It's not my job to parent my kids

I love my mom. I don't know what else there is to say but that I love her. She was and is a great mother. I have been very blessed to have her growing up. Even this week she called to encourage me after a rough day. She always has my back, even when I'm in the wrong...oh she'll kick my rear but she would never leave me. And I love her for that. And because I was blessed with amazing parents I strive to be that for my kids. I fail miserably sometimes but I do try. But as I get older I'm becoming more and more convinced that my job as a parent is to not be a parent.   It's not my job to parent my children.  My job is to disciple my children. I grew up in the church and had good times and bad times. I saw how people of real faith live that out to make our world a much better place and I've seen people that just play church lay some hurt on people that will stay with them forever. I've also worked in the church for many years serving and partnering with families to help them raise their children in a faith many don't quite grasp. The problem started some time ago, I'm not sure when. But at some point the church was either given the reigns or the church took them and became the primary spiritual leader in the child's life. No longer was it the responsibility of the parents to raise their children in faith, it was the professionals job. Not every church was this way and not every parent was this way, but many were/are. I can't even begin to count the number of people that brought their broken teenager into my office and essentially said "Fix them!" Not every parent or teen that visited me was like this but it was enough that I took notice.  Typically the case would be that mom and dad weren't living a very authentic faith at home yet expected their child to. And when the child couldn't reconcile what they saw from their parents at home and what they saw from them at church the parents got angry. The child would begin acting out against this false walk and the parents got more angry. By the time they would bring their "wayward" teen to me it was well past the breaking point. Some times the parents were living out a very real faith but had come to it later in life and couldn't understand why their children weren't just following along. And in the worst cases parents were flat out hypocritical when it came to their children. I had a parent sob over their child smoking pot while they were smoking crack but justified it by saying to me, "But I never smoked it in front of them." As if that somehow made it all ok.  I never understood this. What was it that they expected me to undo? Was it the 12-18 years of life teachings that they carried with them? I was never able to get ahold of just what it was I was to do. It was in these moments that I begin to sense that something was very wrong with how we did things in the church. Like I said, at some point the church became the primary spiritual leader instead of the parents and when that happened a major paradigm shift occurred. With the responsibility of spiritual caregiver no longer on the parents they began a slow descent into comfortable christianity. No longer were they worried about Christ's call to serve the unloved, the poor, those on the margins; no longer did they bother themselves with loving their neighbors and when that happened a disconnect happened at home. Faith became compartmentalized and church was a place you went to instead of something you were. When that shift happened, students started leaving the church. Why? Because it wasn't real, it wasn't authentic. Faith wasn't something that impacted any part of their lives, except maybe an hour or two during the week. Oh there might be a little extra time thrown in here and there with a pizza party or lock in. But that did nothing to help answer the hard questions that teens were asking. And because we parents weren't involved with their spiritual upbringing we were left wondering what happened. If you are a Christian parent reading this and you are not discipling your children, please hear me say this with a mouthful of grace; It is not your church's job, it is not your children's minister or student minister's job to disciple your children. It is yours and yours alone. Hopefully you attend a church that partners with you in discipling your kids but the responsibility falls on your shoulders. If you're not a church that helps equip you for that role- then FIND ONE! As a parent there is nothing more important than passing on your faith to your kids! And let me say this as well, they only way to effectively disciple your children is for you to have an authentic faith that you practice in front of them daily. If you're kids don't see you live and love and serve and struggle they will not hear a word you say. Let me take that back, they will hear every word you say and see the lie in them. Our children ache for a faith that pushes them to live a better story and the only one that can give them that is us. How we walk and talk at home is far more important than any lesson or sermon they will ever hear. How we walk and talk at home will be the example of what Christ calls us to in their lives. Whether we understand it or not, we are a walking talking example of Jesus to our children.  The type of Jesus they see is up to us.  It is not our job to parent our children, it's our call to disciple them.