Creeds and catechisms at home

A panel with Keri Folmar, Cyndi Logsdon, Eugene Low, and Kevin DeYoung on teaching the creeds to children. The conversation is about catechesis in the ordinary life of a household.

Panel discussion, “Creeds and catechisms at home,” with Folmar, Logsdon, Low and DeYoung, Nicea Conference 2025, Istanbul. Speakers aren’t labelled in the source captions.

Welcome

Good evening. Yes, good to see you. I have been here for 9 minutes. So hence no real, thank you. I was supposed to come a day earlier and the flight out of Charlotte was delayed five hours and it was delayed long enough that it wasn’t going to get the connecting flight from London to here.

So they said, “Well, we’ll put you on the flight tomorrow.” So they pushed back the flight a day. So it did get here. My friend assistant Caleb is somewhere here as well. So, we just landed and took one of maybe the world’s fastest taxi I’ve ever been in. So, is this Am I getting a real experience here? Yes. And made it here. None of our bags made it here. So I am wearing what I’ve been wearing for the last 24 hours. I did buy the world’s most expensive suit at the London Heathrow airport. I took three minutes and I grabbed a shirt, a coat, a pants shoes, and I will try that out tomorrow. And if you if it doesn’t work, I will wear this tomorrow because the bag comes in after, Lord willing, I give the plenary. It comes in tomorrow late morning. All of that to say, I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to be with these friends and glad to have clothes on. So we are thank you and good to see you. We are going to talk about catechisms and creeds in the home. And we’re going to do a little bit of around the loop a couple of times just to everybody answer some introductory questions. But then you don’t want a panel to just be you give a five minute speech, you give a fiveminut speech and we do that. And so we want as much as possible to have a conversation and talk not only about the Nicene Creed in the home because if you ask us how many of our children have the Nicene Creed memorized any of them

possibly one of

well there you go. So listen apostles

do to any of our work.

Introductions

Good job. So we want to talk about parenting as well. So let’s start and Keri introduce yourself and important for this panel is not only your ministry context but tell us about your family.

Hey I’m Keri Folmar and my husband is John Folmar over there. He’s the senior pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai and we have been there for 20 years now. And I have three children who were raised over there. I have a 27year-old, a 25year-old, and a 24 year old. Or is he 23? But around those ages.

And you have a son-in-law now?

Oh, and I have a son-in-law now since May. Very good. And how are they doing? How are they doing in life with the Lord? We don’t presume that everyone has kids. You know, they go through a lot of different stages, but just tell us a little bit about them.

Yeah. Yeah, they are doing very well. Ruth is a member of our church in Dubai. Khloe is a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. And Andrew is a me member of Mount Vernon Baptist Church and they all are plugged into their churches, love the Lord and we’re very thankful for it because that’s not a guarantee. It’s only by the Spirit.

Well, I will ask subsequent when we get down here a little bit about what you did, but Cyndi, introduce yourself and your family.

My name is Cyndi Logsdon. I live here in Istanbul. We’ve been here for a couple of years. We lived in a different place in Turkey before then. My husband is the lead pastor of the Union Church of Istanbul. We have two grown daughters, both in the States with their husbands. My oldest daughter and her husband are members of the Oasis Church in Tucson, Arizona. Her husband is one of the elders there. My youngest daughter and her husband are members of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. Both of our kids are kind of still in academia that my oldest daughter’s finishing up a degree program. My youngest daughter her husband’s still working on a degree program. So they’re in those stages of life, but they’re walking with Jesus and we’re very thankful.

Good. Eugene, tell us about yourself and your family.

Yeah, I’m Eugene Low. I’m lead pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Singapore. Married to Cla. We have two sons, one 16 and one 13. We’re still praying for them to make a conscious profession of faith. They come to church with us. They listen to the sermons. We read the Bible with them every night. We’re praying that the Lord will work in their hearts and bring them to himself.

My name is Kevin DeYoung and I am the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Charlotte, North Carolina where my bag still is. And I have been married to Trisha for 23 years and we have nine children.

They are different ages.

Can you name them all like

Something like this? Ian is 22. He graduated from NC State and he lives back at home and works hard at a golf course. Probably will get married in the next year. He does have a girlfriend. We’re not just like prophesying about.

And then Jacob is 20. He is a sophomore at NC State. Did you go to or did John go to or were you a different Carolina school?

No. John grew up in North Carolina to Duke for law school.

Yeah. Right. Well,

understand that’s it’s pretty. Mark De went there, too.

Elizabeth is a senior in high school. She’s 18. Paul is 16. Mary is 14. Benjamin is 11. And Tabitha is nine, Andrew is six, Susanna is five. So we have one out of college, one in college. Yeah. At no sleep. That’s a feat. And then so our church has a school, a K through 12 school, Christian school with about 1100 students. So we have seven of them are DeYoungs. Seven of them are trying to set records. I would love to hear and we’ll just go reverse and I’ll keep talking but talk about maybe what you grew up with relative to creeds and confessions and catechisms and what you have tried to do in the home. So I grew up in the Dutch reform tradition and the H Heidelberg catechism was definitely a part of my upbringing. We had it in Sunday school class. I had to meet one-on-one with my pastor when I was fourth or fifth grade and I wanted to join the church which was pretty young and so we I read through the H Heidelberg catechism with him. We had to memorize parts of it. I grew up in a church service which was fairly traditional. So we would have had the Apostles’ Creed, the H Heidelberg Catechism. I’m sure there was a Nicene Creed. I don’t remember it being drilled into my head. So, I grew up with creeds, confessions, catechisms in the church and in my home. And now that I’m Presbyterian, you subscribe to the Westminster Confession and larger and shorter catechisms. So, again, my kids are having some of that same background now with a different set of standards.

What we do at home

So, they go to a Christian school, so they get some of it there. They get it in Sunday school and they get some of it in the home. We do not drill our In fact, I was just at a different conference a few weeks ago and I was on another panel on how to raise kids who love the Lord and or not love but love the word. And it was all about like family devotions. And one of my sons said, “Dad, you should probably want to like do a really good family devotion this week so you have something to share.” So my kids were like, “You want to read the Nicene Creed at dinner today?” So you can share the So we don’t read the Nicene Creed at the meal table. We have not memorized it. We have used the shorter catechism some. We have used a children’s catechism some but they get it from I mean I think the it’s really hard if they don’t see it in church. I know we have different church traditions here so it’s very normal thing in our context.

We have some kind of confession almost every single week. So we just did the Nicene Creed last week. So they will get that often and I think that’s maybe even more important than what’s in the home or the home you want to support. Well of course we see that. So I did a conference a year or so ago and I was doing a it was a breakout about 800 college students when we were there and on the Nicene Creed and I said how many of you grew up with the Nicene Creed in your church? It was maybe like 20 people out of 7800. So I don’t know if older generation grew up with it or certain denominational context. Some of you have if you’re a pastor have a say over that. Others of you don’t. But we are not I do not give myself an A+ or an A or even a B. And you know, I tell people if you want to get the family worship A+, talk to my good friend Jason Helopoulos and read his books. If you want a very chaotic home that tries to love Jesus, follow the DeYoungs.

How we grew up

So Eugene, what did you grow up with? Did you grow up in a church context? Did you grow up with creeds and confessions? What have you done with your kids?

I didn’t grow up in a Christian context. My parents were not believers. I became a Christian in university and I think one of my first experiences with a creed or with a catechism was reading Thomas Watson’s a body of divinity.

Which is a commentary I think on the shorter catechism.

Yeah. That was really helpful for me as a new Christian. It was helpful for building some solid foundations that would serve me well in the years to come. As a family I think I resonate what you said. We haven’t used creeds or catechisms that much. We did use the new city catechism. So that was particularly helpful. It was very accessible. We were we was we were reciting that at church as well. So it was nice to do that at church once a month at our services and then to do those questions in the home as well.

So that that that’s as far as cre and catechisms go in the home. But after this conference sounds like I should read them the Nicene Creed at least when I get home.

Church and culture

What is either the broader cultural context or specifically the church context in Singapore? Would Creed’s confessions be a very normal thing or rather strange and I’m thinking for the same your context as well?

Yeah, I think unfortunately in Singapore, we’re not very creed. Not very confessional. Even the denominational lines are quite noncredo. So I think there’s a sense in which you know people kind of say no creed but the Bible that’s quite common and there’s not a lot of knowledge about church history. So the use of creeds it sounds a bit sounds rather archaic

And people don’t think they are as applicable now as maybe what they used to be.

What’s been your experience Cyndi? Well I was raised in a Southern Baptist home. My father was a pastor and we were always in church and always being taught about the Bible, but I had never heard of a creed when I was younger. And I also didn’t understand what catechism was. I had a good friend who was Roman Catholic and she would talk about catechism. And so to me it was just something that a Roman Catholic family did. So, one Saturday morning, I was probably seven or eight years old. I was wanting to spend time with my best friend, but in order for her to be allowed to go out, we had to go to her catechism first. And so, I remember sitting in that class and they were going around asking questions, giving answers, two things that I felt like I wish I had known.

And I remember sitting there thinking, she knows a lot. She knows solid answers to solid questions. And it was just something I’ll never forget. So I actually remember the first time I read the Apostles’ Creed, I was a young adult and there were several things in there that I thought, I don’t understand this. I’m not sure what this means. I’m not sure what this means. But I was realizing there was a lot out there that I wanted to learn about. I would say with raising our children, we’ve done a lot of different things in the home. We did use Westminster, we used New City Catechism, we used a lot of different things. One say one thing I would say we didn’t do well was we weren’t super consistent with any of them. We would try one for a season and then the next season we were doing something else and sometimes we would go back. So we didn’t have one that we did you know through their entire upbringing but we tried different things at different times in different seasons in their life and afraid that

sometimes you need to do that though I mean different ages you have to see if something works see if they’re paying attention at all and see if it resonates with them right

and there were different season

you don’t want to always use the same thing

I think you’re right I think for my girls it was really good at different seasons in their lives as well. And I remember even during COVID when my youngest daughter was a senior in high school, my oldest daughter was in college. So at this point, we’re already thinking anything that we have forgotten to do, they’re sunk. You know, they’re grown and we’ve missed all these things. But even during that season, God had g they were back in our home for a while and we had time to go back over things and we did a lot during a like just a six-month period and we were just really thankful that we felt like this is just the grace of God. There were things that we wished we probably would have gone over when they were younger, but we had another season and they gobbled it up when they were 18 and 20. And so we were thankful for those for that season as well. Cyndi, do you think this and I promise this is a genuine question, not a Presbyterian gotcha question. Do you think are those sorts of experience well the assumptions that you had are those still prevalent in many Baptist contexts? This is what Roman Catholics do or some other kind of Christian but we have the Bible.

I don’t know the upbringing that I had there was it was not very liturgical at all. It was also not a reformed context and I was in since my dad was the pastor, I was in that setting until I was 18. So, I’m really familiar with that. The Baptist context that we’re familiar with now are reformed and it seems like there’s a different emphasis on the creeds, a different emphasis on cate catechism, all these things from what I’m seeing. I know when at our church when we started using the New City Catechism I had to answer questions that you know assuring people that no, we were not becoming Catholic.

Keri, what about your experience growing up and with your kids?

Yeah. Well, has what is that movie Jesus People or something? The one about the start of Calvary Chapel? Has anybody seen that?

Jesus Revolution.

Yeah, my kids.

Yeah. If you’ve seen that, that’s kind of the atmosphere that I grew up in Southern California. That that was actually happening as I was growing up. And so no creeds like that that would be some very informal Christianity. And I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. So I was kind of exposed to that kind of stuff. But not taught anything in my home.

Definitely not taught. We didn’t pray at meals. We didn’t do any of that. So yeah, I wasn’t taught any of that. And then when we got married and had kids, we would do the Westminster Shorter Catechism with our little ones when they were really little and we taught them hand movements to go with it. So like why did God what’s one of the questions? Why did God create you and all things? And our daughter would say for his own glory.

And so that was kind of a fun thing to do like when she was in the high chair and eating her food and we would go over these catechism questions. So we did that but basically John’s philosophy was let’s just make sure our children know that God is the center of our home. So, let’s do family worship.

You know, a few minutes of reading the Bible after we eat dinner. Or we would go to a book like leading little ones to God. You familiar with that? That’s a great book, a theology book for little ones. And we would do things like that just to make sure the kids knew, yeah, this home is dedicated to the Lord. It is really important to do something even if it’s small. Even if you think we didn’t do it for the last two weeks. Okay, you can do something today. And better to do four minutes every day than to try to get the world’s best family worship time once a month and then the kids are like, why are we here for an hour?

Especially with different ages. I mean, you’ve got these different ages, different attention levels. So if you get into a good discussion with the older ones, fine. Let the other ones fall asleep. They don’t have to be attentive all the time. But yeah,

Teaching our children

well, you were starting to say something earlier and I want to hear more about h how did you think about those ages? Because catechisms we often think of memorization and that’s a great thing to do when they’re young and there’s lots of studies about how brains develop and that is the time where you remember things and sometimes if we start doing that when they’re teenagers that’s really not the best developmental time and it’s where they’re asking questions they don’t want to just memorize things. How did you think about that, especially if you might have an age range of kids? And what advice would you give to people here?

Well, yeah, we did memorize when they were little. And I think John on the way to school, even in high school, would have the kids sometimes memorizing a chunk of Scripture. But you know, that was kind of off and on.

But mainly what we taught our kids like when they got school age, we wanted them to open up their Bibles before they went to school. Like if it was a couple minutes, fine. We just wanted them to get into a habit. They weren’t believers, but we wanted them to be in that habit. And we wanted them to see us reading our Bibles. So, they knew that we spent time with the Lord every morning and they would spend a little bit of time reading the Scriptures before we took them off to school. So that’s kind of the environment that we wanted to create, but we didn’t memorize stuff all the way through.

Yeah. You have thoughts, me? I remember when my children were very little one of the things that was big on television in the United States at that time was this red kind of puppet thing named Elmo. I don’t know if he was in all the other countries, but my girls would know everything about Elmo and all these other characters. And someone, a dear friend, a mentor just said if they’re old enough to memorize the names of all these characters on TV, they’re old enough to memorize truth.

And you know there were things that I would say we did not do well. We were so we did a lot of res recitation and having them memorize things and I remember one specifically probably 10 years after we’d worked through some of these questions. One of my daughters came to me and so this is just my confession to all of you. One of my daughters came to me and she asked what indamin was and I said I don’t know. Oh, I’m thinking like end of mommy something you eat. And she said that thing we learned, what is the chief endamin instead of what is the chief end of man? And we had gone over that over and over, but they’d always heard it. What is the chief enderman? And that’s what they had memorized. So, we didn’t get it all right.

I bet they remember it now, though. They did learn it eventually. Praise be to God. But we did find that there was a lot they could learn. And I actually had one of the families at our church. So, it’s actually our associate pastor. He’s here somewhere. His wife is the Sunday school director at our church here in Istanbul. And she was also has an education background. And we do New City Catechism with our Sunday school kids every week. My classes, the first through third grade, and they’re learning their questions. But one of the things that she helped me with, she came in a couple of weeks ago and led that portion of our class. And I think I was still a little bit probably scarred by my kids not understanding some of it.

And I was spending a ton of time trying to explain to the kids what every word meant. And she was just showing me the value of getting it inside them at these young ages having. So she just did a lot of memory out loud. First phrase, and they were going back and forth and their children know their questions. And I absolutely love it because when we think about the things that they’re learning, and it’s not just to teach doctrine, but it’s also these barriers to teach them what to be afraid of, what to avoid, what are the red flags and the bad things in the world, heresies. But when they get these phrases, sound doctrine, stuck in their minds, it comes back to them when they hear things that aren’t true. So I think it’s good to get them memorizing at young ages.

Eugene, how and if you were going to say something else, you can add that at the front end. But I’m wondering as you think about this as a pastor and whether from your own kids or kids in your church or simply young Christians, we’re talking about the Nicene Creed, that’s what this conference is about, which has a lot to do with some very difficult technical doctrine. We’re talking about the Trinity, the two natures of Christ. Have you found ways to explain the Trinity to young people? Non-heretical ways.

The Nicene Creed at home

I think the Nicene Creed is really useful for that. I think the language is it can be technical but it’s actually not it’s not hard to understand. So language is quite plain. So I think that that creed the Nicene Creed is very useful to explain trinitarian doctrine. I think the simple statements of you know I’ve read somewhere simple statements where the Father is God, the Son is God, spirit is God all are God but they’re not like three gods. So I think those simple axioms also very useful to explain the Trinity. I think that’s the use of I think that’s the usefulness of creeds. It can take some pretty deep theology from Scripture and present it in accessible ways. And I think that that’s the value of a creed like the Nicene Creed.

Yeah, we love to I think I’d love to have younger people in my church use it more regularly.

I love that answer because we I remember so in Presbyterian church to be ordained as a pastor you have to take exams and it can be very stressful. I remember a student getting very anxious and then he just slipped into reciting parts of the Nicene Creed and then he kind of apologized like, “Oh, I know that’s cheating.” No, that’s why you learned it.

And we’re not going to come up with language that’s better than that. With the Trinity in particular. I think because we want to give an analogy and a metaphor and nothing quite works that water ice vapor or you have three different roles or you’re in an apple. All of those things my kids sometimes have come home and said our teacher told us now they know not with the young children we don’t but the doctrine of the Trinity in particular you simply have to use the words and we haven’t improved upon the terms and you’re right it may sound daunting with you know an 8-year-old to go through the Nicene Creed they might not get anything. But you can say very God of very God, light of light. Okay.

Why does it say begotten not created? That’s you. You can talk about those things in a way that yeah, they’re not going to get it fully just as we don’t fully comprehend it, but we can understand it, we can communicate it, and that’s what the creeds are there for. M just to expand a little bit and think about our parenting more broadly and wanting our kids to grow up. As I said, this panel I was on a few weeks ago, the panel was how to raise children who love the word of God. And we all said we can’t.

You can raise children to memorize a catechism. You can raise children to do stay out of some of the bad things when they’re young. But if you say to have a heart that loves, you can do all sorts of things with the means of grace to get them there, but you can’t actually go in and make their heart do something.

So, I love which was it you, Gloria said you just wanted the kids or Keri, I was thinking Ferman, not Folmar. Did you say it? Talk some more about when you said you wanted the kids to see whatever you did that God was at the center of this home. More almost caught than taught. What other things did you do to try to help them catch that?

Yeah. Well I think that what we want to do with our kids, this is kind of more general, but what we want to do with our kids when we’re doing family worship or having conversations or anything is pack a bunch of kindling around their hearts because it’s only the Holy Spirit who can light that fire, right? So, we want to give them kindling. And the thing that I think we did pretty well in our home is we did show them that we love the Scriptures and we love the church. And so our kids when they did leave our home, all of them did have a habit of reading their Bibles and they would go through phases where they were reading them more or less at different times.

But all pretty much kind of feeling the need to read their Bibles and they immediately when they left our home went to their local church and got plugged into their church and eventually became members baptized members of their churches. So they couldn’t imagine. I remember our oldest child went on a trip one time just while she was in high school and she had to journal. It was a school trip and she had to journal and she wrote in her journal, “I really miss my community.” I think she didn’t want her teacher to necessarily read church, but she missed the church even while she was gone for a week. So I think that’s what we want to do. We want to be teaching them with an eye toward like the Holy Spirit can come in and light that fire in their hearts.

What we would do differently

Cyndi, you’ve been humbled to share some things you could have done better and tell some funny stories, but I know you did some things well. What would one or what would be one or two things your kids would say, “Yeah, my mom and dad did that well.” And you can reflect on even what your parents did well raising you in a Christian home.

I think one of the things that my daughters are thankful for is that we worked as a family to make sure that they had read the entire Bible before leaving the home.

And I think they both got through it twice. But just we wanted to make sure and we also worked on biblical theology. So, we had some different, you know just different kind of presentations and things that we did with them a lot to help them see how the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together, how it’s one big story. And I think they’re thankful for those things. I think one thing that I’m very thankful for and this was something we’ve learned from people wiser than we but just trying to pray with them a ton.

And so now and we’re 6,000 miles away. We still pray with them a ton. And when they share something, stop right then and pray with them and pray for them. And I think it spilled into their lives. They love prayer.

They’re women of prayer.

did you all did you both think that did you have in your head that yeah, I sort of parent for 18 years and then there go the adult children and what is it been to realize they still need a parent and how is it different and how is it the same?

Yeah. Yeah. Big time. Like John and I looked forward to being empty nesters and that time never really came. We’re pretty much empty nesters now. But no. Yeah. You think that parenting’s going to end it at when they go out of your house and it doesn’t

like even when they’re married, you’re still parenting in some ways giving advice. You want and you want that. You want your kids coming to you for advice. And it’s just it’s sometimes more intense, often more intense when they’re adults. So, it’s you know, people always say it’s physically tiring when they’re little,

It’s emotionally tiring when they’re adults.

Prodigals and grace

Can you speak, Cyndi? There must be people here who have kids who are wayward or they people in their church. We all know those stories. And maybe they’re 18, maybe they’re 28 and they’re wondering, okay, they’re not a 10-year-old who’s got a little rebellious streak and I can drag her to church and make her do these things. What does it look like when you have a child who’s now an adult and doesn’t seem interested or maybe even is opposed to the things of the Lord and your heart breaks? How do you continue to parent without being without parenting them like they’re five because they’re not anymore?

I think a lot of prayer and a lot of grace. I have a friendship group that’s pretty small. A few women and from different parts of the world and some who are going through some things with adult children right now. And we have a commitment. We are on our knees for each other’s children. I think praying for wisdom for how to have conversations, praying for wisdom to know when to speak up, when to remain silent when to share from God’s word, when to just listen. I think having other parents and actually we have some at our church here in Istanbul that the moms just get together and pray for our children but also pray for how we are going to relate to them and seeking counsel from other people before we moved over here. So we lived overseas, then we were back in the states for a season, then we moved back and so we had never been across the ocean from adult children. And before we did, Keri’s actually one of the people that I asked, please give me counsel.

And one of the pieces of counsel that she gave me, I think was probably the best thing that I learned about parenting from afar. And I think I’m just so thankful that I asked and she was so willing to share her wisdom. So for parents that are struggling, I do think that there is so much comfort in the fact that we can trust in a good father who loves our children and we can come to him in prayer knowing that he hears our prayers and we can gather with his people praying for our kids. I think my counsel would be just don’t stop.

Keep praying, keep sharing, keep asking for counsel, keep being available to your children, answering the phone when they call relating to them at their current stage of life.

And I think as they get older, you do have to do you can’t do the same. I’m telling you now, do it. But you can in lots of verbal and non-verbal ways communicate. I’m here and I want to help and I’m I stand ready to and if there’s a pretty good relationship you can say would you like to know my advice and they may or may not but you some things do need to change and that and you know we’re just on we have 5 to 22 so we’re having to navigate all of those ages but it is it’s even totally different from 16 to 22

I would say another thing that has helped us Jonathan Leeman has a pretty new book out on authority and he talks about the difference between authority of command and authority of counsel and as your children are getting older you make that shift in parenting and that’s helpful for me. So I would recommend that book if you’re trying to think through different stages of life and what authority looks like as it’s changing.

Cyndi, what you shared was really encouraging. I think I we’re probably early ear early on in the parenting season. Our kids are still living in our house with two teenagers. We found it really helpful to speak with parents whose kids have strayed. I think it’s humbling. I think for us to realize that we can’t change the hearts of our children. And it’s helpful to speak to parents whose who have the heartbreak of kids who’ve turned away. I think humbles us and makes us more prayerful. Helps us to I think also relate to parents whose kids have turned away with more humility and grace and to love them in the church as well and to give them a space in the church where we can pray for them, pray for their children and care well for them. So I really appreciate what you shared and it’s encouraging for me as a younger parent in my years of pastoral ministry. I’ve never I’ve encountered so many parents who have wayward children and just and some who will with tears almost every week shake my hand and just say, “Pastor, could you pray? Could you keep praying?”

I have not known any of them to feel like, “Wow, I was a great parent and I don’t know why my kids turned out so this way.” Every one of them deals with feelings of regret and what did I do wrong? So, I think in most of our churches, we’re probably not we’re not in the danger of just letting those parents, yeah, you didn’t do anything wrong. They feel that already. So, likely it’s wanting to make sure there’s a culture of continued hope and prayer and forgiveness. And every one of us can look and see, wow, it’s amazing that they turned out with all those mistakes that I made. And other parents that you’re an amazing parent

and I you did the same thing with these four kids. And I don’t know why one of them and you could almost see it from a young age. Just one of them was on a different wavelength. So it’s really important to have not excusing not you know a sort of just low expectations but understanding as parents that if you already feel that pain and it’s probably the most exquisite pain you feel and then not to add on to that the burden of if you only would have done a b and c if you would have done more catechism your kids would have this line which I heard Tim Keller say one time and has always stuck with me he said, “Once you have kids,” slight exaggeration, but it’ll stick with you. He said, “Once you have kids, you’ll never be happier than your least happy child.”

Now, praise God, there’s the gospel and there’s joy and there’s a way to be happy in the Lord. But he’s getting at he was getting at something powerful there that we feel what our kids are going through.

Where to start

Eugene, what counsel would you have for people here who are maybe they’re hearing this and thinking about I haven’t done any of these things? Maybe they have young kids. Maybe they’re sensing, wow, my kids are almost out of the house. What do I do? Somebody’s saying, where do I start to have this kind of influence and pass on these truths to my kids? What advice would you give them?

Yeah, I think just start small. Start where you are. Start small. I you know like what you said don’t do 1 hour family devotions out of the blue 10 minutes like for our teenagers we realize that what’s been helpful is just to I think some of you may know the Swedish method of reading the Bible so we use that with our teenagers we’re reading through the New Testament with them now following

Swedish

It’s basically three questions I think David Helm talks about it in onetoone Bible reading.

It’s what stood out for you? What question do you have from the passage and how would you apply this? So we’ve enjoyed doing that with our two teenagers. You know, they have their busy lives as well. I mean, school in Singapore is very intense and stressful, especially as a teenager. So, we try to grab them for maybe 15, 20 minutes every evening, pray, read the Bible, ask them those three questions, pray again and then we’re done. And I think we’ve been able to sustain that fairly regularly. Not all the time, but we trust that as we expose them to Scripture, the Spirit can use that and hopefully open their hearts and then bring them to Christ. So be consistent. Don’t aim too high, but just aim for consistency.

A bit over a long period of time is better than just a lot and just once. Yeah.

Final words

Cyndi, do you have a final word of encouragement? Thinking about all of the messages that bombard us from the world. The world is catechizing our kids in all sorts of ways. Any encouragement for these brothers and sisters as they think about bringing the truth of God’s word and these historic catechisms to bear on their family

just that someone is going to be teaching them. I think he is right. There’s all kinds of creeds and really dangerous creeds, secular creeds that are posted on yard signs that they’re passing by. Love is love and transgender women are women, all these things. So, they are learning from somebody. So, take advantage. And I love what my brother Eugene shared, a little bit at a time, but just getting it out, doing what you can. And if you go six months and you’ve forgotten to do anything, just pick up where you’ve started, but you have today. So yeah, use it for the glory of God.

Any final word, Keri?

Well, I just read Clare Morell’s book called Tech Exit. It is really good and it’s and so I guess my advice would be don’t babysit your kids with your phone or an iPad. Keep those things kind of away from your kids and you know because they can get things that you don’t even know that they’re getting from it. So that’s what I would say.

Yeah. I think the one of the big takeaways I think about a lot of the things that I’ve if there’s one theme maybe in a lot of the things that I’ve written it’s that being a Christian is easier and harder than we think. So it’s harder than we think because being a Christian means carrying a cross. It means dying to oursel. It means fighting the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is not a cheerleader for us on the way to heaven. So being a Christian wherever you live, if you’re really living as a Christian, is going to be hard. And yet I think we also need to hear in a different way that that being a Christian is easier. Meaning it’s one foot in front of another. It you don’t have to have multiple advanced degrees and be the most extremely gifted organized person. You don’t have to have more than 24 hours in the day. Sometimes we can conceive of a way of doing Christian discipleship that only fits the most type A, the most accomplished, the most brilliant. None of us claim to be that up on this panel.

That’s not false humility. That is very true. I think of a line from Aleister Beg said one time he heard someone say that when he was younger, he had no kids and six theories on parenting. And now that he had six kids, he had no theories on parenting. And I feel that a little bit too. If I probably won’t write a book, if I do write a book, I just know what the title will be. The inmates are running the asylum will be the parenting book. And yet I think for those of us who have had the privilege of growing up in a Christian home, I think, what did my parents do? They did a lot. There was a lot of things they didn’t do. They didn’t sit down and have a the talk with us. You probably should, but they didn’t. They didn’t you know, they didn’t have Paul Tripp kind of get to your heart conversations. You should try it, but it might not work.

But here’s what I knew when we left. I knew my mom and dad loved each other. They loved us. They loved Jesus. And they loved the church. And they never told they never said, “Here’s the catechism. Do we love?” Yes. Yes. Yes. You just you felt it. And that’s what I mean by it’s harder because that takes a whole life, but it’s also easier that you may not be the superstar in getting them to memorize the Nicene Creed. But if they know you love each other, you love them, you love Jesus, you love the church, that’s a lot of kindling.

Prayer

Eugene, would you close us with our time here with prayer?

Be happy to.

Father, we praise you that you are such a loving Father to us. We thank you for the gift of your son. We thank you for the gift of your spirit who enables us, who empowers us, who convicts us of sin, of righteousness, of judgment. Father, we entrust our families to you. We pray for our children of those we know.

Father, we pray that you would in your mercy open their hearts to Christ. And we pray that we as parents would love them well, that we would reflect Christ to them. And we pray that at the end of the day, as Kevin mentioned, they would see that we love Jesus, we love them, and we love our spouses. Father, we entrust these things to you. We know that you are able to help us and strengthen us. We pray that you would help us in our need for Jesus’ sake. Amen.