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Passing It On

Passing It On

How to Nurture Your Children's Faith Season by Season  

by Kara Lassen Oliver
eBook
Children Legacy Spiritual Practice

Give your children the greatest gift of all—pass on your faith.

In Passing It On, Kara Lassen Oliver provides a practical guide to help parents, grandparents, and other concerned adults nurture their children's faith. For four weeks at a time, she offers easy-to-follow suggestions for families during the seasons of Advent, Lent, summer, and back to school.

This book features

  • plans for weekly Family Gatherings with age-appropriate activities
  • symbols to remind family members of the week's spiritual emphasis
  • a suggested daily practice and prayer for each week
  • a Leader's Guide for parent groups studying this book together

The most valuable legacy we can pass to our children, grandchildren, and other children is a spiritual heritage. Kara Oliver shows us how to do just that.

Kara Lassen Oliver is executive director of The Upper Room Center for Christian Spiritual Formation. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Oliver and her family (husband, Jeff, and children, Claire Marin and Carter) spent two years in Malawi, Africa, as Volunteers in Mission. Oliver is the author of Passing It On: How to Nurture Your Child's Faith Season by Season and the compiler of Stepping Out on Your Own: Devotions for High School Graduates and Meeting the Messiah: Scriptures for the Advent Season. Oliver has served Discipleship Resources International, part of Discipleship Ministries, as director of publishing initiatives in the Central Conferences. She spent several years as a freelance editor and writer and was youth minister at Belmont United Methodist Church in Nashville from 2003?2006. She holds a master of divinity from Vanderbilt Divinity School and a bachelor of arts in religious studies from Butler University.


Reviews

Compassionate, wise, and funny, Kara Lassen Oliver is a gracious guide for families who want to create space for faith nurture, even those who aren't sure where to begin. I have been using this resource with my own three children—who are not the type to sit quietly and receive instruction!—and the grace-filled times we are sharing around our candle feel holy and healing. Passing It On will give parents the tools they long for to help their children connect with the God who loves them.
—The Rev. Elise Erikson Barrett
United Methodist pastor, mother, and author of What Was Lost: A Christian Journey through Miscarriage

In a time when families are often pulled in different directions and during an age when the family dinner table seems to fade into the background gathering dust, Passing It On: How to Nurture Your Children’s Faith Season by Season gives voice to God's call for us to live in community with one another—gathering together to hear and reflect on the stories of the Christian faith. This book provides a tool for families as they seek ways to pass on the faith from generation to generation. With intentional and faithful discipline, Oliver provides a means for bringing the family back together. Gathered together, families are invited to live into the seasons of the Christian year, pay attention to God's presence in their lives, and discuss and share their experiences with the Holy. Passing It On provides a helpful and tangible way for families to join each other on the journey, nurturing each other in the Christian faith.
—Rev. Tanya Marie Eustace, PhD
Director of Children and Intergenerational Ministries
Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church

Seek intention in a world of divided attention! While the marketplace skips ahead, selling next season's wares before this one even starts, this book will help families live more deeply by practicing presence in the present moment. Whatever your family looks like, wherever you live, Passing It On makes room for you to foster and record your shared wisdom intergenerationally. There is room here for preschoolers, grandparents, teens, stepparents, siblings, family members close at hand, and a world of beauty yearning to be engaged. As a practical theologian, I thank Oliver for this invitation into practicing the formation that is already happening with more engagement, encouragement, and delight.
—Melinda McGarrah Sharp, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology and Ethics
Phillips Theological Seminary, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Author of Misunderstanding Stories: Toward a Postcolonial Pastoral Theology

Kara Lassen Oliver has offered us an amazing guide that allows families to grow in faith together throughout the calendar and Christian year. Drawing from ancient patterns of prayer, scripture, and a child’s need for ritual, this resource will strengthen the connection between parents, children, and God.
—Melanie C. Gordon
Director of Ministry with Children
Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church


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