Teaching the Faith at Home

One of my favorite things to do is to teach the faith within my congregation.  I love to teach Bible study and Confirmation classes.  But the effectiveness of this teaching is almost always closely related to the extent to which it is not an aberration in the life of the learner.  That is to say, are they learning the faith outside of that one hour each week that they are in Bible study or Confirmation instruction.

This is particularly true for children.  There are 168 hours each week.  If learning the faith is limited to 1-2 hours each week, with little exposure to the Word of God outside of those times, it should not surprise anyone if the Christian faith becomes increasingly marginalized in a child's life as they grow older.

That means that learning the faith needs to take place in the home as well.  

I realize that the near immediate response is, "How will I find time to do that?"  Or, "I'm not good at teaching."  Or, "Isn't that the pastor's job?"  

The answers to those questions/statements are "make time," "you can do it," and "no."  

However, short answers are rarely helpful, so let me write just a little more.

Every one is busy.  I get it.  That becomes especially true when you are also responsible for all the different things your children need to do.  But I am not proposing that you devote an hour a day to having your own confirmation class at home.  What I am suggesting is that you take some times you were already together, and using those times to reinforce the Christian faith you want your children to have.  For example, when you are driving the kids to practice, turn off the radio and talk to them.  Tell them a Bible story or recite a part of the catechism together (this may require some preparation on your part if you are driving).  If that sounds daunting, you can get the catechism set to music or an audio Bible to listen to together.  

You may not be confident in your ability to teach.  First off, you can teach just fine.  Your kids are watching you to learn all sorts of things, like what is important, what is real, how to act, how to treat others, and so much more.  It is actually somewhat scary how much we teach our children without trying or being aware.  That being said, if you are not confident in your ability to teach, there are numerous resources that can help you, from devotion books to the audio resources I alluded to above to Luther's Small Catechism.  

Christian parents are the foremost and most important teachers in the lives of their children.  Your pastor wants to help you to teach your kids about Jesus, and when he has the opportunity, he will also teach them about Jesus.  But the responsibility ultimately lies with you to teach your kids the faith.  God bless you as you carry out this most important endeavor.

A future blog post will lay out how we teach our children the faith at home in a short simple way, by incorporating this teaching into our bed time routine.