephew that we're talking about, it's really easy for us to think that we already just have a relationship with the parent and with the child because we do have these natural familial bonds. However, being related to someone genetically is different than actually having a positive relationship with them. So we need to think through, are there things that are hindering my relationship with this sibling or with this niece or nephew? This is something in my own life that the Lord really revealed to me in my late twenties is that even though it had been years since I had lived with my siblings in the same house, that there were ways that I had sinned against them when we were growing up that I never confessed and repented of. And initially my thought was like, oh my goodness, Lord, we're talking about 15, 20 years ago in some cases. Do I really need to go back and repent for these things? But the Lord really just convicted me that sin always must be paid for. It must be confessed and repented of. And so in my late twenties, I went to both of my siblings and I confessed and repented of ways in which I had not treated them biblically growing up, and that did wonders for our relationship. Now, did it happen overnight? No, it didn't. But that confession and repentance cleared up the path of our relationship and then enabled me to continue investing in my siblings and getting to know them better and learn how to love them better. So we need to make sure that we're being intentional about building relationship with the parent and child, especially if we do desire to speak into the parenting situation, that the ability to speak into a situation really must be earned.

Now, I am not the found of all wisdom. Those of you who have listened to this podcast for a while, definitely know that because I pray before I record these podcasts. I do a lot of research before I record these podcasts, but I'm a fallible human, so I still make mistakes. And sometimes you don't have to retract things that I have said. And so I'm not the found of all wisdom, but I have studied parenting a lot. I have done a lot with child developments. And so there are many times that I look at the parenting of those who are around me and I think, oh, you know what? I think this would be better if it was done this way. Or, oh, I think this could be changed. I don't walk around to those in my life telling them what I think they could be doing better in their parenting, that the ability to speak into a situation must be earned.

Now for close friends, there have been situations where close friends have asked me for advice on parenting, and I'll share my thoughts there. Or there have been times where friends who I've invested in have shared with me an issue that they're facing in parenting. And I've asked them, then, would you mind if I shared with you some things that I think you can do to help with that problem? And sometimes people have said no, and sometimes they've said yes, and if they say no, I'm like, okay, they don't want my advice. I'm not going to force my advice on others. And other times they have said yes. And so we need to make sure that we are building relationship with those in our lives, whether it's our siblings, whether it's brothers and sisters at church, whether it's friends, we need to be building relationships.

Another important thing is we need to make sure that we are praying daily for these parents and these children that God can do anything. God is omnipotent. He is all powerful. He can do what we can't even imagine. And so we need to be lifting up these parents and these children before God daily. We need to be praying that God would be working in their hearts, that God would be convicting them of their sin, that God would be opening up their eyes specifically for parents to ways in which their parenting could be more in line with the biblical worldview. We need to be praying that God would be working in children's hearts, that he would be convicting them of their sin. We also need to be praying that God would give us opportunities to speak the truth to these parents and to these children. We need to be praying that God would even send others to speak the truth, because you know what? We might not be the person who is most equipped or most efficient at speaking the truth. I think when I think about this, I think back to a situation at my old church that the church I used to attend when I lived in the Midwest, we had a ministry every Wednesday where we would meet up at Barnes and Noble in the morning and we'd have coffee and we would invite, it was on the Meetup app and we'd invite anybody to come and we'd talk about the deeper things in life. And most of the people that would come would be spiritual but not religious. They'd be agnostic or atheist. And one thing that we found out several years into this ministry was that one of the young men who was attending, who categorized himself as agnostic was actually the grandson of a very, very well-known apologist. And his mom actually reached out to our pastor and said, thank you. Thank you for starting this ministry. Thank you for engaging him. In these conversations, we try to have these conversations, but we've really been praying that the Lord would bring others into his life. And so in this ministry, my pastor and others at our church were able to challenge this young man and talk about different things in ways that probably his parents weren't able to because of the closeness of that relationship. So pray that God would bring others into these parents and children's lives to speak the truth, and then trust that God loves these parents and these children even more than you do, and show that you trust him with that by continually lifting them up in prayer before him.

Another thing I would encourage you to do is just to seek to enjoy time with the parent and child without an agenda that it can be really easy for us, especially for those of us who do not have children of our own, to think like, okay, what children can I invest in and then to kind of make those children or their parents our projects. We're wanting to invest in others and love others and speak truth to others is a really good thing. But we need to make sure that we are viewing these people as people and not projects and just enjoying time investing in them, building the relationship, praying that God would give us opportunities to speak truth to them.

Another thing that I think is really important is that we're studying to make sure that we have wisdom to offer when we are asked. It's something that I did when I was a teacher. This might sound really strange, but I went to a ton of parenting conferences and homeschooling conferences simply so I could get equipped and educated myself to understand how do you disciple children? Well, how do you make sure that your heart is turned towards them and their heart is turned towards you? How do you get them to think, well, how do you discipline in a gospel centered way. So that this way, not only could I use those things in my interactions with children, but I could help the parents that got it placed in my sphere of influence. So some resources that I think are really helpful that I have mentioned before in this podcast, this series put out by Paul David Tripps ministry called Getting to the Heart of Parenting. Highly recommend you check that out. That is a DVD series on parenting. Really, really helpful. Another series that's helpful is Visionary Parenting put out by Visionary Family Ministries, led by Dr. Rob and Amy Rienow. That's another great parenting series. We also here at Foundation Worldview, we have a parenting series that's more geared for churches. So even if you're not interested in purchasing that whole series, highly recommend you just check out a sample of that. You can get the first video for free on our website. So just highly recommend that you continue educating yourself.

And just a reminder, again, the most important thing to be doing is to be praying. Praying for these parents, praying for these children, praying for other people in their life that God would place in their life, and praying that God would give you wisdom. So I hope to the questioner who wrote in this question that you leave this podcast encouraged, recognizing what your God-given role is in this situation, and trusting that God loves these parents and these children even more than you ever could.

Well, as we wrap up, just ask that if you haven't yet taken the one and a half to two seconds that it takes to rate this podcast that you would take the time to invest rating it, that really helps us get it out to more people. Also, to ask that, if you have a question that you would like to submit on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can do that by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. As always, my prayer for you as we leave this time together is it, no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourself, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good. By using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.