Coaching Children Through the Complexity of Church
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Coaching Children Through the Complexity of Church
Learn two key Parenting for Faith tools to help your children navigate church life, conflict, expectations and the “goldfish bowl” of ministry.
Church can be hard and complicated and our children need help in navigating this. When you have built a steady stream of connection with your children, it means that you can coach them through the tricky sides of church well.
There are two tools you can use to help you coach children through the tricky areas of church.
Creating Windows
Creating a window into how you deal with the big complicated bits of church – and who God is in that – helps your children to understand the heart of what’s going on and to see how they can manage it themselves.
Framing
By explaining what they are looking at, you can create a framework so they can understand everything well – whether it’s why people go to traditional services or why someone got upset with you. Research suggests that the primary cause of church leaders’ children walking away from faith and the church is that no one talked about church conflict; if children don’t have a place to understand and process church conflict, they won’t know how to understand it or cope with it.
Family stress and hypocrisy
Sometimes, the pressure of the church hat can mean that your kids see you performing differently for the church congregation – one minute you are scolding them, the next you have a big smile on your face, welcoming everyone. If this isn’t framed for your children, they may misinterpret this as meaning that they have to perform for the church or that you are hypocritical.
