Did you grow up in a Christian home?
How do you know?
Those were two of the questions which were posed by Lucy Moore during Messy Church training on Saturday.
The assembled throng laughed nervously and made jokes about growing up in a bungalow and how they had never asked their house if it had accepted Jesus as its Lord and Saviour before confronting the fact that this is a hard question.
I grew up in a house with two Christian parents. I went to church every week and Boys’ Brigade. But that didn’t make it a ‘Christian home’. Did it? We prayed each night before bed. Did that make it a Christian home? My dad became a minister. Did that make it a Christian home?
The question and answers led to an interesting discussion asking:
‘How do we model faith at home?’
So, I’m asking you:
Did you grow up in a Christian home?
How do you know?
And as an extra bonus question:
Would your kids (or future kids) give the same answer as you?
Great questions!!
I grew up in a Christian home and I am quite comfy saying that. My parents are both committed christians – they live a life based on christian values and I know how much their faith means to them. They are christ-like in the way the live their lives (not always perfect but then thats ok) and are good role models I think for others trying to be christ-like.
When I was growing up I can remember praying at bedtime, doing Sunday School – never did YF – went straight onto grown-up church as a teenager. We had lots of bibles in the house and I got a music hymn CH3 one year for Christmas (so I could practice the hymns on my recorder!) None of this necessarily makes the house a Christian home. It is def more about my first paragraph. Anyway something must have rubbed off because look at me now!
Which takes me onto your bonus question! Neither my husband nor my children would say that they have found Christ, God is a puzzle. Now as a minister that is perhaps a conudrum – but I hope that someday things will change. In the meantime I continue to follow Christ the best way I can. Neil & the kids see me at my best and my worst and that is very grounding I can tell you – they soon tell me if they don’t think I am living up to the values I espouse. They have also accepted and supported my calling into ministry. I certainly couldn’t have done it without them. I would like to hope that the home we share is a christian home – even if I am the only one that does God so to speak – and that my kids will see and understand that – only time will tell.
Great questions, and here’s my answers;
1) Yes
2) Because we were learning to have Jesus at the centre. Not doing stuff. Not being nice. Not being perfect, Just living for and loving Jesus. Sure, we did stuff too; there was church where Dad pastored until I was 16, there was worship, there were kids learning to listen to God, there was tension too.
It’s become really challenging to me recently to crave (yes, crave) the increase of Jesus in me. not in a hyper-spiritual, sanctimonious way. Please, Lord NO! But in a grounded, reality that God lives in and through me. That I am being transformed to be more like Him to the people I live and breathe with.
I think that this will make the answer to 3) “yes”.
Yes, I grew up in a christian home. To me it was all I knew growing up as my parents were missionaries in a developing country all of my childhood and into my teens and then back and forward over the years until their health dictated otherwise.
I know it was a christian home because we lived and breathed our faith. Walked the “walk” and talked the “talk”. Jesus was at the centre of everything. He was the reason for living. My father and mother were preachers and teachers, guiding and supporting others in their faith. As a child and teenager it was all I knew. I never questioned it until I was 18. It was very difficult for me to break away when I chose to live my life differently.
My now adult children, were not raised in a “christian” household but what I did pass onto them were good moral values, freedom of expression and the ability to choose for themselves once they have experienced life.