Faith at Home

A Handbook for Cautiously Christian Parents

Wendy Claire Barrie

Oct/2016, 160 Pages, Paperback, 5.5 x 8.5

ISBN-13: 9780819232762

$25.95

$25.95

Add depth and meaning your family's traditions with these basic Christian practices that nurture and enrich everyone’s faith at home.

Home and parents are the key mechanisms by which religious faith and practice are transmitted inter-generationally. Recent studies indicate that the single most important factor in youth becoming committed and engaged in their religious faith as young adults is that the family talks about religion at home. However, for many parents in the United States, religious language is a foreign language.

Faith at Home helps parents learn this "second language" and introduce it to their children in simple, meaningful, concrete ways. Parents often ask: How do we introduce prayer to our children if we do not necessarily believe prayer changes outcomes? How do we approach reading the Bible with our children when our own relationship with it is mixed or complicated? How do we talk about difficult things and where do we find God in the midst of them? How do we teach our children to make a difference in the world? How do we connect what happens at church to what happens at home? These questions and many more are addressed with talking points, practices, and resources provided for each subject.

WENDY CLAIRE BARRIE is the author of Faith at Home: A Handbook for Cautiously Christian Parents and a Christian educator with more than thirty years of experience in Episcopal parishes, large and small, urban and suburban, on both coasts. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

"Faith at Home is a delightful, easy-to-read book that brings fresh inspiration into the age old dilemma of how to talk about and celebrate faith at home. I read it with my highlighter in one hand and a pen for note taking in the other––Wendy's take on celebrating faith in the home is not just for families, but for anyone who works with youth or children."––Jerusalem Jackson Greer, Minister to Children, Youth, and Families at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Conway, Arkansas and author of A Homemade Year

"This insightful and creative approach to formation is rich in theological reflection and full of practical advice for Christians of all ages. Parents, as well as educators, clergy, godparents, and all faith folk concerned with living a transformed Christian life, will benefit from Wendy Claire Barrie's wisdom. Formation inclusive of home and church is helpfully brought together in this timely and accessible book."––The Rev. Dr. Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Claremont School of Theology

"When the parents brought their children to Jesus, the part of the story that got left out was that he gave them A Handbook for Cautiously Christian Parents. This is a must have and must read book for all parents."––The Rev. Dr. Mark Bozzuti-Jones, Priest for Pastoral Care Community at Trinity Wall Street and author of The Womb of Advent

"For parents who may be at a loss as to how to build Christian faith and practice into daily life and family traditions, Faith at Home is a friendly, accessible guide. Wendy Barrie writes from an Episcopal perspective, pointing readers to the rich resources of the traditional liturgical year, the sacraments, and the calendar of saints, while inviting parents and children to find ways to wonder, question, and celebrate together, and to work and speak out for justice in witness to their faith. Her suggestions and insights, grounded in her own experiences of parenthood and her vocation as a lay parish minister, are realistic, practical, and thought provoking. Parents will find especially helpful the chapters about "Making Home Holy," "Finding God in Difficult Times," and "Meeting God in Others;" clergy and parish leaders will appreciate the afterword with suggestions for ways to think about ministry to families, and ways to use the book as the focus for a discussion group."––Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, creator of The Sunday Paper and Beulah Land, and author of Offering the Gospel to Children

"Wendy Claire Barrie has written a book with simplicity in mind that will enable busy families to find the minutes and moments in each day and each season to share their faith, using her own experiences as a parent to frame her work. We all know that parents are a child's first teacher of our faith so having the language along with topics and suggestions for establishing rituals and traditions in the home as a guidebook is a tremendous gift to the Church and its families."––Kathy Graham, Coordinator of Lifelong Christian Formation, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama

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$25.95

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