Category Archives: kids and spirituality

Sacraparental Lent with Kids

This is an introductory post to our Lent with Kids series, explaining how and why we’re using candles and a bunch of other things to make Lent meaningful at home. I wrote this several years ago now, and it has become a cornerstone of our family spirituality. Skip to the bottom to see the basic […]

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A Northern and Southern Christmas Treat

About a third of you, Gentle Readers, are based in the Northern Hemisphere, where the church calendar was born and raised: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and so on, until Advent begins another church year again. That means that your wintry Advent is naturally an expectant, waiting time that builds to the celebration of Christmas […]

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Advent in Art 2013: Expectation

Advent in Art is a project of World Vision New Zealand for the spiritual nurture of staff. Mark Pierson and Alison Squires curate and produce beautiful sets of cards with reproductions of paintings, Scripture readings, questions for reflection and a ritual to perform. This year Advent in Art features the art of Wayne Forte, reproduced […]

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Advent with Toddlers

Happy Advent, everyone! Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the four-ish-week period leading up to Christmas. Today was SBJ’s first appreciation of Advent. He’s almost two, so I wasn’t sure just how much would be appropriate for him, but lots of things surprised me about the day, so I thought I’d give a full […]

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Advent in Art 2013: Shall We?

    Probably my favourite season of the church year is coming up soon. Advent, the four weeks before Christmas where we prepare ourselves for celebrating Jesus’ arrival in our world. There’s lots to like about Advent (even if you don’t have calendars filled with chocolate). It’s not often we engage deeply in old-fashioned anticipation, […]

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God, Kids and Parents: Myk and Liam [Guest]

Welcome back to Dr Myk Habets from Carey Baptist College! In his earlier guest post on praying with his kids, Myk (pronounced ‘Mike’) talked about how he uses names for all three persons of the Trinity when he prays with his little daughter. In this update, written a year or so later, in 2011, for […]

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God, Kids and Parents: My Eighty-Two Cents

In case you missed the biggest news of the (/my) blogosphere last week, I have a guest post up at the glorious Lulastic and the Hippyshake. It’s an exciting week for this fangirl! She’s running a brilliant series of guest posts, How to be a ______ Parent, and she asked me to do ‘How to […]

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God, Kids and Parents: Myk and Sydney [Guest]

Dr Myk Habets is a theologian at Carey Baptist College, where I studied for four years. He’s pretty flash! As well as lecturing in systematic theology, hermeneutics and ethics, he’s head of the newish Carey Graduate School and Director of the RJ Thompson Centre for Theological Studies. He’s also a husband and father, and a […]

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God, Kids and Parents: Rod Robson [Guest]

‘The short answer to how to raise a child in the faith is to live it out openly in front of them.’ By popular demand, today Rod Robson opens a new series of insights from parents on how to present God to our kids. Rod is a Baptist minister (and was my youth pastor!) in Christchurch, […]

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Not Only A Father #4: Speaking the Unspeakable [Guest]

A warm welcome back to Dr Tim Bulkeley who is posting this series based on his book, Not Only A Father, looking at gendered language for God. For more on Tim’s background, see the first post. Speaking the unspeakable: mother-language before the reformation People I talk with about using motherly language and pictures to talk about God […]

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