Latest / Growing Disciples: Faith at Home with Chatham Families / Introducing "Growing Disciples: Faith at Home with Chatham Families" Episode 1
Transcript
- speaker-0: Well, hey there. Welcome to Growing Disciples, Faith at Home with Chatham Families. We're so glad that you found your way here. And this is the very first episode of this podcast brought to you by Chatham Families, a ministry of Chatham Community Church. And our hope and our heart is to encourage families to see the ordinary moments of life, even the messy ones, as opportunities to Point the people they love to Jesus. And we want to help you cultivate faith at home with your kids. speaker-1: Yes, yes, yes, we do. I'm so excited about this. We love messy moments. We love beautiful families. And ⁓ excited about this first episode of this brand new podcast. speaker-0: Okay, so before we jump into anything else, ⁓ let's just take a second and introduce ourselves because if this is the first time you're hearing our voices, you deserve to know who you've invited into your car, your kitchen, or your morning walk, wherever you might be listening. ⁓ and I'll get us started. ⁓ my name is Elizabeth Lindbergh, and I am the wife to Mike and a mom to two amazing adult sons, Matthew and Andrew. And Matthew's engaged to Danielle. And Andrew is married to Rachel, and they have made us grandparents with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl. speaker-1: She's very cute. speaker-0: And and who's my guest here with me today? speaker-1: My name is Alex. I'm blessed beyond measure ⁓ work at Chatham Community Church and to have worked with ⁓ Elizabeth Lindbergh for going on almost three years now as ⁓ Chatham ⁓ Family's director. And so it's been a pleasure to work with Elizabeth, to be a part of this. I ⁓ am only a guest today. I ⁓ but I get to be the the host to ask the questions and ⁓ help introduce the podcast and Elizabeth to ⁓ to our audience. So ⁓ so so glad that Elizabeth, you've done the hard work. I all I had to do is show up and ⁓ you had all the cool gear and all the things. ⁓ but it's really, really great to work with you. It's been a long time. ⁓ I've enjoyed working with you for a long time, and I'm really grateful for the three source. So ⁓ Elizabeth, why don't you get us started? Episode one, why the name? How did you choose the names of the podcast? speaker-0: Well, ⁓ I've lived through the messy, I've lived through the wonderful, the exhausting, and the joyful moments that shape the life of a family. And I've been praying for that God would ⁓ use me as a source of encouragement for moms and dads and grandparents ⁓ who are pointing their families to Jesus. And our hope with this podcast is to offer creative ideas and some practical wisdom that help parents nurture the growing faith of their children at home. speaker-1: So any number of ways you could have encouraged that. Balloon Animals, Skywriting, ⁓ why podcast? Why why do just have to go to that pod? speaker-0: Well, like most people, I love podcasts. They help me learn on the go. I can be out walking the dog or driving to Virginia to see my granddaughter and occasionally cleaning my house and ⁓ can still be learning something meaningful. speaker-1: So what do you listen to? What are the podcasts you love? speaker-0: I listen to a little bit of everything. ⁓ like politics and apologetics, the news, family life, ⁓ interviews with authors of books that I'm reading, things about new technologies like AI, and ⁓ so often I'm thinking, This is so awesome. This is gold. How can I share it with some people? How can I share it with families in our community? And ⁓ and you notice that we were having a conversation and you encouraged me to give this a try, to start a podcast. And ⁓ and so we talked about it and we thought we could design it specifically with our families at Chatham Community Church in mind. Parents, grandparents, and anyone who loves kids and wants to influence them for Jesus. speaker-1: So one of things I love about working with Elizabeth and worth working with her is ⁓ her passion for like kids, families, watching kids grow. So why like watch you share a little bit of your heart? Like I'd love would hear your heart and your passion for seeing kids know Jesus and equipping parents and grandparents to and and ⁓ invested adults to be a part of their lives as well. So tell us little about the the heart behind all this. speaker-0: Yeah, so I grew up going to church, ⁓ but I and I knew all the rules that I was supposed to follow, but I didn't have the relationship with Jesus. And but when I was a young mom, that's when I finally understood the gospel and accepted Jesus' free gift of salvation. And I began praying and reading his word and realized how much I didn't know, especially about raising two sons to know and follow Jesus. And so I remember asking the Lord Please bring some women into my life that could model this to me. What does it look like to be a godly wife and mother? And he was so faithful and generous. And he surrounded me with these fantastic women who had children a little bit older than mine, so they could model to me ⁓ what this journey could look like. And they guided me, they prayed for me. ⁓ and then and also they modeled for me what it looked like to be that godly wife and mother, not just on Sundays, but throughout the week in the everyday moments of life that are hard, that are wonderful. ⁓ and I'm just forever grateful for them. And in sort of praying about this podcast leading up to this this moment, I remember reading in Acts 14, and I shared this with you about how Paul and Barnabas, they it says that they strengthen the believers and encourage them to continue in their faith, even in the midst of that crazy chaotic culture that they lived in. And so that's my prayer for this podcast. ⁓ that it would strengthen and encourage those who listen. speaker-1: Love it. So if anyone is out there listening to podcasts and saying, I'm not sure this podcast is for me. Who is the podcast for? speaker-0: It's for parents. It's for grandparents. It's for aunts, uncles, neighbors, anybody that wants to invest in the life of someone in the next generation, ⁓ to point them to follow Jesus. speaker-1: So almost anybody basically is what you're saying. No one's your pre self is qualified. That's right. You're all invited. And what's a winner here ⁓ at Shadow Free Church, Channel Families. Love us in All right. So ⁓ what can listeners expect? Kind of what what what's coming down the pike? What's what what's the program gonna look like? speaker-0: That's right. Right. So we're ⁓ the plan right now is to release two episodes a month and we will be ⁓ talking about ⁓ book recommendations for folks for parents. We'll ⁓ have discussions about preparing your kids for baptism or communion. We're gonna be talking to ministry leaders ⁓ about the work that they do to serve your families week in and week out. ⁓ we'll also address challenges about like screens and technology and now AI. There's some really great conversations that are out there and I'm happy to ⁓ synthesize those and have shorter conversations for you to, you know, grab this information in a shorter platform. ⁓ yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, one the things I love about Elizabeth, Elizabeth is a total learner. She's always learning things. And there's always questions of like, she hears a great podcast, has a good book, and the question of like how can I get this in the hands of f our families, our parents, our grandparents who are wrestling with these issues and don't have always don't have time to find resources. So Elizabeth works hard so you don't have to people. So ⁓ I will say that Elizabeth ⁓ is a great she's a great researcher, she's great at finding resources, she loves learning. And I ⁓ one of the things I'm really looking forward to listening to this podcast is listening to her to distill ⁓ someone's book or someone's podcast into something that will be like a ⁓ a executive summary, a short version of it that they could be a good teaser to say, ⁓ that's something I need to go I need to go read that book. I should go listen to the full podcast or whatever. So you're gonna get like some of the best of from Elizabeth's research. This would be so, so great. It's such a resource. And ⁓ also you're gonna hear from us some other folks as well. So as you think about sort of as we kind of come to a close here, ⁓ what would you love for listeners to take away from episode one? speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ a feature of this podcast, like Alex was saying, is ⁓ you we're gonna be sharing with ⁓ with parents about what their kids are gonna be learning in Chatham Kids and in Mosaic student ministry. And so in coming episodes, we'll be talking to those ministry leaders. And one resource that I wanted to highlight for to for for this episode is the Chatham Kids curriculum has a parent devotional. This includes the lesson that the kids are gonna be learning each week. It offers, so it shows the parent what scripture passages the kids are gonna be in. in during Chatham Kids. It gives them a little prayer prompt and then ⁓ some questions about how the how the parent could apply that message to their lives during the week and perhaps then of course having that those conversations with their kids. So it helps, you know, parents are in church, the kids are learning great stuff in in Chatham Kids. And then but on the drive home or at lunch or throughout the week, it it's a tool that parents can then use to just have those great conversations to help drive home the points that the kids are learning ⁓ while they're in Chatham Kids. And so I we'll have a link to that parent devotional in the show notes. We'll also publish it in the family ministries newsletter, which comes out in the beginning of each month. And if you don't yet receive that, we'll have a link for you to subscribe to that also in the show notes. speaker-1: Man, I do think I'm super excited about that resource of parents knowing about it. I have to think about how many parents, grandparents that I love, like love the Lord and love their kids and aren't quite sure how to start the conversation. Right. Like and and just needing some prompts, some guides. And so if you if you ever find yourself in that space, or if it's not something you've ever explored before, like that, you know, I haven't ever figured out how to talk to my kids about faith or whatever, maybe it feels new to you to talk about it out loud or well, those sort things. Like those kinds of ⁓ resources can be super helpful. For parents, grandparents, and invested adults to be able to come alongside a kid and say, Hey, what are you learning? And how can we talk about it? And and and you know, it it's like for so many of us, being able to talk about it helps it to kind of be even more integrated for the kids as well as for the adults to be able to have this conversation. So mm-hmm. ⁓ so hey, ⁓ as we wrap up, ⁓ any any any closing words here ⁓ for us beside well, actually I want to say as we've already said this podcast is for everyone. So the closing word is like and subscribe and share. That's what they and that's what the that's what they all say. It helps with the algorithm. the mystery of the algorithm, who knows how the mysterious algorithm works. All I know is if you like, subscribe, and share, then it pops up in your feed, no matter where you go. ⁓ it'll it'll pop off every couple of weeks and you won't miss an episode, all the sort of things. It also helps other people to find it. So ⁓ like, subscribe share. That's step number one. ⁓ Elizabeth Will's forgot. speaker-0: Yeah, and if there's a topic that you really would love for us to to cover, ⁓ by all means, you can reach us at families at chatum church dot org. I'll also put that ⁓ email address in the show notes because if you're driving, we don't want you taking out a pen and writing that down. No. But it is families at chatamturish.org. Kinda easy to memorize, but we we'll do the work for ya. speaker-1: Hey, I'm super excited about this. It's gonna be ⁓ such a great gift to our community. Thanks for doing all the work to get together. Can't wait to hear you, other guests, more weren't worshipping people than me, talking to you about kids and family stuff. And ⁓ my prayer for this whole enterprise is that it's a blessing to families, moms, dads, grandparents, and using adults by prayer, hoping that this is a really good resource for working system in beautiful ways. speaker-0: Well, thanks for joining us for this first episode of Growing Disciples. And until next time, may the Lord strengthen you as you nurture thee that follow.