Packing for Uni

Change is the big theme of our house right now. Not only is it just seven days before Kieran begins his 12-month trip to Uganda, but Becky is now busy preparing for Uni (Nottingham). Our spare bedroom is filling up with boxes and Bex has been busy online ordering a drawing board, portfolio and more pencils and pens than it seems possible to use in three years.

So Liz and I are rushing headlong towards that status of 'empty nesters' at the relatively young age of our mid-40s.

It's ironic that for almost twenty years we've been working towards the day that Becky and Kieran can achieve some level of independence - but that now that day is rapidly approaching, the prospect of it is more difficult to come to terms with (particularly compared with say in the middle of night when trying to console a teething three year old to sleep).

The skill of parenting (and it certainly is a skill) is something that we assume exists inately within everyone. Yet when things go wrong society is quick to condemn the inadequate, less than successful parent and reluctant to provide the kind of support, encouragement and learning opportunities that all parents could benefit from.

I am convinced that parenting is an area of massive potential for the church. Given our established role in baptisms, weddings and funerals, extending an interest into the area of parenting seems a natural next step. And surely our wealth of church related schools provides an immediate community of parents to tap into?

For me the Christian model of parenting is something about unconditional love. That's not the same as uncritical love of course, or laissez faire, everything is acceptable kind of love.

Unconditional love is about loving without judging, loving when love might seem far from deserving and loving with a longer timescale in mind - a more divine timescale perhaps - than any child or young adult can grasp. It's the kind of love that seeps through generations and continues to be felt despite the apparently unbridgeable divide of life and death itself.

It's the kind of love that equips youngsters to go off and discover things for themselves and encourages them to then share that same understanding of love with others. Yet it remains the kind of love that is still there at the end of the phone to be called upon whenever. It's the kind of love that rejoices in saying 'yes' and imparts enough wisdom for youngsters to discover how to say 'no' for themselves.

That kind of love is the kind that I was blessed with and continue to experience from my own family. And hopefully it is the kind of love that Becky and Kieran have embraced without, as yet, fully understanding its depths.

It is a deeply Christ-like love, at times sacrificial but more often simply selfless in its desire to want the very best for another.

The church needs to recognise with urgency just how central parenting is to the mission of God. As the context in which love is so frequently expressed and explored, parenting is also the context in which the nature of God is most frequently revealed and experienced.

In ignoring the importance of parenting, are we not making the missionary task of the church infinitely more difficult?