By Mike King
We are blessed to have 11 wonderful grandchildren. We are also blessed to have all of them living within a few miles from us. We are even more blessed that we all go to the same church. Recently, my wife, Vicki and I filled up a van after church with a load of our grandchildren with the intent to take them on a mini-pilgrimage highlighting our childhood stories and locations that were meaningful to us. This included the places we lived, and we met and many stories about their parents growing up. More details on the “how” we did this trip and some tips for grandparents at the end of this article, but first, the “why” – why did we take this adventure to our past with our grandkids? Well, these kinds of experiences of storytelling have always been a part of our parenting and grandparenting, but even more so with our focus on a big-picture project we are working on here at Youthfront.
Last fall, we received exciting news we believe will significantly deepen the impact of Youthfront ministries on thousands of families we have the privilege of serving. Youthfront was selected as a recipient of a four-year grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. for a project designed to help parents and caregivers actively participate in the Christian formation of their children.
Lilly Endowment is known for its philanthropic support of Christian thought, scholarship and institutions of learning. We’re humbled and blessed to be selected for this grant project in their focus area of Christian Parenting and Caregiving.
As we launched into planning the work of the grant project, we slowly turned from a primary focus on the child, child theology, and development issues toward an awareness that a presence-centered, playful and passionate relationship with God was not only important for the child’s faith formation, but was critical for adult spirituality and caregiving (parents, grandparents, godparents, and other adults in children’s lives). Giving care and nurturing spiritual formation that will endure in children’s lives requires Christian adults who are well-equipped to passionately engage in a presence-centered way of life that is fundamentally Christological. Rather than asking congregations to impart faith to their children, engaging caregivers in the faith life of children opens parents, grandparents and godparents to a deeper experience of their own faith.
The purpose of this project is to empower and resource parents, caregivers and congregations to accompany their children in faith within communities of mutual prayer, practice and ministry. All our activities as part of the project seek to attend to three aspects of practicing faith: communion, contemplation and curation. In Communion, we cultivate relationships and practice community, recognizing that our personhood is grounded in our connection to God, each other and the world. In Contemplation, we use spiritual disciplines and contemplative prayer practices to foster a posture of receptivity and openness to being encountered by God. In Curation, we create environments and nurture opportunities to encounter God and to participate in God’s ministry in the world, recognizing that we don’t conjure God but we watch for God and follow God’s lead to care for each other and the world. It is to Jesus Christ, who by the Holy Spirit rests at the center of our lives, that Youthfront seeks to point people. By sharing life and exploring faith alongside each other, we encounter Christ now, present with us, as we are present to God and to the world around us. Presence in the present, we believe, is the yearning and struggle of so many parents, grandparents, pastors and congregations.
Back to the pilgrimage.
We started by driving by Vicki’s childhood neighborhood telling stories at multiple locations that were either meaningful or described what it meant for her growing up. We then went to her second home, which brought her to a church that we visited with our grandkids while we explained that it was where we met as 14-year-olds. We visited my childhood home and the places that were meaningful to me, including the schools I attended. We took them to places to tell stories about our dating life and showed them where we got engaged. All along the way, they were fascinated and asked dozens of questions. We showed them where we got married and shared what it was like being the parents of their parents. We ate at one of our teenage hangouts that has the exact same menu today. All through the day we weaved in the story of our faith.
When we took them home the greatest thing was listening to them vying for the right to tell the stories to their parents! In the months since we did this mini-pilgrimage, they still request us to tell certain stories again and remind us of what they learned about our lives. These stories are now their stories, and it makes us so happy. Taking an active role in the spiritual formation of our children and grandchildren is such an important responsibility to embrace.
Whether you can replicate this “pilgrimage” concept with your own grandkids or implement some version of it, sharing your childhood memories, parenting stories and faith journey helps bring clarity to theirs.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
About Mike King: As President & CEO of Youthfront, Mike brings more than 40 years of youth ministry experience. A pastor, author and frequent speaker, Mike leads an organization known for its scholarship and practice in bringing youth and families into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. His book, Presence-Centered Youth Ministry, shaped a revisioning of the theological approach to youth ministry and classical Christian practices. Mike earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from Nazarene Theological Seminary.
