Children, Families & God
Available now: £9.99 (plus £5.00 p&p)
(for multiple copies please send me a message on the “contact” page as this can easily be arranged with a combined postage rate which is much less!
This book is written because of a longing in my heart that has grown and grown as the years have gone past. Put simply, I am writing this book because I believe the time is coming where children and their parents are going to come to faith and present themselves in our churches in great numbers. They will come from backgrounds where no-one in their family will know anything of the stories of Jesus. We are already in days where most of us meet children and teenagers with parents and grandparents who have never attended church and have a very low opinion of the Christian faith, due to things they have heard or seen. Jesus – as you will know – for many people is truly on a par with Santa and the Easter Bunny. Or a swear word.
This book is not intended to be a definitive manual of “how to’s” nor a succinct summary of every theological writing on children and family. I have deliberately intended it to be a little of both, trusting the Spirit of God with what I believe he has said to me thus far; to excite and challenge you as church leaders, pastors, ministers, parents and children’s workers for that which is ahead.
In 2 Kings 3:16 the Lord tells Elisha to make the valley full of ditches. He won’t see the wind or the rain come down yet the ditches will be filled with water and he and his cattle will drink. It will be a sovereign act of the Lord Almighty. So if you lead a church that is longing to make an impact on this world, it’s time to get the ditches ready; to prepare the structures for what is ahead. I believe we will see again the transformation of society that is inextricably linked to the transformation of family life. Children will lead their parents and vice versa. The church is in desperate need of advice and guidance on how to nurture children’s spirituality and not to ignore or destroy it, in order that these young ones would go further than we have ever gone before. And speaking as a church leader in the “sophisticated” UK, we are in desperate need of any intervention from God that will stop the decline of children and young people from our churches. In addition, I sense it is time for compartmentalizing to stop – to see children’s ministry as something that happens “over there” with its own branch of theology, with its own “how to” books, with its own language and culture.
I feel as if God has called me to pull down the partitions which we have constructed for our own ease and convenience. There will be times where we meet physically all together and there will be times when children, teenagers and adults spend time separately, but there is coming again upon the church a re-visiting of what it means to be generations together praising Jesus, learning from him and impacting the world significantly. Generational differences are intentional so that the impact of the generations together would send a powerful message.
Returning to the verses from 2 Kings 3:20, the ditches were filled with water the next morning, just as the Lord had said. When did the water come? In the night? In the twinkling of an eye…or….?
We may not see any signs of what is coming but nevertheless, let’s make ready.
Update: the book is also available on kindle in the USA, UK, France, Spain, Germany and Holland.
