Nurturing Faith in the Home

The editors of Lutheran Partners posed two questions to three authors who are all energetically consumed with the need for both the home and the church to educate, nurture, and pass on the Christian faith among both adults and youth.

The questions are: (1) Why is the home the primary place for teaching and nurturing the Christian faith? (2) How can the congregation work in partnership with the home to strengthen the home’s faith-shaping role?

To keep the faith is also to nurture the faith. The primary place to nurture the faith is none other than the home.
Jean Bozeman

“Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.
(Deut. 6:4-9, NRSV)

Have you ever read a piece of Scripture that, while familiar, you suddenly felt as if you were reading it for the first time? That’s the way I felt a number of years ago when I re-read this familiar passage, the Shema.

The passage notes the One, above all others, to whom we are related and the way in which this relationship is to be lived. Herein is contained the message of “ministry in daily life,” as well as the grounding for family ministry and the locus for the nurturing of faith within the home.

The nurturing of faith in the home begins with you, the reader. It is a call to live your life, to have your total being---heart, soul, and might ---turned toward the Lord.

The person who wants to live in a healthy Christian relationship with others and who wants to raise children in a Christian family, that person must begin by reflecting on his or her own spiritual identity with Jesus the Christ.

If, as is so often the case, we start with children as the focus of nurturing faith in the home, we forget what it takes to fill our own cup in order to be able to share the gospel. Then, we are like the teacher who has the teacher’s guide, prepares well, and teaches the facts but never conveys his or her own faith journey related to the concepts.

In another light, a focus on the household as the primary place for nurturing faith must recognize that families come in all shapes and dimensions. Even when children are not present in the household, this is still the primary place for nurturing the faith.

It is in the home that we are truly ourselves. It is here that we sense our rooted ness, admit our failures, celebrate our joys, acknowledge our despair, and experience illness and death.

In our church, we have lamented the gap between what has been called our “Sunday and Monday” world. Perhaps this is because, within the home we have neglected to learn how to integrate and name our daily experiences of living of living as faith experiences.

In the home we have the daily experiences of life---not text book examples---for the growing recognition of God at work in our own life. The home should be a place of intentional, planned study and reflection in which we can articulate and experience faith and daily life.

For children, the home is their primary world. It is from the interactions in this setting that the primary life stance of the child develops. While researchers vary in the exact age, they all agree that the major developmental tasks and primary values are established in the preschool years.

It is in the home that the basic sense of love and trust are developed. It has also been established that the child who has an inadequate development of love and trust will have difficulty in later relations with peers or in establishing their own household, as well as in developing a trust in God.

Luther was quite clear in how he saw the role of parents in the spiritual development of children:

Most certainly father and mother are apostles, bishops, and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel. In short, there is no greater or nobler authority on earth than that of parents over their children, for this authority is both spiritual and temporal. Whoever teaches the gospel to another is truly his apostle and bishop. (The Estate of Marriage, 1522, LW45:45)

The home is the place in which we learn to value ourselves and relate to others---to forgive, develop trustworthiness, learn to listen, settle conflicts, share emotions, seek justice and peace, and care for the earth.

By all means, I do not want to suggest that the church community does not have a major role in the nurturing of faith. Both the home and the church play vital roles.

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home.

(Deut 6:6-7)

Currently, it seems that most congregational Christian Education is aimed at children. While children’s education should not decrease, the church must increase its emphasis on adult education if the home is to renew its commitment to being the primary place for nurturing the faith.

Too often the church has only offered should about what to do in the home. You should pray, have daily Bible reading and family devotions, and share the faith at home and in your neighborhood. But this tends to only add to people’s sense of guilt.

In reality, people often express that they don’t feel adequate or feel they “know enough” to talk about their faith or to pray. Hence, I suggest turning the “shoulds” into “cans.”

According to Effective Christian Education: Search Institute Study Tools (ELCA Users Guide), the congregations that often do the best with children are congregations that have the most lively adult education programs. As we teach adults, whether they have children or not we are enabling them to know the faith, be steeped in Scripture and to live, walk, and engage the faith in all avenues of their life. And for those who have children, we are equipping parents to be apostles and bishops in their own homes.

Within the congregation, we can take the goals for the home as a basis for education (see side bar, “Home-based, Faith-building Goals,” on this page.)

We can also provide classes and resources for home use that equip members to take up these tasks. We can be sure that preaching and teaching encourage people to see the link between faith and daily life.

For instance, regular parenting classes could address the child’s physical and faith development appropriate for that age. Other classes might concern such issues as: sharing one’s own faith, answering your child’s faith questions, dealing with conflict, sharing forgiveness, and enhancing family traditions.

Life transitions---birth, baptism, new school, new job , confirmation, marriage, divorce, and death---are valuable opportunities for nurturing change and enabling people to see the working of Christ. In our culture, time is moving so fast that we need special time to pause and reflect.

The church can assist members as they move through these times of change, separation, and growth. Theses events, that most affect life in the home, can be marked by study, support groups, rites of passage, and often, celebration.

Jean Bozeman suggests that members of households set the following seven goals as ways to nurture faith in the household: