As we continue our journey through Life Matters and focus on parenting, we wanted to provide you with a list of resources to support your role as a parent. Click on each image or title for more details.
Safe House: How Emotional Safety Is the Key to Raising Kids Who Live, Love, and Lead Well
Pastor Brandon said this is his favorite Christian book on parenting approaches. The claim is that the most important thing parents can do is become emotionally mature and self-regulated selves. You don’t need to do all the “right” things as a parent.
Both science and the Bible show us that the most important thing we can provide for our kids is a place of emotional safety. In other words, the posture from which we parent matters infinitely more than the techniques of parenting. The author has a podcast called Famous at Home that Pastor Brandon and his wife, Briana, enjoy.
Connected Parenting: Set Loving Limits and Build Strong Bonds with Your Child for Life
A great middle ground between popular parenting styles today. It presumes that you are your child’s frontal lobe (i.e. the rational, higher-thinking component of the brain) and your job is to fulfill that job for them while training their own frontal lobe. Despite what they want, kids are not capable of making decisions of helpful restraint, delayed gratification etc., so that is the parents’ job. It reminds us that limits are loving.
Take Back Your Family
In this book, Bethke uncovers the historic events that led to our obsession with the nuclear family, then exposes the devastating effects of our current “me culture.” Then he shares the values and strategies he and his family lean on in their quest to live as a community bonded by a shared mission, committed to mutually growing and thriving together. By returning to God’s original design for families on earth, he says, we can participate in the kingdom work that restores and fulfills our innermost desires for connection, contentment, and meaning.
Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut & The Welcome Mat Out
Parenting is a life-long commitment and privilege. Raising God’s children doesn’t stop at a specific time or a certain age, but the relationship will change. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Jim Burns helps you navigate this rich and challenging season of parenting.
Give Them Grace: Leading Your Kids to Joy and Freedom Through Gospel-Centered Parenting
This book isn’t a “how-to” manual; it’s a call to remember, speak, and rest in the gospel as you model Jesus to your children. This is the good news of parenting. It’s not about getting things right all the time — it’s about grace.
As you read, you’ll discover the gospel foundation to parent from a place of joy, freedom, and peace. This newly revised edition reflects what Elyse and Jessica have learned in their own parenting journeys in the last decade and includes two new chapters on parenting with grace in regard to your children’s mental health and gender.
Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Children
Parent and author Jodie Berndt understands what it’s like to release children into the world and still care deeply about them and everything they’re up against in life.
In Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Children, Jodie shares prayers designed with your adult children in mind, whether they’re just leaving the nest, flying well on their own, or struggling to take off at all.
Audiobooks Worth Listening To
