We Make Disciples of What We Love

She sat across from me with tears she wasn't trying to hide. Her son was in his first semester of college and somewhere between move-in day and October, church had quietly dropped off his calendar. No dramatic falling away. No angry deconstruction. He just didn't go. Didn't feel the need. Didn't see the point. She was devastated. And honestly, sitting with her in that moment, so was I. Here's the thing -- she wasn't a neglectful parent. She loved her son. Jesus and the church were part of their family identity. But over the years, the pressure to keep up had been real. When the tournament fell on Sunday morning, every other family on the team was going. When the coach made it clear that serious players showed up to everything, missing felt costly. So church moved. Not every week. Not even most weeks. But when something collided with it, church was usually the thing that gave way. He hadn't been raised without Jesus. He had been raised with Jesus as one priority among several. And when he got to college and no one was deciding his schedule for him anymore, he had his answer. She had given it to him, one Sunday at a time, without ever meaning to.

Start With the End in Mind

Here is a question worth sitting with: when your kids are fully grown -- when they are 28 or 35 and living their own lives -- what do you most want them to love? What do you want to be the big rock in the jar of their life, the thing everything else gets organized around? Most Christian parents would answer quickly. They want their kids to love Jesus. Now here is the harder question: does the life you are living right now actually point toward that vision? Because our kids are not primarily shaped by what we tell them to value. They are shaped by what they watch us value. If what we do says something different than what we say, they are hearing what we do. Every time. Loudly. 

We are always discipling our kids toward something. The only question is what.

This Is Where Christians Get to Be Different

I understand the tension families are living in. Extracurricular activities are not the enemy. The travel team schedules are relentless, the club commitments stack up fast, and the pressure is not imaginary. Coaches notice who misses. Other families are going along with it, which makes opting out feel lonely. Whether it's sports, dance, academics, or theater -- many of you are doing your best to hold a lot of things together.

But here is what I want you to hear as an invitation, not a burden: this is one of the most practical and visible places that following Jesus makes you look different from the culture around you.

The world has built an entire system that assumes your kids' activities come first and everything else -- including the church, including rest, including your family's life with Jesus -- fits in around the edges. Most families just go along with it because the current is strong and swimming upstream is hard.

But Christians have always been called to live differently. When your family protects Sunday morning, when you're willing to have a hard conversation with a coach, when your kids watch you say "we're going to miss that tournament because we don't want to miss our church" -- you are not just making a scheduling decision. You are making a declaration about what your family is built around. And your kids will remember that. Not as a restriction. As a witness.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God." The question was never whether your kids participate. Sports, the arts, academics -- these are good things. The question is what it is all oriented around. When Jesus is genuinely at the center, everything else finds its right place

What Formation Actually Looks Like

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses gives Israel the great commandment -- love God with everything you have -- and then immediately turns to parents and says impress this on your children. Talk about it when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. He wasn't describing a curriculum. He was describing a life. 

Jesus said it plainly: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21). What we invest our time, money, and emotional energy in is what we are actually telling our kids we love. And: "Everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher" (Luke 6:40). Our kids are being formed by us whether we intend it or not.

What they need most is not perfect parents -- genuinely great news for all of us, especially mine. They need to see us actually love Jesus. Not manage a religious routine. Actually love him. Did they watch you open your Bible because you wanted to? Did they hear you talk about your church community like those people are family? Did following Jesus feel like the center of your home, or just one room in it?

Disciples of Jesus are not made in the one hour a week we're in a pew. They are made in the other 167.

It Is Not Too Late

If your kids are still young, you have time. The next few years of consistent, joyful life with Jesus lived out in front of them will do more than you know. Start this Sunday. Let your kids see you choose the church when it costs something. Let them watch you come back when you drift.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs speaks in wisdom principles, not ironclad guarantees -- faithful parents sometimes have prodigal children. But the principle runs deep. The direction you set in the early years has long reach.

And if you're the parent feeling like you've already missed too much -- like the window has closed -- I want to speak directly to that. It is not too late. Nothing done in faithfulness to Jesus is wasted. Not one prayer. Not one honest conversation. Not one Sunday you chose the church even when it was hard.

God is a better parent than any of us and he has not stopped working. He is the father in the parable who sees his son while he is still a long way off and runs. His pursuit of your child does not depend on the quality of your track record. Change course today. Your kids -- whatever age they are -- are still watching. Show them that Jesus is worth reorganizing your life around.

The story is not over.

We make disciples of what we love.

Think about your kid at 30. What do you want them to love most? What do you want at the center of their life? Work backwards from that picture and let it shape the decisions you make today -- the things you protect, the things you let move, the life you build in front of them.

That vision, lived out faithfully in the ordinary moments of family life, is how the next generation comes to love Jesus and his church the way we hope they will.

That's the kind of formation that survives college. That holds when no one is watching. That gets passed on.

Ryan Kearns serves as Executive Pastor at Stonegate Church in Midlothian, Texas.