Discipling your kids (part 1): You are your child's first pastor

All Christian parents want their kids to love God. We bring them to church, drop them at Kids Church, and hope something sticks. Church really does matter—we know that.

But there's an assumption worth naming. A lot of us have quietly absorbed the idea that our child's faith is primarily the church's job. A bit like education: that's what schools are for. We send our kids, the teachers teach, and learning happens. We think our role as parents is mostly to get them there, make sure they do their homework, and support them along the way.

It's an understandable way to think. But when it comes to faith, that's never what God had in mind.

You can’t outsource how faith grows

Psalm 78 paints a picture of how our kids are meant to learn about him.

“We will not hide [these teachings] from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done… so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God…” (Psalm 78:4, 6-7)

What's being described here is a beautiful passing down of teaching from parent to child to grandchild. It's a responsibility that is personal and important. Its goal isn't just that children know facts about God, but that they set their hope in him—that is, that they have genuine faith in him. And the Psalmist assumes it travels through families.

This idea runs all the way through Scripture. God's design has always been that the primary place where faith forms is the home, in ordinary life, through the people who are closest to your child: their parents.

You are their pastor

They're your kids. That means you are responsible before God for how you raise them and how you teach them about him. Not the church. Not their Kids Leaders. You.

As their parent, you are the primary person through whom they learn to understand the world: what's true, what matters, who they are, and who God is. Children look to their parents to interpret reality before they look anywhere else and have access to your child that no pastor, teacher, or Kids Leader ever will. Under Jesus, you are their shepherd. Their first pastor. And the most significant spiritual influence in their life.

Think about the hours alone. If you’re a parent who works full-time while your child’s in primary school, you probably have between 20-35 waking hours with your child each week. A Kids Church leader sees your child for an hour on Sunday. You see them at breakfast, in the car, at bedtime, when they're scared, when something happened at school and they don't know how to feel about it. This time is precious. Every moment is an opportunity that God has given you to help them learn about, look to, and trust Jesus.

Where the church fits in

Of course, church has a special role to play in your child's walk with Jesus too.

1. Your pastors

Your pastors' job is to love, encourage, and equip you to do yours. To help you grow and live as a disciple yourself, to support you as you shepherd your own children, and to be a resource when you're not sure how.

2. Your kids’ leaders

What leaders of our Kids Programs do runs alongside what you're doing at home. Their job is to give your child a place to experience what it means to be part of God's family in a way that makes sense at their age. To hear and learn about God, begin to pray, make friends who are also following Jesus. To be loved by leaders who know their name. All of it connects to and builds on what's happening at home.

3. Your church family

The New Testament repeatedly calls the church to love, serve, encourage, and bear with one another (Rom 15:7; Gal 6:2; Eph 4:2, 32; Col 3:13)—and your children are meant to be on the receiving end. They're meant to be loved, cared for, and carried by the community around them. But they're also watching. A child who grows up inside a community where people genuinely love each other, take God's word seriously, and practice faith openly is witnessing something that makes the gospel plausible in a way that instruction alone never quite can.

All three of these matter but it's worth being honest: none of it substitutes for what happens at home, with you. These things can reinforce it, enrich it, and come around it. But they could never replace it.

You don't have to be perfect

You can't do this perfectly. None of us can. And that's not the goal.

If you wanted your child to have a real relationship with a close relative who lived far away, you'd do all sorts of things. You'd set up the video call. Make sure they message happy birthday. You'd tell them stories about who that person is, why they matter, what they mean to you and your family.

Our children knowing God isn't so different. God is real, he loves them, he knows them, and he wants to be known by them. But if we want them to have a genuine relationship with him (and not just know facts about him) then we need to actually bring him into their lives. We need to be the ones who create the moments, get to church, tell the stories, and model what it looks like to trust him.

God’s not looking for perfection. The goal isn't to get it right, but to show up and keep trying. He wants us to be the kind of parents who take their child's faith seriously and does something about it, even imperfectly, inconsistently, and even when we’re not sure if we’re doing it well.