Dinner-Table Discipleship for Kids: Helping Families Talk About God in Everyday Moments

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Thomas West
All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. My name’s Thomas. I have two kids. I have a 12 year old little girl named Perry Elizabeth, and a son named Shepherd. And this is Trevin. Trevin, introduce yourself.

Trevin Wax
Trevin Wax. I’ve got three kids. Oldest just got married just last weekend. They just got back from their, their honeymoon, and then we have our oldest son, we have our daughter just graduating high school, and we have a middle school boy at home, so different stages.

Thomas West
Some experience with the parenting has been established.

Trevin Wax
I don’t know if you call it experience, but

Thomas West
we’re here. It’s so good to see you all. Thank you so much for entrusting us for one of your breakouts. I haven’t run the stats on this, but it’s a strong possibility. This is the only breakout at a women’s conference being led by two men. So, Trevin, try not to mess this up. Okay? You do my best, do your part. Here we are. Let me, let me tell you why we’re here. We’re here to speak to an experience that is all too common, I’ve had the experience so many times, I’m sure you can relate. Get home from a full day, you see your kids, maybe you’ve been with your kids all day, whatever the situation, whatever the circumstance, you land into the dinner table and a really intentional question gets asked, and for whatever reason, there’s not enough energy, there’s not enough focus, there’s not the mindset that says, “Oh, I’m ready for this, let me, let me meet you there. Instead, so many times, I personally, I just want to reach for my phone, I just want to retreat, I’m just all out of gas, the battery is almost done for the whole day, and I’m just thinking, I don’t even know what to do. A sense of responsibility as a Christian. I want to be here for my kids, I want to lean in, I want to be able to answer the question, to take advantage of the moment, but oh, I just feel like I’m coming up short. That’s a, that’s a, that’s an issue, that’s a, that’s a problem that’s way too common for each and every one of us, and that’s part of what we’re here in this afternoon to talk about. What does dinner table discipleship look like? But it’s so much bigger than the dinner table as well. It refers to the car ride, waiting with the sibling, watching the other one practice. How do we take advantage of these everyday moments? So, of course, our great team with Harvest House, who we absolutely love, great resources over there in the bookstall, in the bookstore, some great resources over there. We wrote a children’s catechism that we’ll tell you a little bit about, but we’re here this afternoon to try to speak to the particulars of how can we make the most of those dinner table moments, Trevin Catechism sounds kind of strange for so many. Just a little bit of background on what the catechism is, where the catechism is coming from, even some support for this from the Bible. And then we’ll kind of get back to the dinner table after that.

Trevin Wax
Yeah, this is an ancient discipleship tool that the church has relied on over the centuries in lots of different ways, for lots of different reasons. There have been a couple of seasons of the church’s life when it was sort of, there were sort of explosions of catechism. One of them was, you know, in the three hundreds, four hundreds, during that season of the church, basically, if you were preparing for baptism, you were called a catechumen, that’s what they called you, because that meant you were going through the process of truly of trying to really understand the basics of the Christian faith. Then, around the Reformation time, you have this other explosion of catechisms, I mean, there’s so many amazing ones, for, you know, if you have eventually, like Luther’s small catechism, you have the Westminster, you have the Heidelberg, all these catechisms that come up that are meant to give you the basics of Reformational Christianity in such a way that would help you to see the differences between that and some of the medieval excesses of the Roman Catholic Church at the time, and one of the things you got to understand about the this, the whole catechism project is there’s always a counter element in catechesis. This is something Tim Keller was saying a lot before he died in the last 10 years or so of his life. He was saying, you know, we need catechisms, questions and answers, type of resources that not only say what we believe as Christians, but say, how that’s different than what the world believes, and so we thought, you know, even though it’s a, it’s a scary word for some, this is the kind of ancient tool that should be dusted off, that we should, we should seek to renew and use in our, in our homes and in our families, and put simply, it just means it’s basic Christian truth in a question and answer format. It sounds for a lot of people, it’s an unusual word, but it actually is a very simple mechanism. It’s how do we get the truth of God’s word, what God’s word teaches, in a simplified way into our hearts and minds, repent. Beat that enough to where we begin to internalize these truths, and then be able to talk about them in different, in different seasons of life.

Thomas West
So helpful. Some biblical basis for catechesis as well. I mean, this isn’t something that the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Anglicans, and the Catholics all cooked up. I mean, we actually have some biblical roots, biblical source for this as well, right.

Trevin Wax
Well, it really starts out as Bible memorization. I mean, the classic passage to go back to is Deuteronomy six, where it talks about, I mean, that is, that is a vision of everyday discipleship, if ever there was one, right. You go back to Deuteronomy six, and what are the words? Repeat these words, you know, when you’re going inside your house, when you’re outside your house, when you’re on the way, you know, write them over the doorposts of your home. I love the fact that, and some of you probably have, you know, Bible verses, or because I’m out of wall art, or something that is happening, that there’s biblical precedent for that, that says something about, hey, this is the kind of house we, we want to be, we want to, like, have these, these, you know, nudges or these things that will will prompt us to think about the Lord, or to think about worship, and so the earliest Christians were basically just drawing on that, that, that deep well of Bible memorization to be able to say we need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and how it’ll help us stand out from the world.

Thomas West
So good, Trevin, so good, so we were reading Tim Keller’s How to Reach the West Again, one of the later writings that he wrote, and we came across it. Keller calls for the development of a new counter catechesis for our digital age, really getting after the idea that the world is always trying to form us. The world always has a story. Many of us, we’re taking it in every day, almost mindlessly, through our phones. We’re just drinking in all these cultural stories, all of these cultural narratives. And as Christians, we need to not simply anymore say, “Well, look, this is what we believe. We need to say, “You have heard it said, and a new mode of discipleship, where we seek to dismantle and take apart the cultural stories, and you’re familiar with these. You do you, if it feels right, chase it, you know, have your way. Very much take apart those cultural stories and reconstruct Christianity in place, very much counter catechesis, right? Yeah,

Trevin Wax
and the whole point of this is to develop an instinct, not just be able to memorize answers, and so one of the.. I printed off something that I is in Christian Smith’s book with Amy Adamsic, that is called Handing Down the Faith, and it’s this book, it’s these two sociologists, and they’re basically saying, hey, what are some of the characteristics that are true of families who successfully transmit their faith to the next generation, and this is one of the things that he says in the, that they say in the book. They say, as a normal part of family life, during the week, they talk with their children about religious things, what they believe in practice, what it means and implies, and why it matters to them in such families, they say religion is part of the warp and woof of everyday life. It comes and goes and talks easily. It is not compartmentalized in certain slots of the week, nor is it an unusual and awkward topic. It is part of who we are and what we care about. That’s the quotes of that they were having from these parents and grandparents. This does not mean such families talk about religion all the time, but it indicates to children that religion matters and that it’s relevant enough to the rest of life that it should arise normally in ordinary discussions of any number of topics. I love that paragraph, because with that paragraph, that’s a Deuteronomy six paragraph, that’s saying that religion, Christianity, the church is not just something that is in a box over here, but it is something that influences what we watch, how we talk, what it is that how we work through things together as a family. We want catechesis at its best is not just a little thing you do over on the side, it’s something that’s there to prompt those kinds of conversations in everyday life. Thomas, you’ve got young, young people, young kids at home. What are some of the practices that you have found most engaging and helpful?

Thomas West
It’s very helpful. We’ll get into some of that in the sample. By the way, isn’t this amazing? I mean, some of you don’t even have to purchase it, just take this home. There it is in the.. don’t say that in the sample guide, right here. I’m sorry, no, here it is, right here in the sample guide. If you wanted to just check it out, just briefly, there’s the table of contents, lets you know the kind of 50 questions that we’re getting into. You can see it’s broken up into these seven different sections, or or or zones, and as you get into it, you start to realize, hold on, this is like basic theology for my children, it’s systematic theology on small scale for young believers who need to grow up and learn it, so this isn’t Bible replacement, this comes alongside, it’s kind of like scaffolding that goes around the Bible. Bible story that helps us read it and understand it, so the catechism itself, it follows the 5050 questions and answers. It really walks through the story of scripture. If you open up to page six and seven, we’ll hone in there just a little more. It’s the real focus of our time together this afternoon. Of course, we wanted to tell you some about the catechism, which we’re so excited about, and we think it could be a real resource and tool for you, but let us tune your attention in to pages six and seven of the sample that you have there. It’s very much a table talk guide, and all throughout the catechism we employ the strategies that you see here to help stir it up with our little ones around the table, even looking around the room right now, we acknowledge there’s moms in the room, there’s grandmothers in the room, babies, apparently babies as well. Amen. We hear you, and children’s workers, children’s ministers, all around the room, all of us thinking in different ways, for the dinner table at home, but perhaps for the table in the Sunday school room as well, when we land, what can we talk about here? So, across pages six and seven, a few resources, and then practical prayer guide on pages seven, eight, and nine, that really help stir it up. We just had five themes that actually aren’t listed here that we just wanted to go through, so Trevin, I’ll present one you can riff on it, and we’ll just kind of make our way through together, but all the while we’re thinking across pages six and seven, we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, like we have been transformed by His grace, and we want to get that across, but how am I even supposed to do it? Like, am I supposed to have, like, a 30 minute sermon ready to go? Are we supposed to be like listening to John Piper while we’re eating mashed potatoes? Like, what is this supposed to look like here? What we’re trying to get across is it’s everyday conversations, it’s piecemeal, it’s it’s literally bite-sized theology, right? So we don’t have these on the screen. Trevin’s gonna have to post that on social, that big paragraph he just read on social media, so we can all go find it later. And here’s, here’s just a few, okay, few, few top tips from a couple of dads of different age kids with some different experience. Here, what do we keep in mind? How do we make the most of the dinner table discussion? How do we make the most of the car ride? First one is right here: redeem the ordinary. Redeem the ordinary. Think with me, every ordinary moment is a discipleship opportunity. Frankly, this probably would have been much better served if Trevin was interviewing my wife, Elizabeth, my brilliant wife, Elizabeth. Just, just right here is something I watch in my wife, Elizabeth, all the time. We’re redeeming these everyday moments. It’s not just, hey, we got to wait, you got to hold your questions, we got to get to the table, we got to open up the book, we got to get the flash cards out.

Thomas West
It’s not time, no, no, it’s always time. It is always an opportunity. Discipleship is always in season, so you know the feeling. As soon as you start to put together that perfect plan for what family worship rhythms and family discipleship is going to look like, I mean, it always falls apart. Always, always. I don’t know anyone who’s actually crushing this. I’m like, man, y’all are a wreck too. Thank God, I thought, especially

Trevin Wax
if you have kids at different ages, just you just hang on,

Thomas West
yeah, all over the place. We want to, we just want to enter that mentality of hold on, we want to redeem these ordinary moments, these everyday moments. So you’re waiting in the car pool line at school, one of them’s in the car, you’re waiting on the other one to come out. It’s an opportunity, right? And the pressure is not on to make everything out of every opportunity, but it’s just to say, like, it’s an opportunity. The other one is at a sports practice, and the other one is just sitting with you there. It’s an opportunity to open it up right there. And, of course, when we get around the dinner table, as well. We want to redeem the ordinary. Every ordinary moment is a discipleship opportunity. Travan, anything you guys have seen in your own home from that as well?

Trevin Wax
I just would just say, don’t miss the power of ordinary rhythms as well. Obviously, going to church, you know, being being present with God’s people, and that just being an expectation, this is just what we do, this is who we are, but also, you know, bedtime prayers, they don’t have to be long and drawn out, sometimes the kids want them to be longer and drawn out, so they don’t have to go to sleep right away, but, like, you know, that even if it’s just a, you know, short Bible story, or you just pray the Lord’s Prayer together, or you’re like those, those things I taught my kids when they were before they could really read and write, they already knew, like the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and things like that, because we just, you repeat that every night, you’d be amazed at how many Bible verses, how many songs, how many questions and answers from this catechism your kids would know, four years old, five years old, six years old, just from the repetition of. Of a couple of weeks, and you’re like, well, they don’t really understand all the words. It’s like that’s not the point. It’s like you’re you’re giving them adult shoes that you’re trusting the Lord, they’re going to grow into. You’re giving them the kind of the kind of structure that as they grow, they’re going to be able to fill up into, and that’s that’s the goal, that’s what we’re going for.

Thomas West
You’re already teeing up the second one. The second thing we’d have for you is this faithful repetition. Faithful repetition, you know, it might not be that we get across, you know, 50 or 100 new ideas a year. It might be that in different seasons and at different times for our family, we learn one idea, we get, we get three ideas all the way down to our soul, to where we’re living in obedience to the Lord Christ, the same true things again and again until they’re formed within faithful repetition, the same true things again and again until they’re formed within. So, a 10 year old and a 12 year old. Okay, I have had to plug so much into Google to remember. I’m like, how did I survive grade school? What happened? How did I get through? I’m so confused. Still, obviously, think about what we do with math facts, think about how we’re pulling alongside of our children with their nouns and their verbs and their prepositions. We go over these things again and again. I mean, we run drills, don’t we? Why not with the things of God? Our children’s minds are nimble, they are creative. I mean, what parent among us hasn’t been impressed. What grandparent in the room hasn’t been just blown away sometimes at the depth and the perception that these little ones have? Right, our children, they have great opportunities to take on information, to learn, and to grow. Let’s give them space to rise up into it, right. Let’s call them up in a very real way. The hardest part of repetition, though, is often knowing, like, what to repeat, right? A very just gentle nudge. That’s one of the reasons we wrote the Catechism, and even as we put it together, we put this together from different backgrounds, for me, myself, I didn’t grow up with a trustworthy catechism available, but you did, and we even collaborated, co-wrote on this from those different perspectives as well, right?

Trevin Wax
Yeah, I grew up, my parents were doing catechism with me before I could even read, they had little laminated cards and they were like basic questions and answers and I still remember it’s crazy how much I you can retain from when you’re when you’re younger and so I’ve seen the benefit of it and I’m really thankful for it you know catechism doesn’t change your heart but catechism gives you the the understanding of theological language and what, what it is that the Bible teaches, so that when the spirit will work in a kid’s heart, suddenly all these things start falling into place, and so it’s kind of like they’re, it’s like they’re setting the traps, they’re praying the Lord will, they’re setting the, you know, this is terrible metaphor, they’re setting the bombs that they are praying the spirit will blow up.

Thomas West
Yeah, we didn’t think this through. We didn’t think I should.

Trevin Wax
I should have

Thomas West
all the boy moms get it, though. Yes, that’s right. Yeah, he’s preaching to me now.

Trevin Wax
Thank you. Yeah,

Thomas West
there it is.

Trevin Wax
Thank you. But that’s that’s what we’re doing, you know. JD Gur likes to say we like to stuff our kids full of Bible, and then hope that they’ll throw up Bible when they get older, you know. That’s great, that’s

Thomas West
good.

Trevin Wax
You know, but you get the point. That’s the, that’s, that’s the, the goal of it, but even if it’s not this particular tool, all of those principles of, if we want to be a Christian family, this is how we want to lead, this is how we want to live.

Thomas West
So good, Trevin, so good. Great job on the illustrations, I love it. Here we are, number three, number three, Shepherd the Heart, Shepherd the Heart, I’m a full-time Bible teacher. Trevin’s a part-time Bible teacher. You would think our kids get a sermon every night with chicken nuggets and broccoli. You were wrong, and I don’t even think they need one. They need parents, they need guardians, they need family, they need Sunday school teachers to come alongside and shepherd the heart. Well, shepherd’s going to call out. Shepherd’s going to say stuff that’s true. Shepherd’s going to say in bounds and out of bounds, right? You’re with me, you’re away from me. We want to shepherd the heart, our little ones in all the different manifestations in this room. They don’t need to be preached at as much as they need to be loved and guided, we got to get the truth to them. We got to explain it, we got to say it, we got to model it. Want to be sure we are shepherding the heart, paying attention to the affections of the little ones that God has entrusted us, entrusted to us, right. Oftentimes, how this gets worked out in our. Home, this is as we practically live it out before them. I’m not saying we’re never going to say the truth, no, no, tell them the truth, right? Read the Bible to them, catechize them in the great catechisms of the faith, and on and on and on. But let’s just be sure we’re on the same page with this, right? We can’t give them what we don’t first already have. Yeah, and the truths that we’re trying to get across to them, they need to be truths that they see mom and dad, if available, working that out. By the way, we come to one another, we apologize to one another, we repent. They need to see mom and dad putting their hand up and say, hey, lost my temper there. I was wrong, I was out of bounds. So, shepherding their heart, yes, getting the truth to them. We got to model it as well. We really can’t give them what we don’t have and we don’t possess. So, I’m working this out with a 10 year old and a 12 year old. You just married one off last week. I mean, shepherding the heart, looking after the affections of them. Yes, we’re trying to get the right truths in the mind, but we’re, we’re paying attention to the affections of their hearts. Any top tips you could add for

Trevin Wax
us? Yeah, they, the thing I would say is, in the older you get with this, the more you realize there’s no secret formula, and there’s no sort of do this, and this will become the outcome. I think a lot of times when even the danger, even of a session like this, is we can talk about a resource or a tool or a practice and think if you just do it this way, your kid comes out this way. That is not the way that it works. Train up a child is a proverb, not a promise. And there probably are some here, maybe your grandparents or your parents, your kids are a little bit older, you’ve really struggled with one, or you’ve got other, you know, challenges. You need to know that some of the best examples we have in scripture, like the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, where you’ve got an elder brother who’s estranged in his own way and a younger brother who’s estranged in his own way. The parent in that story is God represents God, and so if God has wayward children, all of us can wind up in that situation, and so we do this because the Bible commands us to in Deuteronomy, but we also trust that there’s, we trust in the grace of God for our own shortcomings, we trust in the grace of God to for our kids, for all of this work to to the word that we have planted for it not to return void. We trust in that, we pray for that, but we also have to leave that in God’s hands. And the older I get, the more I realize how much that is the case. The more, as our kids have gotten older, the more I’ve had to pray in particular seasons, in particular times, for particular ones of our kids, because you see this particular struggle, you see this particular direction or temptation or tendency, and nothing puts us on our knees in prayer like parenting, and realizing at the end of the day we’re entrusting these kids to the Lord, so I would just say, as a just as an asterisk or a caveat to the entire conversation, don’t think that there’s just a one to one formula at the end of the day. We’re coming back to the Lord, wearing out our, you know, our prayer benches, and we’re praying for these kids that the Lord has entrusted to us, and we’re praying for him to do his work in their lives. It’s

Thomas West
great. It’s great. Now, I appreciate the great irony I’m about to stumble into being a couple of guys saying this to a room, mostly full of moms, right? So, but here we are. Welcome, the questions. You’re welcome to roll your eyes, like a couple of dudes are telling me. No, listen, listen, journey with me, sister. Here it is. Welcome the questions and help them ask better questions. Welcome the questions and help them ask better questions. My wife, Elizabeth, is a phenomenal question asker. Right, I’ll get home from the office at church and I’ll lay out a new plan. Hey, here’s where we’re going. Here’s what we’re going to, and she’ll ask five questions no one on my team thought about or had the courage to ask me. I’m like, hold on, there’s a problem here. My kids have received this spiritual gift of powerful question asking from their mama. Right, a show of hands for any parent in the room who has woken up with a child standing beside you at your bed, pumping you full of questions before you’ve had coffee, right? Right, we want to be people who welcome the question, and we want to be people who help reframe and help the kids ask a better question. Now, here’s, here’s one of the things about a catechism we learned this from Tim Keller. Tim Keller would say all a children’s catechism is doing is it’s giving a person a category, and that’s what we’re trying to do, and what we’re offering here is what we’re just encouraging you with is how do you look at eight to 12 year olds. Younger than that, and older than that, and how do we just say, am I giving this one the categories they need to grow up here in the world? And that’s what a good catechism does. It asks a question, and it provides just a thimble-sized solution for an answer. There’s so much that we have to go on and learn. There’s so much more we’re going to have to grow up into, but we have a category formed through a good question, when you have an opportunity to look back to the sample you see here, 50 questions that we want to train our kids to ask. Sometimes they’re asking nonsense questions. I think my boy Shepherd the other day asked me something about, like, when we get to eternity, like, will we grow toenails or something. I’m like, I have no idea. Like, are we doing this watching that? I don’t know. I’m so confused. Anyways, you get over here to pages six and seven as well, and you can see we’re supplying you just here today with some example question starters. So, you see there on page six, you know, how do we create a natural rhythm for this, but some question starters, right? And that’s a great way to really get after our kids, right? Give them a dose of their own medicine when they just exhaust us with all the questions. Just return fire, sister. Just ask them a bunch of questions, make them think a bunch of times. Trevin,

Trevin Wax
I think this is huge, because you don’t have to have the answer to every question they ask you. In fact, it may actually be good for you if they ask a real.. as they get older, the questions get harder. I hate to tell you, but if they, when they start asking the questions, then if you respond just with the with the humility of saying that’s a really good question. Great, I’ve really got to think about that, or let me look into that, or I’ve got someone I want to ask about that. It, what it does, is it lets it lets them feel like they’re part of this this faith tradition that answers and asks questions, and like we do this. I’ll tell my favorite question story real quick. For when our, when our kids were a lot younger. Our daughter, I think she was probably six or seven years old. It’s Christmas time, and we’re in the, in the car, and we’re driving to church, and you know, I can’t remember, like the Pentatonix version of ‘Mary Did You Know’ comes on or something at the end of the song. My daughter just says, ‘Dad, I think she do, and I was like, man, she’s really listening to this Christmas song, but it, like, made me think, you know, the questions that are being fed to them, they’re wrestling with, and so what you want to do with, like, a catechism, like you want to help guide their questions and answers, so that when they come with their own questions that are deeper, that are challenging. I’ll tell you one other thing I think is good with some kinds of questions. You can differentiate with your kids the difference between the non-negotiable basics of Christianity versus things that a lot of faithful Christians and Bible-believing Christians may disagree on, but sometimes if you and your spouse don’t exactly see it the same way, like there’s sometimes you know we’ll have questions and I’ll be like, well, you know, your mom thinks this, this is what I think about that, and you’re just giving them the category of, oh well, these two can be married and have theological disagreement, you know, on those lower tiers of importance, that’s a perfectly fine way to go about things, so that then they can kind of begin to see, oh, you know, well, Dad thinks this, but our pastor actually sees it this way, or this is, you know, on some of those third tier issues, really important for the unity of the church, for kids to already have it in their mind that good Christians disagree on a lot of stuff, but then they have also in their mind those non-negotiable, the basics that we agree on, because they’re so central and so clear in scripture.

Thomas West
So helpful, Trevin. We’re coming on to our final five minutes. We have the fifth one right here: formed to be sent, formed to be sent. This gets after what we’re really aiming for in all of those dinner table discipleship moments. What are we aiming for when we have the those rights to school that apparently will be over before we know it. What are we aiming for in all of this? We’re trying to form them so we can send them when we get around our dinner tables in the evening. Can I just encourage you, let’s, let’s be sure, as good followers of Jesus Christ, that we’re not trying to have a hunker down or a bunker in mentality. It’s like, no, we’ve retreated to the home again today. Our job is to get formed once again, just a little more into the image of the sun, because we are trying to raise these little ones up. We are trying to send them out into the world. Yes, to be meaningful contributors to society, of course. We’re trying to raise them up to be agents of reconciliation, ambassadors for the Lord Christ. Let’s be sure we always have that outward focus to these inward table conversations. We’re trying to raise them up, so we can. Send them out.

Trevin Wax
Yeah, that reminds me of that, that when the Apostle Paul in Philippians talks about how he wants us to shine like stars in a crooked and perverse generation. And I think about the generation that our kids are being raised up in. I think about just how dark this world is. We want them to shine like stars in this world too, and for that light to be bright, not to be dim. And one of the ways that we do that is that we provide the greater contrast. That’s what a Counter Catechism is really all about. Is how do we stand out in the world, stand out so that Jesus Christ gets the glory that He deserves from our lives and from the generations that follow.

Thomas West
So helpful, Trevin. The Lord’s grace on you all for bearing with a couple of dudes to chat with you for just a few minutes, but we care a great deal about this, and very much as a pastor, theologian, and a theologian pastor, we wrote this to equip you to equip your church, to equip your children’s ministry, to equip you as a grandmother, a mom, and an aunt, all the different roles that we play here as a sister in the Lord, to be able to lead our children together. Trevin, just anything final to say from it, or any direction to point us in before I give that final conclusion, and we see who won one of these ridiculous door prizes.

Trevin Wax
I just wanted to give a shout out to Jessica Blanchard. Didn’t she do a good job with the illustrations in here? She really took what we had worked on, and, and she, with the team at Harvest House, really made this inviting for, for kids. And so I would say, we love your, your, your feedback on it, as you get into it, as you get through it. I mean, I don’t know, you know, we’d love to see additional editions of this at some point, and if there’s things we can do to improve it, we, we want that to be the case, so that it’s one of the sharpest discipleship tools that can help kids for the next 1020 years or so.

Thomas West
So helpful, Trevin. We’ll start to bring it in with this right here. Let me just speak to you from my heart. There’s a, there’s a great chance for the last 40 minutes, all of this could be misunderstood as great, guys. Thank you so much. Now I have five new ways that I can fail as a parent, and that’s just not the truth at all. God is the ultimate parent, and you cannot manufacture faith in the life of your loved ones. We are utterly dependent together on the grace and the kindness of our God to do what only He can do in the lives of these little ones here. Right, so as we get up and we go from here, and in a day’s time, when we get up and we go from this conference, let’s be, let’s be sure that we know who is actually in charge, who the real parent is, as much responsibility and agency as we all want to go and take, God is the ultimate parent, and he is the only one who can develop that faith in the lives of our loved ones. Watch this, you parent, you sister, you are a witness to God, and you are a witness to His grace. So, when we land back in our homes and houses tomorrow and over the weekend, let’s carry that to our children, witnesses to the grace of God, humbly sharing the story of how He has been so good to us. I think we’ll find in the end that’s that’s more than enough. I’m just moved. I’m going to pray for you, pray for us. Adrian’s up, and we’re there. Our Father, I thank you for these mothers, I thank you for these grandmothers, thank you for these sisters, the aunts, the Sunday school teachers, the children’s minister, the children worker represented here. Father, we pray that you would help us to look away from our energy, our preferences, and our own appetites, and to look after others in our lives, specifically the little ones you have trusted to our care for the little season that we have them for, help us to testify to your grace in our own lives and our own stories. Well, to them, we pray all around this room, we pray you’d call prodigals home, we pray that you would prevent prodigals from running, Father, we pray that you would save, you would restore, and you would strengthen here, represented in this group, like only you can, and we ask for it together in Jesus’ name. Amen.