Helping Parents Disciple Their Children: Tips for the Local Church

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How can church members support parents in discipling their children without relying solely on Sunday school programs? In this episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz offers practical steps for individuals to encourage family discipleship through prayer, hospitality, babysitting, and meaningful relationships. Whether you're single, an empty nester, or discipling your own children, discover how you can make a lasting impact on the next generation within your local church.

Transcript

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

Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says, "How can an ordinary church member, not someone who's a pastor or anything like that, support parents in their church in discipling their children? I don't mean supporting Sunday school. While that's good, parents should be the primary disciple makers." Yes, we wholeheartedly agree at Foundation Worldview, and so this is a great question for us to think through. Whether you are someone like me who is single and does not have children, or whether you are an empty nester who has raised children but no longer has children at home, or whether you are currently discipling your own children and you simply want to help other families in your church, it's great for us to think through how can we as ordinary, everyday people just help the other families within our sphere of influence, specifically within our local church? How can we help those parents become the primary disciple makers of their children?

And so that's the topic we're going to dive down deep into today on 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. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for this episode today.

Now, what I'm going to do to answer this question is I'm just going to share some basic tips of things that I do in my own life because those of you who are faithful Foundation Worldview followers know that I'm single. I've never been married. I don't have any children of my own, but I am very passionate about helping parents disciple their children well. So some of the things that I think anybody can do and are things that I do in my own local church, the first thing is regularly pray for the children and their parents. Now admittedly, this is something that I need to get better at doing. I do not pray for the parents and children in my church every day. However, I do have a list on my tablet that I go through. It's a prayer list of the families in my church, praying for them specifically that the parents would be discipling their children well, and then for any things that I know that are going on in their lives. And then also for the children specifically, I pray for the children that I see in my church who have really hard hearts that God would soften their hearts and then pray for the other children as well. So that would be my first recommendation is to regularly be bringing these children and their parents before the throne of God that you're talking with God about them. You're praying for specific requests, and then also as you are praying for these children and their parents, what I have found in my own life is that as I pray over specific people, God really softens my heart towards these people and really directs the affections of my heart towards these people so that I love them with the love of Christ. Now, do I love them perfectly? No, absolutely not. I'm a sinner, but I have found that when I pray for people consistently, that God really stirs the affections of my heart towards that person.

The second thing that I seek to do and that I would recommend that you do no matter the situation that you're in, is regularly offer to babysit for children at church so that their parents can have some good one-on-one time. Because really godly parenting is best supported by a healthy marriage. And so I would encourage you, whether you are single or you're an empty nester or you're a family to start asking families in your church regularly, when can I babysit for you so that you guys can go out on a date night? My personal goal is I try to do this once a week. It doesn't always work out that way for me. Some weekends are busier than others, some weeks are busier than others, but I do try to make it a goal of once a week to reach out to a family at church and say, Hey, these are the nights that I'm free or the afternoons over the weekend that I'm free. When would you guys like to go out on a date? If you have children of your own, I would just really encourage you to do the same thing and invite parents to drop their kids off at your house so that they can play along with your kids and the parents can go out on a date night. I know that one of my really good friends, my pastor's wife back in Chicago, Rachel, she was so good at this of regularly watching other people's kids. She has four kids of her own, but she would frequently have eight, nine or 10 kids at her house that she would be watching other people's kids as well. So just really encourage you to seek out when you can babysit for others.

Now, a few encouragement in this. Sometimes when you ask people when you can babysit, they might be very hesitant to take you up on this because they're not used to people asking this or they might feel guilty thinking like, oh, I don't want to just ask for free babysitting. Now this is not your issue. This is something they have to work through with getting okay, being okay being served by the body of Christ. But we'll just encourage you, if the first few times you ask someone, they kind of are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll figure out a day or No, not this week. Don't get discouraged. Don't get discouraged that people are saying no. Some of the families that I try to babysit for, I had to ask them three or four times when I could watch their kids before they finally took me up on it. So don't get discouraged. Just keep being consistent and asking people and then give people different options, different days of the week, different times, different locations. There's one family in my church, sometimes they drop their child off at my house. Sometimes I'll go over to their house to babysit, give them options. Can we come over to you or can I come over to you or can you drop your kids off here? Give options too. If they don't feel comfortable leaving during a mealtime, maybe their child's a picky eater and they just are like, oh, they only eat what I prepare. Offer to babysit at two in the afternoon. So just be creative and flexible and don't get discouraged if people say no the first times.

Another recommendation that I have would be intentional at building relationships with parents because building a solid relationship takes time, and if we want to invest in others, we can't just swoop in and expect that we can start investing and offering advice and offering help right away that there needs to be some kind of relationship established here. And it does take time in general, as I'm seeking to love and support and help the families that God has placed in my sphere of influence in my local church as a general rule, I try to wait somewhere between four to six months of consistently investing in a relationship before I offer any advice, unless the person specifically is requesting that advice. And so it just takes time to build relationships. So if you're thinking, yeah, I really want to help the families in my church be better at discipling their children, don't think that you can just walk up to someone new, introduce yourself, and suddenly start giving them advice for how to disciple their children well. So invest in relationships. It takes time.

And just as another little caveat, I always, even though on this podcast, I am giving advice all the time, that's my job on this podcast, and you can choose whether or not you want to listen to it. Where I do not treat my personal life like this podcast, I generally only give others advice when they ask for it, or if I see an area where I feel like I should speak the truth, I always ask for permission before that. So I think that that can be a really wise thing. Before giving advice to ask for permission, do you want to know my thoughts or can I share with you something that I think might help you in this situation? Just a helpful paradigm that I learned in a book a few months ago is in most conversations, people's goal is either to be helped, to be hugged, or to be heard. So to help to have practical advice offered to hugged, to be offered comfort or heard, just to have somebody else let them know, I have heard you. I care about you. I see you. So you can even ask in a conversation if a parent is talking about a frustration with a child, oh, this keeps happening, you can say, oh, I'm really sorry. That must be difficult. And you can even ask them, would you like some advice in this situation? Or are you just looking to be heard or would you like to be comforted? But that helped, hugged, and heard paradigm, I think is a really helpful one.

Another thing that I think you can do is start practicing hospitality in a way that's going to help other families. So if you currently are discipling your own children, would really recommend that you open up your home regularly to other families, whether that's once a week or once every other week, or just start inviting these other families in your home and do real life as you invite them in. Don't make it a night where everything is perfect and perfectly cleaned and you have the most amazing dinner. If on Tuesday evenings you normally have spaghetti and salad, serve spaghetti and salad. Invite people into your real life because as you are faithfully discipling your children and others see you faithfully discipling your children, that's going to be one of the best motivators and encouragement for them. I was actually just talking with a friend earlier this week and she does a really good job of disciplining her toddlers. She has two toddlers and she does a really good job of disciplining them consistently with love and also firmness. And I was asking her how she started disciplining well like that because she's relatively young and she told me that when she was dating her husband, her husband was being discipled by another family while he was in college, and every time she would go to visit him, she would actually stay with that family and he would come over and have dinner, and she was like, I just watched that family and what they were doing. And so by being in that home, she learned so many great techniques for working with her own children.

Now, if you are someone who's like me, who's single, or if you're an empty nester and you don't have children that you're currently discipling in your home, open up your home and you can actually invite people over or you can practice hospitality in a way that is more convenient for that family. You can offer to make a meal for them. Now, I don't always do this, but in the past, something that I've done is if there's a family where I know I want to get to know them, I want to have them over. But I know it's a lot more difficult for them to pack up 2, 3, 4 kids and drive over to my house than it is for me to just pack up myself and drive to their house. I'll offer to make a meal and then bring that meal with me over to their house so that they're getting a night off from cooking, but they also don't have to pack up their whole family and drive over to my house. You could also suggest meeting up outside at a park, having a picnic, and then so the kids can play on the park. Well, you can just chat and get to know the parents better. So hospitality is really going to be key in this.

And then a final suggestion is ask good questions when you are with that family. Specifically ask good questions of the kids because a great way for families to start discipling their children is to ask their kids questions that are going to get them thinking. Questions about what the Bible has to say about certain things, questions about things they've encountered in the world, questions about things that they're thinking. And so if you are a parent right now, when you have other families over your house or when you're together for church events, just model asking your kids good questions and other parents will start to pick up on that. Or if you're like me, you don't have any children or your kids are out of the house when you're with families, ask the kids good questions. That's something I usually try to think of ahead of time when I'm going to spend time with children in my church. I try to think of what are one or two good questions that I can ask this child? Because as you model asking those questions in front of the parents, that's something that hopefully the parents will pick up on.

Well, I hope that these suggestions have been helpful. Again, I just suggested that you regularly pray for the children and their parents, you regularly offer to babysit, be intentional at building relationships with the parents, practice hospitality, and ask good questions. If you found the content of this podcast beneficial, please invest a few seconds that it takes to like and subscribe so that way you don't miss any future episodes. It also helps us get this content out to even more people. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a Future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.