As anyone who has ever tried it knows, this parenting thing is hard. These little ones and teenagers that God has entrusted us with don’t come with an instruction manual and they don’t stay young forever. As parents, we’re on this non-stop train of training that won’t stop for a long time and we feel like we don’t have a clue. The bottom line is this: I need help. Can you relate? Often, as parents, we know that we need some sort of support system, but we’re not quite sure where to turn. We may seek advice from our parents or from the relatively small cluster of people we trust to know what’s really going on in our homes. Possibly worse, we just try to suck it up and figure it out on our own. What in the world are we to do?

 

As we’ve been on a journey over the past few years to strengthen our ministry to families, we have been thinking, dreaming and praying about how the church can do a better job of “partnering with parents” as they seek to lead their kids in a relationship with God. We talk a lot about wanting to help parents, but many of us believe we can do it better. There are practical ways that the church can help equip and encourage parents to help their family walk with God. We’ve decided to ramp up our efforts to parent with purpose.