This week in books
Here's our reading pile from this week:
Kathrynne, Kaitlynn, and I read through On a Summer Day multiple times this week. We really like most of the Lois Lenski books and try to check them out whenever we can at the library. We also read through Eric Liddell: Running for a Higher Prize numerous times, too. The poetic style this book is written in makes it very fun reading.
We've been reading a chapter of David Livingstone everyday for the past two weeks and are now over halfway through the book. I made a goal of trying to read through one larger book a month to the girls. Not only do I think it is good to read a bit above their level sometimes, but I also am very challenged by reading good biographies, especially missionary biographies.
Jesse has been reading The Adventure of Missionary Heroism to us in the evenings. We don't always get to this every evening after our Bible reading, but we try to read a chapter a few times per week. I would highly recommend this book to any of you looking for some good family reading material. We've thoroughly enjoyed it.
I also finished reading through Matthew with the girls. Now we're in Mark. I slowed down my Bible reading from 2-4 chapters per day, to 1-2 chapters each day. I read at least a chapter of that to the girls in the morning over breakfast. At this point in my life, this is working well and I've been so encouraged reading through the Gospels again. There are so many practical insights for me as a mom, plus Kathrynne loves hearing the stories of Jesus and it helps me to think through it carefully as I am reading it to little ones and trying to explain it and make it understandable to them.
Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk With God was one of the best books I have read in a long time. There are okay books, there are good books, and there are excellent books. This book most definitely ranks up there with the excellent.
A clarion call for a return to the Biblical model of parenting, Voddie Baucham's message was very convicting and just what I needed to hear. His message is not a popular one, in fact it flies in the face of most of modern so-called "Christianity," but it is Biblical and desperately needed in this anti-family culture.
Whether you think you know what it takes to raise Godly children, or whether you feel as if you don't have a clue, you need this book. You can read part of chapter 1 here.
Kathrynne, Kaitlynn, and I read through On a Summer Day multiple times this week. We really like most of the Lois Lenski books and try to check them out whenever we can at the library. We also read through Eric Liddell: Running for a Higher Prize numerous times, too. The poetic style this book is written in makes it very fun reading.We've been reading a chapter of David Livingstone everyday for the past two weeks and are now over halfway through the book. I made a goal of trying to read through one larger book a month to the girls. Not only do I think it is good to read a bit above their level sometimes, but I also am very challenged by reading good biographies, especially missionary biographies.
Jesse has been reading The Adventure of Missionary Heroism to us in the evenings. We don't always get to this every evening after our Bible reading, but we try to read a chapter a few times per week. I would highly recommend this book to any of you looking for some good family reading material. We've thoroughly enjoyed it.
I also finished reading through Matthew with the girls. Now we're in Mark. I slowed down my Bible reading from 2-4 chapters per day, to 1-2 chapters each day. I read at least a chapter of that to the girls in the morning over breakfast. At this point in my life, this is working well and I've been so encouraged reading through the Gospels again. There are so many practical insights for me as a mom, plus Kathrynne loves hearing the stories of Jesus and it helps me to think through it carefully as I am reading it to little ones and trying to explain it and make it understandable to them.
Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk With God was one of the best books I have read in a long time. There are okay books, there are good books, and there are excellent books. This book most definitely ranks up there with the excellent.A clarion call for a return to the Biblical model of parenting, Voddie Baucham's message was very convicting and just what I needed to hear. His message is not a popular one, in fact it flies in the face of most of modern so-called "Christianity," but it is Biblical and desperately needed in this anti-family culture.
Whether you think you know what it takes to raise Godly children, or whether you feel as if you don't have a clue, you need this book. You can read part of chapter 1 here.
posted by Crystal Paine at 9:46 AM
29 Comments:
I am reading Family Driven Faith, too! I like it so far. It's one of those books that I have to read and digest before I go on to the next chapter. Lots of deep stuff and very eye-opening!
-jen
Looks like some wonderful reading! :o) (We love to read at our house!) And I find new things every time I read my Bible, but I am always impressed with how explaining passages to the children really brings it home to me!
Re: Voddie Baucham's Book The Family Driven Faith. Love this book. I finished it about a couple of week's ago, and we are now reading through it (at the request of our eldest son, 17 y.o.) with the children as part of our evening worship time. They are enjoying it tremendously. He has such a gift for humor ... just a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down! ;o)
Our family has a tremendous respect for Voddie Baucham. We became aware of him through the SBCHEA (Southern Baptist Home Education Association). I listened to him preach live via internet at the Sunday Evening Worship Pastor's Conference of the 2005 SBC Convention in Nashville. He preached on why he believes the Bible is true. Awesome preacher! I have a few of his sermons linked on my blog and intend to post of review of this new book sometime next week. I'm so glad you enjoyed it; I completely concur with your comment, "This book most definitely ranks up there with the excellent." Amen!
Just a comment on reading to your children. . . I want to encourage you to keep it up. I have raised my children now, all 4 are in their twenties. We did read to them, and much of that came through homeschooling; however I regret not reading to them a lot more! I wish we had read more books as a family together, such as ones you are reading. My little 17 month granddaughter stayed with us for 10 days this month and her mom keeps talking about how before she was at our home she would never sit very long to be read to. Now she is always bringing books for my son and daughter- in-law to read! They keep thanking me for giving her this love for reading! :} I think it helped Abby and me to bond more and I am grateful to the Lord that He gave me a "second chance" to read to my grandchildren. So keep up the ministry of reading, you will not regret it! You will all be blessed!
Love,
Carla
Crystal, thank you for the great recommendation on "Family Driven Faith." I have never heard of this book and I look forward to getting a copy!
Oh may our children grow up to "live for Jesus!"
Wow-- looks like some really good reading!
Come by my place if you get a chance... something special for you there.
Wow! I read the excerpt from Family Driven Faith and boy was it great. It is great to hear from someone who is not afraid to make some waves in what has become common "Christian" social attitudes and instead go by God's attitudes.
Sparked by the excerpt, one commment of mine is that the main goal of ours should be that we are training our children to love and follow God with all their hearts on a daily basis. This I believe was Bauchman's point, but I don't think church attendance isn't necessarily an indication of one's relationship with God. We need fellowship with God (and each other) first and foremost, not a membership to a building. (WE are the church!) My husband and I have not gone to church for years. When most Christians hear this I know they probably think that means we am not seriuos about God or fellowship or that we are missing out, but that isn't the case at all. Since we left church (because God told us to!) I have only grown by leaps and bounds with my relationship with the Lord. And no, we aren't planning on going back. The church system as a whole is horribly flawed and twisted from what it should be.
Sarah L - thanks for your comment.
While I definitely agree that church attendance means nothing regarding a person's heart, my husband and I do believe that being a part of a Bible-believing body of believers is something that we see clearly in the New Testament. Christians were not called to be isolationists - we need others to sharpen us, we need the preaching of the Cross of Christ to challenge and equip us. We need Christian brothers and sisters to hold us accountable, to hold us up when we are weak.
We went for a few years without being able to find such a church and though it was a time of great growth in our lives, we were also starving for the fellowship, the preaching, and the uplifting and support of other believers.
While it is very true that the majority of churches today, sadly, are not Bible-believing, Christ-exalting assemblies of true believers, we do not believe this means we should chuck the whole baby with the bathwater.
I'm sure some will disagree with us on this but I encourage you to search the Scriptures and seek the Lord.
Oh and don't worry, Sarah L, I'm not condemning you or your family for what you have chosen to do, just sharing what my husband and I believe. God bless you and your family!
Carla: Thank you so much for your encouragement. You don't know how much it means to hear from Grandmas around here!
I also read Family Driven Faith and it rocked my world. I agree with his view on the family and church. However, my views on the family/church were very different about three years ago. God has been showing our family another way and I am so grateful. Vodie mentions in his book there may be a revival in this country happening within families. The change in our family has been radical. I am also running into a few other like minded folks. I am praying this will spread and save our country.
Kris: Yes, I believe there may be a revival happening in this regard and it is very exciting to see! I'm so thankful for Voddie's courage to take a stand for truth.
Thanks for the great reading list. I love to read to my 2 boys and find for my 4 and 2 1/2 year old it's been the most effective hour here and there of "homeschooling" I get.
I really struggle to stand firm in the area of training my kids in the admonition of the Lord with an unbelieving husband, but by God's power and grace I'm filled excitement daily to watch the enemy fall as I trust God is for me and will gaurd that which I've committed to Him- my sons.
This list of reading gives me some great new bags of seed to start planting in my two little fertile feilds of future Godly manhood!
Thank you! And thank you again for ministering the truth, even to us who've never been trained and have gone the way of the world but now desire to obey God in every way and depend on His mercy and grace every second of the day!
God bless you!
Sheila
Crystal - I wholeheartedly agree with you about the great benefit and importance that fellowship can be in one's life. It has certainly not been my husband & my goal to isolate oursleves, but our experience has been that it is quite difficult to find others who truly want to fellowship and seek the Lord. We have and still do, sorrow at a lack of people in our life at times because of various circumstances (long story), but believe in faith God will bring more in His time. When I say fellowship, I don't mean just hang out and do fun things because we both happen to be "Christians." Not that we don't like to joke around and have fun with our friends, but we believe that is not what the primary focus of the relationship should be.
I can understand your point about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however after seeking the Lord, we believe that God wants to do an over-haul. It is not that I don't think there are Bible-believing churches out there or that only we are "right-on", but as a whole I do believe there needs to be a BIG change. A lot of what I have seen regarding church structure, practice, doctrine, etc is not as Biblically-based as most people might think. We need to guard against being religous, following church tradition or a system instead of following Him as His Spirit leads. So, Jesus is our pastor as we believe it should be! (Matthew 23:8-10) I'm not so sure you want a huge discussion like this going on in your comments, so sorry if this is kind of long but I just wanted to respond back. I could say a lot more, but I will stop here unless you would like to hear more through e-mail. :) God Bless you and yours as well! I did not take your response as a condeming one and and hope you don't take mine that way either.
Sarah L - Thanks for not feeling condemned by my comment as I didn't mean it that way at all! And I SO agree that we need to choose well and choose wisely in friendships. I want friends who are going to point me to the Lord, not pull me to the world. Friends who will love me enough to reprove and admonish me, friends who sharpen me. These kinds of friends are rare and so precious!
I just read part of the first chpater of Family Driven Faith. It sounds like a great book, and just what so many Christians need to hear (myself included).
I read that excerpt fully expecting to find some sort of ridiculously narrow view of Christianity and scripture, but I was surprised to find myself nodding in agreement with much of what he wrote. You see, while I have no children of my own, I work with the teens at church and have for years. I've seen exactly what he's talking about with kids leaving the church in droves. In fact, I can pretty well predict which of our teens will leave the church when they head off to college, and it almost always points back to a home situation. Usually, it's that the dad is not a spiritual leader. (If there is even a dad at home.) Or the parents just go to church because it's what they're supposed to do, but there is little true emphasis at home on living Christ-centered lives. They're good people, but they often treat church as a social thing, rather than a true spiritual thing.
Thank you for the book recommendations. I read the first chapter of Family Driven Faithfrom the link that you gave and I plan on getting my hands on a copy of the book very soon.
I have never heard of this book and I look forward to getting a copy to read.
Looks like a good book.
Voddie Baucham is coming to Wake Forest,NC for a Regional National Center for Family-Integrated Churches conference in November.I may not agree with every thing he says but I might attend just to hear him speak.Since we are near the Southeastern Seminary and Scott Brown lives in Wake Forest there are many Vision Forum events here.
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I am also going to try to get a copy of Family Driven Faith. Thanks for mentioning it.
We love Vodie Baucham in this house. I will have to see if our library system has that book!
Thank you for your recommendation of 'Family Driven Faith'. I will certainly be seeking it out to read now.
Pauline.
I'm half way through 'family driven faith' and loving it - i'm in the UK and saw the recommendation on your blog and had to order it from the States so i've been waiting in anticipation. I feel inspired and stirred and am soaking in what God is saying for our family through it all.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Leah
Crystal,
I saw Voddie at a NCFIC conference, and he is an incredible speaker. He is a man of great vision and presence and he is a true blessing. I am interested in his book; I am sure it is wonderful. Blessings!
Crystal,
First, hooray for the Lois Lenski books! I loved those.
I have been curious about Voddie B. What an orator! I skimmed the chapter that you link to, and it does look great. But I remain curious, as I always am, about contemporary Protestant theologies of the family. A title or catch phrase can often tell you so much about an author's presuppositions and worldview. Here, I am curious as to Voddie's word priority. Since you have read this book, why do you think that he entitles his book "Family Driven Faith," rather than the other way around? "Faith Driven Family," seems like it would ring truer to me. Knowing that Voddie has a vibrant and pretty orthodox faith, can you set me straight about this? (I may just be nit picking...)
MM - I'm about halfway through Family Driven Faith now. My husband and I are reading it outloud to each other, mostly while we drive. We're roadtripping this week so hopefully we'll finish it!
My guess about why he titled it "Family Driven Faith" is because he is distinguishing from "church driven faith." He's talking about the parents being the vehicle of passing on the Christian faith to their children, as opposed to parents abdicating that responsibility to the church.
In the book, he certainly advocates for a family that is driven by its faith, but his particular focus is on HOW a family becomes driven by faith...and that is when the family drives the faith education, rather than that responsibility being handed outside the home.
My only complaint about the book so far is the incorrect punctuation in the title...I'm pretty sure "Family-Driven Faith" should be hyphenated. : )
Becky,
Thanks for your input, I do appreciate it. Your response-
"My guess about why he titled it "Family Driven Faith" is because he is distinguishing from "church driven faith." He's talking about the parents being the vehicle of passing on the Christian faith to their children, as opposed to parents abdicating that responsibility to the church-"
... is what I expected.
Crystal, I know you want to avoid debates, but I cannot help wondering whether there is a contradiction here. In his first chapter, Voddie *laments* the fact that modern young people disobey Scripture by not being committed members of the church family when they grow older. Why then would he convey a sense of the church's formation being 'opposed' to the role of parents? Why would he portray the 'abdication' of parental teaching to the church as a negative thing, but then lament the fact that children feel no allegiance to the church? It has always seemed to me that the role of parents is to hand on the church's teaching within their families, so that their family life is conformable to the Christian faith- not the other way around.
I get so antsy about these issues. If someone who knows the book better than I do could fill me in, I would be grateful!
MM: I really think you ought to read Voddie's book yourself. You probably won't agree with all of it (does one ever agree 100% with everything in any book?!), but it might be insightful to you. :)
I think most modern churches have lost sight of the impact of the family and the importance of the family. There is little that encourages the family as a unit working together and little that encourages parents to be the spiritual leaders/nurturers of their children. The family is very often separated, segregated, and parents abdicate their spiritual duties and responsibilities as parents by leaving it up to the, as Voddie calls them, "trained professionals" (the youth pastor, Sunday school teacher, etc.)
We forget that the family itself was designed to be a picture of the family of God and that a marriage relationship is to give a picture of Christ and the Church.
I think probably where your disagreement would lie is that you believe (according to what you said) that the parents are to hand down the *church's* teachings. I believe (and I think this is something Voddie would agree with as well) is that it is the parent's responsibility to train and raise children to love the Lord and obey His Word, first and foremost. If a child or young person can spout off a church's teaching or catechism answers, but knows not God, what profit is there? And since I believe that parents are the ones who are given the primary responsibility of teaching and training their children, I believe the church should be seeking to equip parents to train and raise their children to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to follow the Word of God.
Crystal,
Thanks for your answer! I entirely agree with you. The church *must* equip and require that its parents raise their children to know and to love Christ.
The fact is, the content of your response-
...it is the parent's responsibility to train and raise children to love the Lord and obey His Word, first and foremost... I believe the church should be seeking to equip parents to train and raise their children to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to follow the Word of God...
...IS the Church's teaching. You and I believe this today because the Church has held it for centuries. Our mandate for raising Christian kids derives from hers (and, I would argue that in this way, though parents are the children's immediate instructors, they are not primary- neither in authority nor in time. The things that we will hand on to our children, whether in Scripture or doctrine, were authoritatively established long before us!)
... this is a sense that I think that the Christian *family* has lost about the *Church*... and hence, the Church has lost the capacity and authority to train and equip her families. It goes both ways. I would love to see Christian authors like Voddie upholding a Faith-Driven Family understanding. Otherwise, Christian kids are at risk for thinking that their faith is no bigger than their family... and can be left behind just as easily. Maybe I will send Voddie an email...
Thanks, Crystal :)
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