How to talk about faith without lecturing with Katheryn Saunders

Yeah, I want I'm curious to know what that can look like, because I think so many people listening are like, but it's so much easier to be like, all right, kids, sit down.

This is what we believe and why.

And this is what you're going to believe.

You know, it's easier to do the lecture, but it's harder to bring in to dialogue.

And I think there's a lot of fear in there.

There's a lot of intimidation.

But how do we structure those conversations with our kids?

That's a great question.

And those are natural fears and fears that I think a lot of parents have.

And I had some of those, you know, we had some of those with our kids when they were growing up.

I think we think in our minds that it has to be, that spiritual formation has to be this formal sort of rigid, really spiritual looking sit down thing.

But that's not actually the case.

What I have found is that those conversations can happen just in the day to day, everyday, ordinary, in your ordinary life with your kids, whether it's in the car or over dinner or, you know, some families have shared with me, they go for, they kind of have created as part, we can talk later if you want to about rule of life, but as part of their family rule of life, they go for a walk after dinner.

And

they're able to have those conversations in this space that doesn't feel rigid or kind of make anybody nervous or whatever.

And just the best conversations end up coming up.

And a lot of times they're just elicited through really good questions.

And that's part of what's in the book.

I have a whole bunch of questions in there, you know, tied to each Benedictine practice, just to get a conversation going and ask your kids.

I think sometimes when we don't give our kids the opportunity to share what they're really thinking.

We're also missing a chance for deeper intimacy with them to better know kind of what's on their hearts and for them to better know us.

I mean, I will say some of that comes from, I think, as parents, a fear of being vulnerable ourselves.

You know, that if If we become vulnerable, and I'll share a story with you in a sec here, does that somehow take away our authority or will we seem weak in some way to them or like something they can't count on? But the truth is actually doing so opens the door for them to be more vulnerable with us and share things that are going on with them.

And it does create deeper intimacy.

There was a family that I worked with that kind of had gone through some of these.