The gospel is so powerful and so transformative that it affects every facet of our lives, especially life at home.
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’m Andy Owens, pastor of family discipleship at Providence. And once again, I’m joined by John Erwin. John, welcome back, brother.
John Erwin
Thanks, Andy. It’s great to be here again.
Andy
Yeah, thank you for joining. And today, we’re answering the question, “What is family discipleship ministry?” This is a family discipleship resource, this podcast. And so, there’s this kind of question. Why? Why would we go through this effort? Why do we have a family discipleship ministry? So, how would you answer that question?
John
Yeah, I think family discipleship ministry, it’s really an area of ministry here at Providence that is specifically focused on the family. It’s going to include things like marriage, parenting, and even the discipleship of students and children within the home. And what we really wanted to do was to bring all these areas under one unified vision, hopefully God’s vision, and have that focused attention on that. So, when you ask why, why would we even have one at Providence? I think we can never overstate the importance of family from God’s perspective. The two components of family that God created, both marriage and parenthood, reveal God’s character to us, like nothing else in creation. If you think about it, the love between a husband and a wife provides a glimpse of Christ’s love towards us as his bride. In the same way, sort of the ups and downs of parenthood offer a compelling picture of God’s tenderness with us, his patience with us, and his consistent love towards us as his children. And I think family does more than just reflect God’s character. It provides us a safe place where children can experience God’s love, through their parents, and understand the truths of the gospel, and really learn how to love other people in that environment.
Andy
That’s good. Really, our families are the context in which we live out our discipleship, our obedience to Jesus, our trust in his grace. And some of our most significant relationships are those with our family members. I think I’ve heard Frosty talk about, there’s no one who casts as long of a shadow over the life of a child as his or her parents. So, there’s tremendous influence and yeah, like you said, there’s just tremendous significance in God’s economy, in God’s eyes, of the importance of family. And so, we want to help our congregation, our church, think about family according to God’s truth and wisdom.
John
And if you think about it, Andy, even Christ himself was born into the context of a family, right?
Andy
Family, yeah.
John
He submitted to an earthly mother and a father and modeled what it means to honor parents and benefit from their direction. It was within that nurturing care of his earthly family that it says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Andy
Yeah. Subject to them.
John
Yeah.
Andy
I read that this morning, in my quiet time.
John
Awesome.
Andy
Chapter two. Yes. So, we are not having this episode so that I can have you explain to our listeners what my job is, but why this matters. Why does this…
John
How can I justify your position?
Andy
Exactly. That’s not the goal here. It’s, we really want to help you all be, again, refreshed by a vision of the gospel transforming every area of life, including, and especially including our homes. Right?
John
Right. Yeah. And I think that’s key. I think we just don’t want to talk about marriage and parenting and discipline alone, although we’ll talk about those things a lot. We want to talk about how we study the Bible together, how we impart prayer to the next generation. What does meaningful involvement in the local church look like? Let’s talk about evangelism and hospitality, missions and worship, things of that nature and how they all are learned and can come out of the context of the family. And we want to see our people to see how God’s grace meets them in all this messiness of family life, and just really acknowledge the difficulty and affirm the value of leading your children to set their hope in God. So, overall, if you think about family discipleship, we want to set forth a path to help guide the process, a discipleship path for our children that parents, in partnership with the local church, can follow. And this discipleship roadmap, if you will, it’ll span from birth all the way to the point where our children leave for college. Ultimately, we just want family ministry to be a resource to our people. We want our people to know that we’re here to help them, to partner with them in pointing their kids to Jesus.
Andy
Yeah.
John
So.
Andy
And that’s really what I’ve spent a lot of the last year kind of thinking, praying about, working on, is trying to think through how to equip the members of our church, who are in that season of life, where they’re either married, but especially if they’re still raising the next generation, they’ve got kids and students at home. How can we view this season as an opportunity for disciple-making? How can we view our role as parents through the lens of the gospel?
So, I’ve actually been working on a roadmap, kind of as John used that illustration of framework for discipleship in the home, which really isn’t very different than talking about discipleship in any other context, it’s just with some specific applications to the home. And some of the unique opportunities are, you have 18 to 20 years to do discipleship with your kids in the home. What every disciple-maker wants is time with people that he or she is investing in. It takes time to impart not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2, to other people. We have to teach them things and give them truth that they can receive and believe and hold fast to, but they also have to see those truths lived out and transforming our lives. And really, parenting is an opportunity, like no other, to do that.
So, yeah, there’s kind of a roadmap with some pneumonic devices. This one through six, of what discipleship is, what the goal of it is, what the tools are, how it changes over time, what are the things you want to be focusing on, as far as skills and truths? And I’m going to start introducing that here through several avenues. I’ve actually recently started it in the weekly Friday emails. And if you listen to this podcast and don’t get those emails and would like to, just email me at [email protected], or if you have any questions really about family discipleship and feel like we could help you, feel free to reach out [email protected] But really trying to help our parents see ultimately, what it is, what discipleship in the home is, is standing on the foundation of the gospel together, listening to God’s word together, praying together, living for the praise and the glory of God’s name together, growing together, and reaching out together, reaching out in our neighborhoods, reaching out in our schools, on our sports teams, with our friends, with our families, around our tables.
So, yeah, I’ve been working on lots of kind of developing lists of lots of resources that people have already put together, and then trying to bring some alignment to what we do on Sunday mornings with kids ministry and student ministry, to not in any sense replace what parents do and parents’ role, but to affirm and support and encourage our parents in the work of discipleship, so.
John
Andy, I think that’s so important as we think about family ministry in helping our parents. Because as parents, I’m a parent myself, and knowing parents, the world is constantly bombarding us with the things that will help our kids achieve the American dream.
Andy
Right.
John
Whether it’s higher education, more education, more sports, more arts, more this, more that. And we so quickly can get sucked into that, and forget our role to disciple the next generation. So, having a path and a roadmap like this to keep in front of our parents is so critical, as we seek to disciple and keep the importance of discipleship within the home.
Andy
I’ve really thought about it in two key, two main kind of areas of need. One is the equipping, the resourcing, and one is the ongoing encouragement. We need the tools and we also need to be reminded that this matters, and that the praise of God and the joy of the next generation in God is what’s at stake. So, it’s both. Yeah, the “Hey, here, here’s some tools, here’s some ideas, here’s some devotionals to do as a family,” and “Hey, here’s the biblical vision for parenting as a glorious calling to help your kids see and savor Jesus Christ.”
John
And within the local church, we get to lock arms.
Andy
And do it together.
John
With other parents and do it together.
Andy
Amen. That’s right. All right. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, hope it’s been helpful to you, and we hope that your heart is encouraged by God’s grace to pass on truth of the good news of Jesus to the next generation, and we hope to see you next time. Thanks.
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.