Highlight: Making disciples at home

Do you find the concept of making disciples at home to be overwhelming? With all that parents are required to do these days, should making disciples of our kids be something left to the professionals?

Melissa Spoelstra says that God doesn’t demand parents be perfect or to raise perfect children, but He does call for faithfulness to Him. In her book, , Melissa gives parents helpful resources for how to raise kids who love the Lord.

“What we want to do is have a plan—and if our goal is to pray with our children every night and we pray with them four times this week, that’s four more times than if we had no intentionality at all. Ask the question, ‘God, what are you asking of me as a parent in being the key disciple maker and my child’s life?’

Parents need to look no further than to Christ Himself to see how to disciple others, even our children.

“What Jesus did was to model the behavior. Here is the Savior of the world making the time to sneak away and spend time with the Father in prayer. He showed us that time with the Father was valuable. He is healing and working miracles and teaching transformational truth and Jesus put a hold on miracles to go be with His father and to pray.”

Parents need to be intentional about modeling but also about training their kids to be intentional too.

“Jesus didn’t just pray, He showed his disciples how they should pray. He gave them some practical life teaching on what that should look like.”

In order to train our children, we need to show them how to pray, how to read their Bibles and how to serve. It’s intentionally being engaged in their lives—training them to be disciples. Melissa Spoelstra encourages parents that implementing even one new practice will reap huge rewards in the lives of our children.


Melissa Spoelstra is a popular women’s conference speaker, Bible teacher, and writer who is madly in love with Jesus and passionate about helping women of all ages to seek Christ and know Him more intimately through serious Bible study. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Bible Theology and enjoys teaching God’s Word to diverse groups and churches within the body of Christ.

Making disciples at home