We’d like to highly recommend Rachel Turner’s new book, Parenting children for a life of purpose. Rachel is a good friend to the Sanctuary and and we’re delighted to see this book as a wider and deeper exploration of issues we first worked on together in our Worship and justice at every age articles. There’s more about why we’re such fans of the book below from co-founder Liz Baddaley – who was so enthusiastic about its content that she wrote the foreword! Here it is…
This book fills me with hope. Like its author, it believes that children are powerful individuals who can have a profound effect for God – now as well as in the future.
It champions the truth that we were created for something much bigger than merely living our own lives or achieving our own dreams. And that partnering with God to be a world-changer has no biblically recognised minimum age limit.
Similar to its prequel Parenting Children for a Life of Faith, it combines clear, visionary thinking with solid biblical grounding. It voices a passionate realism that recognises both the urgency and achievability of the transformation it longs for.
The book’s real life stories demonstrate the author’s deep awareness of the competing pressures facing young people. And its practical ideas model how change comes simply by allowing new thinking to enter existing discipleship approaches.
Our churches and our world desperately need the kind of children and adults Parenting Children for a Life of Purpose invites us to be.
We are called first and foremost respond to our Father’s love by living out Jesus’ words to love God and others with every fibre of our beings (Luke 10:27) and making him known to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:16-20).
In an age of me-centred thinking and celebrity culture, I am deeply encouraged to find a book on calling that doesn’t start from a place of ascertaining individuals’ specific gifts or strengths.
Instead, it asks us to be inspired by Christ and his call to the whole church – and to make this our primary purpose. As we live this out with our resources, talents and time, we will discover everything we do is invested with new meaning.
For our purpose is really to ask the same question again and again in every situation we face – from personal relational issues through to globally powerful consumer choices, campaigns or career paths – ‘Jesus, what could I do here to put you and your other children before myself?’
Imagine if this kind of thinking was to inspire a generation…
My prayer is that it will.