When You Walk By the Way
The Productive Household as A Vehicle for Family Discipleship, Part I
One of the feelings that often raises its ugly head when I’m thinking about parenting my children is the feeling that I can’t possibly get enough time with them while they live under my roof to disciple them the way I’d like. Several factors contribute to this, the most obvious being the practical side of trying to handle the necessary things of life, like work, health, and friendships, while ensuring I get the time with them I need. Another is that I know I will need to increase my income beyond what I now make to provide a foundation for our family in the future. How do I spend the time and energy to lay this financial foundation while still fulfilling my responsibilities to them today? And how can I successfully pass on a vision to each one of my children when simply passing it on to one person seems like a monumental task?
I haven’t answered these questions to my satisfaction yet. I do, however, want to share with you some of the progress I’ve made in working out possible answers. Most of it’s not original to me, so there will be plenty of references to other resources I encourage you to research further. Hopefully, I can save you some work by pointing you to the resources I’ve found most helpful as I’ve sifted through different suggestions and ideas.
Also, because of the breadth of this topic, I’m going to break it up into three parts. The first part, this post, will focus on the broad answer to these kinds of questions. The next two posts in this series will be published once I have a little more experience personally, some skin in the game. But the broad overview of what I’m thinking about and exploring has been something that’s been brewing in our household for a couple of years now, and I’d like to share some of what we’ve learned.
When we begin the process of building a productive household, it’s easy to be enamored with its benefits when compared to the modern view of the household as a recreation center. Economic productivity, family discipleship, a community-building lifestyle, and family identity all fit well into a productive Christian household. But it’s also easy, as we begin the hard work of establishing such a household and center for our family, to get distracted and bogged down with the day-in and day-out work that comes with it. Finding the right business to pursue in the short-, mid-, and long-term; finding the right church community; deciding on the right level of involvement in that community based on your children's ages; deciding whether to homeschool or private school; deciding the curriculum with which to educate your children; increasing your value to the community by learning new skills and gaining more experience; and dealing with the normal frustrations of car trouble, home repairs and maintenance, sickness, too-busy holiday seasons, etc. all contribute to an intense decision fatigue. Not only are there many decisions to be made, but they all feel like vital decisions for our household’s health.
Let’s spend a little time focusing on one specific aspect of the productive Christian household that, in my opinion, is one of the biggest benefits. This principle is one of the foundational principles that helps guide all of the aforementioned decisions and, therefore, relieves a little of that decision fatigue. That principle is active, intentional family discipleship.
A Core Principle
I haven’t systematized them yet, but there are a few core principles that drive my desire to establish a productive Christian household. These principles are what keep me from abandoning the project despite its difficulty. The opportunity for family discipleship is one of these principles that motivates and shapes most of the decisions my wife and I make regarding the direction of our household.
Let me briefly reference the Scriptural grounding for this principle. If I were to create a list of the core principles driving my desire to establish a productive Christian household and attach a list of verses to support each principle, the following from Deuteronomy and Ephesians would be at the top of the list for the principle of Family Discipleship:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD [is] one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.1
And in Ephesians,
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.2
This is a high and difficult calling on parents.3 Essentially, everything we do with our children is to enculturate them into the Kingdom of God. More specifically, we should be teaching and showing them what it looks like to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom in our context of place, time, and culture, and we should be doing this all day, every day.
How can we do this, though, when Dad goes off to work for eight hours of his day, Mom goes off to work for eight hours of her day, and the kids go off to school for around six hours of their day? Often, when the family is home together, the TV is on, the laptops and tablets and phones are out, and each member of the family is pursuing their own amusement. That model can’t accomplish the calling from scripture. The scenarios where something even remotely like the above provides enough opportunity for discipleship usually include one of the parents working at the school their children attend, so they’re with them most of the day. Also, the TV, screens, and other isolated entertainment are limited and replaced with family worship, family activities on the weekends, learning new skills together, etc.
Intentional Discipleship
In contrast to the household as a recreation center is the household as a means for service or ministry. Service to the individual members of the household by meeting their immediate, daily needs of eating, sleeping, relating to one another, and the instruction of children. Also, service to the surrounding community by meeting its needs, which could be through farming, a tech-based service, a skill-based service, or some other business like managing rental properties. Essentially, the household is the fundamental level at which you are to love your neighbor. It is there that loving our neighbor begins. We first learn to love the neighbors within our household, and that then overflows into loving our neighbors outside of it.
To focus on family discipleship, though, a specific aspect of loving our children is teaching them, both through instruction and demonstration, to love God and their neighbor. As the Scripture above indicates, this is done in the rhythm of daily life as they watch us do the things to which we are called and as we have discussions with them about why we do what we do the way we do it; the necessity of those discussions means that we must also know that ourselves. Fathers should have a clear vision of how their household fits into their church body and their community and what unique skills, experiences, and gifts their household can offer to God by offering them to others. That vision, when submitted to Scripture, should yield some basic principles to live by that provide a helpful grid for the parents to use when making family decisions.
The principles and vision are communicated in the thousand little things you do together as a family. Changing the oil in the car, doing yard work, making and delivering a meal for someone, and serving families in the church are all opportunities for parents to communicate to their children what is important to the household. Now, imagine that you are able to set up a family business or reach a high-level position at a business in which you can include your children from time to time. Portions of your time working are now open to you as opportunities for family discipleship.
For example, if you own rental properties, your family can be involved in cleaning up the properties or preparing them for guests. Your family is now involved in what you do for work, and it’s no longer an abstract idea of something Dad goes off to do every day. If you’re homesteading, you can create opportunities for your kids to pursue their own interests as they get older and teach them how they can pursue these interests in such a way that it creates value for other people. If we dedicate some time to thinking about our work, many possibilities become apparent in many different fields, whether as an employee or a business owner. And, maybe, it’s a blend of a few different options for the different seasons your household goes through.
Show Them
This lifestyle allows for opportunities, not just to explain family values and principles to your children, but for them to see you make decisions based on those values and principles. They’ll get to see that, not only does Dad say Adams do X, but he makes decisions every day with that in mind. The two together will make a much deeper impression.
To be clear, I’m only in the beginning steps of this process. But my wife and I are making decisions that are setting us up to be able to integrate as much of our household and work as possible. I take steps now to include my kids as I work on different tasks around our home and in helping others, when appropriate, so they can see me living life the way I’m exhorting them to live their lives. I want them to see me make decisions to delay gratification, ask forgiveness when I’ve wronged someone, take care of the property God’s provided us, and worship God with them at home and at church with the corporate body.
It is long, hard work. By God’s grace, we and other households will do it well and see a generation of children who are secure in their identity because their parents worked hard to disciple them at every opportunity, when they sat in their house and when they walked by the way.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NKJV, emphasis mine.