What Makes Faith Stick?

Have you ever heard the phrase... "Like Mother, Like Daughter" Children are more like their parents then we would sometimes like to think. Now this of course is not necessarily bad. I mean you are raising them so you would want them to be like you in some ways.

The Bible calls us to "train a child a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it." In the book, Sticky Faith, Dr. Kara Powell and Dr. Chip Clark help you find everyday ideas to build lasting faith in your children.

Powell and Clark state, "how you express and live out your faith may have a greater impact on your son or daughter than anything else." I would venture to also say that this is true when the children in our ministries. But the most important thing a parent can do is model the faith that they are teaching their children.

When I first entered children's ministry as my career I did not do a lot with family ministry. And to be honest I am not sure I really knew what to do when it came to the whole family. For me there really was no reason that stood out too much other then feeling completely inadequate for such a task. Here I was a 23 year old single female. I didn't think I had anything to offer. But as I continued to really meet the families and build relationships with them I found how unbelievably important a whole family ministry is.

I remember a mom asking me to do a Bible study with her daughters. The mom was heavily involved in the occult, specifically Santeria. And although she wanted her children to learn about the Bible she really had no desire and lived the complete opposite of what the Bible says.

To this day all of her children have strayed away from anything we have ever talked about. It didn't stick because it wasn't adopted in the home. And not only was it not adopted in the home but what was lived out on a daily basis was completely opposite. As Powell and Clark says, "when it comes to kids' faith, parents get what they are."

So ministry to families as a whole is so incredibly important. And we can do this by getting involved in the families lives and really taking a vested interest in their lives. It is never to late.