Parenting’s Primary Purpose

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GUEST BLOGGER: Barrett Johnson, along with his wife Jenifer, founded Imperfect & Normal Families Only (I.N.F.O. for Families) in 2013. Their ministry focuses on equipping families with a biblical worldview, addressing modern challenges such as marriage dynamics, parenting, sexuality, and technology. With a relatable, down-to-earth style, they aim to support parents and couples through coaching, speaking engagements, and practical resources.

If we’re not careful, parenthood can be just an extremely long series of exhausting tasks, repeated over and over, ad nauseum.

Without focus and a clear awareness of our basic goal, there is atendency to get stuck in the rituals of daily life and forget that God has placed us in a totally unique situation with an essential mandate. Specifically, we’re called to disciple our children. Without a doubt, this is a parent’s most important job.

We’re tasked with preparing our kids to know Jesus and walk intimately with Him. Over the course of a couple decades, we’re to help them join God in His mission of bringing redemption and salvation to a world separated from its Creator. We’re charged with helping the little people in our homes get caught up in God’s amazing plan for their lives. This is the fundamental and only nonnegotiable purpose of parenting in the Christian home.

Yet the pressures of our busy schedules and the routine cycles of life can easily distract us, resulting in this critical task getting lost in the mayhem. Without a clear sense of purpose, it’s easy to lose sight of the objective. Just as workers on an assembly line can forget their work has meaning, so, too, can we forget that the daily work of parenting a child has the potential to create a committed follower of Jesus Christ.

One who just might change the world.

Perhaps it’s easy to lose sight of this calling because the process takes so long and we see so few significant milestones along the journey. With most any other endeavor, we have the satisfaction of receiving regular feedback on our progress in the form of small successes and victories. In school, we get periodic report cards. At work we might finish projects or close deals. Even in our church activities, we can conclude and then evaluate events or programs.

Parenting is a different animal altogether. You get very little feedback. When was the last time your children let you know your contribution to their lives is invaluable? Or your peers or your own parents commented on your successes as a parent? It rarely happens.

Likewise, with the exception of events like a profession of faith or baptism, it’s hard to know day-by-day or even year-by-year how your kids are growing spiritually. Like their physical growth, your kids’ spiritual growth is likely to be so gradual that you might barely notice it except when God opens your eyes to some dramatic step they’ve taken.

It can be incredibly frustrating. Still, discipleship remains the basic calling of parenthood.

Parents are the Most Strategically Placed Disciple-Makers in God’s Creation

As parents, we have an incredible opportunity to disciple the children God has placed in our homes. And He’s made it simple. On the one hand is a child who needs to be introduced to Christ and then grown up in the faith. On the other hand is a committed adult believer who’s been given the command to make disciples. God creates something of a captive audience by, in His sovereign will, placing one in the home of the other for twenty years or so. He makes the child dependent on the parent, giving the adult many opportunities to teach, shape, and mold the child. What a perfectly simple plan for growing new believers!

Yet, again, too many parents miss this opportunity. The most common mindset I’ve observed is parents leaving the spiritual development of their children to the church. We’ve somehow come to believe that if we take our children to Sunday school or get our teenagers involved in a youth program, we’ve made the greatest possible contribution to their spiritual growth and development.

How tragic! Not to mention unbiblical. While the church should certainly be a resource for Christian parents, it should never be the primary means by which their children are discipled. In fact, it can’t be. And yet many of us still count on the church to introduce our kids to Christ and to teach them to walk with Him. While the church should reinforce what we’re doing at home, God has given the primary responsibility for the spiritual development of children to parents. Again, taking ownership of this role may feel overwhelming; it’s a heavy burden. But it’s an essential one for every mom and dad.

I realize how scary this might sound—even worse than overwhelming. It may seem like this is just one more dimension of parenting where you could potentially end up feeling like a failure. But take heart! God is with you and God will lead you. He wants to enable you to do what you could never do on your own.

One thing is certain: if you want to make a difference in the world, the best place to start is with your children. The legacy of faith you’ll pass down from one generation to the next has a multiplication power with the potential to literally change the world.

Adapted from Disciple Them Like Jesus by Barrett Johnson

Now available from Bethany House wherever books are sold.