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I had a great conversation with friend and experienced Director of Faith Formation (so fancy) Jen J the other day. Our sons are both in swim lessons together, so we got to shoot the breeze about Sunday School and formation and what makes faith "sticky."
You and I both, as parents, want our kids to be loved, to be loving, to grow up with some stability and resilience, to help others, to leave the world better than they found it. And you and I both know that this is hard work and so often mystifying and terrifying work. The world doesn't respond well to open-hearted, caring people and, as my husband said when our eldest was born and he held them in his arms the first time, "The world is not good enough for you." I feel that deep in my heart.
So how to share the faith we have, how to help our kids navigate a dangerous world with compassion? I'm going to muse about these things in the coming weeks here, but if you ever want to just come chat or go have a bourbon and rant about it, please message me! As Cole Arthur Riley writes, "Together we won't get lost in despair."
Jen shared with me four generally-agreed-upon touchpoints that make the faith we share with our kids stick with them for their whole life. You could consider this a checklist, though each one is complex:
- a regular Sunday routine
- summer church camp
- a transformative journey
- campus ministry
The idea is, if our kids have these in their experiential tool box, they are significantly more likely to be part of spiritual community later in life, but they're also significantly more likely to be those compassionate, resilient people reaching out to others as Jesus did.
I'll share more about these four topics in future emails, but for now, maybe notice how each of these showed up in your own life--what was your Sunday routine growing up? It doesn't have to be the same now, but what was it like? Did you go to camp? Or on a mission trip or pilgrimage? What was it like? Were you part of campus ministry? What did you know about it from others if you didn't?
And who, in all of those, paid attention to you?
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