A Mother’s Kingdom Discipleship

January 22, 2025 | by Shela Ervin

Our Station

It has been three years since I followed my husband into local church ministry.

Our lives have been filled to the brim since we began the work of church revitalization here in our humble Massachusetts town. Beyond learning to love our unique local body, bringing administrative order, and prayerfully dreaming for the future health of our church, God has been kind to plop three vivacious children into our laps.

So here I am, a pastor’s wife, and a young mom to three under five. I’ve often described life these days as treading water in the deep end of mothering.

Our Work

Here’s the thing I’ve discovered about three little souls living in this home that we are building: Suddenly, the duty for kingdom discipleship has a newfound weight. The Shema that we read in Deuteronomy chapter six has flesh and bones: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” As a mother, I am to order our life together to show our children the living God.

This is a responsibility I can’t evade. Suddenly, my work at home calls me to a new level of consistency, discipline, readiness for repentance, and theological precision. What a call.

With newfound earnestness, I’ve sought to order our home’s rhythms to revolve around the intake of God’s Word and meditation on his precepts. In real life, that means a breakfast table time full of Scripture-memory chanting, hymn singing, and a daily proverb and blessing given by Dad. It means family worship before bedtime cuddles each night. It means a conversationally rich life in which we talk about what God’s Word says about, well, everything.

With increasing sobriety, I’ve begun to notice the influence of my own holiness on their view of the Christian life. Because in our home, we sin a lot. We sin against the Lord by neglecting to love him supremely. We sin against each other by being selfish and impatient. But with gospel grace coursing through our hearts, my husband, Jeremy, and I repent repeatedly and wholeheartedly, to each other, and to our children. We are cultivating in our home what we pray is the fragrance of Christian humility, truth telling, and love.

Our Day Off

One weekend this past summer on a family outing, I was profoundly encouraged in my work of daily discipleship.

On one of Jeremy’s days off, our family drove down to Newport, Rhode Island, to get together with several pastor family friends, all graduates of The NETS Center for Church Planting and Revitalization. We enjoyed time together at the beach, a visit to our friend’s church building, a stroll downtown, and a sunset pizza picnic as the parents talked and the kids ran around.

After our visit, it was most natural for us to explain to our young children that each of these dads have the same job—they are all pastors. So-and-so’s dad and so-and-so’s dad all get to proclaim the gospel every Sunday at church and take care of God’s people.

My heart warmed as I explained to our children that one of Dad’s friends proclaims the gospel in Massachusetts, while another friend proclaims the gospel in Connecticut, and another in Rhode Island. Just like our family proclaims the gospel in the South Coast of Massachusetts.

Suddenly, our children had a flesh and blood picture of men and their families who live to build up Christ’s kingdom. In their small but ever expanding worlds, their point of reference for this life we live in Christ now extends past the walls of our home, and to other towns and places.

Our Realization

If the discipleship of our children doesn’t take them to the end of the matter, the end of all things, it is not faithful discipleship. 

The end of the matter is that God is glorifying himself in all of creation by redeeming and recreating it through Christ the King. All of our lives here fit into the movement of this cosmic story and its eventual end.

Likewise, the gospel we share with our children must not ultimately be a message they can exchange for a ticket to heaven if they don’t know what heaven is for. They must know, from our teaching and our living, that the story unfolding today is the Story of God, with the gospel message telling everyone who will hear, that the kingdom is here.

The ordinary men and women we live and worship with are living toward that great kingdom. Dad’s ordinary friends who pastor are working each week to build up that great kingdom. The missionaries we pray for are proclaiming the same good news that Jesus is coming soon to make all things new. Because of the King who is coming, we read, and pray, and fill up our hearts with hope in his Word at the breakfast table.

Our Commitment

So with hearts renewed, my husband and I, like many faithful parents we know, are committed to discipling our children in obedience to God’s command. We are committing to teach them diligently, telling them when we sit in the house, and when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise, what our gracious King has done, and much more, what he will do.

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About Shela Ervin