Making Disciples...thanks Mom and Dad

I sent this email to my family today after reading an article by a guy that has a different passion than I do. Anyway, I thought I would share it through blogger, as well.

So, you may or may not know this about me, but I am not all about the big and the cool. To the contrary, I am really for the element of making disciples through relationships, not explosions. So, when I see something like this from Ron Luce who is the driving force behind Acquire the Fire (which by the way, the actors in SAVED went to in order to make sure they could adequately give proper humor to youth ministry when they made a brilliant satire of youth ministry), I kinda laugh. However, this time, it really stuck out to me...since we are all about a family email going around.

Here is the reality...crazy, we all love Jesus. We may disagree, and some of you may not fully realize that you were elected (that is fine, you are in, and when we get to heaven, you will realize that you had no part in your salvation), but the reality is that we all love Jesus. The thing is, that our mom and dad don't get to write the book. They just did it (right, wrong, good, bad) they made disciples of Jesus Christ...Not Don Thomason, not Rod Price, or Don Leigh...but mom and dad. Sure, as we all can attest, Grandpa had a part. But, in the biblical mandate, it ultimately comes down to mom and dad. Faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Thanks, mom for passing on the heritage, and for dad for breaking the generational sins to help us be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Don't worry about writing the book...just pass on your stories of loving Jesus and loving us to those who don't get it, or need help. This seems to be the master plan of parenting.


ARTICLE REFERENCED:

Friends, Something exciting happened to my family a few weeks ago. We got a call from the editors over at Charisma Magazine. They wanted to run a feature story on my family because of the parenting book we just published called ReCreate! My wife, Katie, and I wrote ReCreate to share stories of how we made it a priority to raise Godly children and build a Christ-centered culture in the home (Charity, my middle daughter, even helped write the teen version!). It turns out that the editors at Charisma were just amazed to see all three kids in one family absolutely in love with God and pursuing them with their lives. A lot of families in ministry really struggle when it comes to their children, and they wanted to find out how we did it. I don’t think we did anything special. It’s all in the book, but we always prayed for our kids and with our kids. And I really think the kids are doing so well because of Katie—she’s just amazing. But really what it came down to was a decision to put our kids first. After God and our marriage, our kids have been our top priority, even before ministry. That’s been the guiding principle for us as parents, and we’ve had to fight very hard to keep that focus. It wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it! Please pray for this article! We really hope that this story in Charisma and the book itself is an encouragement and blessing to all of the families that read it. The article will be in the March issue. Until then, you can watch some videos we recorded for each chapter in the book and order a copy online if you’re interested. Consumed by the Call,Ron P.S. I've been sending out email updates on a variety of topics every week or so.

If you're not getting them, you can sign up at www.teenmania.com. Ron Luce
Founder and President