Growing up as as Christian college kid, eventually you’re gonna be asked to “share your testimony” and when that moment comes, you better hope you have something dramatic to report!

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Like how you had an addiction or negligent parents or were suicidally depressed and God came along and radically saved you…

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I don’t know call it our fixation with the Hollywood story “arc”, but for some reason when it’s your turn to share and you pipe up saying how you were, ‘raised in a secure and loving home filled with Jesus and the hope of glory,’ it feels like it doesn’t have the same affect…

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But shouldn’t we celebrate this story with equal or greater fervor?!

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In fact, doesn’t its rare nature indicate to us the corresponding level of celebration and praise required?

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Apparently, the successful baton pass of faith has never been regarded with that much esteem.

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Perhaps part of the answer to that question lies within our Jewish ancestors. There are two ways to make certain the baton of faith is not passed down in your family legacy and those are: 1, failure to remember and; 2, the influence of the surrounding culture…

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One of our foundational Legacymakers “life verses” is found in Judges chapter two:

“That entire generation passed away; a new generation grew up that had not personally experienced the Lord’s presence or seen what he had done for Israel. The Israelites did evil before the Lord by worshiping the Baals. They abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They followed other gods – the gods of the nations who lived around them. They worshiped them and made the Lord angry.” - Judges 2:10-12 NET

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You can see the connection… they neither knew God nor saw all that he had done. Did they not see it first person or did they simply forget the oral tradition? Did they fail to repeat it in the house, on the road, in the morning and at night (Deut 6)?

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The second part is also infinitely clear: they traded the truth of God for a lie… the lie of the surrounding culture. Now we need not give “the world” (the Bible talks of 3 main threats to our formation to Jesus: the world, the flesh, the devil) too much credit or authority, but it remains the #1 threat to our radical counterculture movement.

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When you decide to discipline your toddlers instead of letting them “lead the way,” you will face the headwinds of culture…

When you decide to op for a basic phone instead of a smartphone for your 12-year old you will face the headwinds of culture…

When you decide to opt for a courtship during the teen/young adult years instead of private dating, (because we just implicitly trust teenage boys and girls to be off by themselves without consequence), you will… you will face the headwinds of culture…

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But living into the culture’s vision for our generational legacies is not the expectation God holds for us. It’s this: “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 NLT

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This article, Passing The Baton Of Faith is about 3 things:

1. discipleship in the home

2. the relationship between the church and the family

3. how to impart a biblical worldview to the next generation.

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But before we go there, a quick word on definitions… As a father (and pastor) of 11 kids, the question of forming your children around the ways and words of Jesus (“discipleship”) is our central preoccupation.

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If discipleship is too much of a “buzzword” for you, consider this definition of formation from Dallas Willard, “spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. Its like education. Everyone gets an education; its just a matter of which one you get.” He goes on to say that from the terrorist to the grocery store clerk, everyone has been deeply formed by some set of culture, values and norms. The question once again is: which one will your kids get?

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1. Discipleship in the home

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Formation in the home looks like this:

doing forgiveness and reconciliation (sometimes a dozen times a day);

asking questions (and searching for answers together) and

discipline, discipline, discipline.

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These are just 3 categories - granted pretty broad categories - that we find prevailing in our home every single day. And you can find a gospel center to each one of these categories.

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Take the first one, for example, forgiveness and reconciliation is a constant when you have kids of all ages constantly crossing one another’s “boundaries,” offending, sometimes cursing, kicking and screaming at one another. What could be more central to the Gospel than the idea of forgiveness?

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So ask: how do we slow down long enough so we can break these moments down when they happen? What is the model for rupture and repair? How are we modeling this as the central leadership figures in the home (i.e. mom & dad). This field guide has covered all of these examples, but for now try this:

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break down the conflict by using “when you did x, it made me feel y,” one party says, “I’m sorry;” the other “I forgive you.”

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Think about question and answer time in the home-again perhaps dozens and dozens of times per day (e.g. why? Why? WHY?), but what an opportunity for framing values and Biblical worldview!

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Finally, think about discipline; the author of Hebrews says, “For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.” (Hebrews 12:6 NLT). Now trust us when we say, few things are more fatiguing and just patently hard than the seemingly endless leaning in, “taking pains” when kids are out of line, but when you keep the truth of this verse in your foresight, it really helps!

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Think about how many areas of formation are related to discipline: boundaries; limits; law; grace; self-control; consequence; morality (right from wrong)… if you extend discipline to include household chores, etc then you have a whole 2nd tier of formation benefits!

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2. The role of church life in the family

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Now because Reggie Joiner already wrote the literal book on this subject (“Think Orange”), I’m merely going to quote him and move on.

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He says, ““Church and family are both primary influences designed by God for a purpose and when they work together, they are orange*. Both are systems comprised of imperfect people—that’s why God desires to use them as a platform to tell his story of restoration and redemption to the world.” *where yellow (the church’s light) and red (the family’s love) combine

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He continues, ““Our fights should really be for the mission of the church and the mission of the family instead of trying to have bigger churches or better families. When it comes to entities that God has created specifically to make disciples and accomplish His mission (of influencing a generation to have a stronger, deeper, and more authentic relationship with God), there is the church...the family...and nothing else.”

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Finally, just for a bonus-because we’re all legacymakers here-“every parent will leave a personal legacy (though not all parents will leave behind an inheritance). What I give to my children or what I do for my children is not as important as what I leave in them.”

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And that’s why we need the church and the family for formation!

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3. How-to guide for biblical worldview

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We’ll end with a story, as we already briefly touched on practical Biblical worldview above.

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A new believer recently asked me how to practically disciple your children in the everyday and the scripture that came to mind was Deuteronomy 6. Its genius is it practical simplicity.

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““Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NLT)

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If you find yourself over-complicating or over-programming your values or your family mission, take it from a family of 13, no one can keep up that pace!

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And here is the example story that I will leave you with…

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The other day my 10-year old son (one of the wildest of the whole bunch) was kind of doing this new “pre-teen” thing of bragging and boasting about how, you know, he could climb the rock wall better than his siblings.

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And you know typically in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I’d just give it the ol holler, ‘Shep! Knock it off…!’ (And I’d do this from 20 or 40 feet away, likely).

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But this time was different; thank God that by his Holy Spirit we get these little promptings, but I got down on one knee, looked him in the eyes and I told him how the book of Proverbs is about 3 different types of people: the wise, the fool, the scoffer… I turned to my 10-year old and said, “son, which one do you wanna be?”

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Its a small, everyday moment at the park one afternoon.

Its a pause, in the hustle and bustle of our distracting world.

Its a brief word, from the best book every written.

Its a vision for his life that I want him to walk into…

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And anyone can do that. (Any parent with a conviction to raise their kids based on ‘remembering the things God did and said’ and to raise their kids like, ‘a holy nation, a precious possession unto the Lord’)

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