Steph 23/05/25

Weave Your Own Web
 
“For one particular research project, my colleagues and I at Fuller Youth Institute conducted long-form interviews with a number of families who had been nominated by their faith communities as exemplars.  We asked pastors to nominate families based not on whether the kids “turned out right,” whatever that might mean, but whether the families stayed faithful through the normal challenges of life, even as kids made mistakes and didn’t unfailingly comply with their parents’ wishes.  They were doing something right because they kept figuring out how they, as the real family they were, followed Jesus and invited their kids to meaningfully join in…almost none of these families did the same thing as another.  Yes, each had a set of faith practices that included Scripture and prayer.  But the type of faith community they were part of, what they did to explore the Bible and the way they approached prayer were all quite different.  As they talked about their values as Christians, they certainly didn’t sound identical…Weaving a web is a unique, bespoke, creative activity.  The same should be true of a family’s (household’s/individual’s) web of faith.  So many factors impact the way faith takes shape in your family, including the number of family members and their ages; how your family earns an income, the location you call home; your personality, history, preferences, and heritage.  All of these, and more, deserve to be factored into how it looks for you to follow Jesus together.  Being a family (community) of faith, in other words, can and should also be a unique, bespoke and creative activity.”
 
‘Woven’ by Meredith Miller