Sticky Faith is an excellent resource and a tool that every parent should have in their library. Powell and Clark and certainly done their research well in the topics that they cover in Sticky Faith.
The premise of Sticky Faith is to provide ideas and suggestions of ways that parents and communities can enable their children to become grounded in their Christian faith as they grow into adulthood. The obvious goal is for our children to come to an understanding and have a relationship with Christ for themselves and not simply because it is what their parents practice.
The ideas in this book were excellent. The focus is on not just preaching at your kids or just letting them watch you live your life, but on building strong relationships with them. By creating a safe environment where our kids feel that they can have ongoing conversation and dialogue about what is going on in their lives. Boundaries are clearly set, yet we help our kids have an identity of who they are as a person and who we are as a family.
While family relationships are emphasized as vital to the success of our childen, I really appreciated the concepts presented of having a "sticky web" or a community of people who are also committed to investing in your children and their success. The authors presented some helpful ideas of having a base of several families who you are connected to and together, these families commit to be there for the other families and their children as they walk out life together. At times, our children learn better from others and so I thought that this idea of giving our children trustworthy people that they can go to throughout their life to be essential to our children's development. Also, I appreciated the ideas that they authors gave of how churches can come together and provide our children with ways to be involved and stay connected during their teen and college years.
A lot of emphasis was placed on how to help our kids through their college years. We see that many times, students who seem to be grounded in their faith throughout high school often fall away when they go away to college. In college, they are now responsible for themselves and their own decisions. It is imperative that we assist our children through this phase of their life. Sticky Faith provides many wonderful and helpful ideas to allow us to do this.
I have to say that I was extremely pleased with Sticky Faith and the resources that it provided. The author also included more details about their research in the appendix of the book, which I felt shed more light on their findings. They also list their website for additional information.
I am thankful for the opportunity to review this book for Zondervan. I was not compensated for my review nor was I under obligation to provide a positive review.
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