Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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You’ve probably heard it said that it takes a village to raise a child. Parenting is so difficult, so complex, so relentless, that it is more than any two people can successfully handle. Children thrive under the responsibility of loving parents but also under the watchful eye of a caring community. I have always believed in the wisdom of this proverb, but I’ve come to appreciate it even more as my kids grow older. And as I’ve come to appreciate …
We did it! Aileen and I successfully got one of our children through childhood and into adulthood. Today Nick, our oldest, celebrates his eighteenth birthday. He is now an adult, and a pretty good one, too. Pretty good? Nah, far better than that. He’s amazing. He is intelligent and witty and mature and well-read and interested and engaging and godly. We are immensely proud of him and confident that he will do well in life. We know there’s lots of …
As Christian parents it is our great desire that our children come to know the Lord. For them to know the Lord, they need to learn how to encounter him in his word and to speak to him in prayer. From a young age we are trying to instill in them this habit of reading the Bible and praying. Over time we want them to pick up this habit on their own. Today I want to tell you about a …
Welcome to another edition of 3 Minute Thursdays, where, in three minutes or less, I try to say something useful, maybe even helpful, about a subject that’s of interest to people like you and me. Today I want to talk about our kids and their cellphones. Really, I want to talk about when should we as parents get our children their first smartphone. (Here’s the Circle device I reference.) Transcript Welcome to another edition of 3 Minute Thursdays, where, in …
If the millennial generation has experienced such ease and privilege, why are so many adrift and purposeless? In this video I ponder the making of a miserable millennial. As always, it’s available on YouTube and Facebook or, if you prefer to read about it, there’s a transcript as well. Enjoy! Transcription We hear a lot about the millennials today, don’t we? Millennials are that generation born somewhere between the early eighties and around the year two thousand, which means they’re …
Many years ago Aileen and I made a decision for our family, little knowing how that decision would end up reverberating around the world. We decided not to have our kids participate in sleepovers. Here’s why, many years later, my family still doesn’t do sleepovers. It’s available in YouTube and Facebook formats and, as always, there’s a transcript for the readers. Note that the videos also now feature captioning. Rush Transcript A few years ago Aileen and I made a …
It may not be the key New Testament passage on parenting, but it’s definitely one of the most important: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” In this video I talk about it and warn how we, as parents, can provoke our children to anger. Transcript It may not be the key parenting passage in the New Testament but it’s certainly one of the most important. Ephesians …
It used to be so straightforward. We got married, then we had children. It’s just what we did. But then something changed, so that today both marriage and having children have become optional, matters of preference. Countless millions are choosing to delay marriage or take a pass on it altogether. Many of those who choose to marry decide not to have children at all. In the face of these new realities we do well to ask: What’s the purpose of …
There are few roles in which we feel deeper inadequacy than our role as fathers. What suits us to the task of raising little people? What assurance can we have that we are doing it well? What will our children someday say of us? These are big and perplexing questions, so it is little wonder that church bulletin boards are covered with posters for parenting seminars and library shelves are groaning under the weight of parenting books. One study found …
Christians have an interesting relationship with culture. Culture is a word we love to use, but one we rarely pause to define. We speak of culture’s dangerous encroachment on the church, of our need to avoid it, engage it, or redeem it. But what is this culture thing anyway? It happens to be the subject of an excellent new book by John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle. A Practical Guide to Culture is meant to help those who are helping the …