Vintage

  Faith incubation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It doesn't happen over night. It must be nurtured over time. Faith Stepping Stones is a process that bonds parents and children into the body of Christ at eight crucial moments in parenting and leads them to incubate faith every night in every home. It provides faith-based parenting education from cradle to graduation through a series of eight short-courses. Each course brings parents and children together for fun and learning, and ends at the altar with a special blessing service.

      Through this process, parents and children develop nightly faith practices that includes blessing, prayer, scripture reading, sharing of Highs & Lows, faith dialogue, and a nightly "I'm sorry" before turning out the lights on the day. This "every night in every home" ritual blesses the child, gifts the family, and calls parents to their promise while incubating faith.

•    Stone 1: Raising a Healthy Baby: Three (3) sessions on physical, emotional and spiritual needs of infants and their parents. Parents are also taught how to do a nightly blessing as a family faith practice.

•    Stone 2: Raising a Healthy Preschooler: Three (3) sessions on physical, emotional and spiritual needs of preschoolers and their parents. Parents are taught to add prayer to the nightly blessing as a faith practice.

•    Stone 3: Entry Into School: Three (3) sessions on physical, emotional and spiritual needs of kindergarteners and their parents. Parents are taught to share Highs & Lows with their children, and add it to their nightly prayers and blessing.

•    Stone 4: My Bible: Eight (8) sessions highlighting 120 key verses in young readers’ Bibles. Youth and parents commit to read a Bible verse nightly, and continue with Highs & Lows, prayer and blessing nightly.

•    Stone 5: Livin’ Forgiven: Three (3) sessions from Passover to Lord’s Supper, with nightly confession and absolution added to the faith practices of Bible reading, Highs & Lows, prayer and blessing.

•    Stone 6: Surviving Adolescence: Three (3) sessions on "Surviving Adolescence" where youth and parents learn and commit to the art of theological reflection (i.e. setting the Bible verse and the Highs & Lows of the day together to ask "What is God saying to us today?"), and adding this to the previous faith practices of confession/absolution, Bible reading, Highs & Lows, prayer and blessing continue.

•    Stone 7: Confirmation As Ordination: Three (3) sessions where youth and parents look at their confession, their confirmation, and their call.

•    Stone 8: Graduation Blessing: Three (3) sessions spread over the fall, winter, and spring where seniors and their parents look back God’s blessings, look to the moment, and look to the future of their new callings.