Jay’s Blog – Fail Out Loud

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I am a failure. 

I say this because I think that, a lot of times, people believe that those of us who are in “professional ministry” are perfect people with perfect kids.  I don’t think that if you actually pressed people, they would really say that. Still, sometimes in the midst of our own failures, we’re intimidated by the success we perceive, real or imagined, in others (insert the name of your favorite social media influencer here).  If, however, you are tempted in your weaker moments to believe that about me, let me set the record straight. 

I was talking with my wife this morning about the perspective older children bring. When we’re young, we tend to believe either that our children aren’t capable of great failure, of fleeing from the Lord, or that we can parent that tendency out of them. As she listened to a podcast with a famous pastor and his wife, who were rejoicing that their 20-something child had gone astray and recently returned to the Lord, our mutual response at this stage in life is, “That could still totally happen to us, or to our kids.” We see our children through the lens of our own parenting failures: the things we flat-out did wrong, the things we could have done better, and the things we didn’t do. 

I thought I’d share a few of our parenting failures with you, not necessarily because I think you’ll learn from them and do it differently. After all, we rarely learn from other people’s failures. I’m sharing them mostly to make a bigger point later, and so you can recognize them if you find yourself guilty of them. 

First, I think we were too strict with our kids early on. When we were young parents, our church generation watched a video series called “Growing Kids God’s Way” by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo. As I remember it, the focus was on securing first-time obedience from one’s children—the idea that, if we can get them to be obedient the first time we ask them to do something, they’ll be obedient to God whenever and wherever he calls them, as well (not to mention making our lives easier in the process). 

I think the principles the Ezzos laid down were basically biblically based and strong. Like so many other things, though, it’s what we did with it that was a little over the top. We felt as though if we weren’t getting first-time obedience, we were bad parents, and so we really mounted up on it, which made us more controlling and authoritarian than we should have been, in a way that didn’t reflect the Fatherheart of God (which, incidentally, is a critical goal of parenting—to point them to the Lord).  

Over time, we backed off a little, realizing that we were provoking or exasperating them with our demands, which the Bible also commands us not to do (Eph. 6:4). Instead, we became more authoritative than authoritarian—still maintaining high expectations, which we tried to tie to reasons given beyond that “we were the parents,” reasons reflecting the nature and character of God as revealed in Scripture, coupled with emotional warmth and expressions of love. 

This shortfall in our lives ties into another area where we failed: listening too much to the latest parenting trends. These days there seem to be lots of influencers out there, even Christian influencers, who have young kids and dispense advice that, if you listen closely enough, lacks humility and appears to have all the answers but not all the data. My kids are in their 20s. I fully admit that I know nothing about having grandkids (except from what my friends tell me) or having children older than 30. I really still have limited knowledge about teenagers, and I’ve been helping families raise them for 25 years. If anyone seems to indicate they have it all down, they’re selling something. 

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t listen to parenting advice and wisdom; it’s actually biblical to do so (Titus 2). But no one should build their parenting philosophy around an earthly guru, and everyone should filter any counsel they receive (including, and maybe especially what I’m saying right now) through God’s Word and the wisdom the Holy Spirit brings. We could have avoided some mistakes if we had done that more. We had to go back on some of the parenting advice we received, even from people we really admired and who were our friends, because it either didn’t work for our children and our family or we later disagreed with it as we reflected on it. 

Another parenting fail was not seeking forgiveness from our children early enough. Early on, we subconsciously thought being good parents meant putting on a front that we knew what we were doing, even when we didn’t, and even when we knew we were getting it wrong. But our kids knew, and all we did was out ourselves as frauds. On some level, we were probably afraid to ask our kids for forgiveness, fearing they would see it as a sign of weakness, that we weren’t good enough to be their parents. 

Then God was gracious and revealed to us through His Word and Spirit that most of what we were doing was teaching not through our words, but through our actions. By seeking forgiveness when we were wrong (and, as I’ve now established, it was often), we modeled the gospel much more powerfully and effectively than we ever could have by reciting the Four Spiritual Laws every night (not that you can’t do that, too). Our kids were remarkably kind to forgive, and it taught them to seek forgiveness, too. As we became more transparent about our failures, we discovered that we could learn from them and that God was in a continuous process of shaping, growing, and transforming us into something greater than we once were. These interactions developed a growth mindset in our kids, one that carries over to this day. We just wish we had started sooner. 

We obviously gave them phones too soon. I don’t know a parent who has already given a kid a phone who doesn’t think they should have waited longer. If you ask our kids, they still felt as though they were the last ones to get them, and ours were on the front end of digital phones and social media, so we didn’t understand the toxicity to the same degree we do now. But I would still have waited until their first year of high school and tried to convince my middle-school parent peers to join me. 

Finally, we didn’t pray enough (or I didn’t; I can’t speak for Ashley). As I said before, when they were kids, preadolescents, and teens, I still had the illusion of control—that the things I did as a parent could effectuate a certain outcome in my children. That was an illusion. We can certainly hinder them by getting in God’s way, trying to manipulate outcomes and circumstances, and undermining His work, or we can wisely coach and direct them through God’s work in the circumstances of life, but controlling outcomes is a fantasy. I wish I had just surrendered them to the Lord and prayed more back then, like I try to do now. 

We made a lot of mistakes, but here’s the thing: I have no regrets. We have great kids who are struggling to live out real, adult lives, with real, adult problems, with a real, adult faith. As it turns out, God’s grace covered it all. That’s the bigger point. When we walk into parenting with lots of prayer, pressing into the Lord, and with a lot of intentionality, not parenting by default, God does amazing things in their lives. Intentionality is different than control, because intentionality is humble. It says, “I’m going to try the best I can with the wisdom you gave me, Lord, and I don’t control the outcome — You do.”  

We parent intentionally, and we mess up, and we learn from our mistakes, and we get out of God’s way, and we fail forward, and we seek forgiveness, and we point our kids to Jesus. This is gospel parenting.

Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.