Posts Tagged With: children

Faith in the West

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Pieter Stok

There are times, many times, when I become despondent about the Christian faith in the west.  From its “me” centred  individualism and rampant selfish lifestyle, to glib culturally hip media presentations replacing authentic worship, and onto its lack of cutting edge into the 21stC mindset, there is much to depress me.

On Sunday we had a breath of life. A glimpse of the past and a possibility for the future. We attended a Lutheran church in Brønnøysund on the west coast of Norway – exactly halfway between the north and south. It was Palm Sunday and the children were incorporated into the service with palm branches. They presented the congregation with songs they had learnt for the occasion. There was also a baptism. Both mother and baby were dressed in traditional costumes. The church was full and there was a clear “buzz” of joy in the congregation. There was not a data projector to be seen. Psalters were handed out. Grandchildren hugged grandparents, friends greeted each other warmly and overall, there was a warm conviviality. It was clear that Jesus was present in the songs, words and attitudes.

It was an environment that a neighbour could be invited to. When an old man using a walker came in, a person vacated their seat, another got a cushion and a still another made sure he sat down safely. “Pastoral” care was obvious.

What have we lost with the obsession for mega churches, CEO’s and business teams running churches with smooth efficiency and ice cold hearts. It is difficult in these environments to share the highs and lows of life’s journeys and to celebrate and grieve together as the family we should be.

Am I just being a grumpy old man, or have we lost something, something precious, in our modern worship practices?

Categories: Children, christian, Church | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Parenting Children for a Life of Faith – Helping Children meet and know God: Rachel Turner, a review

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Pieter Stok

Parenting Children for a Life of Faith – Helping Children meet and know God: Rachel Turner. Bible Reading Fellowship 2018

I am always on the lookout for resources to assist Christian parents in the amazing but terrifying task of discipling their children in faith. The good news is that I have come across two related resources which I can heartily recommend. One is a book and the second is a video series. My strongest encouragement is to get involved with both, but I know (as an ex-English teacher) that there are reluctant readers out there in parent land, so the video series is a minimum!

The Book:

Parenting Children for a life of Faith by Rachel Turner. (This is available from Koorong and Book Depository in an omnibus edition which includes Parenting Children for a Life of Purpose & Parenting Children for a Life of Confidence – (I haven’t yet completely read the latter two).

The Book: Parenting Children for a Life of Faith has the by-line “Helping children meet and know God.” The book includes chapters on modelling a relationship with God and countering wrong views of God. The chapter “Chatting with God” deals with the idea that our relationship is not just meant for set times of reading the Bible or devotions but is an all of life activity. I found this chapter particularly helpful although I would have liked to see a greater emphasis on Bible reading with regard to “hearing” from God. With that quibble aside it is very encouraging. There is also a separate chapter on more “formal” prayer. Another chapter that was very helpful was entitled “Surfing the waves” which is about making the most, as a parent, of the opportunities that arise in the ebb and flow of your child’s spiritual growth.

Other chapters include “Helping children engage with church” and “Starting well with under-fives.”

In part 2 of the omnibus she has a chapter on telling your children the whole gospel story from a young age. She adds examples as to how this can work. This, she suggests, helps children to make sense of the world and its brokenness from a young age. This important idea deserves an article/review just on its own as I found it a good antidote to the, often piecemeal, manner in which the gospel is presented to children.

Overall, I found the content to be practical and Biblical with an abundance of helpful examples. It is a book I wish I had had when I was a younger parent.

The Parenting for Faith Video Course

Rachel Turner also presents a (free) 8 part video course on the same topic. https://www.parentingforfaith.brf.org.uk/ For a sober lad like me her exuberance is sometimes overwhelming, however, putting that aside it is a very valuable resource. There are also downloadable handbooks available to lead you through the course. It is the type of course where it would be very valuable to meet with a few like minded parents and do it together over 8 weeks.

In an era where there are so many “attractions” vying for the heart of your child, here is a book and a video course which can develop your parenting skills in that crucial and eternally relevant arena of faith development. Parents of faith want their children to engage in a life under the Kingship of Jesus from the earliest possible moment.

Pieter Stok

Categories: Child Theology, Children, christian, christian education, Church, Faith, Family | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Burying our Children – a blog from the past

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Pieter Stok
Burying Our Children
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Blessing our children

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Pieter Stok

Below are two posts from ‘way back’ that are still relevant today. In fact, from my perspective, matters have deteriorated. Thoughtful feedback would be appreciated.

Blessing Children
Blessing Our Children – continued
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Parenting

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Pieter Stok

Below is an article on parenting that I wrote many years ago … it is still relevant

Just One Reason Why a living Christian faith is Important
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The Pornification of our Culture

Posted on September 1, 2022 by Pieter Stok

Currently I am reading Carl R. Trueman’s brilliant unpacking of our contemporary social morass in his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. This mind-bending unravelling of the nature of modern identity in the West is a “must read”. However, I just want to reflect on one chapter: Chapter 8 – The Triumph of the Erotic. In this chapter Trueman explores how Surrealism, inspired by the likes of Marx but particularly Freud, made a concerted attempt to destroy Christianity via the means of a sexual revolution.

The author traces how this process has worked in what he describes as the “pornification of mainstream culture.” We see this in more recent times through the rise of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in the 1960s through to explicit sexual acts in mainstream television and films in the 2000s. There has been an increasingly overt wearing down of the old sexual morals. What was once hidden  in dark places is now celebrated out in the open. As he points out, in today’s context Hefner looks conservative. Now porn in every aspect our culture is the norm.

The author then goes on to look at the implications for violence particularly towards women, and the impact of this revolution on the feminist movement as a whole.

My precis is brief and insufficient, however, the question this chapter raises for me is, how do we protect our children from this inescapable onslaught? In some ways contemporary society must resemble the situation of the early church in a pagan environment in which the culture was etched into every aspect of daily life. How do you grow up faithful to the gospel in such an environment?

Here are some thoughts, but I would love readers to add their contributions as well. For the church, this is a communal issue in which community must play a crucial role in the response:

  1. Nurturing faith must be a parent and church’s highest priority. Faith is both the foundation for protection but also the restorer when failures occur.
  2. Modelling within the family and church is key: what we say, what we watch, how we respond to the inappropriate must always be consistent with our faith. Children watch our every move and are expert at detecting hypocrisy.
  3. Nurturing responsibility is also important. Age-appropriate steps in trust and responsibility are essential. Teaching strategies in reading and watching and choosing what to read and watch is essential.
  4. Many of the practical parenting ideas given (by a variety of programs) with regard to the internet are helpful, but ultimately children need to be responsible for their own choices and action.

These are just a few broad ideas. But Carl Trueman is right when describes this as an assault. The “pornification of our society” is an attack on faith, the family and the church. There are many who see these as outdated institutions. Therefore, we must be prepared to defend these institutions vigorously and passionately with the welfare of the most vulnerable foremost in our mind.

Categories: Children, christian education, Christianity, Faith | Tags: , , | 3 Comments

Mothers

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Pieter Stok

A post written by my wife. Most appropriate as Mothers Day approaches

Mothers

Everyone is talking about their mother this week. It could be because it is Mother’s Day on Sunday, but the actual cause is a comment by a politician, followed by a nasty retort from a newspaper journalist.
The gist of it all is that some women in the past were prevented from pursuing a career and had to settle for marriage and motherhood. (Do they realise that they’re saying their mother got second best when she became their mother?)
And so we have story after story published of women who missed the opportunity to be lawyers, doctors and all those other prestigious professions.
Instead they were “doomed”, “corralled”, or “pushed”, into “domestic slavery”.

I have always maintained that being a wife and mother is a career. If our society saw the role of mothers to be caregivers first, (as that is what we are designed, physically and emotionally, to be), and view the time they spend working outside the home as the ‘other’ job, I believe we would find a more harmonious balance. And every woman’s work would be equally valued.

Instead of saying “I took time off (my paid job) to have a baby” why don’t we turn it around and say “now that I have finished having children and they’re more independent, I will do that course or start that job”. Maybe we should be talking about taking time off my role as a mother to pursue paid work. This also implies that parenting is a forever role that you go back to every night. And the other job is the ‘other job’. We might begin by not asking people what they do. As if their job defines them. (I am reminded of some headstones in Switzerland. On them is written the deceased’s title and profession. No mention of the loving family she had.)

I think that the politician’s mother had it around the right way all along. She wanted to be a lawyer but her job as his Mum came first. Later, when she had raised two fine, competent sons, she took time off to study and begin a different career.

Categories: Family | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Pieter Stok
This is another post from my wife reflecting on the struggles of finding a suitable playgroup for our grandson.
Finding a playgroup to take my grandson to has not been easy. It’s also revealed some worrying aspects of how the church sees its role in the world. Let me explain.

I have been involved in many playgroups since I took toddler Jeanette and baby Kathryn to the first in a church hall in Kingston, Tasmania, in 1977. I’ve been both participant and organiser, in both community-run and church-run groups.  So I kind of know what I want for my grandson, and armed with the right questions I picked up the phone. Several churches in our neighbourhood run playgroups so I started with them.
The people I spoke to didn’t know me, I could have been anybody.
Question one: Is your playgroup run by the church? “Well, um, yes, sort of …”
Question two: Is there any Christian content? “What do you mean?”
Question three: Do you talk about God? Do you sing Christian songs, or tell Bible stories? What about saying thanks before snack time?
“Oh no! No, no, no!! I can assure you that we don’t ever do THAT! No, we provide a service to the community, that’s all.”
Okay, so I did fess up and told them that I was a Christian, looking for a playgroup that would help my little grandson explore and enjoy God’s world. I wanted a place filled with adults and kids ready to acknowledge Christ’s Kingship, at least by pausing before snack time, or by telling the story of Jesus’ birth at Christmas. But preferably much more than that.
But then I got an explanation of why they couldn’t do that. “We believe Jesus told us to just love people into the Kingdom.” And “the Bible says they will know we are Christians by our love”.
Church-run playgroups used to excite me. They were urban mission fields. I fear we have forgotten our calling.

Romans 10:14

But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?
Categories: Children, christian, Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Kids of the Kingdom

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Pieter Stok

This post comes from my wife:
A lifetime ago I arranged for a photo to be taken of all the children in the church we attended. All kids under the age of fifteen or so were gathered in the church hall and the photographer stood on a trestle table to take the snap, while proud Mums, Dads, and the rest of the congregation looked on.

It wasn’t until later, when the photos arrived on my desk, that I noticed the banner hanging high on the wall behind the children. It read: Christians are different.

A baptismal font in Karlskrona, Sweden


We used to laugh about that. 

But the truth is, that when it comes to our children, Christians aren’t different enough.
We don’t see our children through God’s eyes. We are like all those adults watching the photo shoot and not seeing the bright yellow banner behind. 

We go about the busy-ness of child rearing; the milestones, the school fees and homework, the music lessons and little athletics. We stress over mixed parties and drugs and driver training, just the same as our unsaved neighbours are doing.
However God has different plans for our children, and He calls Christian families to BE different. One Christian put it thus: 

The Christian family must define Christ to the world, so that the world may find Christ.
May we scoop up that delightful toddler,

May we be caught up with the excited third grader who has won a ribbon for running,

May we hide a secret smile while our lovesick teenager mooches around the house,

But may we never forget that they are part of God’s plan for Gospel-spreading.

Categories: Child Theology, Children, Church | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Bible Black Holes

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Pieter Stok

Another blog post from my wife.

Did you know there are black holes in the Bible? There are mud puddles, canyons, and prickle bushes as well.

I know about these because I tell Bible stories to kids.

Have you ever noticed how many empty spaces there are in Bible stories? For instance, what did Jesus and Zacchaeus discuss over lunch? And what was happening on Easter Saturday?

Try telling these stories to children. They’re not afraid of black holes. They will launch straight into them.
Slimy mud puddles that most Sunday school teachers avoid, such as how Mary got pregnant? Kids will take a running leap into that one.
Tricky prickle bushes that college theologians won’t venture near? No problem for the minds of 5 year olds. A group of preschoolers once explained the Resurrection to me.

Grownups can read the signs at the top of a cliff that say “Don’t go too close to the edge” or “Danger. Unstable cliff edge”, but kids only see an opportunity to explore.
Burning bushes, talking donkeys, floating zoos, miracles…
And the best part is that they will joyfully take the grownups by the hand, if we are willing to let them lead us.

Next time you’re reading your Bible and you find a black hole, find a child to tell the story to. Sit alongside them and wonder together. No space suits, flack jackets, parachutes, or safety harnesses required.

Categories: Child Theology, Children, christian, Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

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