In Dr. Theresa Roberts’ book Raising Disciples, she reminds us that, “every child is in the process of discipleship. The question is: What is discipling them?” In my experience as a Youth and College Minister I think of it this way: we are always being oriented to love something; the question is “what?” Students in their teens have been oriented to love things like academic excellence, praise from adults and peers, extracurricular participation and success and romantic attention. This orientation of their love is, in Roberts words, a kind of discipleship. As we disciple our children, we can make them disciples of academic excellence or morality, with hopes that intimate understanding of the Gospel comes along as well. Or, instead, we can disciple our children into Gospel-centered people, who from that source of wisdom, develop a keen sense of morality, who strive for academic excellence and who see all of their choices and their entire lives through a Gospel-minded lens. 

If you are like me, you might worry that children’s ministries can underestimate the littlest members of our communities. Children can be a sizable portion of a congregation, while only being taught a fraction of the story of the Gospel. In fact, lessons for children are all too often reduced to good morals like kindness, fairness, and responsibility (each of these words given their own week of recognition in my elementary school growing up). With these lessons, our kids will grow up to be nice people, but if good morals are all we entrust them with, then we are entrusting them with less than what God has entrusted to them. The fullness of the Gospel is not just about living a moral life. In fact, a gospel only taught through the lens of morality is not good news at all. And if the good news is that we are invited into a relationship with our Creator, we know that relationships are so much more than following a moral code. Relationships are vulnerable, joyful, curious, angry and tearful. Relationships share a history, a sense of belonging and rituals of connection. If we believe even the littlest in our communities are invited into the Gospel, then we are invited to disciple them into a relationship with their Creator in all of the fullness that relationships bring.

If we believe even the littlest in our communities are invited into the Gospel, then we are invited to disciple them into a relationship with their Creator in all of the fullness that relationships bring.

Raising Disciples is an essential resource to help ministers, church volunteers, and parents adapt their discipleship to specific stages of a child’s development. Roberts offers useful tools to help mark a child’s stages of development and coordinate approaches to their discipleship. When I read through the collection of charts divided amongst the first chapter, I could immediately imagine the “Development of Preschoolers” chart printed in giant sheets and hung up in a church’s preschool classroom. These sheets weekly remind our teachers, parents, and leaders of the cognitive, moral, biological, and social stages of our littlest congregants and, most importantly, how they can be entrusted with the fullness of the Gospel through discipleship with their age and stage of development in mind.  Roberts has been discipling young people for decades and her book is a helpful guide for how we can pick up this calling to disciple young people, as well. 

Using well-researched data and actionable steps for discipleship, Roberts helps ministers, leaders, and other mentors to young children understand how to best disciple children in each of the multi-faceted ways that we are invited to encounter God. She also doesn’t oversimplify ideas like reading the Bible, praying, and spiritual disciplines such as fasting -yes, fasting! Her accessible advice helps adults teach and model to our children how to connect with their Creator. For example, in praying with children, Roberts reminds us how to help children sew prayer into the fabric of their lives by encouraging us to point children to a prayer of thanks when they observe a beautiful flower or to encourage them to ask for God’s help in the anxieties leading up to a test or performance. This brought back memories of my own mom reminding me to pause and ask God for help as I frantically searched around the house for a missing assignment. When I struggled to fall asleep at night, my mother would tell the story of how, as a child, she used to scoot over in her bed and imagine God lying next to her holding her hand. In those moments, my mom helped sew a deep sense of connection and comfort through the avenue of prayer and the presence of God, the same kind of belonging and comfort I know in my Creator in adulthood. 

Roberts goes on to encourage that we entrust the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude to our children. As children are often the exact opposite of silent and less prone to solitude we can often save teaching this spiritual practice for adulthood. But Roberts reminds us that adults struggle with the practice at first too! Children, with accommodations that suit their age, can experience a growing sense of the voice and presence of God through silence and solitude. This deepens their relationship with their Creator, thus deepening their discipleship into people who experience the fullness of the Gospel. Reading Raising Disciples, empowers me to encourage volunteers, parents and mentors to imagine an age appropriate way to invite children into each of the spiritual disciplines that adults enjoy as they commune with God. 

Reading Raising Disciples, empowers me to encourage volunteers, parents and mentors to imagine an age appropriate way to invite children into each of the spiritual disciplines that adults enjoy as they commune with God. 

If we have not asked ourselves lately, “What is discipling our children?,” it is high time we do. And if we find our discipleship approach is falling short of entrusting our children with the fullness of the Gospel and the good news that invites children into a rich a meaningful relationship with their Creator, then both praying for our littlest disciples and reading Roberts book, Raising Disciples, will surely point us in the right direction. Prayer partnered with a resource that is knowledgeable about children’s developmental stages and that takes our children seriously enough to believe that they can be discipled into Gospel-centered people is valuable for anyone with young people in their lives.

I first encountered Dr. Teresa Roberts in the classroom. I was a young ministry student at Ozark Christian College and I quickly realized she was someone I wanted to learn from. Whether it was engaging strategies for teaching or diving into the books of Timothy and Titus, I took away so  much from her classes. This same wealth of knowledge and creative teaching that I remember is in her new book, Raising Disciples: Guiding Your Kids into a Faith of Their Own. This book helped me reflect on my current role as a Youth and College Minister in a church that works to entrust the fullness of the Gospel to each member of its congregation, including children and youth. As I partner with parents and my congregation in raising disciples with the teens entrusted to us, I find myself ready for Dr. Roberts to write part two, which I would go ahead and title “Raising Disciples: Guiding Your Teen into a Faith of Their Own.” In the meantime, ministers, mentors, parents, teachers, grandmas and grandpas, Roberts offers guidance for all of us on how to say yes to the great calling and gift of entrusting young people with the Gospel of good news. May all of us delight in it. 

Dr. Theresa Roberts is an alum of Emmanuel Christian Seminary and previously taught seminary ministry courses. She is now the Professor of Ministry and Christian Formation at Ozark Christian College. Her new book Raising Disciples: Guiding Your Kids into a Faith of Their Own comes out October 8th.