A new book explores sharing faith with children in the context of busy, modern households.
With the pressures of our modern world, parents are struggling to find the time, energy and tools to talk about and demonstrate faith to their kids. impress is a book written for these parents in the “drowning years” of raising children and is part encouragement and part how-to when it comes to sharing faith to the next generation in the context of our modern households.
Author, media professional, and church pastor, Ainsley Freeman, said the book represents much of her life journey to date.
“As a former children’s ministry pastor, I am passionate about faith in the early years and I’ve thought a lot about the significance of teaching, loving, and enfolding children into the life of church,” she said.
“The reality of having my own children has made me realise that intentional faith formation isn’t a guarantee and is hard to do in our homes. We might like to outsource it to the ‘professionals’, but instead, we need to rediscover it’s importance within our modern families and the significant role we have as parents to pass on faith.”
“If the Gospel really is Good News, then it should do more than just cost a few hours on a Sunday morning when everyone gets dragged to church. If the Good News of Jesus is as good as the first disciples thought it was, then it should really infuse every aspect of our lives – and especially the lives of those who live within the four walls of our home. We can’t put this off and think we’ll do it another day because when our children graduate from high school, we will have used up more than 90 percent of our in-person time with them. This is a confronting reality that we as parents need to contend with,” Ms Freeman said.
Ms Freeman said she carved out time to write impress by waking up at 5:05am every morning. “It strikes me that we live in a world that we are trying to impress. With our shiny social media feeds, curated content, impressive travel diaries and lavish LinkedIn profiles – many of us spend a good deal of time trying to be impressive to ourselves and our audience of choice.”
“But there is another role that we have been gifted and another impression we are encouraged to leave. In Deuteronomy 6 the people of Israel are given an encouragement to pass on faith – to ‘impress’ it upon their children. How does this ancient commandment translate into our contemporary context? Amidst the whirlwind of busyness and abundance that surrounds us, the hard and holy work of passing on faith risks being overshadowed in our homes,” she said.
Reflecting on her new book Ainsley said, “It is imperative that we talk about and live our faith in a way that leaves a real impression on the next generation and this book will help and inspire parents to do just that.”
impress is available through the Olive Tree Media online store
