by Brian and Beverly Chan
Editor’s Note: Audio from the conference can be found here; a brief overview of Dr. Baker and some of his additional materials can be found here.
1) What happened at the Grace Life Weekend Conference? Who was the speaker? What was the theme?
The Gracelifers had our annual three-day conference at church. Dr. Ernie Baker was the speaker and the theme was on “parenting as a discipleship ministry.”
2) What topics were covered in the main sessions?
The main topic was on keeping critical parts of your marriage and parenting front and center by organizing you family life around those things. This was huge as it provided the foundation from which we could build the rest of the material off of.
Other topics were parenting as a discipleship ministry, peacemaking as a family, the discipline of children, and a healthy dose on the importance of family worship.
3) How was the conference helpful, encouraging, and/or challenging?
First, the conference was helpful in affirming the things we have been taught at Lighthouse through the years. There wasn’t anything new that we haven’t already been taught by the current or previous leadership (Pastors Patrick Cho and John Kim). So in that sense, it was a great endorsement that the teaching we get at Lighthouse is reliable and trustworthy.
Second, it was encouraging to hear from someone who has gone through the journey of parenting, is now a grandparent, and can share reflections and lessons learned from this journey. While the same biblical principles apply, how it gets played out in life may differ from family to family. You’re really just looking for nuggets of practical suggestions that may or may not work for your family. Ultimately, you have to decide what to try out; there’s no chapter and verse for what date nights should look like or how family devotions should be conducted. So hearing what some of Dr. Baker’s family traditions were, how they handled certain discipline situations, how they worked on their marriage throughout that time, and how they handled different family struggles were all very challenging and encouraging to hear.
Lastly, Dr. Baker was a great speaker who was easy to follow and understand. He presented an even mix of theology and practical suggestions that we feel was worth the time.
4) What has been some of the positive feedback you’ve heard about the conference from others?
People are motivated. We understand how much we really are under-performing in the eyes of the Lord and how much work still has to be done in our own hearts before turning our attention to our children. None of us know how much time God has given us with our children and we definitely need to do a better job of redeeming our time with them. We need to strive to be more mature in following God’s prescription for parenting while understanding that ultimately, the salvation of our children is in God’s hands alone.
While the degradation of American culture does make it harder, we are still called to follow the timeless biblical principles for parenting. It’s encouraging to know that even though we fail time and time again, we serve a gracious God and are thankful for His continual forgiveness of our failures and shortcomings. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do and with the help of the Spirit and the encouragement of our peers at church, we’re ready to make the changes we need to make and help improve the spiritual health of the church one family at a time.