Service
4 Easy Ways Parents Can Use the Internet to Grow Giving Hearts
Today I’m happy to share this guest post from author Amy L. Sullivan! Her book “When More is Not Enough: How to Stop Giving Your Kids What They Want and Give Them What They Need” releases today. Be sure to check it out – seriously, who doesn’t need a book with that title? My daughter is 11, and last year our girl saved money from her birthday and Christmas to buy herself an iPod. My husband and I blocked the poor girl from many of the capabilities which make the iPod fantastic (Awwww, mom! Read More…
Read MoreAre You Shaping Your Kids to Do God’s Work Right Now…Or Just Preparing Them for When They Grow Up?
I’m excited today to feature a guest post from Wynter Pitts, founder of For Girls Like You Magazine, a ministry to girls (age 6-11) and their parents. Do you remember being 9, 10 or 11 years old? I do. It seems like a lifetime ago. Probably because, in my case, it was! I have vague memories of lining my “babies” along the living room wall and yelling out names as I “took roll” and set up my classroom. I was convinced that I was going to be a teacher…when I grew up. I remember following Read More…
Read MoreTeachable Moment: What It Means to Simply Love
As I’ve mentioned before, my husband Bryan leads a ministry that serves chili to 100-200 local homeless people each Thursday night. At the end of the year, we took all three of our kids to serve for the first time (that’s two 4-year-olds and a 2-year-old). I had only been once before myself, so it was a new experience for me as well. We brought apples, bananas and tangerines and put them in a little wagon that the kids could pull around. What an impactful and emotion-filled night it was! When Read More…
Read MoreA Meaningful Christmas Gift Idea: Wrap an Empty Present
Last week I offered the following Christmas present choice to my 4-year-old twins: “Mommy and Daddy are planning to get you five presents for Christmas. But we want to give you a choice. You can choose to receive all five presents or you can choose to receive one less and we’ll let you pick a gift to give to someone in need.” If they made the choice to give up a present so someone else could receive one, I planned to use the money that would have been spent on their gift for something Read More…
Read MoreA Simple Project: Transform Gratitude into Action
Each night before bed our family does a roundtable prayer of thanks, with each of us saying something we are grateful for. Every time we do this, a small wave of guilt passes over me. I know we are supposed to give thanks to God for all things, but there is something that feels privileged about thanking God for all that is good and then placing our contented heads on our pillows to rest before another blessed day. I’ve spent a lot of time making sure my kids feel grateful. I guess what bothers Read More…
Read More60 Faith Questions I Hope To Answer Before My Kids Leave Home
In my recent post about starting faith conversations with kids, I pointed out that it’s one thing to acknowledge we need to be intentional in fostering the deeper conversations of faith; it’s another thing to have a plan for what those conversations should be. I said that I would draft a bucket list of conversations I want to have with my kids before they leave home someday and share them in a post. Here they are! A few notes on this list: 1) These are questions that I feel are Read More…
Read MoreHow to Start Writing Family Spiritual Goals: One Example
I’ve been thinking a lot about the key findings from the Revolutionary Parenting book I outlined in my last post. There is so much to take away from Barna’s findings, but what convicted me to most immediate action was this one: “Another of the distinctive qualities of Revolutionary Parents was that they set tangible and measurable parenting goals and held themselves accountable. Three out of every four of these parents (73 percent) developed and pursued goals. That’s about fifteen times Read More…
Read MoreA Must Read for All Christian Families: Revolutionary Parenting
I just finished reading the book “Revolutionary Parenting: Raising Your Kids to Become Spiritual Champions” by George Barna. I couldn’t put it down! It was so compelling and directly relevant to the focus of this blog (intentional Christian parenting) that today I want to share several key highlights from it. The author, George Barna, is the founder of the Barna Group, a leading market research company in tracking and analyzing matters of faith. The extensive research the Barna Group Read More…
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