How to Lead Your Family Spiritually Without Preaching
When we talk about how to lead your family spiritually, it’s easy to picture a traditional family sitting around the kitchen table. Dad has the Bible open, Mom is beside him, and the kids are listening while he leads family devotions.
That’s a good picture, but it’s not a picture of every family.
Some children live with both parents, while others live with Mom or Dad. Some are growing up with grandparents, stepparents, or other relatives. Blended families are common, and many children divide their time between two homes. Sometimes a parent has died. In other cases, Mom or Dad is still alive but has chosen not to be very involved.
I know something about several of those situations.
My father died when I was four years old, and my mother never remarried. I grew up in a single-parent household without a dad. Years later, I became a single parent myself. I was 22 when my wife left me for another man, and I received full-time custody of my son. Suddenly, I wasn’t studying single parenthood from a book. I was living it.
Then I met Wendy, who was also a single parent. When we eventually married, we blended our families together while dealing with the reality that neither of our children’s other biological parents was very involved in their lives.
That leaves scars.
I sometimes wonder which is harder: growing up without a mother or father because they died, or growing up knowing your mother or father is still alive but doesn’t seem particularly interested in being part of your life. I don’t know the answer, but I do know that when we talk about spiritually leading our families, we need to talk about families as they actually exist.
Start With Whoever God Has Put in Front of You
This entire Start at Home series has been built around a simple idea: if we want to change the world, we need to stop looking first toward Washington, our culture, or somebody else. Change begins with us, and then it moves outward to the people God has placed closest to us.
Sometimes that’s your spouse and children. It might also be your grandchildren, stepchildren, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, or parents. Maybe you’re the only Christian in your household.
Your family may not look like the family in the church brochure, and that’s okay. The important question isn’t whether your family fits a particular picture.
What are you doing with the people God has put in front of you?
God’s Word Has to Be in You First
One of the foundational passages about teaching faith within the family is found in Deuteronomy:
“These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” — Deuteronomy 6:6–7 (CSB)
We usually focus on the second part: “Repeat them to your children.” But look at what comes first: “These words…are to be in your heart.”
Before God’s Word is taught to the next generation, it needs to be changing us.
That’s why this post comes where it does in the Start at Home series. We’ve spent the last several posts talking about putting God at the center of our lives, reading His Word, praying to our Heavenly Father, and surrendering ourselves to His authority.
Now we take that home.
If God’s Word isn’t changing the way I live, I’m going to have a difficult time convincing my family that it should change the way they live.
Your Family Is Already Listening to Your Sermon
You may never stand behind a pulpit, but you’re preaching a sermon to your family every day because they’re watching how you live.
They notice how you treat your spouse and hear how you talk about other people. Your family sees what happens when you’re angry, disappointed, tired, or under pressure. They know what you spend your money on, what consumes your time, and whether Sunday morning Christianity has anything to do with Monday morning life.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t verbally teach our families about God. Deuteronomy specifically tells us to talk about His Word. Spiritual leadership, however, is much bigger than giving your children a Bible lesson.
Your family will learn a great deal about what you really believe by watching how you live.
If you tell your children to trust God but panic every time something goes wrong, they’ll notice. Teach forgiveness while carrying grudges for years, and they’ll notice that too. If you say church matters but everything else routinely takes priority over gathering with God’s people, you’re teaching them something about church whether you realize it or not.
On the other hand, your family also notices when you open your Bible because you need wisdom, pray because you don’t know what to do, give generously because someone needs help, or forgive someone who hurt you. They’re watching when you surrender something to God that you’d rather control yourself.
All of that is spiritual leadership.
Spiritual Leadership Isn’t Constant Preaching
This is what I mean by “without preaching.” I don’t mean that we shouldn’t teach our families Scripture or talk about Jesus. We absolutely should.
What I mean is that every conversation doesn’t need to become a sermon.
Imagine your teenager comes home upset about something that happened at school. You could immediately launch into a 20-minute Bible lesson about trusting God, and maybe that’s what they need. Then again, maybe they need you to sit down, listen, ask some questions, put an arm around them, and eventually say, “Why don’t we pray about this together?”
You just taught them something about prayer without preaching a sermon about prayer.
The same thing happens when you’re wrong and say, “I shouldn’t have said that. I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” In that moment, you’ve demonstrated repentance, humility, grace, and forgiveness without announcing a lesson on any of them.
Our faith should become part of the normal rhythm of family life. That’s exactly what Deuteronomy describes: talk about God’s truth when you’re sitting at home, traveling down the road, going to bed, and getting up in the morning.
In other words, God shouldn’t be a subject we only discuss at church.
Train Them in the Way They Should Go
Proverbs gives parents another familiar instruction:
“Start a youth out on his way; even when he grows old he will not depart from it.” — Proverbs 22:6 (CSB)
Many of us know this verse as, “Train up a child in the way he should go.” It’s an important principle, but I think we need to be careful with what we make it mean.
Proverbs gives us wisdom for living. We shouldn’t turn this verse into an unconditional promise that says, “If you raise your children correctly, they are guaranteed to follow Christ for the rest of their lives.”
Children grow up and eventually make their own decisions. We can teach them God’s Word, take them to church, pray with them, demonstrate our faith, love them, discipline them, answer their questions, and point them toward Christ.
But there is something we cannot do: we cannot choose Christ for them.
No parent can repent for a child, believe for a child, or surrender that child’s life to Jesus. Eventually, each person has to make that decision.
I understand that intellectually.
Emotionally, it’s much harder.
There Isn’t a Day I Don’t Wonder What I Did Wrong
Wendy and I raised our children to know God. They went to church, heard Scripture, saw us pray, and watched us try to live our faith in front of them.
Were we perfect? Not even close.
There are things I would do differently if I could go back, and I imagine every parent who has raised children could make that list.
Today, neither of my children is regularly attending church. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t wonder, “What did I do wrong as their dad?”
That’s hard for me to write because I love my children, and Wendy loved them. More importantly, I want them to know and love the God whose love Wendy and I tried to demonstrate to them.
I know what Scripture teaches about personal responsibility, and my children are adults who make their own choices. My mind understands that truth, but some days my soul has a much harder time accepting it.
Parents Carry Guilt They Were Never Meant to Carry
I don’t think I’m the only parent who struggles with this.
Maybe your child grew up in church and walked away. Perhaps they’re angry with God, claim they no longer believe any of it, or are living in a way you know conflicts with Scripture.
So you replay their childhood and start asking yourself questions. Was I too strict? Was I not strict enough? Did I work too much? Should we have prayed together more? Did they see too much hypocrisy in me? Did I fail them spiritually?
There may be legitimate things God brings to mind that require repentance. If you sinned against your children, admit it. When an apology is needed, give it. If there’s something you can repair, try to repair it.
But there is a difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction moves us toward repentance and restoration, while condemnation keeps whispering, “Your child isn’t following God because you failed.”
That’s exactly the kind of accusation Satan loves to use. A parent can spend decades carrying responsibility for a decision that ultimately belongs to another person.
You Are Responsible for Faithfulness, Not the Outcome
This connects directly to what we discussed in the previous post about surrender.
Parents have responsibilities before God. We should teach our children His Word, model obedience, pray for them, love them, discipline them appropriately, bring them into fellowship with other believers, and point them toward Jesus.
God holds us responsible for how faithfully we fulfill those responsibilities, but He hasn’t given us the ability to make another person believe.
Paul described something similar when talking about his ministry:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6 (CSB)
That’s a verse I come back to often because it reminds me of the limits of my responsibility. I can plant, and someone else may water, but I cannot make anything grow. God does that.
There is tremendous freedom in understanding the difference.
It doesn’t mean we stop caring, nor does it mean we stop praying for someone who isn’t walking with Christ. Instead, it means we recognize the limits of our assignment.
Faithfulness belongs to us. The outcome belongs to God.
That’s surrender too.
What If Your Family Doesn’t Want to Hear It?
Maybe you’re trying to follow Christ, but your family isn’t interested. Your spouse doesn’t want to talk about God, your adult children roll their eyes when you mention church, or your teenager has decided Christianity is ridiculous. Perhaps your parents think you’ve become some kind of religious fanatic.
Constantly preaching at them probably isn’t going to help.
Instead, love them, pray for them, listen to them, and live consistently in front of them. Answer questions when they ask and admit when you’re wrong. Don’t compromise what Scripture says just to keep everybody comfortable, but don’t turn every disagreement into a theological cage match either.
Peter gave Christians instructions about influencing an unbelieving spouse:
“In the same way, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, even if some disobey the word, they may be won over without a word by the way their wives live when they observe your pure, reverent lives.” — 1 Peter 3:1–2 (CSB)
The immediate context is marriage, but there’s a broader principle worth noticing: how we live can make the gospel visible before someone is willing to listen to us talk about it.
Let Them See You Follow Jesus
Paul told the Corinthians:
“Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 11:1 (CSB)
That’s an intimidating verse because Paul was essentially willing to say, “Watch me follow Jesus.”
Could we say that to our families?
Not, “Watch me because I always get everything right.” None of us could honestly say that.
Instead, let them watch what happens when you get it wrong. Let your family see you apologize, forgive, pray, and open God’s Word when you don’t know what to do. They should see you worship, serve, give, trust God when you’re scared, and surrender when God’s way isn’t the way you would have chosen.
In other words, let them watch you follow Jesus.
That’s spiritual leadership.
Your Family Doesn’t Have to Look Perfect
I think the church sometimes unintentionally makes people feel like effective family discipleship requires a particular family structure: Dad, Mom, kids, family Bible study, and everyone holding hands around the kitchen table.
If that’s your family, thank God for it.
But maybe it isn’t. Mine wasn’t.
I grew up without a father. Later, I became a single father, while Wendy became a single mother. Eventually, two imperfect single-parent families became one imperfect blended family, and there were wounds we didn’t create and couldn’t completely heal.
Maybe your family has some of those wounds too. That doesn’t disqualify you from spiritually influencing the people God has put in your life.
You may be a single mom trying to raise children to know Christ or a dad doing it alone. Perhaps you’re a grandparent who has become the most consistent spiritual influence in your grandchildren’s lives. You could be an aunt or uncle whose niece or nephew actually listens when you talk, or an adult Christian living with family members who don’t know Christ at all.
Whatever your family looks like, start with whoever God has put in front of you.
Changing the World Starts Around the Kitchen Table
We’ve spent a lot of time in this series talking about what’s wrong with our culture. It’s easy to look at Washington, schools, entertainment, social media, politics, or younger generations and conclude that somebody needs to fix this mess.
Maybe.
But before we worry about changing everybody else’s family, we should look at our own. That doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed an outcome, because we aren’t.
We can’t make our children follow Christ, force our spouse to believe, or make our grandchildren love God. Neither can we argue our brother, sister, niece, nephew, or parent into surrendering to Jesus.
What we can do is faithfully follow Christ in front of them. We can teach God’s Word, talk naturally about Him, pray with them and for them, love them, serve them, forgive them, admit when we’re wrong, and let them see what a surrendered life actually looks like.
Then we trust God with what happens next.
I still pray for my children, and I still hope there comes a day when I see them sharing the love for God that Wendy and I tried to show them. Until then, I have to practice the very thing I wrote about in the last post: surrender.
Paul’s words remind me where my responsibility ends and God’s begins. Wendy and I planted. Other people have watered and may continue watering for years to come.
But God gives the growth.
That’s His job. Mine is to remain faithful.
If we’re serious about changing the world, the first people who should see evidence that Jesus is changing us are the people God has already put in front of us.
That’s where changing the world starts.
Continue the Start at Home Journey
This post is part of our Start at Home series, where we’re looking at God’s blueprint for changing a broken world. We’ve spent several posts looking inward at our own relationship with God. Now we’re turning toward the people He has already placed in front of us.
Your family doesn’t have to look perfect, and you don’t have to have all the answers. Your responsibility is to faithfully follow Christ, point the people you love toward Him, and trust God with the results.
Read the complete Start at Home series and follow the journey from the beginning.
Listen to the Companion Podcast
Each blog post in the Start at Home series is paired with companion episodes of the Disciple Blueprint Podcast. The podcast continues the conversation and explores these biblical truths from a different perspective.
Listen on your favorite major podcast platform or visit the Disciple Blueprint Podcast.
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You may not be able to control the choices your family makes, but you can faithfully show them what following Jesus looks like.
Start with the people God has already put in front of you.
