LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Family Discipleship Objectives Essay
Submitted to Dr. Dan Burrell
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN610 - B02
Family Discipleship
by
Duc Tran
Introduction
In Deuteronomy 6:5-7, the Lord gives His people who are parents a very important
commandment to carry out:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress
them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along
the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
According to this, parents are supposed to be ready to use every opportunity to teach their
children to know and love God. It can’t just happen without a high commitment and a plan with
clear objectives knowing that we are constrained by time, resources, and the children’s free-will.
By charting strategic objectives around how the family discipleship occur, the focused areas, out-
of-control aspects, long-term preparation, and age-based discipleship methodology, the parents
can begin to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from
it” (Proverb 22:6).
Foundational Understanding
As any strategic plan, it’s crucial to understand the foundational of family discipleship. In
Deuteronomy 6:5-7, the Lord taught the parents to start their parenting by loving Him first. Rod
Roger made it clear that “You cannot lead people where you have never been.”1. Parents cannot
teach their children to know and love God if they themselves are not it the intimate relationship
with Him. Therefore, the first step in the preparation for family discipleship is to come to God
for mercy and grace to be godly parents so that He could use us to influence our children.
The verses also teach parents that the context for family discipleship to happen is
everywhere and every time. Whenever we “sit at home” – when the family gather for breakfast,
1 Rod Roger, Pastor Driven Stewardship: 10 Steps to Lead Your Church to Biblical Giving (Dallas, TX:
Brown Books, 2006), 92.
lunch, dinner, weekend, holiday..., or when we “walk by the way”, spend time together outdoor,
in the cars, going shopping…, or when we start the day and before we go to bed (“when you lie
down and when you get up”), family discipleship can occur. Tripp added that “Training and
shepherding are going on whenever you are with your children. Whether waking, walking,
talking or resting, you must be involved in helping your child to understand life, himself, and his
needs from a biblical perspective.”2 In addition to those “informal time”, parents can also
disciple their children during “formal time” such as Bible study, church service…
As the time and resources are limited, parents should focus on the most important areas
that can lead the children into knowing God. These areas are: understanding the Big Story – the
Gospel, the importance of putting faith in Jesus for salvation, Bible study and praying, and
Biblical worldview. These are the most essential areas because they bring the child directly to the
knowledge and presence of God and to have a right mindset of the world they are living in.
Last but not least is the focus on the “formative instruction” method. Parents are easily
tempted to look for fast and practical tips to deal with the children’s behavior rather than
exploring and dealing with their “heart”. For the behaviors are just the reflection of the heart,
discipling children from the heart issue is the only way to make a life-long impact and
transformational change in their life.
Objectives
Firstly, it’s crucial for the children to know the Big Story in their early age. The Big Story
is the grand picture in the Bible: the Creation, the Fall, the Redemption, and the Restoration.
Parents can begin this from the children’s early age stage, by telling Bible stories before bedtime,
in morning family devotional time, or through Christian animation movies and songs for
2 Tedd Tripp, Shepherding A Child’s Heart (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2005), 32.
children. Tad Thompson even emphasized: “The gospel is the most important category of truth
for you to stock in your spiritual pantry. If you will commit to nothing else, resolve in your heart
today that you will do whatever it takes to saturate your home life with the message of the
gospel.”3 The key factor in this objective is for the children to understand who God is, how He
created the world and especially human and have a wonderful plan for them, how human sinned
against God and trapped in sinful nature, and how Jesus came as God to die on the cross so that
everyone can come back to Him through faith.
When the children get older and learn how to read, parents should begin to have daily
family Bible study. At this stage, the church should be a supportive partner that helps parents
with proper trainings and materials so that they can organize and lead a Bible study with their
children. In each study session, parents can help their children to practice their observation skill
to understand by themselves who the God of the Bible is and His redemption story.
To make it more personal, parents can also be active in witnessing to their children how
they came to God for salvation, how God is transforming their lives every day and their vision in
serving Him. As children learn about God from their parents more than they learn from the
church or other friends, it’s the parents’ role to be the example of living out the gospel.
The second objective is to help the children to put their trust in Jesus to be their Lord and
Savior. The strategy to achieve this objective is to be theologically clear about trusting Jesus for
salvation. The children need to understand the gospel from their heart: recognize that they are
sinners and only Jesus’s death and resurrection can make them right before God again so that
they can have eternal life. It’s necessary to make it straight that a prayer cannot save anyone,
only Jesus can. We also should avoid questions about faith that are manipulative. For example,
3 Tad Thompson, Intentional Parenting (Adelphi, ML: Cruciform Press, 2011), 14.
questions like “Do you want to go to heaven?” will mislead the children to have a wrong focus
about salvation and ignore other important realization of their sinfulness or how the cross
provides forgiveness and eternal life. In addition, parents should communicate the gospel with
children just like they do with other adults and avoid metaphors like “asking Jesus into your
heart” for they could confuse the children in long-term. If the children feel that they are not ready
and have unanswered questions, we should be patient and respect their will. 1 Peter 3:15 reminds
us that we should “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the
reason for the hope that you.” Patiently and clearly answering their questions is an important
aspect of child evangelism. We should remember that every child is unique, and it may take more
questions or more time for some children than others to make the decision of placing their faith
in Jesus.
The third objective is to teach the children to have the habit of studying God’s Word,
meditate on it, and pray. Children can learn about God through their parents and the church,
however, it’s more important that they learn how to know God by themselves through reading
the Bible and prayer. The parents should be the example and train up their children to have the
eagerness to learn God’s Word and come to Him in prayer. The church should train the father and
mother to guide the children on how to read and study the Bible methodically and encourage
discussion, sharing within family members occasionally. When the children are at younger age,
parents can help by asking the children to have the habit of asking observatory questions (Who,
When, Where, What. Why) and then the parents would provide the answers, do the explanation
and application. When they get older, children should be encouraged to do the explanation and
application by themselves with the assistance of the parents by providing them with the theme
and context of the passages. In addition, sharing and witnessing among the family members on
how the Word of God has helped to sanctify them in practical contexts are very helpful. To make
the Bible lesion more alive, parents can be creative by teaching it via drama, movies, comics,
family trips to historical sites.
The same way goes for prayer. The parents cannot teach the children to pray if their
prayer life is not lively. In addition, we can have devotional time when each member can pray for
each other and share how God answers their prayers. An important thing to teach the children
firstly is that praying is literally speaking to God, to express their thought and feeling to God as a
Father, to show respect to his love and power, to praise and thank Him for what He has done, to
confess sin and ask for His forgiveness, and to ask for His guidance and provision. To teach this,
parents should make examples in their prayers every day, before and after the Bible study time,
and pray with them children before bed. For each age group, parents can choose suitable words
and ways to pray that the children can understand. For younger ages, parents can pray shortly
and simply in familiar topics such as: school, pets, friends, family members. For older ages,
prayers can include confession of sins, protection from temptation, pray for the lost, for those in
needs, and the church...
The fourth objective is to provide the children with Biblical worldview. That’s the lens
through which the children will interpret what they learnt and experience. “Music, movies,
television, books, video games, websites, and textbooks are all influenced by some way of seeing
the world, so the study of worldview is crucial in helping children analyze the cultural
information they absorb on a daily basis.”4 With biblical worldview, children are equipped to
build their core value base on God’s Word and have an anchor in the current of worldly culture,
self-centralism, and relativism. Parents should be straight forward and open to discuss with their
4 Ibid, 23.
children when they come to certain ages, about teenager period, on how to defend their faith
before atheism or scientific naturalism/ evolution, on ethical issues such as pornography,
abortion, and homosexuality.5
Conclusion
In a nutshell, it’s important to remember that the time parents can have to influence their
children is limited. Therefore, they should learn to “count the days”, be intentional, and have a
prayerful plan with clear objectives to train up their children in the way that they could know and
trust God as their Lord and Savior. On the other hand, knowing that the children’s decision on
following the Lord is of their own; therefore, parents should trust God that He is the one who
does the convince and conviction and transformation, not us. “We should impress truth on the
hearts of our children, not to control or manage them, but to point them to the greatest joy and
happiness that they can experience—delighting in God and the goodness of his ways.”6
5 Ibid, 23.
6 Tedd Tripp, and Margy Tripp, Instructing A Child’s Heart (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2008), 7.
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
