It’s Not Enough to Take Your Kids to Church

Our family loves the Church. We have served in various roles in various churches throughout the years, and we highly value being part of a faith community. We love that our kids have a place on Sunday mornings where they feel welcome and known, taught by teachers whose love for God pours over into their love for our kids.

The Church matters to us. But Sunday mornings alone are never going to be enough to build a lasting, rooted faith in my kids. Weekly gatherings serve a purpose, but faith isn't something that gets installed once a week. It's something that gets woven in (through the ordinary, unglamorous moments of an actual life).

That's it. That's the whole philosophy.

You're already equipped for this.

You don't need a seminary degree. You don't need a perfectly curated devotional shelf. You don't even need to have your own theological questions figured out (you won't… my kids still stump me all the time). What your kids need is much simpler and much more available to you than you think: a parent who's willing to talk about God like he's actually part of real life, not just part of Sunday.

In our house, that's looked like small, repeatable things:

• A Bible story over breakfast before the school-morning scramble
• Naming what we're thankful for at dinner
• A verse spoken over our kids at bedtime
• Praying out loud when we pass an ambulance
• Letting "why do we treat people that way?" turn into a conversation about being made in the image of God

This isn't a checklist you have to match.

You don't need our rhythms. You need your rhythms. You need to develop rituals and patterns and habits that fit your family, your schedule, your kids' personalities, your own way of talking about faith. Maybe it's singing one line of a worship song as you head out the door. Maybe it's memorizing one verse a month. Maybe it's just reading a storybook Bible together most nights, even the nights you’d rather just turn off their bedroom lights.

Small and consistent beats big and occasional. Every time.

Don't try to do all the things you want to do in an ideal world if you're just starting out. Pick one small, manageable step instead. A lofty goal you don't meet just leads to disappointment — and that's usually when people give up altogether. We don't want that for you. Choose your priority, and set a reasonable expectation for working it into your family's rhythm.

Your kids don't need you to have all the answers. They need you to keep trying to answer their questions – learning alongside them, curious instead of certain, willing to say "I don't know, let's find out together." That's what makes you trustworthy to them.

That's the whole heart behind what we make at Unhidden Treasure. We're not here to hand your kids something instead of you. We're here to hand you something to use with them –because you're the one they're going to remember.