Back to normal?
One of the things that definitely makes my life work best is routine. When lockdown happened in March 2020 all the routines that we knew – school, work, church, social life – all disappeared. Things were much more fluid which gave opportunity for spontaneity, but also created the possibility of chaos! One of the first things I did was create a routine for our family, more flexible than it would have been in normal life, but giving us anchor points throughout the day and the week.
Life is now beginning to get back to a bit of a more normal pre-pandemic routine for many. School life is getting ready to start again in September. In-person church is back to some degree, social activities can resume a little as well.
A question that I continue to ask though is which parts of what we thought of previously as normal family life do we want to resume and what do we want to leave behind?
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One of the incredible benefits of the last 18 months has been the emphasis that parents have had to give to family discipleship. Pre-Covid many relied on the children’s ministries in our congregations to teach and disciple their children, but when church ground to a halt that also stopped in the regular way and for many stopped altogether. Children’s ministries in all our congregations play a vital part in teaching and discipling our children in what it means to follow Jesus, but for Christian families, these ministries are not the only way and not the primary means of discipling our children. That is the task of the family. Children’s ministries do provide an incredible support to that family discipleship and supplement children’s lives with more people of faith who love them, take an interest in them and help them on their journey of discovering who God is and what it means to follow him.
Regular routines
In Deuteronomy 6 we read,
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Parents are given some commands in this passage which may help us to think about how to return to normal patterns of family like we had pre-pandemic, without losing the lessons that we may have learnt while living through a pandemic.
Firstly, we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, we are reminded to work on and grow our relationship with God and to follow him every day in all that we do. Maybe in the last months, you have spent more time reading your Bible, praying and growing in your relationship with God. Maybe you have spent less time. As life begins to return to some more normal routine maybe this is something that we all need to think about.
Secondly, we are to have the commands on our hearts. We are to live knowing that God wants to be in relationship with us and that he is moulding us, however imperfect and messy our efforts to strive to walk his way each day.
Thirdly, we are to impress these commands on our children. And where does that happen? In church? At conferences? In children’s ministries? No, primarily in the everyday, mundane, routine parts of life. As we watch TV on the sofa, when we walk to school or to the shops, as we put children to bed, as we all pile into the car together in the mornings. Faith is to be shared in the places where we are with our children, in the routine, in the ordinary, in the mundaneness of life. Children’s ministries and churches can support that discipling, but the main modelling and life-changing work of the Holy Spirit in our children happens in what we often consider the boring parts of everyday life.
Isn’t it great that God does not ask us to do scary, big event, special things to help our children grow in their faith? There might be a bit of that sometimes. But our children’s faith mostly grows as we walk to school and they help with the dishes. Because that is where we talk to them. That is where we give them windows into our faith and how we respond to life. That is where we get to frame something of how God works in the world and how faith in him is lived out. That is where we hear what our children are passionate about and where they want their faith to make a difference. And that is where together we can talk to God, lead our children and let them connect with their creator and have a living, growing relationship with him.
A new normal?
As a parent, as September comes, I am waiting for swimming lessons, ballet classes, sports clubs and after-school activities to start up again. I look forward to children’s ministries and uniformed organisations gradually being reintroduced and engaging our children. I am excited about our children reconnecting with each other and with adults who care for them in those places.
But I don’t want to lose the chats on the way to school, the whispered conversations at night in the dark at bedtime, the working out the world as dinner is being made and the table set, or developing a view of the world as we watch TV and movies and seeing how God wants us to love and care for others in the world as we show who he is with our lives. I don’t want to lose what we have learnt about family discipleship in the pandemic when we leave it and resume more normal patterns of life. I want the normal, boring, mundane, life-changing activities that grow our faith as a family and as a denomination.
What about you?
Ruth Bromley is the Presbyterian Church in Ireland's Children's Development Officer.
This blog is part of the digital programme series, Refined: Fanning the Flame, an emphasis within the Refined initiative on gradually resuming more regular patterns of congregational activity.
Visit the Refined hub here.