4 Keys to a New Start

From Jenny Cudahy Director of Children Ministries

Happy New Year CPC families! One of my passions is encouraging parents to nurture the faith of their children. This can be done by weaving faith into the conversations, rituals, and traditions that we already naturally do with our children.  You will hear much more about this from me in the months ahead, but I found this great article on using the New Year as a time to be more intentional about creating a faith-filled home that I wanted to pass along to you as you contemplate the fresh start of a New Year. I hope you enjoy it, and that you have a happy, safe,  and blessed New Year!

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By Marilyn Sharpe of Youth and Family Institute

 Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush; anxious for greater developments and great wishes and so on; so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have little time for each other; and the home begins the disruptions of the peace of the world.

MOTHER TERESA

The New Year is an excellent time for taking a second look at exactly what it is you want to pass along to your children — what’s essential and what’s not, what weaves the fabric of your family together from today into tomorrow? These four keys are an excellent place to start!

Caring Conversations

Caring conversations are the floor under all of our close relationships and are the way we model and transmit Christian values and faith to the next generation. Listening deeply, respectfully, and with great care, and speaking with love and gentleness helps children experience the love of God. Responding to the daily concerns of our children gives us their trust and the credibility to invite them to express God’s love to others.

Family Devotions (or, Finding God in Everyday Life)

Turn up the “God language” under our caring conversations and you have family devotions. Adults need to learn the Christian message and the biblical story, finding themselves in God’s story and God in their story, in order to be able to pass on faith to their children and to other adults. Sometimes, devotions use Scripture, a devotional text, and prayer at a set time in a set place each day. Sometimes, it grows out of spontaneous conversation and wondering aloud how God might be present in the sunset or current events or a family celebration and what God might be calling us to do in response. Our Christian faith shapes the whole of our lives and involves a lifetime of study, reflection, and prayer.

Family Rituals and Traditions

We already have a multitude of rituals and traditions. How do we wake one another up, say goodbye for the day, welcome one another home, and say good night? How do we celebrate birthdays and holidays? What stories and recipes and activities and values shape our identity as a family? How might we pray for one another when leaving for the day, when facing a hard decision, when dealing with stress? Find God in the midst of these daily or seasonally repeated experiences, and we will suffuse family life with God’s presence. This makes it very clear what our family values, believes, and promotes, and how faith shapes us individually and as a family.

Family Service

Why would we do service as a family? Isn’t it enough to do it individually? Learning that “faith is caught as well as taught,” we understand that we need to be together as a family, linking the generations, to serve as a loving response to what God has already done for us. Together, we have a chance to talk about what we have done, why we have done it, and what we have learned. This is the way to make service a joyous opportunity to love God back, to say “thank you,” to be the light of Christ for others. Serving with children makes it a habit, a spiritual practice, a faithful way of life.