Candace Nassar
Welcome everyone. Today I have the privilege of talking with Sarah Cowen Johnson, author of “Teach Your Children Well”, a step by step guide for family discipleship. It was the Christianity Today’s 2023 best book award in the category of marriage and family. Our ministry team read it this past fall and y’all I am such a huge fan of this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In fact, I wish I had it when I was raising my kids many years ago. As we continue our podcast theme of the month of Renew. I hope this episode will encourage you to reflect on what you’re currently doing to disciple your children and challenge you to be a bit more intentional about it in the coming year.
In Deuteronomy 6:4-9, the bible says that discipling our children should be a rhythm that happens naturally as we live out each day kind of like sleeping and eating. But if we’re honest to most of us it doesn’t come naturally at all. There are a lot of reasons why this is the case and we’re going to talk about a few of those today. We’re also going to discuss some of the barriers that keep us from practicing discipleship in our homes and ways to overcome those.
Candace Nassar
So I know you’re going to be so blessed by this conversation. Please join me in welcoming award winning author Sarah Cowen Johnson. Hi Sarah!
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Hi. Thanks so much for having me I’m looking forward to talking today.
Candace Nassar
It’s so great to have you here and Sarah and I actually connected via Instagram after MomQ made a reel that brought one of her many discipleship ideas in her book to life and so I’m just thrilled that she’s taken the time out of her busy schedule to share her wisdom with us today. Sarah, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe how this book came about.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
I’m in Providence, Rhode Island and I have a background in college ministry. I was on staff within an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship for many years and then I switched over and was on staff at our church. I kind of moved into the church ministry world in 2016 and it was in that context that I began to think about family ministry.
So that’s my professional side. Personally, I am a mom. I have two boys. They were little at the time. They’re now almost 14 and 10.
But at the time I was serving as the Executive Pastor. We didn’t have a children’s person on staff and so I was working with a team of lay leaders trying to figure out our vision for family ministry. We started reading and that’s when I came across the statistic that maybe many of you
are familiar with. Half of our kids walk away from their faith after graduation and that statistic is now probably conservative. It’s probably higher than that. I was really taken aback by that both as a mom and as a pastor and so I felt like well we have to figure out what could make a difference. How could we do better than that?
You know, in the church world we jump to thinking about programming and staff and those things are all great, but nothing moves the needle on that statistic like parents and so parents who talk about and practice their faith in the home, 82% of their kids go on to follow Jesus as adults. At that point I felt like well okay so at our church we’re going to make a commitment to put an equal amount of time, energy and resources into equipping parents and so that began this journey.
Candace Nassar
I love that! That’s so great. You know our church a few years ago (I attend Hill Country Bible church here in Austin) and our church did the same thing actually. But, they just put it on the internet with some resources.
What’s so great about your book is the practical tips. You give the reason behind which I love and we’re going to talk about that. And I want to know where some of those came from. Tell us how do you spend your time now that you’re this published author?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Right? So right before the pandemic I launched out on my own I’m now serving as a ministry trainer and coach and consultant. I work with churches. My biggest client is actually the denomination I belong to which is the Covenant Church and I work with pastors around the country. So I do a number of different things. In part of my life I work with church planters and do training for church planters. But in this part of my life, family discipleship, I do seminars. I do parent coaching. I do coaching for family ministry teams and, really my goal with all of this is I see every parent as a leader and it falls under the category of leadership development. I want to equip people with practical tools to lead in their sphere. God’s given every parent a little ecosystem to lead and many parents don’t think of themselves that way or don’t know where to start and so I love working directly with parents. But I also work with churches and ministry leaders to help them think about the parents in their context.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, so I couldn’t agree more that parents are leaders and moms particularly as we’re interacting probably the most with our kids.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes
Candace Nassar
Okay, so for those listeners who may be unfamiliar with the term discipleship. Can you explain what it means to disciple our kids? What’s the end goal?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes, absolutely! So discipleship is a fancy word for following the way of Jesus just walking the path of the daily in and out of following Jesus. When we disciple somebody else it means we are helping them to follow Jesus. With our kids it means we are showing them not just telling
them but showing them how it looks to follow Jesus. At our church we have a framework for discipleship that I think is really helpful. Because it sort of fleshes out the picture of what that looks like. So we talk about discipleship as a journey. You’re following the path of Jesus walking the way of Jesus, whatever you want to say and we talk about that. We walk that path in 4 different directions. The upward direction. We want to be with Jesus. The inward direction. We want to become like Jesus. The outward direction: we do what Jesus did and the withword direction: we follow Jesus together. So in other words, a lot of times when we think about following Jesus we think about prayer and bible reading. Those are obviously essentials. But we sometimes forget that part of walking the way of Jesus or discipleship includes your direction, mission being active in our world to share the gospel and to serve and then also community to to be part of a church and to walk the way of Jesus together so up in out with that’s how I think about discipleship.
Candace Nassar
That’s really good. Yeah, so and it’s so important to God. I mean he obviously makes it very clear in the Word because he knows that we need all that reinforcement because the temptations and the struggles of this world and of our sin nature are so strong and so we need that as moms and our kids need that as well. You know what this kind of leads me, I’m jumping ahead a little bit in what I was thinking about talking to you about this morning, but one of my favorite things that you talked about in the book was identifying your child’s five. The reason that I love that so much is because I have raised 3 adults who follow Jesus. And I don’t I didn’t specifically set out to do that (identify their 5). But as I look back on their life I can see that those adults, those christian adults in their life particularly as they get into those elementary mid you know teen/preteen years are so important.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes, so that concept comes from the book sticky faith which I highly recommend and it’s about how to develop a faith that sticks. It is from the Fuller Youth institute and they talk about the importance of 5 other adults in a child’s life. You know my emphasis really is on parents and yet no parent parents in a vacuum or can parent in a vacuum. Nobody can follow Jesus by themselves. We’re designed for community. We were meant to do this together. The sticky faith folks talk about yeah 5 christian adults who are not their parents being involved in their life. Knowing their birthday, showing up at their sporting events, etc. But as they get older those are the people that when there’s something that comes up in their life and they may be hesitant to talk to mom or dad, those are trusted adults who can be there. You know to be surrogates.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, it’s especially because a lot of our listeners are moms of littles and it’s hard to imagine when you have those little ones that they will get to a point that they’re not going to be right at your feet every second. They start to form their own opinions and they need that those other people that they can trust and talk to. You are so obviously so blessed to have strong parents that discipled you as a child and can help with your children.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes my dad made a commitment when our boys were little that when they started Kindergarten he would.
Candace Nassar
You talk about your father in the book, “pappy” pouring into Noah. Tell us about that.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
They do a weekly bible study with them and so during the school year on Wednesdays he picks up both of our kids and he does a little 1 on 1 with each one. He has done that consistently since they were in kindergarten. For us, my husband and me, to have another person that they adore you know, invested in their spiritual development, just broadens their picture of what it means to follow Jesus. Kids can see, “This is not just something that my parents do; this is something that my grandfather does.” And so yeah, we feel like poppy is our wingman in this. It’s been so helpful. Yeah, it’s incredible. I didn’t have grandparents who were believers. On one side they were churched but on the other side my grandfather was an atheist. I did not grow up with grandparents who were pouring into me spiritually and so it is just such a gift to look at that happening for my kids. I cannot recommend that enough. If you have any listeners who are grandparents or have believing parents ask them to have little check ins with your kids. Asking, “How can I pray for you?” It’s so helpful.
Candace Nassar
Greg and you were obviously on the same team to teach your children well. This is so key! I’m thinking of marriages where the husband is not bought in. How do you handle that? What would you say to our listeners?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Right? Yeah, oh man that is you know that’s a common experience and if that’s you, my heart goes out to you. Yeah I think recognizing where you do have influence in setting culture within your family. In an ideal scenario, you and your partner are doing that together. But when it’s just you? The lord is there with you. I think that’s important to remember for none of us are doing this on our own. I love to talk about just how the holy spirit and you make an incredible team. So I think it’s really a place of learning to depend on the Holy spirit.
I also think there’s a difference between spouses who are resistant and spouses who are just disengaged and those are yeah so those are 2 different scenarios I think it’s much much trickier when a spouse is completely resistant to a mom raising their children to know Jesus than a spouse who is just sort of not not in the game. But, that’s where I think being part of a
community depending on on the wider body of aunts and uncles who can, especially if there’s a lack of a male, spiritual, prototype in the home, to surround your kids with other men who love Jesu. I think that’s helpful.
Candace Nassar
And that’s going back to the 5 right? These are sort of interconnected. In your church home you can talk to your pastor and explain your situation and they can help identify adults, besides you. Maybe Sunday school teachers, youth group leaders, that sort of thing.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yeah, mentoring I think especially. My oldest son is almost fourteen and we’re helping him right now to identify a mentor because he’s got questions. He’s asking us his questions. But. my husband and I are aware it’s going to be really important for him in the next season to have another man in his life that is not family. So Poppy’s been great. We’re doing our best you know, but we’ve got a couple people that he’s thinking about inviting one of them to mentor him.
Candace Nassar
That’s great. Yes I love that and that’s a pattern that he can continue his whole life because we all still need mentoring as we grow.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
That’s right, That’s right? It’s such a important healthy rhythm to establish.
Candace Nassar
I’m well into my senior years at this point and still still seek out mentorship. So yes, a lifelong habit. Okay, so let’s go back to talking about that statistic that you mentioned earlier: that 50% of Christian kids who walk away from their faith after high school graduation were involved in youth groups. We’ve already identified your whole impetus for the book was that parents don’t really know how to disciple their kids in a lot of ways, particularly if they were never discipled.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
That’s right, That’s right.
Candace Nassar
I mean I did not grow up in a Christian home. As we think through that, what are some of the other barriers that keep parents from feeling like they can disciple their kids?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes, yes, so the key behaviors that I’m trying to isolate are talking about and practicing your faith at home and so I think talking about that can be challenging. I think practicing is the one that people are like, what does that even look like. So when I do seminars and I ask parents what keeps you from talking about and practicing your faith at home. 2 things come up all the time: one is time. People just feel like where am I going to find the time to add this in and so that’s
when I think that is just a function of our very hurried overscheduled culture. So parents feel like time is the most limited commodity. So what I love to do with parents who feel that way is think about what are the routines and habits already in your life that you can repurpose for discipleship. So car rides or mealtimes and so we can talk about that in a bit but I really I love to promise parents you can disciple your kids without adding any time to your day. You can do it by repurposing time you already have.
Candace Nassar
Yes.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Time is one barrier. I think that lack of knowing what to do and that’s why so much of my work is I’d love to just crystallize a few ideas into something really practical. Practices you can do at home in 3 to 5 minutes. Simple things you don’t feel like you need a seminary degree to do. So that’s a big emphasis of mine. Let me give you 10 different ideas and you could try one and then another. Recently, I didn’t write much about this in the book but I’m starting to train on it and think a lot more about it is our addiction to technology. This is another barrier. Both our own addiction and our kids. Just what happens when our kids are online and on their devices all the time I think that comes up over and over again with parents, especially with teens. They say, “I can’t even get through to my kid.”
Candace Nassar
Those are habits that we have to set the personal management example and help them do the same thing. I used to teach high school. I’m a retired high school teacher and I went the whole gamut of saying you can’t have a phone in my classroom to you can have the phone. But, trying to help them manage it personally. I mean that’s just the world we live in.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yeah, it is and I think that this is a whole other topic for probably another podcast. But I really do think that is one of the things that connects that whole world to the family discipleship world. Part of what it means to raise followers of Jesus in this moment is that we are going against the grain and they are going against the grain. I think that’s different than it was even when I was a kid and when you were a kid. I think there were a little bit more tailwinds from the culture that respected general Christian principles. I love to share the story of when I was in high school and not sleeping with my boyfriend and making choices that were different from my peers. Definitely it was different but I was seen and told, Sarah you’re such a good person. That is not the message that our kids are getting today when they choose to adhere to the christian sexual ethic for example. So I think with technology. It’s the same kind of thing. It’s very difficult for us to think about raising our kids in a way that will make them left out that will make them different but that’s part of actually what it means to follow Jesus. They’re going to be left out and different if we do it well and that is painful but it’s part of what it means to follow Jesus in a world that is not.
Candace Nassar
You know you had a sentence in your book and I remember it so well because this is what I kept telling my kids is. We’re gonna raise little weirdos and
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yes, exactly exactly and that is painful. You know for some people. Yeah yeah.
Candace Nassar
It is painful. I’m about to be teaching Matthew 7: 24- 27 about the man who builds his house on the rock and how when the winds and the storm come, the house stands. And it just makes me think of the culture. You know when culture goes one way and Jesus goes another. We have to follow Jesus and that he’s the one we’re trying to please and obey. And just instilling that in our kids.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
That’s right, That’s right.
Candace Nassar
Is a really big part of discipleship wouldn’t you agree.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Absolutely and I think in the past many mainstream Sunday school curricula focus on bible knowledge of God. We teach our kids to know about God and I think at the moment that they’re going to need more than just knowledge about God. They really need to know him, to love him, to trust him and that’s always been true. But I think there’s a way that when the culture is sort of with us, when church attendance is kind of a cultural thing, people can follow Jesus without a lot of resistance without a lot of struggle. I think the harder it gets to follow Jesus, the more they need something deeper than just head knowledge. I think part of our role in discipling our children is to help them taste why the way of Jesus is better than anything else. I think that’s something we actually struggle to articulate sometimes especially in the areas of again, like sexuality or the things that really diverge from the culture. Sometimes we have a hard time explaining why is this actually good news. Why is this way better? I think we need to help our kids to taste that actually the way of Jesus, the way of enemy love, the way of generosity, this is so much better than anything else out there. And that’s not something we can just convince them of with words so that’s right, that’s right?
Candace Nassar
Well, we have to live it. We have to believe it and sometimes you know that’s hard and we go through hard times and we wonder, we doubt. But, just staying grounded in our own faith. As much as we’re discipling our kids we have to do that as well. So good stuff. Oh man, really good now you can. I think you can write book 2. You’ve got book 2 on the horizon there.
One of the things that you were talking about that I love is repurposing the time that we already have as parents. I loved when I was in the car with my kids or at the dinner table or whatever we would have those discussions about how God worked in their life today. Where did you see God
in your life? You have a name for those. And you’ll just do a great job of explaining that. So can you tell us about those? I’m not. I don’t want to say the word because I might mess it up.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yeah, when we think about discipleship there are 2 different ways we can think about it. 1 is sort of very proactive where we sit down and decide I’m going to do this spiritual practice. We’re gonna you know do this at dinner where we’re sort of in the driver’s seat. The other one is what I call responsive discipleship where we’re responding to what God is doing in our children’s lives. The fancy word for that is a Kairos moment. In Greek that means time and it means an ah hah moment in time that’s kind of ripe with opportunity and potential. In the christian context, it’s when something from the kingdom of heaven, realm of God is breaking into our everyday life. So in the bible a great example of a kairos moment would be Moses with the burning Bush. You know God’s trying to get his attention and so this something of God is breaking into Moses’s everyday life. So those things happen. It’s not usually a burning Bush. It’s not usually that dramatic but those things happen in the lives of our kids all the time where God is knocking at the door. He’s trying to get their attention and it could be some you know experience of emotion. It could be, something like in the book I talk about, we’ve had many a kairos moment when we pass by a homeless person who’s asking for something and the kids are trying to wrestle with that. What does that mean? I really think that is a big part of discipleship. Learning to recognize those moments and then knowing what to do with them. To simplify it succinctly for this podcast. Learning to respond to those moments and help our kids engage God with their heart, their mind and their feet. So what does it mean to engage with God directly, to interact with him around those moments to think about theology, to use the bible as the ultimate source of truth and what we think about these things and then how do we respond? What do we do?
Candace Nassar
Right. Yeah and the other thing that really hit home for me was you talk about some cautions that parents can consider as they’re facilitating those moments and I think that as moms, we kind of want to dictate and control. You know we lead them. We’re not leading them to discover it. We’re telling them what it means. What would you say about that?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Right? Yeah, so this is a big paradigm shift I think for us which is learning to trust that God and our children can have an independent relationship. So even before they make a decision to follow Jesus or understand the gospel cognitively, we can trust that the holy spirit is at work in their life and that actually even little children can hear God’s voice. They can interact with him and so our role, sometimes we feel like our role is to mediate that relationship. We stand in between and sort of translate. Where I think we can learn to encourage our children and God to interact directly. So for example, it’s never a bad instinct to pray for our children. We should pray for our children. But when our child is in the middle of something that I would call a Kairos moment if they’re verbal I think the more that we can invite them to pray. You know pray with them but to say do you want to talk to Jesus about that. And you know you can coach them and help them know what that means. But I think there’s an instinct where we are always the ones who step in and say let me pray for you. and again not our instinct. We want to do that. But as
much as we can to train them to learn to talk to God and to learn that um they can hear his voice. He can speak to them.
Candace Nassar
Yes.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
It’s not that humans get to a point in our development where suddenly we’re able to to comprehend and and interact with God. It’s that God has stooped to interact with us. We can absolutely believe that God can speak to a toddler right? God can speak to an infant in a way that we may not understand.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, that’s so insightful and I really appreciate that. So tell us a little bit about, I mean you do have a teenager now, Noah. How do you see all of this playing into everything that you’ve been doing in his life? You and your husband, your father. Are you seeing the fruit of that or or what are you? What are the challenges?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yeah, so I love John Westerhof’s model of spiritual development and I write about that in the book. It really helps us to understand what’s happening with our kids and what’s normal in terms of their spiritual development as they age.
Right around age 12 they enter what he calls the searching stage, which is where their primary way that they are interacting with God. They’re questioning their faith, searching and wrestling and ripping things apart and that can often feel very threatening to parents. But what Westerhoff says is that actually that stage is essential to go through before they reach this adult owned faith. In the stage prior to that-elementary and just early middle school- the way that they’re interacting with their faith is in the context of community. So if you assigned that group a mantra, it would be “I believe because we believe”. Then to get from that: “I believe because we believe, my family believes, my church believes.” to get from that to this adult owned faith you actually have to go through that searching phase to figure out. Do I believe because I believe?
Many of our youth groups and Sunday school programs or many parents and churches don’t know how to handle that searching stage and so a lot of times our discipleship gets truncated at that affiliative stage and we send our kids off to college with this. “I believe because we believe” mindset and that’s where we see a lot of that 50% happening. I think. So back to Noah. So what I have seen and what’s been really like. It’s kind of fun to me that oh yeah he’s right on target, right on cue. He’s asking really great questions that at first look can feel scary right? Like oh my kid is suddenly who has loved jesus’ whole life like suddenly unsure, suddenly asking questions. Just the other day Noah had an experience watching our pastor have this really profound encounter with God. Noah’s on our worship team. He’s a drummer and yeah, he was wondering like I didn’t feel anything at that moment. What does that mean you know? Um, what’s happening? Yeah, it can feel so threatening it can feel so scary to watch our kids try to rip apart
and dismantle the things that they have been taught and yet I know and I’m able to reassure him at that moment, “Noah this is totally normal that you’re asking these questions.” You actually need to. I believe these questions have answers. I believe that God will talk to you about these things and so we talked with him and gave him some practices to do that. He’s been doing and um, you know I asked him yesterday. How’s it going? He’s like “It’s going great.” So I think the key for me is and what I would encourage parents of teenagers with is it is totally normal. It feels like a threat to their faith but it’s actually a threat to their faith that they don’t do this. and so being able to say “That’s a great question and I’m not scared of that question. I don’t know the answer but let me help you support you. I wrote the book when he was just entering that stage and now that he’s like more fully in it, ut’s fun to see like I have right on target. Here we are.
Candace Nassar
Yeah I saw that too with my 3. Some of the dinner table conversations were whoa! You know, dear in the headlights. But, we said God wants you to investigate those questions. He can handle it. His Word can handle it. Go and do the searching and come back and let’s talk about it and that was I think that kind of giving them that kind of rope was absolutely key.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
That’s right.
Candace Nassar
So that when they went off to college they didn’t turn away and I’m big on that. So I’m really glad when you say that.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
That’s right? Yeah yeah, well that takes so much courage. You know it. It is um, it’s scary. My dad talked about how I don’t know the Apollo: it was Apollo 11 or Apollo 13. One of the the moon missions that went around the back of the moon and they lost radio contact with the astronauts. So he talks about how with teenagers sometimes it feels like that right? Like they’re going around the moon and you lose contact like what Is going on. Are they going to come back around and have trust in God with them at that moment. They’re not sharing everything with me anymore, they’re asking these crazy questions like it feels like they’re around the back of the moon.
Candace Nassar
That’s a great description.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
But they’re going to come around the other side and we trust that Jesus is going to put them back in orbit and back in communication. But, in that moment. That’s how it can feel.
Candace Nassar
Yeah, yes, absolutely great. Great insight? We probably need to be wrapping up but I did there are a couple other things that I really wanted to ask you about? One is as parents we can
disciple our kids. We can show them the way of Jesus, we can lead them but we can’t make the decision for them to trust Jesus and you talk about that in the book. So what can you say to the younger mom because we do hear that a lot. The 2 biggest concerns I think for our moms are they’re going to walk away as teens and college students and we’ve addressed that. The other one is they are never going to trust Jesus and so what would you say to that mom?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
We have to acknowledge from the very beginning that we don’t have control over this. We don’t. This is not our decision. It’s not ours. We don’t have the power or control to just poof make you a Christian. We don’t. We don’t have that authority or power. But that is true about everything as it relates to parenting and so.
Candace Nassar
Right.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Stephen Covey’s circles of concern versus circle of influence is very helpful for me. Basically the idea is that we have many many concerns but we need to isolate and find what’s our sphere of influence. What can we do? So spiritually speaking our participation in this process with the Lord matters. We see that in the statistics that our participation matters and yet it’s not like a magic formula that we plug in and we get the absolute guaranteed output of disciples. So I think. like Mary who said yes to being the mother of Jesus and couldn’t do that without the holy spirit. And yet the holy spirit invited her to play this unique role in bringing Jesus to life right. So that’s kind of it’s like we are invited to say yes I’ll give everything that I have. I’ll do my best here and yet somehow know that I can’t do this by myself. I can’t take credit for it. I can’t. So it’s one of the paradoxes of faith. It’s trusting the lord with our kids. Also they may for a season walk away and still the story’s not finished right? The story continues and we know stories of kids who’ve walked away and come back. I think when we have that concern, we can turn that into fervent prayer for our kids that they would follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. Yeah.
Candace Nassar
Right? It’s all we can do, very good. Well I just thank you so much Sarah this has been a great conversation so helpful
We’re going to put the link to your book in our show notes so our listeners can find out. Is there any other way our listeners can connect with you?
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Yeah, I have a website. Just my name sarahowenjonson.com I have a bunch of free resources on there. I do things around the church year advent lent Christmas things like that. I also have a newsletter you can sign up for there. And then I’m sort of active on Instagram so that’s a good place if you want to connect. It’s got a combo of my you know, family and fun things and then also I’ll post um resources
Candace Nassar
Great resources in different ways. Okay well I Just it’s been great I Wish you continued success and thank you again.
Sarah Cowan Johnson
Thanks so much for having me.