PT:Why do you think the role of the family is central to our lives, but also to society as a whole?
RP: Family is the place where we get our basic socialisation, our basic education. There have been several experiments to try something else, that the state could take that place. When I began 26 years ago, people used to laugh at me on the radio and television. That argument is gone now. We know how vital the family is. The sheer economic cost of trying to do what we do in the family is just mind boggling. One psychologist said that it’s where we get our sense of connectedness from, our sense of roots. That’s why at our parenting events we talk about traditions and rituals.
When I speak to people who have had wonderfully sweet lives, they often begin with the words, ‘We always did this’, ‘We always did this at Christmas’, or ‘We always did this on Saturday nights’. I was speaking recently at a friend’s funeral and I knew him as a friend, but I wanted to know him as a dad. So, I went to speak to his adult daughters - they were almost 30. I asked them to tell me about their dad. They said: ‘He was crazy. Every Saturday night he insisted on doing the cooking! He wasn’t much of a cook, but he’d put a silly apron on and speak in a French voice. He’d block himself in the kitchen and we’d ask through the keyhole what we were having. He’d always reply, “Edna never tells!” We could never work out why the French chef was called Edna, but some Saturday nights we’d smell smoke. Then we’d hear the car start and for that night at least we knew it was going to be fish and chips!’ So when I asked what made their family life sweet, they told me about a silly apron, a French chef called Edna and they began with the words, ‘We always’.
Family says: ‘These are our values. These are our traditions. This is the way we do things.’ So whatever your values are, take time to put them into your children’s lives. Family is vital. There is no substitute for it; it’s the foundation of cultures.
PT:What is the remit of Care for the Family’s work? What do you do?
RP: Marriage, parenting and bereavement. We want to help people in relationships to stay together. One of our most exacting courses, which we’ve got some government funding for, is called ‘Let’s stick together’. It’s a onehour relationship course and we deliver it in post-natal classes. A lot of couples break up within a couple of years of the birth of a first child, because it’s such a traumatic experience. It’s only an hour, but you can tell them what’s coming down the road. You can tell them that this little one will put a bit of a strain on their relationship, and that their sex life might not be so great for a while. Sometimes you have to go a bit easy on each other and need to watch the way you speak to each other.
We work in parenting, so if you have two kids, you will almost certainly have chalk and cheese… one will be compliant and the other will wake up every day with the same prayer on its lips, ‘Dear God, help me drive my mother crazy today!’ That is practically universal law. You sometimes meet a family with three perfect kids, but you don’t want to go on holiday with them! Even so, I would advise them not to think of having a fourth! We work in the area of parenting.
PT:You wrote How to get you kids through Church, without them ending up hating God. Was that from personal experience? What were you trying to share through that?
RP: I wrote a book about 12 years ago called Bringing home the prodigals. That got me all over the world talking to people about kids who had walked away from faith. I discovered that when I spoke to many of those young people they hadn’t walked away from God at all, but from something else. What was that something?
I believe in the local church and I’m at a local church almost every Sunday, but many of them found their experience of church unhelpful, to say the least. Many of them talk of very judgemental things, or people saying, ‘You could never be a follower of Jesus if you’ve got a tattoo or you smoke.’
I found many of them had never been prepared in life for three big disappointments that will hit every follower of Jesus. There will be disappointments with others: people will let you down. The youth leader you look up to and think is Mother Teresa is going to let you down one day. Who’s going to get us ready for that day, when our faith is not in them but in God? There’s also disappointment with themselves. I’ve said to my kids: ‘No matter what you do, you can always come home. I want you to be good, I want you to have high standards, but whatever you do, you can always come home.’ I found that many young people felt that there was no way back because of things they had done. Nobody got them ready for disappointment with themselves. And thirdly, hardest of all, nobody got them ready for disappointment with God. They only heard sermons that were positive and success-orientated, and they were encouraged to pray for their friend who had cancer when she was 14, and their friend was made well and it was wonderful that God had answered their prayers. But, a year later, some of them cried at gravesides and nobody got them ready for that. And that’s a mistake. The old prophet said, ‘Though the fig tree may not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vine, still I will rejoice.’
If we’re going to get kids in the long haul then we’ve got to learn to accept them for who they are. People used to say about my daughter, ‘She’s such a spiritual young woman.’ When she was 14 she would sit in church taking notes when the preacher was speaking. Even I was ashamed! But we’ve often confused spirituality with personality. Lloyd (my son) couldn’t’ sit still, but Lloyd couldn’t sit still in Geography either. He didn’t want to read or sing lots of songs, but Lloyd would buy The Big Issue, he was a great friend, he did many of the things that Jesus loved. But it’s so easy for a kid like that to be made to feel rubbish and we’ve done that. So, that book was about getting them ready for things to hit them in life. What attitudes could we have to make it harder for them to walk away, and if they did, easier to come back?
There is no substitute for family; it’s the foundation of cultures
PT:How can the Church change what we’re doing in order to grow a more resilient faith in our young people and children?
RP: I think we can make people belong – all kinds of people. It’s easy to walk away from an institution; it’s harder to walk away from a family. When I was touring round the world for Bringing home the prodigals, I came across some incredible stories. There was one story of a Hell’s Angel who was dared to go to church by his friends. He was 26 with long greasy hair, and enough iron in his face to open a small hardware shop! On his knuckles he had very rude words - that was his statement to the world. Someone dared him to go to church and he went and sat on the front row. Unfortunately for him, that church allocates certain seats to certain people who welcome. He’d sat himself in Marge Staples’ area. Marge is almost 90 and she sees him and says: ‘Oh young man, it’s so lovely to see you. Come here and let me hug you!’ And as she’s hugging him, she feels the metal, and then she feels something else - he’s crying. He doesn’t stop crying until the preacher finishes, and he became a Christian that day. Six weeks later a consultant plastic surgeon gave him a skin graft to remove the rude tattoos. When they baptised him the wounds still hadn’t healed, and he had to wear plastic bags over his hands tied with rubber bands as he went under the water!
I want the spirit of Marge Staples. I want to say to kids on the edge that they are accepted and that God looks at the heart. I want them to feel that they belong.
PT:A lot of churches do all-age worship and try to bring everyone together to foster this sense of family, but sometimes it can be a service that everyone hates! Have you had experience of family services? How can we make it work?
RP: You’ve hit the nail on the head! All I know is that in the life of every local church there has to be some time where everybody feels part of it. Some occasions where we are together with all the things that drive us crazy, the babies in the front row yelling and screaming… it drives preachers crazy! They spend eight hours preparing a sermon and as they’re giving it, the kids are going crazy! In a sense, we have to begin to create this sense of family, this sense of belonging. The truth is that all kinds of people feel isolated in church. Those with young families often feel isolated: they’re in for a bit and then they have to go out to the crèche. The elderly sometimes feel disenfranchised because they’re not entirely sure what’s going on. Single people sometimes feel disenfranchised because it’s so familyorientated. Our first aim ought to be not programmes but love. The honest truth is that where you have churches that genuinely care and genuinely love, the gizmos don’t matter.
The phone went at home a couple of years ago and when my wife Diane answered it, it was a wrong number. But then she spoke for about five minutes. Afterwards she told me that the woman on the end of the phone said: ‘My dear, please don’t go. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in a week.’ Diane said to an old lady a couple of years ago, ‘Where are you going tonight Doris?’ Doris replied, ‘I’m going ballroom dancing.’ Diane said, ‘Oh, do you like dancing?’ and Doris said, ‘No my dear, but since my husband died it’s the only time of the week when anybody touches me.’ There’s such loneliness. And as churches, whether it’s with families, older people, single people or those with disabilities, we somehow have to make people feel that this is family, and that they belong.
Youth and children’s leaders can often get a hard time from parents in church. We give them a hard time because we want them to do in one night a week what we’ve not managed to do in 16 years
PT:What can families do to encourage faith in the lives of their children and young people?
RP: Youth and children’s leaders can often get a hard time from parents in church. We give them a hard time because we want them to do in one night a week what we’ve not managed to do in 16 years. The primary thing is when they are at home. That’s our main task. They are our responsibility as parents.
It’s been suggested that there are four stages of faith in a child’s spiritual development. Experienced faith, this is when they’re small. The second stage is affiliated faith, and this is where the children’s or youth group is very important, being part of a peer group. Thirdly, searching faith is when they start doubting things that they thought before. It’s not a bad thing, let them do it. Fourthly is owned faith - it has to be theirs.
Experienced faith is when they are very small. The fascinating thing about this stage is that it’s not that they’re not listening, it’s that not a word is lost. The way we deal with a naughty child in the Sunday School class, the prayers we say with them - take every opportunity to put things into your kid’s lives. My daughter has two little ones and eight weeks ago, she went into hospital for a routine operation and it went wrong. Over the next two weeks she had major surgery, a suspected heart attack and her husband Paul was looking after the kids. My wife was in a hospital having another operation. Some nights I’d just sit with Katie (my daughter). She had tubes in every part of her body and we thought we were going to lose her at one stage. I’d just sit with her and hold her hand. One night she’d come up from one of the big operations and she was in the high dependency ward. She said to the nurse, ‘Could I have a minute with my dad and my husband?’ She asked us to pray and I held her hand and I said a little prayer that we used to sing every night when she was a little girl of four years-old: ‘Lord keep us safe this night, secure from all our fears. May angels guard us while we sleep, until morning light appears.’ Those traditions, those prayers, those things that you put in them when they are little help them in life. We have to do that. We have to spend time doing that as parents. They have to catch us praying too. They have to hear us say sorry to others. They have to see how we handle failure. We don’t have to be perfect parents, but they have to see that it matters to us.
For more information about Rob and Care for the Family, visit careforthefamily.org.uk
