Love and Truth Center
Summer’s here, our schedules are shifting again, and at Plethos we’re convinced it’s a great season to try something new. If you’re a parent, you understand how vital it is to shape an intentional Pass It On culture under your roof. You and I have a limited number of years of profound influence on our kids’ hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits. And while life might get the better of our time, talent, and treasure in a given season, we’re called to use these for God’s glory in our homes, huddles, and communities.
If you’re looking to grab hold of a new rhythm of discipleship in your home, consider doing it one bite at a time. When you read Deuteronomy 6:4-9, you see a handful of habits, spaces, and practices at play. Pick one and focus on it for a season. You’re building something awesome here, don’t rush it. But don’t hesitate to dive in, either. Pick one weekly family habit you’d like to incorporate into your home and build on it for a season. Trial and error. Adjusting it as it becomes more and more natural.
I have three kids, ages fourteen, ten, and five. To be honest, they rock. Angels? No, but they’re a huge blessing. Let me throw at you one of the new weekly family rhythms we started this spring. For some, this will sound daunting. For others, this is amateur hour. Either way, it’s an example of taking the next step.
During Lent, my wife and I decided to commit to a weekly Sunday night sabbath meal around the table. This was not particularly new; honestly, we eat together all the time, but it was what we started during that singular meal that has already become a coveted space in our family rhythm. First, we decided to celebrate the weekly projects each of us is working on: learning a new skill, completing a reading challenge, building, writing, researching, practicing, etc. Share, celebrate, encourage, and challenge. The other week we were serenaded by a solo presentation of Silent Night on the recorder. No squeaks and smooth finger transitions. Fantastic!
We’ve also incorporated weekly successes, growth, challenges, obstacles, sins, memory passages, and even looking ahead at the week to come. It’s informal, discussion-oriented, peppered with jokes and rabbit trails, and unhurried.
One of the most rewarding elements is how we close out our time, communion. We dive in with a passage of Scripture. So far, we’ve taken turns reading, discussing keywords, topics, theological concepts, practice in real life, and always connecting it to the life of Jesus Christ. We pass around bread, each one tearing a piece from the whole. We pour grape juice into cups and pass them around. We take turns reminding one another about the meaning of the bread and the cup, the body, and the blood. And we connect it to the passage we just read. We eat, and we drink, and we pray.
It’s not unique, is it? Families have been eating and communing and praying together for millennia. But it’s a new, intentional rhythm for us, with more being built around it throughout the week. Not rules or commands, but rhythms and habits that shape healthy and whole kids in a world working its hardest to flip them upside down and inside out.
Here’s an invitation as your home becomes the Love and Truth Center you desire it to be:
Pick one habit, night, morning, practice...and invite your family to join you in living it out.
Explain why.
Make it real.
Make it enjoyable.
Connect with them at the stage they’re at in life and faith and draw them upwards until it’s a habit in your home.
As the modern American prophet Ray Kinsella once said, “If you build it, they will come.”
Guest Post by R.J Dyson - Author, life coach, family dude, and Plethos content partner on a mission to connect his home to Jesus.
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