Liz Pemberton May 11th 2014 - Model Mums

All Mums are Models!(and the rest of us too…) Ladies, I wonder if you ever had a little childhood fantasy about being a model?   Did you ever imagine yourself looking fabulous, strutting your stuff down a catwalk, jetting between New York, Paris and exotic island photo-shoot locations?   I may have had a very, very brief fantasy about that in my younger years but reality soon came knocking when I stopped growing and could tell my figure wasn’t very model-like. These days, I just think being a model would be very hard work!However, in some senses I have become a model. In fact, we are all models.   We model things all the time, whether we think about it or not.   In the mornings, we might model what a sleep-deprived person is like before they’ve had their coffee.   At dinner time, we might model how to cook a good chicken curry in 30 minutes.Those of us who are parents or who have children in our lives, are always ‘modelling’ in front of them.   The big question is, What are we modelling and what are they learning from it?This year so far I have been very blessed to attend some excellent professional development courses, one designed specifically for children’s ministers and one for ministry in general. Both of them left me with one big thought: The church’s strategy for turning children into mature disciples of Jesus Christ is not working. I have become more and more convinced as both a parent and a children’s minister that 40 minutes a week on a Sunday morning is not anywhere near enough to help children grow into disciples.   It is certainly part of it, but the primary responsibility for discipling children lies with parents and other significant adults in their lives.   This is why I am so passionate about worshipping together as families and about faith at home.     We are already discipling (and modelling to) our children in a huge number of ways, both intentionally and unintentionally (ours for example have been discipled into liking chocolate and Dr Who!)… but what about their spiritual lives? How are we doing that? How are we shaping them to become disciples of Jesus in the everyday adventure of life?We might not feel much like very good disciples ourselves and so I invite you all to walk with me on this!   We all need discipling, no matter what our age.   This really just means learning to follow Jesus more closely and becoming more like him so that, as a church community, we can disciple each other as we seek to disciple our kids. Let’s help and support each other. Let’s share ideas (like our recipe book). Let’s pray for each other and pray for our kids, that they would grow up to know, love and follow Jesus. And most of all let’s ask God for His Holy Spirit to help us (he promises this in Acts 1:8) as we respond to the Great Commission to make disciples, in our own families and households.Love and blessings,Liz Pemberton