Have you ever watched an exercise show on TV . . . while sitting on your couch, eating ice cream?
Or researched online to find out more about healthy dinners for your family, but then fed your kids hot dogs and macaroni and cheese (adding baby carrots on the side to inject some nutrition into the meal)?
Or read a magazine article praising the virtues of low-flow showerheads and then stood under an old showerhead that drenched not just you but also your entire shower stall?
I’ve done every single one of these things.
In each case, I wanted to get in shape or eat more nutritionally or be more environmentally conscious.
I had worthy goals, but I didn’t know how to convert those goals into feasible, sustainable next steps.
I was full of inspiration; what I lacked was implementation.
At this point in this guide, you hopefully have a vision for your family’s future.
What you need is a strategy that translates that vision into concrete actions for this Thursday’s dinner or next Tuesday’s ride to school.
But this strategy will be unique to your family.
The paths carved out by the families in this Sticky Faith guide are as varied as the families themselves.
In the midst of wanting to be more intentional and learn
from the ideas of other families, celebrate what is special about your family.
If you want to move from Sticky Faith rhetoric to Sticky Faith reality, we recommend that you create your own road map using the following path.
Celebrate your family’s Sticky Faith practices up to this point.
What practices were you already following even before you read this book?
Perhaps you didn’t realize until now how beneficial those practices were.
Recognize what you’ve done well.
Record those practices here:
Review your notes at the end of every chapter.
Whether you read this guide on a plane flight, during a weekend, or over the course of several months, you’ve covered a lot of paragraph territory.
Odds are good you’ve forgotten some of your early insights and convictions, so flip to the end of each chapter to see the findings and ideas you noted as having the most potential for your family.
If you’re married, discuss those highlights with your spouse.
You’ll make more Sticky Faith progress if you both read this guide, but if that’s not possible, share with your spouse what most impacted you.
You might even ask them to read certain pages or chapters themselves so they can at least get a CliffsNotes version of what might be most relevant for your family.
If you aren’t married, do the same with a close family member or friend who knows you and your kids well.
What if my spouse isn’t a Christian?
Or what if they are a Christian but don’t want to be very involved in helping build Sticky Faith?
It’s impossible for you and your spouse to care equally about all things.
You might value keeping the house clean, while your husband is fine with a bit of clutter.
Or you might care deeply about being five minutes early to family events, while your wife views anything less than showing up ten minutes late as being on time.
Every day, you navigate areas in your marriage in which you have different levels of interest.
It’s not unusual for Sticky Faith to fall into that category.
Instead of nagging or criticizing your spouse (which, as you’ve probably seen in other areas of your marriage, doesn’t yield great results), try involving them through a feasible baby step.
If your spouse doesn’t want to read this whole book, see if they’d be open to reading a chapter.
(Depending on your kids’ ages, we’d suggest
,
,
, or
.)
If a chapter is a bridge too far, see if you can read them five ideas that you think could be most helpful to your family.
If five ideas seem like too many, choose your single favorite.
If they’re not even interested in hearing one idea, that doesn’t mean you abdicate altogether your hopes for Sticky Faith.
Choose some low-hanging fruit — meaning one or two ideas that you can implement on your own, without spousal support — to gain some momentum.
We realize it’s not going to be easy.
A significant discrepancy between your and your spouse’s commitment to building Sticky Faith may stem from a significant difference in your commitment to following Jesus Christ.
Instead of a faith partnership, you may feel you’re shouldering most — or maybe all — of the spiritual direction of your household.
Sticky Faith might be one more area in which you feel spiritually and emotionally alone in your family.
The good news is that the church itself is a family — the family of God.
Even though my husband is as (and some days more) committed to Sticky Faith as I am, we need our church and our extended family.
Other caring believers lift up our weary parenting arms and speak into our kids’ lives when for some reason we just can’t.
You might feel alone in your nuclear family, but you and your kids can turn to your extended church family and allow them to fill your emotional and spiritual tanks and travel down the Sticky Faith road with you.
Choose five ideas to try — for now.
We’re serious about this limit.
If you choose more than five, you’re more likely to fail.
Five is doable.
Two might perhaps be better.
One idea that you pursue wholeheartedly might even be best.
You can always add more ideas later.
The Sticky Faith parenting race is a marathon, not a sprint.
I think my top five (or fewer) Sticky Faith ideas for our family might be:
If appropriate, talk about those ideas with your kids.
Depending on your kids’ ages and the nature of the ideas, it’s often wise to discuss those ideas with your kids.
When it comes to bringing about change in any system, we have found that people are more likely to support what they create.
If you give your kids the chance to help steer your new family traditions or practices, they will be more likely to get on board.
Identify the next steps to take in the next week and month.
Figure out the days and times when you will try out your ideas.
If any preparation is required, mark that on your calendar or on the appropriate “to do” list or app.
Some next steps in the next week and month might be:
Post your plan in a public place.
Visibility increases ongoing vision.
Whether you place your ideas and next steps on an index card on your car’s dashboard or on your family bulletin board, you need reminders of the Sticky Faith changes you’d like to explore.
View everything as an experiment.
We at the Fuller Youth Institute know kids, but we don’t know
your kids.
We know families, but we don’t know
your family.
Some of the ideas that are home runs for one family might be a strikeout for yours.
If what you first try flops, you may want to give it a second try, or you might want to abandon ship and try something else.
Hold your general commitment to building Sticky Faith tightly, but hold the specific ideas you try lightly.
Tell a friend about your plan.
Expression deepens impression.
The more you share your ideas with others, the more you will tend to own them yourself.
Plus, you might inspire a friend to conduct a few Sticky Faith experiments in their own family.
If you feel comfortable, ask your friend to hold you accountable for the next steps you’ve planned.
If you’re in a small group or Bible study, share your ideas at your next meeting.
You might even want to suggest that your entire group read part or all of this guide so that you can support each other in your Sticky Faith journey.
One or more friends I’d like to discuss my Sticky Faith plan with are:
Schedule on your calendar when you will evaluate your idea.
Depending on the time frame you’ve created for your next steps, mark a specific day on your calendar for you to evaluate your ideas.
Whether you do this alone or with your spouse, you might also want to reread portions of this guide to help fuel your family’s Sticky Faith fire.
Relax and enjoy the journey.
Often when we present these findings and ideas to parents, parents tense up because they feel either overwhelmed at what lies ahead or guilty for their mistakes.
As we discussed
in
, Jesus is bigger than our parenting mistakes.
God loves our kids even more than we do, and we can trust him with our family’s faith journey.
Keep in touch with us and learn from other parents.
The best idea for your family might come not from this book but from an online portal we’ve created for parents to journey together and sharpen each other.
So visit
stickyfaith.org to sign up for our free
FYI E-Journal or access a host of free resources.
In addition to hearing your feedback, we’d love for you to contribute a story or idea, or glean a few from other parents like you around the country, at
stickyfaith.org/stories.
Almost every time I speak to parents about Sticky Faith, I pray that the kids represented by the adults in the room would beat the “one-out-of-two drift-from-the-faith” odds.
I ask God to so inspire and equip parents that if we were to fast-forward a number of years, we’d hear story after story of kids who have been changed by Christ to change the world around them.
For life.
Our team is praying the same for every reader of this guide — including you and your family.
If you walk away from this guide and make just one change in your family, take just one step forward, we’ll consider it a victory.
If you listen closely, you’ll hear us cheering you on.
