Summer Success

​​​by Adam Kronberger / Head of School

Growing up in the home of two public school educators, I vowed I would never grow up to be a teacher. While it was mostly all I knew when it came to vocational opportunity, it seemed too mundane and familiar for my taste. I even recollect my father telling me at a young age that I would make a great administrator. Despite my early misgivings, eventually I surrendered to this clear calling in my life in my early 20’s and have only experienced blessing after blessing. A well-known Proverb exhorts us to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (22:6).It seems my parents had a hand in determining my career destination.

While I am sure my parents were pleased I chose a similar career path to their own, nothing elicits more celebration from a parent than a child who continues to pursue Jesus into adulthood. Author Jan Magruder surveyed 2,000 Protestant families about their parenting journey and the effectiveness in training up a child in the ways of Jesus Christ. She uncovered consistent factors during a child’s upbringing that were the most predictive of spiritual health in young adulthood. The significant and consistent predictors while growing up included parents who...

• Read the Bible with their children
  
• Prayed with their children
  
• Attended and served in a church with their children
  
• Encouraged their children to listen primarily to Christian music
  
• Participated in mission trips with their children
  
• Monitored the significant influence of their child's friends and adult influences

As we enter the summer months, many of our children will have more disposable and unsupervised time than during the school year. Reflect on this list and consider how to maximize these experiences in your child’s life. How can our family and my child get plugged in to our church more? How can Bible reading and prayer be modeled and practiced daily by the entire family? What strategic friends, young and old, are having an influence in my child’s life? What kind of music is regularly influencing their worldview?  

Some parents may desire their children to grow up and take over the family business. Other parents may dream of their child becoming an athletic star or influential politician. Yet the most important goal and responsibility is the one that holds eternal consequence: long-lasting transformational faith. And the formula is simple. Read, pray, and connect.
​
– Adam Kronberger / Head of School