Tim Kimmel

Now it may seem odd at first glance that I, a single, childless woman, would pick up a book on parenting, but I have a bit of a love-affair with grace and happened across this lovely tome whilst babysitting at my sister's. The beautiful thing about this one is that it's less of a parenting how-to (totally irrelevant to me) and more of understanding and developing my relationship with God by understanding and developing all sorts of relationships around me. In short, this book is about living show more life with a keen awareness of my own desperate need for constant grace! This should really be titled something like Grace-Based Living (or Christocentric or Gospel-Oriented… you get the idea). It's not a difficult read and sometimes I feel Kimmel tries to hard in making his points – the average intellect got it a couple pages ago already – but then there are many other passages that you can only ingest a sentence or two at a time. I recommend this to anyone with any kind of relationship to any other human. Slash "all y'all".

Some favourite moments (this is mostly for my failing memory, not necessarily anyone else's edification, though take from it what you will):
- Truth is inseparable from grace. Boundaries in one's life stem from a passionate and grateful relationship with Christ rather than a moral checklist of human invention. Grace and truth are like Siamese twins joined at the heart – to separate is to kill both.
- "Cheap grace" isn't really grace at all. Rather, grace pushes toward holiness and propels us to embrace truth. "Cheap grace" holds people down and sets them up for heartache. "Cheap grace" is cowardice, laziness, and selfishness.
- Raising "safe Christian kids" is a spiritual disaster in the making. Folks, I'm a huge fan of the theory of Christian education (to take one small example) but in reality, I've seen Christian schools become 'safe havens' for parents too lazy or just plain unable to parent well. The result is kids who are ill equipped to live fruitfully in the world or to be able to respond well to any ideas that don't fit into the safe little boxes we've contrived for them. Jesus is good, but He isn't safe (yes, that's an Aslan reference). There are risks to living Christianly – read Hebrews 11! In attempting to provide a sanitary, hermetically sealed Christian existence, we forget the power of God – we think God is incapable of doing what He said He would do. Friends, that's a strong indictment. Raising safe kids produces a generation of people who must stay within a spiritually sterilized environment in order to thrive. These are nice systems that produce nice kids who marry nice kids who go to nice churches and hang out with like-minded friends. (Dare I mention the majority of Dutch Reformed churches?!)
- Legalism is the lazy man's religion. It doesn't require much thinking, or a relationship with God.
- Grace, on the other hand, is freeing – it gives the freedom to be different, to be vulnerable, to be candid, to make mistakes (that last one is a toughie for any Dutchie). Therefore, living by grace can be hard, because it is unnatural.
- Grace isn't a nice little theological system that allows you to do anything you want. Rather, it's a lifestyle and set of choices that are the outgrowth of a walk (a lifelong journey with twists and turns!) with Him.
- Grace-based families aren't preoccupied with keeping sin out by putting a fence between themselves and the world. These fences don't exist, because grace-based people understand that sin is already present and accounted for inside each one of us. Sin is not an action or object that somehow managed to penetrate our defenses; it is a pre-existing condition that permeates our being. Grace-based parents aren't surprised or angry by sin; they expect it – and point the sinner to the work of Christ on his behalf.
- Legalism: an exoskeleton that depends on an external environment to hold our urges in check and temptation at bay.
- Grace: an endoskeleton that sees our strength by Who is working inside us. The unlimited power of Christ and thorough effect of His finished work on the cross form the internal belief system that functions as the skeleton keeping us strong.
- "Your propensity toward sin shouldn't surprise, threaten, or even bother you. You know you're a sinner. You realize you have a bent toward selfishness, stubbornness, and lawlessness – exactly the kind of person Christ loves and for whom He died. By acknowledging your children's sin from the outset, you can encourage them to struggle with their sin out in the open where you can talk about it and direct them to the power of Christ. And when the children are actually sinning, grace makes it easy for you to have open, candid, and vulnerable discussions about the areas in which they struggle. You should be able to talk openly and honestly about sin because you're aware of your own sin. Grace demands a humility and sensitivity toward your children's battles with sin because grace is a daily reminder of how desperately you need the Saviour as well." show less

I'm a parent, not a youth minister. I underlined a lot of this book, things we want to do in our family. There is some great stuff about parenting out of grace rather than fear. About having a vision for true greatness, meeting your child's inner needs, etc.
But the book's biggest weakness for me was that it assumed a large structured church. Our church is smaller, without tons of programs, no paid youth or children's pastor, just the church body pitching in. Our church already emphasizes show more that spiritual training begins at home. This book did not apply well to our kind of church. show less

Probably the best parenting book I've read. The author warns against the "religion" of rules with no room for mistakes and grace. He discusses how to give our children the freedom to be different, vulnerable, candid, and to make mistakes. This is one to read and re-read.

I thought this was a great book for everyone in ministry. In fact, I am encouraging my staff to read it, even those not in youth or children's ministry. The idea of creating a big picture and then aligning everything we do to reflect that picture is very necessary in the church. We get caught in programs and details of ministry and forget our major objective. Good things crowd out the one thing that God has called you to uniquely accomplish.
As a parent, I appreciated the fact the mission show more was to connect the heart of the child to the heart of God. I do think behavior modification is a failed attempt to honor God and creates a lack of relying on Him rather than a dependence upon Him.
My major critique of the book is it seemed to not know where to go after saying it needs to be about grace. If I were a parent not on staff with the church, I would want to know, "Yeah, but what do I do." I felt like it was high principle, high structure, very little application in the home. Also, I felt a little bit commercialized. Go get this resource if you want to actually do something about the issue I just raised.
Overall, good book for the ministry, and an okay book for the home. show less