Discipleship is bringing all of life into conformity with Jesus’ authority. It’s constantly relying on His presence and power and doing everything for His glory. So, while discipleship in the home isn’t less than Bible time, prayer, singing, and church engagement, it is so much more.
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, that aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome back to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” I am Andy Owens, pastor of family discipleship, and I felt like it was time to bring back my original guest on this podcast, and that is Daniel Savage. Daniel, welcome back.
Daniel Savage
Yes. Long overdue.
Andy
Yes. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve I think I’ve talked with a lot of folks on staff since you and I did our first five episodes on family worship, and it just seems like people need to hear from you again, so.
Daniel
Well, I’m happy to be here.
Andy
Yeah.
Daniel
Thanks for asking me.
Andy
You’re welcome. So what I want to talk about right now, just to have a quick conversation about what discipleship is and specifically how discipleship, and specifically our role as parents to disciple our children, is not limited to family worship time, going to church, doing overtly spiritual activities, right? It’s not just when we read the Bible, when we pray together, when we sing together. Those are foundational, important. This is not at all in an attempt to undervalue those things.
But let me start with reading a verse from Philippians 4. This is Philippians 4:9, and I think it will make it clear where we’re going in this conversation. Paul writes to the church of Philippi, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.” So Paul, he lived, he served, he labored. He taught in such a way that he could write back to this church and say, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.” This is a call to imitation, but in a sense, an all-of-life imitation. So why don’t we start out, Daniel, just tell me, what do you think discipleship is?
Daniel
I think, just starting with this verse as a jumping-off point, I think discipleship is helping other people follow Christ. The idea of a disciple is a learner, and so discipleship is teaching. And typically when we think of teaching, a lot of times we think of a teacher in a classroom or a preacher, even, in a church. That’s teaching, but as he articulates here, there’s a lot of different ways to teach. There’s speaking, there’s modeling, there’s encouraging. And that is what Paul is advocating as discipleship. The way to teach someone to follow Christ is to tell them about following Christ and then to show them what it looks like to follow Christ.
Andy
So bring them alongside you as you follow Christ.
Daniel
That’s exactly right. And I think there was probably a better understanding of that in the first century, their whole idea of discipleship. That’s what they thought of. And we have narrowed that to, “I need to teach you these ideas. I need to…”
Andy
A set of truths that I need to make sure you’ve mastered.
Daniel
Right. Which is certainly a part of it and can’t be done without it. But the modeling is a big piece of it that I think is maybe more relevant in parenting than any other form of discipleship, because it requires spending time together, living life together. And even as I was thinking about what we were going to talk about, I was just thinking, our kids see more of our lives than anyone else, if you include you and your spouse together. So they are going to see not just what you think and believe, but how you act, how you live it out. So.
Andy
That’s great. And part of the reason I want to talk about this is because I don’t want there to be a false dichotomy in our understanding as a church about what it means to disciple our children. You may have heard me say at some point we want our children’s ambitions and their sights to be set on heaven, not Harvard. That’s from Chap Bettis, “Disciple Making Parent,” and Harvard being symbolic of any worldly success. And obviously Harvard’s not inherently wrong or bad. It actually started as a theological training ground. But we talk about, hey, the goal of Christian parents shouldn’t be to make their child the most successful athlete or student or dancer or singer or whatever thing it is that you and your family are into, but it should be to raise them up to followers of Jesus.
But I don’t want people to hear that and think, “Oh, our kids don’t do sports because we disciple them,” or, “Our kids aren’t engaged in the arts because we disciple them.” But rather, we want to disciple our kids through their schoolwork and their sports and their extracurricular and social activities. We want to disciple them, in a sense, in all of life. And so that’s why I think this is a worthwhile topic to think about on here. And so I’ll just throw out, I love your explanation of discipleship, just helping someone else follow Christ. And I think it’s learning, because it does fundamentally mean, disciple, is a learner.
It means learning to live all of life in reliance on the grace of Jesus, under the authority of Jesus; all of life constantly being renewed according to the word of God and the Bible and shaped by God’s purposes in the world. It’s our whole being, in a sense, being apprenticed to King Jesus for his purposes in the world. And so discipleship in the home is trying to help our kids have that vision of their lives as belonging to King Jesus. So let’s talk for just a minute about the value and the relationship between planned intentional discipleship activities like family worship, reading the Bible, prayer, church participation, service, and then these unplanned, not as overtly spiritual, but nevertheless valuable discipleship in everyday life.
Daniel
Yeah. So let me just say one thing about what you just said about separating those two things. I think about that a lot because my kids are now eleven, nine, and seven, and they’re starting to display some strengths and…
Andy
Interests.
Daniel
Things they’re good at. And what I’m talking to them about regularly now is, God gave you that. You are a steward of that. So sometimes we think of academics and sports and arts as the enemy of discipleship, but really we want to take those things under the conformity of…
Andy
They’re the realm of discipleship or the context, the canvas.
Daniel
Correct. So I want my son to be the best athlete he can be, I want my daughter to be the best student she can be, or whatever their strengths are. I just want to help them now to understand that it’s for the glory of God, that they don’t have anything they haven’t received. And so I’m pushing them to be the best for the glory of God. How do you use this to expand God’s kingdom and to be a light in the darkness? So trying to start that early. But thinking about the relationship between formal discipleship instruction planned times versus all of life and as part of discipleship, I think that first I would say they have to go together.
I hear some people, sometimes they dismiss the formal times because they say, “Well, I’m doing it as we go, in the car and along the road.” Deuteronomy 6. They interpret that to mean, well, it doesn’t need to be formal. I can do it as life comes up. And there’s certainly some truth to that, that we should be doing that as we go, in the car, at the game, on the walk, whatever. But paired with intentional times just makes that, that much more effective. And there’s a lot that’s taught in the intentionality. So when you devote time to devotions or prayer or going to church, any of those things that are explicitly Godward, it is teaching your kids. They’re learning about your priorities. They’re learning about what you think is important. And so when you set aside even a few minutes to read the Bible or to pray, they’re learning about what you think is important, and that’s where it starts to… Even that is going into the modeling. And then that builds springboards into those as-you-go moments where…
Andy
You’re loaded with things you can bring up and talk about in those moments.
Daniel
Correct. “Oh guys, this sunset reminds me of that Psalm we read the other night.” Or when your son or daughter comes to you and they have an issue with a friend or something happened, a conversation that they’re trying to debrief with you about, to be able to point back to, “Hey, we read something about that the other day. Do you remember that, when we were reading in Philippians?” Or, “Do you remember what God said about that? How does that apply here?” It gives you those natural springboards and opportunities to not just weigh in with your opinions, but to point back to the Word. And again, you’re modeling that you’re living life submitted to the Word, looking to God and trying to receive his direction.
Andy
That’s great. And I think one of the things that is helpful to see here is that discipleship always happens in the context of a relationship. And hopefully if it’s good discipleship, it’s a growing relationship, growing in trust, growing in love, hearts being knit together in love. And so there would be, I think, a pretty significant danger if our kids perceived, “Mom and Dad’s interest in me is only to tell me things from the Bible or to only take me to church. But when we’re done with that, they don’t really care about me or love me.”
And so I think that’s just another benefit of doing things together, like bike rides and playing basketball or soccer, or cooking a meal together, or reading a story together. Because you’re always deepening the relationship, you’re widening the channels for communication, and you’re communicating to your children, “You’re important to me. I love you.” And that in a sense, reaffirms and strengthens those intentional times of discipleship of, “Hey, Mom and Dad are telling me these things and taking time out of our schedule to help us understand God’s Word because they care for me, because they love me.”
And so just an example from our family last night. It was one of the first nights we thought it was cool enough to do this. We have a little new-used fire pit that we got, and we made a fire outside in the evening, and we had a little family devotion time outside by the fire. We were reading John’s Gospel because two of our kids are in student ministry. Student ministry’s going through John’s Gospel. So we read a section of John’s Gospel. We talked about it for a few minutes. We sang a little bit, we prayed together and we had s’mores and we turned on the Lord of the Rings audiobook that we’re listening to as a family and sat around the fire listening to a really good story.
And so those are different in some ways, but really connected and similar. And I think the value of both rises because we did the other, if that makes sense. And so I think of both of those as really significant investments in our kids. One is just more fun entertainment, but time together, and one is intentional discipleship. So, any examples from your own family, or just things you see as highly valuable relational investment opportunities?
Daniel
Yeah. And this is a simple one. It’s changed a lot over the years, but just the nighttime routine. So that has always been a go-to, ready-made opportunity to spend time together, lay in the bed for a few minutes, pray, and we’ve done different things over the years and not all of them spiritual. I mean, Wyatt and Thatcher and I watched Dude Perfect videos in the bed. They’re five-minute little videos, but they’re fun things that we did over the years. Now we mostly pray and talk about prayer requests, but yeah, just time investment. Relational investment is always valuable and it is especially valuable in discipleship.
Andy
Amen. Amen. Well, I hope this has been a blessing to you, our listeners. We’re really thankful that you tune in. Daniel, thank you for joining again.
Daniel
Thanks for having me.
Andy
May the Lord bless you, and look forward to catching you on the next episode.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast, produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.