7 Ways to Disciple Your Kids at Home

Do you want to raise kids who love and serve the Lord? Don’t let this responsibility overwhelm you! Use the following tips as a guide to disciple your kids and lay a solid foundation of faith in your home.

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Around the Internet, as well as in real life, there’s a question I see a lot from Christian parents (and have even been asked, myself, a few times):

“How do I go about teaching my kids about God and giving them a strong faith foundation?”

This question is especially prevalent among parents who didn’t grow up in a Christian home. They want to raise their kids in the Christian faith, but they don’t know how. They haven’t had a model to draw from.

Let me first say that I’ve only been at this for (almost) nine years, so I have by no means “arrived,” nor am I an expert. I don’t have any “secrets” or “sure-fire” tips for spiritual training at home. I don’t even know yet that my own kids will love and serve Jesus into adulthood (though I pray daily that they do).

Even if I was writing this on the other side of raising kids, however, I still wouldn’t be able to offer any magic bullets. Because the thing is, there are no guarantees when it comes to raising kids who love and serve the Lord. They all have to make that choice for themselves – just as we all did at some point!

While we can’t control them, however, we can control ourselves. While we’re not responsible for their ultimate choices, we are responsible for the part we play in discipling our kids.

I may not have raised kids into adulthood yet, but I’ve learned a lot in my near decade of parenting. Plus, I read a lot. (Like, A LOT a lot.) From what I’ve learned from research and experience, here are seven ways to disciple your kids at home.

7 Ways to Disciple Your Kids At Home

Do you want to raise kids who love and serve the Lord? While ultimately, we can’t make that decision for them, we can do our best to point them to Jesus. Don’t let this responsibility overwhelm you! Use the following tips as a guide to disciple your kids and lay a solid foundation of faith in your home.

**Note: You may notice I don’t include attending church services as one of the keys (though it’s included in #4). That’s not because it isn’t important – it is! I simply wanted to focus on what we’re doing IN OUR HOMES so we make sure we’re not delegating our kids’ spiritual training to our churches, pastors, or Christian schools.

1. Make it a priority

It is all too easy to get caught up in the busyness of everyday family life. The logistics and demands of running a household, getting everyone where they need to go, and keeping everyone alive and fed is enough to keep us spinning in circles.

That doesn’t excuse us from the oh-so-important responsibility of discipling our kids, though. What it does mean is that we have to prioritize their spiritual training. We have to be intentional about it. We have to create a vision, make a plan, and schedule times/ways to do it, or it won’t get done. It’ll get lost in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

Read my post about how to create a family discipleship plan for practical tips on creating a plan and schedule for discipling your kids.

Recommended Resource: Family Discipleship by Matt Chandler & Adam Griffin

2. Teach Biblical truths

Knowing what we believe and why we believe it, and then being able to articulate it to our kids is key to raising kids who continue to love and serve the Lord. The more kids understand about the Christian faith from a young age, the better equipped they’ll be when their beliefs are – eventually and inevitably! – challenged.

And make no mistake – no matter how strong your faith is, your kids will question, at some point and to some extent, the beliefs you’ve taught them, whether that’s in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. And that’s a good thing! We want our children to be critical thinkers! When provided with adequate answers, that questioning will actually strengthen their faith, not weaken it.

This doesn’t mean we need to be able to answer all their questions about God (there are some things we won’t ever fully understand this side of Heaven). But we should be able to answer the big ones, at least, and be willing to find answers together to the ones we can’t.

For more about teaching our kids Biblical truths and a list of resources I’ve found helpful in doing so, check out my blog post “Apologetics Resources for Christian Moms.”

Recommended Resource: Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, by Natasha Crain

3. Establish Family Faith Routines

As you disciple your kids, it is SO important to establish some faith-building routines as a family. This could be a number of things, but at the top of the list should be reading the Bible together as a family. To give you an idea of how to do this, here’s how I read the Bible to my kids to promote Biblical literacy.

Praying together is another fruitful practice to incorporate into your family routines. Pray over your days in the morning, before meals, at bedtime, as you embark on a vacation or road trip, during important milestones or celebrations, before tests and important events, and after you’ve seen God’s faithful provision or blessings. There are so many ways and times to pray together as a family!

You might also go through some kind of family devotional together, such as Our 24 Family Ways, by Clay and Sally Clarkson, Grace for the Moment Family Devotional, by Max Lucado, or Kingdom Family Devotional, by father and son team Tony and Jonathan Evans. These can be especially helpful if your family is new to family discipleship and/or your own familiarity with the Bible is in its infancy.

As you do any of the above, make sure you’re not doing all the talking. And whatever you do, avoid lecturing! Ask your kids questions, and invite them to ask questions! Don’t shy away from the hard stuff – stay calm and answer as honestly as you can (and is appropriate for their age and understanding). If there’s something you don’t know, look it up together!

Recommended Resource: Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms, by Justin Whitmel Earley

4. Worship Together

Another practice to include in your spiritual training is worshiping together as a family. Of course, this includes attending church services (with a positive attitude!) and teaching your kids the importance of corporate worship with a body of believers.

But I don’t just mean at church! Let them see you worshiping at home. I love to play worship music at home, especially when I’m having a rough day. And I will often turn on kids worship music in the evenings while we clean up from dinner. I love hearing my kids singing their favorite songs about God, and it sets such a wonderful tone for our home.

Recommended Resource: Seeds Family Worship

5. Teach and Model the Spiritual Disciplines

Teaching your kids about the spiritual disciplines is a great way to disciple them. Spiritual disciplines are practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth in Jesus. They help align our hearts with God’s, develop a deep relationship with Him, and transform us from the inside out. Teaching them to your kids is a great way to set them up for a rich, lifelong faith in Christ.

Of course, in order to disciple your kids, you have to be one, yourself! And the best way to teach your kids the spiritual disciplines is to model them. Let them regularly “catch” you reading your Bible, praying, fasting, serving, etc. This doesn’t mean you need to be perfect (after all, imperfect parents point their kids to our perfect Savior!); it simply means they see you purposefully pursuing growth.

Here are some great resources on discipleship and cultivating spiritual disciplines:

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster
The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard
The Great Omission, by Dallas Willard
Kelly Minter’s Encountering God Bible Study

6. Show and Tell

As you disciple your kids in the Christian faith, talk about the importance you place on God and His Word, and in trusting and obeying Him. Make the Bible personal and relevant to your kids by sprinkling Scripture and Biblical applications into your daily life. However, be careful not to over-spiritualize everything or lecture. A quick word here and there to show how the Bible comes alive in our everyday lives is good.

As you talk to your kids about faith in God, make sure you are showing it by example, as well. They need to see you trusting, obeying, and serving God, even (especially!) when you don’t necessarily feel like it. As you face important decisions or challenges, share with your kids the process you go through to follow God’s direction, as is appropriate for their ages and the situation.

7. Assemble a faith “village”

There’s one thing I’m learning the longer I’m a parent, and it’s something we have forgotten: we were not meant to do this on our own. We weren’t meant to raise kids in a vacuum. We need parenting partners, and our kids need other faith-filled adults in their lives.

The final way to disciple your kids at home, then, is to help them develop meaningful relationships with other Christian adults. Drs. Kara Powell and Chap Clark go into this in detail in their book, Sticky Faith, in a chapter called “A Sticky Web of Relationships.” They recommend recruiting five adults who can invest in your kids in little, medium, and big ways, and offer practical advice for doing this.

Example of adults you could ask include extended family members, Sunday school teachers or small group leaders, family friends, teachers or coaches, and adults in your church. Whether it’s regular mentoring sessions or occasional outings, pray about who you can ask to partner with you in your spiritual training as you disciple your kids.

Recommended Resource: Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids, by Drs. Kara Powell and Chap Clark