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Sep 09, 2024 14:00pm

Parents, We’re Disciple Makers

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Stand Firm Parents Article

Helping families stand firm in such a time as this.

Parents, We’re Disciplemakers

Over the past year as I’ve shifted the focus of Stand Firm Ministries towards helping parents and the next generation, I have noticed the job of Christian parents described in many different ways—whether that’s “raising children up in the Lord,” “training up children in the way they should go,” “raising Christian kids,” “raising up godly children,” “raising children in church,” and the list could go on but you get the idea. Often the variety of terms is because there isn’t a universal term, but other times the different phrases are due to a spectrum of perspectives of what the faith maturity of Christian children should look like. That range of opinion of what a mature Christian should look like isn’t merely a parent problem—it’s a church problem. Across churches and even within churches there is a wide array of “brands” of Christianity. This creates confusion for children’s ministries in churches and for Christian parents at home. As with most issues with contradictory views, we need to get to the core foundation.

When we strip everything back and get to the core of Christianity, we find that it is to simply follow Jesus and to understand that we should go back to the first inivitation He gave to follow. This first invitation can be found in Matthew 4:19, where Jesus finds Peter, Andrew, James, and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. There He asks them to follow Him and if they do so then He will make them fishers of men. That invitation is the core foundation of Christianity.

In accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow Him, these men were committing to be a disciple of Jesus and to in return disciple others. That’s the core of Christianity–becoming a disciple to then make other disciples. Like the first followers of Jesus, we’re also disciples. Also like the early followers of Jesus, raising or training up someone in the Lord is discipling. We may get that when it is a peer we’re helping grow in their faith, but it is the same case with our children.

Christian parents, we’re to disciple our children. Raising them in the Lord and training them up is discipling. We can write this off as just semantics, but I believe if we adopt the idea and term of discipling or disciple-making then it helps us more accurately frame our calling with our children. Just as we’re called to be disciple-makers through the Great Commission, we’re to disciple our children— “our Jerusalem” to borrow from Acts 1:8.

One of the reasons we don’t use the term disciple-making to refer to Christian parenting is because discipleship can sound daunting, as well as formal.

Discipleship isn’t nearly as daunting or overwhelming as we make it. The truth is we’re already discipling our children. Every interaction and everything they see from us is discipling them into something. We’re doing it. We’re disciple-making. What tends to be lacking is intentionally discipling them to follow Jesus. In that same vein, disciple-making doesn’t have to be formal nor should it be. It is not merely taking your child through a discipleship workbook, but it flows out of everyday life.

I’ve likely stirred up questions about discipling our children, but the aim here was to just get us thinking that we’re disciple-makers for our children. That’s our calling.

To further help us realize that we’re disciple-makers, I have a four-part series on Parents as Disciple-makers on my podcast, Stand Firm Parents. There I talk about discipling our children in greater detail and talk with guests about how it isn’t as hard as we make it and how important of a role we have. I hope you check it out, but first take a deep breath and say to yourself, “As a parent, I’m a disciple-maker.”

This is a Stand Firm Parents article from Stand Firm Ministries and first appeared on www.standfirmministries.com.