The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family: Over 100 Practical and Tested Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Kids - Softcover

Powell, Kara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310338972 ISBN 13: 9780310338970

Verlag: Zondervan, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

If you are eager for an authentic action plan you can use every day to point your kids toward lasting, lifelong faith, this is it.

Building on the bestselling go-to guidebook Sticky Faith, The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family  shows parents how to actively encourage their children's spiritual growth so that it will stick with them into adulthood and empower them to develop a living, lasting faith.

This accessible guide presents more than 100 practical, easy-to-implement ideas to set your family on a trajectory of lifelong faith, including how to . . .

• Handle mistakes and show forgiveness
• Connect and relate to your teenager
• Talk faith with your kids
• Build faith during downtime or on vacation
• Make your house a hub of faith
• Be a family of service
• And more!

Perfect for busy parents who don't have time and inclination to read--yet grounded in sophisticated, academically verified data by the Fuller Youth Institute--this guidebook is a welcome resource you can turn to time and time again for fresh ideas and inspiration.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Kara E. Powell is an educator, professor, youth minister, author, and speaker. She is the Executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary (see www.fulleryouthinstitute.org). Kara also serves as an Advisor to Youth Specialties and currently volunteers in student ministries at Lake Avenue church in Pasadena, CA.  She is the author of many books including Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (with Chap Clark) and Deep Justice Journeys. Kara lives in Pasadena with her husband, Dave, and their children, Nathan, Krista, and Jessica.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family

Over 100 Practical and Tested Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Kids

By Kara Powell

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2014 Kara Powell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-310-33897-0

Contents

Foreword, 11, 
Acknowledgments, 13, 
1. Why Does Your Family Need a Sticky Faith Guide?, 15, 
2. You Get What You Are: Modeling Sticky Faith, 27, 
3. Handling Mistakes: Showing Sticky Forgiveness, 41, 
4. Warm Family Relationships: Building Blocks of Sticky Faith, 61, 
5. Connecting: Finding Ways to Relate to Your Teenager, 79, 
6. Community: The Power of Five Faith-Building Adults, 95, 
7. Grandparents and Senior Adults: The Magic of Intergenerational Interaction, 115, 
8. Communication: Talking Faith with Your Kids, 129, 
9. Vacation! Downtime Ways to Build Sticky Faith, 147, 
10. Home Sticky Home: Making Your House a Hub of Faith, 161, 
11. Service That Sticks: Putting Family Faith to Work, 179, 
12. Sticky Transitions: Helping Kids Leave Home with a Faith of Their Own, 197, 
13. Taking the Next Sticky Faith Steps with Your Family, 215, 
Appendix 1: The College Transition Project Research Overview, 221, 
Appendix 2: The Sticky Faith Families Project Research Overview, 229, 
Notes, 235, 

CHAPTER 1

Why Does Your Family Need a Sticky Faith Guide?

Tennis balls.

I had to get tennis balls.

They were on the packing guide from the childbirth preparation class, so that meant one thing: they were essential.

You might be wondering, Why would a woman in labor need tennis balls? Our teacher suggested that while we were waiting for our baby to be born, we could put a tennis ball in a clean tube sock and use it as a massage tool.

I guess I needed a clean tube sock also.

The list from the childbirth class was fairly lengthy. Its specificity and breadth might have scared off other soon-to-be moms, but not me. My strategy was to follow the guide's every recommendation down to the last syllable.

In case you're wondering, yes, this was my first child.

So I needed chapstick.

And massage oil. Just in case my shoulders were aching and Dave's hands were too dry.

A deck of cards, a few magazines, and some music—in case we got bored.

VHS tapes (yes, I'm dating myself) of a few movies to pass the time during labor.

A roll of quarters for the pay phone. Mind you, both Dave and I had cell phones (we might have been using VCRs, but at least we had phones—albeit bulky ones), but the guidebook also recommended a handful of quarters, so I chased down some.

All of the above plus a few changes of clothes and my regular toiletries were in my carry-on suitcase three weeks ahead of time, carefully positioned by our front door for us to grab when it was time.

At 10:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, I went into labor. As I staggered to the car, Dave grabbed the suitcase, tossed it in the trunk, and made sure it made it to my hospital room for the big night.

Where it sat. Unopened. For my entire ten hours of labor.

We did open the suitcase the next day for my toothbrush. And a second time two days later so I could change from my shapeless hospital gown into shorts and a T-shirt for the ride home.

At least no one could accuse us of not following the hospital's guidebook for our son's birth.

Planning Ahead

I'd be surprised if any of you reading this book didn't plan ahead for your first few days with your child.

If you adopted your child, you planned the setup of their bedroom and made a few changes to your home. But more important, you thought about how to attach and bond with your new child. You likely had to work through intensive guidebooks and required training courses to become adoptive parents. Ahead of time, you tried to simplify your life and secure time off from work to make sure you would have the days and hours you wanted—and needed—to cocoon with your child.

If you or your spouse gave birth, you might not have been as extreme as I was. (In fact, I hope you weren't.) But you almost certainly chose the location. You likely strategized your route there. You probably even figured out how you were going to contact your friends and family, and maybe even who you were going to notify first.

I'm guessing that when it comes to planning for your first few hours with your child, you'd receive an A. (I myself was apparently trying for an A plus.)

But then something happens. Or rather, lots of somethings happen.

Our kids get older. We do too.

Our kids get busier. As do we.

Our kids seem to gain more energy. We seem to lose it.

If you're like me, you may have been proactive the first few days and even years of your kids' lives, but as your family's days become consumed by soccer practices and science tests, you become reactive. Instead of looking a few months or even years ahead, we consider ourselves lucky if we make it through the next few hours or days of our frenetic schedule.

At most, we devise plans for our children's education—both now and in the future. We think about schools they might want to attend and calculate the steps our kids (and we) need to take to boost their grades and extracurriculars. But that's often the only area of our family life where we have any long-term vision or goals.

For most families, faith tends to be more of an afterthought.

How Will a Sticky Faith Guide Help Your Family?

Let's get real: no part of parenting is easy. Whether we're responding to our fifteen-month-old's cries from the crib or our fifteen-year-old's texts from the mall, we're constantly improvising. Guessing. Hoping that what we're doing comes close to what's best for our kids.

Part of that is inevitable. Parenting will always be a messy (and often awkward) dance of art and science.

But what if there was research that removed at least some of the guesswork about what is best for our kids—both now and long-term? What if we could learn from proven tools and ideas that would help us create a plan for our families?

For some of us, following a plan is a joy. We are the type of folks who love making lists and identifying next steps.

For others of us, the term "plan" is a four-letter word. (Well, actually, it is a four-letter word for all of us, but you know what I mean.) We cringe at the thought of tying ourselves down to specific goals and tasks.

Regardless of whether you love or hate plans in other areas of your life, we at the Fuller Youth Institute hope you're willing to use this guide to map a spiritual course for your family.

Without a guide, without intentionality, your family is likely to drift.

So is your kids' faith.

Multiple studies indicate that 40 – 50 percent of young people—like your kids—who graduate from a church or a youth group—probably a lot like your congregation or your kids' youth group—will leave their faith and the church after they head to college.

To help that sink in, please take a moment to visualize a photograph of your kids and their Christian friends. Now imagine holding a red pen and drawing an X through almost 50 percent of their faces, because that many will fall away from the faith as young adults.

As a mom, a leader, and a follower of Jesus, I'm not satisfied with that. I bet you aren't either.

As we at the Fuller Youth Institute have spent time with families who beat those odds—who are more successful than average...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zondervan
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0310338972
• ISBN 13: 9780310338970
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: SMM itaku(DVD)(SNDDP); www.sony.de; ; Sony Center, Building D, Kemperplatz 1; Berlin; 10785; Deutschland