Neil O’Boyle: As parents ‘we couldn’t hide the fact that we were flawed, but we could be authentically flawed’

Neil, diving right in, what do you think is the key thing to remember in Christian parenting?

As a youth worker with over 30 years of experience, I am acutely aware that young people can spot artificial faith from a distance. They’re looking for something genuine, something lived rather than merely taught. So I’d say one of the most important things is living authentically in front of your children.

When raising our four children, my wife and I made a deliberate choice. Rather than creating a rigid spiritual environment where faith felt a routine, we chose to hold to the values of our faith, talk about the importance of faith, try to demonstrate our own disciplines through prayer, the Bible, church, and to be very honest about our challenges, our frustrations, and own our mess-ups. There seemed little point in hiding them; they all had a front row seat to our lives.

So, you were making a conscious decision to be very open and honest with your children?

Yes, choosing to live out our faith visibly, including the struggles. Our four children are all very different but each would learn more from what we did than what we said. When they saw us really struggling to forgive when wronged but still committed to working it through, arguing over who was going to pray because the other was too much in a bad mood about a current issue, and expressing disappointment that something hadn’t worked out the way we had prayed but was still trusting for the break through, they hopefully caught something.

we need to allow our children to come to things in their own way and in their own time

We got more wrong than we got right, but we didn’t shut conversations down on our own spiritual struggles; rather, we turned them into conversations and even invited them to comment on their insights and perceptions.

We couldn’t hide the fact that we were flawed, but we could be authentically flawed.

And how did they respond to that? Did they take the opportunity to engage with that and ask you about it?

Yes, we’ve always wanted them to know that no question is off limits and that we’d always treat their questions with respect. We have lived in five different nations, our eldest two have lived in all five with us, the other two joined us on the way. For most of their lives they were the minority, the marginalised, they faced challenges for being different, one of our children attended thirteen schools in her childhood. There have been real difficulties. So, with that in mind: nothing was ever off the table. Communication was far more important than any awkwardness.

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When faith is central to your life, then it’s normalised. Not in a weird or intense way, but a recognition that there is an additional member to our family, who is God. So, he wasn’t excluded, but very much included, and when we felt confused or uncertain, conversations went to God, or we pushed into the values of our faith while allowing our genuine feelings to surface. A comment during a film, a question prompted by a news story, or an observation while driving often opened doors to connecting life with faith.

Sounds like being abroad was a challenge in several ways.

It was amazing, but yes there were some challenges in terms of parenting. On of the issues we had was the choice of churches. When you live overseas in different speaking cultures, churches in English were few and far between. So we ended up taking them to some slightly questionable churches, and even more questionable children and youth provision – not in a cultic or abusive way but more on the weird and socially odd spectrum. We would laugh about it, commit to it and make regular checkins as to whether we were all on board with stuff.

And did you see their faith grow through this time and this way of doing faith in life?

Yes, we did, but what I would add at this point is that as parents we need to never have an idea in our minds of how things need to unfold, we need to allow our children to come to things in their own way and in their own time. I guess that perhaps the most challenging aspect of nurturing teenage faith is resisting the urge to force spiritual growth. Everything was an invitation. Sometimes when we asked if they wanted to talk about it, pray about it, leave it with Jesus, the answer was a very clear “no”. So, the no was always accepted. Where we talked further was when the no impacted others negatively, we felt that had to be circled back around to.

Do you ever think about what it would have been like if you’d have stayed in the UK in one place?

We always dreamt of creating a stable environment where our children would grow up in a family home, go to just 2 schools (primary and secondary), be close to grandparents, and belong to a great church where everyone grows up together. That didn’t happen. In fact, the exact opposite happened.

We knew with that lifestyle, statistically the odds of our kids keeping their faith were low and resentment was likely to be high. So, we thank God for where they are spiritually at now as adults. One has a master’s in theology, the other a degree, two are in youth ministry and our youngest is committed to outreach, especially among the homeless, while belonging to a local church. They all have a strong faith. The next question is always, “So what did you get right?” Honestly? Not a lot! When our kids are asked that question, it’s been reported back to us that they’ve said: “Mum and dad lived their faith but never made it weird or forced.” There is a part of me that wonders if that happened by chance because we didn’t really know what we were doing in that regard. So, it comes down to one real explanation: the grace of God.