Full Transcript for Why Your Family Needs a Church: The Missing Piece of Family Discipleship

piece in a lot of family's discipleship plan, not the primary disciple of of your children. And so as you're listening, as we're going through this. Keep in mind, these are things that that are really important for your family, but you still have that primary call. the second thing that I want to touch on really quickly is that there's a group that are not involved in a good church because it there just isn't one nearby. They've really struggled to find one. There, there's a large number of people who have. Who have suffered from hurt from churches because man is sinful and a lot of of hard things happen within churches. And so I want you to hear our heart in this. We understand that there are some really difficult situations, but we we want to just encourage you as we go through this to not turn off what God's good plan for you is because of something that man has done. So as we're as we're walking through this, keep in mind that this is for you too. This is still God's plan for you and it is good because God makes no mistakes even when man does. so before we dive in too deeply, I did want to to touch on that. I think that's really important because I will say that as I've had conversations with these families that I was talking about earlier, they do bring up often there's some sort of a hurt. that is happened in the church. And it is everything from there's a pastor that just got just carried away and just was, you know, it to it just something was said wrong and they were not sensitive to a particular situation that was going on and the family got hurt and they left. There are all kinds of hurts out there. And the what we're doing here is that we are encouraging you not to give up in this area. Yeah. You know, that Leslie Nunnery (09:35.788) We understand your hurt. We empathize with your hurt. We sympathize with your hurt, but don't give up. Yeah, yeah. Because the New Testament never imagines isolated Christians. We simply do not see that. And that's really the first thing that we wanted to key on. Christianity is inherently relational. there are in the Bible over 50 one another verses, and we're going to talk about that more later. In fact, We are giving you a a resource that we've created for your family called the missing piece of family discipleship. 41 another commands every Christian parent should know. because it's really important as we are looking at what God's word says about the body, about our relationship with other believers, that there's a lot of scripture that backs this up. Love one another, honor one another, serve one another, et cetera. And we'll look at that more. Lately or later in this episode. but the the point of all of that is you can't one another yourself. You just you just can't do it. Christianity is inherently relationship, it is a community, and there is so much power in that. Yeah. So not only can you look at these and say, okay, love one another, honor one another, serve one another, you cannot do this alone, but you could also turn this into a question where you're asking yourself. You know, am I doing these things in the church? And so you're able to interact. You know, when you look at the stories in Acts, right? You have the the ascension of the early church, you have the ascension of Jesus Christ, and then 50 days later you have Pentecost. And all these people from different communities around Jerusalem from all over at and in It all around the Mediterranean came into Jerusalem for Pentecost. They were there. And you have this story of 3,000 coming to know the Jesus as their Lord and Savior. You have the story of Peter preaching. You have the story of the the rushing of the Holy Spirit. And those people did two things that came to know the Lord at that time that responded to that invitation. Leslie Nunnery (12:00.402) They did two things. One of them is that they went back into their own communities. So they went up to Cappadocia and they talked to their family and their friends and those that they loved. They said, You will not believe what just happened. And I'm a believer in Jesus Christ now. This is who the Messiah is. Here's the good news of the gospel. They shared that with those that are around them. So that's the first saying that they did. And this is a natural thing. I remember when I was 24 years old. And I came to know the Lord as my savior. The very first thing I wanted to do was call all of my friends. And so this is a very natural thing. So that's the first thing that they did. Okay. But there's also those that stayed in that community. They stayed in Jerusalem. And what did they do? They gathered together in a community. And that community was bonded together by Jesus Christ. So believers want to be around believers. You know, those that follow Jesus Christ want to be around others who follow Jesus Christ. It's like a natural gravity. And you want this. This there's a hole in your heart if this doesn't happen, if you're not able to be around them. And so what I'm I one of the things that I'm kind of saying here is that that draw that you have to other believers, that's the Holy Spirit. Yeah. It's not only is it going to change your life, but it's going to draw you to other believers. And so give in to that because that's a good thing. And if you don't have that, what I would say is that there might be a problem there. You know, I would question salvation. I would question whether you believe in Jesus Christ being who he is. I would question that if you don't have that. Okay. And I know that's an extreme thing, but that's something that we need to bring up is that this is something that if you're a believer, you want to be around other believers. Well, you know, First Corinthians twelve even talks about the body. It talks about the various, some are an eye, some are a hand, some are a, you know, it goes through all of these things. Leslie Nunnery (14:14.305) And and the fact of the matter is, you can't be a body all by

yourself. You can't do that in isolation. And homeschool families, I think, are really, really vulnerable to this because we are already kind of taking on ourselves some of the things that a lot of other people outsource, right? Education, yeah, we got that. Activities, yeah, we can organize those. Bible teaching, no problem. Community, yeah, we can create that too. Like we do all of these things, but there's a there's a point when responsibility turns into self-sufficiency, where we we start kind of insulating ourselves. And and I don't believe that the Bible gives us any indication that discipleship is meant to be done in isolation. Every single thing that we see throughout scripture is that discipleship growth, spiritual. spiritual growth is done within the context of a body in your family, in the body at large. This is a great opportunity. And so it's really, really important to prioritize that at any cost, really. Well, so it when we were when the kids were young, we live in Atlanta, Georgia, and we were had we had a great church when we were there. And we've talked about that church and on the show many times. But I got an I got another opportunity. And the quite frankly, the truth is is that we were looking for ways to get out of Atlanta. The traffic was so horrible and we were just ready to get out. And so we got the opportunity to move out. And so we we left and sold our home, moved our family, and and and and went to you know this other state. And while what we didn't realize when we were considering moving and that we never considered this while we were going through the the you know the the consideration of moving is church. Yeah. We didn't think that we would Leslie Nunnery (16:27.776) It w it never dawned on us that we we would not be able to recreate or be able to find another church. And where were you moving? And so we moved up there and we bounced around for two years and we didn't have a church. And it was a very hard time. I remember actually reading a psalm 63 about David being in the wilderness and f actually being able to identify that. And You know, there was all kinds of reasons why we had a hard time finding the church. There was theological issues, there was issues where the churches were just wrong. There were issues where the pastor and the preaching was pretty good, but they there was taste element to this that we just weren't comfortable in. And I I do want to throw that in there because I don't think there is, I don't think it's wrong for you if you're listening to this. To say, you know what, it's the church is just, it's there's nothing wrong with the church, but it's not quite the taste that I want in this particular area. I'm not as comfortable. I'm not as comfortable here. This is okay. But so there were all kinds of issues in these churches, and we bounced around for two years and we even try to plant a church. I remember trying to start a Bible study with the idea that we were gonna we had two families that

were actually meeting with us and the idea was is that we were going to grow this thing to actually be able to plant the church. That didn't really catch any traction. I remember having church, you know, with our family, right? Having a little, you know, service Bible study on Sunday morning where we would sing songs and then I would teach. And that's not quite a church. You know, that's not, you know, really a church. And so we struggled for two years. And it finally got to a point. And I tell this story in in one of our Sunday night emails, which we should probably link all of those Sunday night emails to the the show notes of this podcast. But I finally went into my boss and said, we're done. we have to move. And Leslie Nunnery (18:46.173) The reason why we are moving is because we can't find a good church to go to. And I do not want our kids to to grow up and not have a good church to go to. Our oldest at the time, Camden, was about five years old. Yeah. Yeah. So just to put that in perspective, he's twenty six right now. So this was twenty years ago. they were much younger. And I didn't want him to, and I didn't want them to grow up in a scenario where they did not have this church. And the reason why are the reasons why that we're going through right now, where you have these one another verses and the encouragement and all that kind of stuff that we're talking about here, I wanted them to have that. Well, yeah, that like I like we we just said, it's it's biblical. That's what we see in the New Testament, not being isolated, you're doing life in community. But the other thing is, or the next thing that we wanted to talk about is that it is proven over and over again that enduring faith, that faith that sticks, like Trisha and I talk about in the book that we wrote, is formed within a web of relationships. and I think that that's really a a a very cool thing because that's where discipleship starts expanding beyond just what you're doing at your home. It starts allowing other people To speak into your children's lives. It it allows others to come along and and actually model for them what being a believer in a different generation or or whatever really is. and and so that's a really, really exciting thing. That actually is where I would encourage you as you're trying to think through this stuff. To get that resource that I talked about earlier, the 41 and other commands that every Christian parent should know, this gives you a list of, you know, all not all, because we didn't go through all of them, 40 of the verses that talk about loving one another, honoring one another, serving one another, bearing with one another, encouraging, forgiving, praying for one another. All of these ways talk to us about how. Leslie Nunnery (21:01.803) We engage with others in the body and how those others engage with us and our children in the body so that they are seeing Christian life lived out generationally, which is so, so powerful. So i the just to put a

cap on the story, we moved and we came here to Greenville and we went from being by ourselves and feeling like we're in a desert. To we moved here to Greenville. And the reason why we moved here to Greenville is because we knew that we could find a good church here in Greenville. Greenville is a very unique place, really rare place where not only are there a ton of churches, there are a ton of really good churches that are theologically sound, that are gospel focused. there's just a lot of churches here. And it sounds like I'm I'm promoting, you know, if you guys want to move to Greenville, be our neighbor. You know, come on. You know. But Greenville is one of those places that there's a lot of good churches here. As a matter of fact, it parents have a different problem here. It's which good church am I going to go to? It's not where can I find a good church? And you may have a community like that where you live. but we went from so we went from not having a church, the church that we came here that we actually decided on before we even moved into our current house, there were like twelve hundred people there. And so we went from not having anybody around us to just being surrounded. And the reason why I bring that up is because as you were talking about the one and others, there were so many people around us that we were able to share faith with. And so Our kids were now able to see what it looks like when there's a widow, when there's to show hospitality, to they were able to see all of those kind of things and what it looks like to serve other people. Right. And they were able to have those multi-generational relationships, which I want to say is extremely important. It's not that you just want your children to have a bunch of friends that are their age. That's not, that's that's not, I mean, that's that's good. Leslie Nunnery (23:23.554) But being a part of a church is more about the multi-generational element and having a lot of people, adults that are around them that are various ages is really powerful. And that's one of the things that this Fuller Youth Institute, sticky faith research, that which actually plays You know, kind of reminds me of the book. The Leslie's book is Trisha's book is Faith That Sticks. this is sticky faith route. And what they determine is that based off of the research, your child should have five adult relationships of various ages. it's a five to one ratio. And they came up with that looking at the research saying that those children that had a five to one ratio, five adults for them, so they know five adults that are working out their faith, that they're seeing everything in action, seeing how this works out, seeing what you know being a Christian is all about, how the Bible and the scripture that they're reading in black and white, how it plays out in person, having five adults that are. working all that out in their lives, those children are much, much more likely. Like I think the number was like 90%, you know, they were they were 90% as opposed to 10%. Yeah. You know, 10% leaving the faith and the church, 90% actually sticking with it. Those that had a five to one ratio were much more likely to stick with the church. Yeah. Okay. And so this is really powerful, which I actually would look at that and read that and say, Well, how do we figure that out? We gotta have that. Yeah. How how do I find five adults that will actually be around my children and and emulate what it looks like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because essenti essentially your kids don't just need Christian friends. Leslie Nunnery (25:33.823) They need Christian adults investing in them, doing life near them and around them so that they can watch them and see what does it look like to be a Christian at 25, 45, 65, 85, et cetera? What does it look like to actually be part of a church? What does it look like if you're a widow? do your do you have someone that your kids can look up to and see stories of God's faithfulness even through difficult times? Are there Christian businessmen that are around your kids where they can they can look up to them and see how they are conducting themselves in a business context? Do you see someone who is walking through suffering that your children can learn from? How God's grace is sufficient and God gives this peace that you can't even describe. It passes understand or it passes all understanding. But they can see that in the life of someone that they know. Just on and on and on, there are so many powerful reasons to have other adults investing in the lives of your children and and and to actually be there within the context of a church community where you can watch them, you can gr grow alongside of them. and they can actually be able to leverage what God has taught them on behalf of your family. It's a really, really powerful thing. And that is discipleship, leveraging what God has taught you on behalf of another. And so as you are doing life with this multi-generational group of people, you see discipleship in action in a really, really powerful way. So just to kind of, you know, step back here real quick and Get into questions. And the reason why I I want to throw these out there is because there's also a lot of families that actually do have a good church. And there's a level of challenge to this where you are actually you have a good church you're going to. And how do you leverage that church in order to be this discipleship partner? And I think that one way is that if you Leslie Nunnery (27:49.308) Do the missing piece of family discipleship download, which this is free. But by it, so if if you do that and you actually go through those and you read them, you can actually love one another, honor one another, serve one another, bear one another's burdens. You can actually read those Bible verses and study that. And not only do you look at it as a command, but you turn it into a question. So one of the questions would be. Who am I loving? Or who is loving

my children other than me? Who am I honoring? And who is honoring, who are my kids honoring? serving one another. Who am I serving? Right? But if something happened, who would I serve? Right? Who am I encouraging? the other question that would be really powerful to kind of think about on this is who are some people that our kids can watch? Who has watched them grow up? Like our kids, we've been going now to the current church that we're going to for 13 years. And the people I was just talking to somebody today at our church that told me that they had pictures of our kids when they were like Camden was was 13 years old, you know, and you know, it's like 13, 11. nine and then like five. Yeah. They have pictures in their Facebook feed of our kids and they wanted to share it with us. And so who has actually shared in the life of your child or who is sharing in the life of your child as they grow up that is that influence on them? Yeah. Well and I want to to chime in as someone who is down the road a little further, kind of taking what David said but expanding on it even more. Leslie Nunnery (29:53.913) Because it's hard to see in real time how those relationships are actually mattering. Like they they seem like they're so inconsequential in the day-to-day. we were at church Wednesday night and it was a combined group time and and one of the deacons who is Probably the youngest deacon, one of the youngest deacons we have. He's he's a young guy. He was in college when we first started going there. but now a dad of three or four and you know, doing great. But he got up to talk about how they do small group in their homes on Wednesday nights when we meet in homes. And so he has a ton of kids in his small group because it's a lot of young families. And he always leads them in a song or two to get the kids involved in what they're doing. And as he started to have all of us sing this song to make all the kids in the room feel like they were, you know, engaged and involved in what was going on, he looked over at my 20-year-old daughter who was sitting beside me and was like, You remember this one, don't you, Lila? And she hadn't thought about that song that we ended up singing. For years and she lit up. She remembered every verse, every motion, talked to him after. It was it was such a personal, tender moment. And I realized this guy who was in college when my daughter was like four years old and taught her in children's church when she was that that little, taught her songs that stayed with her till now. They still have a relationship. She is now talking to and teaching his kids. And it is such a powerful picture of how deep those relationships go and how impactful they are on the lives of our children. So I would say there's probably people that are listening to that and they are saying, I want that. Yeah. There's other people that are saying, you know, well it Leslie Nunnery (32:03.54) If you're saying, if you're out there and you are saying that as we're

telling these stories, you and you're you're telling yourself, man, I would love to have that. I would tell you two things. One of them is that you need to go to a church that you can find that. And I don't want to start encouraging people to, you know, quit your jobs and move across country and all that kind of stuff, but I do want to highly just urge you. To find a church in which you have that. And it is a worthy conversation to lift up even to the level of should we move? I'm not going to tell you that you need to move because I don't know your situation, but it is worthy of that conversation. The other thing that I would tell you on this is that maybe it's just you go to a good church, but you don't have those kind of relationships because. You're not looking for them. You're not engaging. You're not seeking them out. Or the other thing about this is that you're not being that for somebody else. And so if you are going to a church, you can do what you can to make it this, where you have those multi-generational relationships, you have those situations where people know your children, you know, when they're young. You have situations where your kids can get involved. You have situations where other people love and invest in your children. You have situations in which you can have a community. You can love on each other. You can pray for each other. You can encourage each other. You can talk about what you have studied in the Bible. You can actually be accountable to other people in this fashion. You you need to make your church that or you need to go find a church in which you can have that. Well, and and that kind of thing is not going to happen without effort on both sides, quite frankly. And that is kind of the next thing that we really wanted to talk about is your children need to be needed by the church. They need to see their spot, that they are not just consumers either. You're not a consumer as a parent. Leslie Nunnery (34:20.956) Your children are not consumers. The body, like I like we alluded to before, 1 Corinthians 12, the body is multifaceted and needs all of its parts. Hebrews 10 talks about not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. When we look at that literally, the way that those were what those words actually mean, if we are not assembling, grouping together with other believers, we are leaving them in a lurch. That's literally what that means. So If you are removing yourself and your family from the body of believers, you are leaving them in a lurch without your gifts, without what you bring to the table, without your personalities. And so your children need to see and understand that they are needed by the church. one of the things that was really foundational in helping us to understand this deeper, like we we thought it theoretically, but when we First, the very first time that we visited the church that we've been at for all these years. it was a startup, it was, you know, one of those teardown setup churches. All, you know, we did that for years. It was great. But the very first time that we showed up at church, we David and I started talking to a family in the church. and they were just very, very friendly. Well, I looked around and our kids were gone, which I wasn't worried about because there was no place really for them to go. But I, I Turned around a little further and I saw them in line, stacking chairs onto the trailer, just surrounded and talking to the adults who were doing it as well. They just jumped in because that's what people were doing, and they just started helping. And at that moment, David and I were like, this is exactly where we need to be. And one of the guys who they were serving right alongside with. I ended up being the the one who married my my daughter and her husband. They go to his small group and so just that kind of an impact. He was he was one of the first people who just started reaching out and and investing in my kids from the very beginning. And that is a really, really big thing. Our kids need to understand that they are needed in the body. Leslie Nunnery (36:44.675) And so as we kind of wind down here, I want you to to really think about about something in particular. And that is if your family disappeared from church today, tomorrow, next week, you just left, would you be missed? And even maybe more importantly, who would you miss from there? Have you plugged in in such a way? That you and your children are connected with other believers where there would be a loss if you were to leave. and yeah, I guess along that same line, when you look around, do you notice when people aren't there? Are you are you plugged in enough and your children plugged in enough that when people are absent for you know a a kind of series of of events? Do you notice? Do you reach out? Are you trying to love them back into the fold? Because that also is a really, really important part of being a church and helping your children learn to love and encourage one another and honor one another and all of those one another that we've been talking about. So, you know, I this has several implications, right? And they basically revolve around go find a good church. But then also if you're going to a church, You need to make that church, you need to actually get involved in that church. And so, you know, you know, walking away from this episode, you know, what should you do? And I think that the way you would answer that is is you need to go learn names. you need to actually go and ask people questions, you know, ask them questions about how are they doing? How can you pray for them? if you remember that they have been going through some sort of a difficulty, maybe ask them about the difficulty. you know, the other thing is is that go, you know, make a point to seek out people that you don't really know. There are always those people that have been coming to church as long as you have or for many, many years, and you've never really

gotten a chance to know them or even know their name or introduce yourself to them, go do that, you know. Leslie Nunnery (39:02.584) the other thing is is that you know, make sure that your your your teenagers and your children, your middle schoolers are actually serving in some way in the church. whatever that might be. Maybe it's stacking chairs, maybe it's singing in the choir, maybe it's counting the offering, maybe it's greeting people at the door, whatever it might be. But, you know, you don't want to be somebody that just sits in the pew. You know, you don't want to be a pew sitter, you know. you want to actually be involved in the church because and notice that that when we're talking about being involved in the church, we have gone through however long this episode is, and we haven't talked about preaching, you know, just sitting and listening to a sermon. All of the things that we're talking about here involve connection and community, and that's what you really need from a church. And I would value that as so high when you're looking for a church. That is the thing that you really should be looking for is that community, that connection, that knowing people, that serving that one another element. That's what you're looking for. And so you need to go and you need to find that or you need to be that the church that you're going to because that's the way a church becomes your partner in discipleship. Yeah. And you need it. You need it. It is a big deal to to actually have this in your life. Yeah. So, so really just to sum it up, if if you're looking for just kind of action points leaving from here, number one, show up. Make it a priority to be at church. Make sure that your kids know what you value. We didn't even go down that rabbit hole about, in fact, I'm confident that we will. But The decisions that you make about how you spend your time and what you prioritize, show your children what's truly important to you way more than what you say. So make sure that your children are seeing that attending church, being plugged in and part of a body of believers is paramount, is of ultimate importance to your family. the second thing, like David was noting, is move towards people, make a point. Leslie Nunnery (41:24.009) To get engaged with other people. You cannot one another yourself, like I said before. So take this resource that we've created, the one and the 41 and other verses that are the missing piece in family discipleship. Work through them through family devotions. Maybe take one a week and talk about it, turn it into a question, see how you can use it within your family, memorize the verses, and then really start acting that out. Move towards people. Make sure that that community of believers is valued by you and important to you. And then finally become needed. Make yourself an important part of someone else's life. like David was saying, serve in whatever way that is. It may just be having conversations with people, not letting people fall through the cracks because you are engaged and you care about them. But it's so, so important that your children know that they are needed, that you are needed, and that you are practicing these one another commands each and every day because that's how we let our children see the body of Christ. That is how the church becomes the partnership in family discipleship that you may have been missing. And so I just challenge you once again to make that a priority. because like David said at the beginning of the episode, parents are called to bring your children to Jesus, but a good church is what helps them follow him and sees how that is lived out generationally and way down the road. So I hope this has been a real encouragement to you. I I do encourage you to go to the show notes, download this resource that we have for you. It will be a huge help. go through it in your family devotions. Prioritize really looking at how these one another verses can impact and shape the way that you look at church and community and all of these outward-facing elements of your faith. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you have a great rest of your day, and we look forward to talking to you again real soon.