I’m so excited to announce the launch of my latest book, Forming Faith, which I co-authored with two of my friends, Matt Markins and Mike Handler. Our heart behind this project was to help inform with the latest research, inspire with time-tested methods, and educate with engaging stories and life experiences. Each chapter teases out the need for formational environments for our kids that create lasting faith.
Some of the topics we work through are
- “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.”
- We’re walking upstream in a flood of new realities
- A Little Less Disney, a Bit More Fred Rogers
- Stuck on a sandbar
- New Barna Group Research
- Getting Un-Stuck from the Church Home Stalemate
- The Forming Faith Pathway (A member of The Gospel Coalition recently called this “pure gold”)
- The Formational Church
- The Formational Home
Forming Faith aims to bring insight to church leaders and high-capacity parents on cultivating lasting faith in children even amid our highly secularized, hyper-individualistic, and post-Christian culture. By helping the reader grasp the pervasive power of cultural formation on today’s children as well as discovering the outdated map we are operating off of in our current church children’s ministries, the reader will gain insight as to why we must move to a new map (which is actually an ancient map) to reach and disciple this generation.
Forming Faith not only uses analysis and research combined with colorful metaphors to understand our times, but it also leads the reader forward with a proposed blueprint for forming lasting faith in children at church and at home and what the two entities must do to maximize our influence on their lives.
For those who have read Resilient: Child Discipleship and the Fearless Future of the Church (Awana), Forming Faith is the logical follow-up book to read, yet it’s also a stand-alone read as well
It’s not working, and everybody knows it. But no one seems to know what to do about it. Even before COVID-19, we were starting to have doubts, but during the height of COVID-19, it became abundantly clear that how we view children’s ministry and faith formation has to change. Parents are deeply concerned about how the culture forms their kids, and the church is frustrated by the lack of parental involvement in child discipleship. Forming Faith taps into these frustrations and fears with real solutions that are biblically based and backed by research.
It is our hope that you find this book challenging but also filled with hope, wisdom, and practical tools you can implement in your church and in your home to form the faith of the next generation.