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The Home Team: Spiritual Practices for a Winning Family
Revell 219 pages 2004 copyright
219 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 30, 2023
Adams does a great job of providing a framework of values that families can pull from to teach and bring up children in a Godly way. It's not always easy to be a parent, but there are lots of ideas in this book for how to instill quality Christian values as children grow and develop throughout their most formative years.
January 24, 2015
The Home Team by Nate Adams
I discussed this book with my daughter-in-law who has a four year old son and 1 year old daughter. After sharing with her some of the following extracts from the book she said that the only things this book would do for her would be to make her feel hopelessly inadequate as a parent and that to put it into practice was just not reality.
Areas covered in the book:
• The Practice of Reading Together - this according to the author would be reading the bible and devotionals every evening and should the children become inattentive warning them that there would be a quiz at the end. No mention of reading any other material eg. fun stories like Cat in the Hat.
• Telling the Stories - this according to the author means every evening before anyone is allowed to leave the table after a meal they have to describe in detail and respond to any questions about something that happened that day. Most families are hardly coping with getting the meal on the table between homework and meetings.
• Following the Leader - this means making the weekly Sabbath "pleasantly nonnegotiable". This is not a bad idea until you read to what lengths the author will go to make this happen. When they cannot make church back from a trip they have church in the car and the order of worship is planned before the trip! I found this extremely legalistic.
• The Practice of Travelling Together - only Christian tapes and CDs are listened to in the car. How about exposing kids to other forms of good music?
• The Practice of Hurting Together was the most bizarre! The family dog gets knocked over by a car and it's leg is broken. The author chooses the family devotions that night to discuss the fate of the dog. All the time leaving his family anxious that he (as leader!) is not going to allow the dog to get an operation. He starts by painting "a pretty harsh, dim picture of the beloved family pet" and when the faces of his family were starting "to cloud up" he decides that this was the teachable moment, the time to make the point and gives a mini sermon on Romans 5! He sees it as an unexpected opportunity that his kids suffered the daylong anguish of not knowing whether he (the dog) was going to live or die. And says that his pain (the author) came from the hundreds of dollars that suddenly left them without even bothering to take the dog with them (meaning the cost of fixing the dog instead of the dog dying). No mention of the heartache to his family should this have been the case!
Red flags for me before buying the book would have been that the author was affiliated to the Southern Baptist Convention and that he used the book entitled Raising a Modern Day Knight as reference.
It is a book full of good spiritual practices but would it result in a Winning Family? I believe it could leave parents feeling defeated, worn out, unable to reach the bar, inadequate as parents in what is already a very stressful world in which to bring up children. Bringing up children in a Christian way can be a lot more fun and less legalistic.
I discussed this book with my daughter-in-law who has a four year old son and 1 year old daughter. After sharing with her some of the following extracts from the book she said that the only things this book would do for her would be to make her feel hopelessly inadequate as a parent and that to put it into practice was just not reality.
Areas covered in the book:
• The Practice of Reading Together - this according to the author would be reading the bible and devotionals every evening and should the children become inattentive warning them that there would be a quiz at the end. No mention of reading any other material eg. fun stories like Cat in the Hat.
• Telling the Stories - this according to the author means every evening before anyone is allowed to leave the table after a meal they have to describe in detail and respond to any questions about something that happened that day. Most families are hardly coping with getting the meal on the table between homework and meetings.
• Following the Leader - this means making the weekly Sabbath "pleasantly nonnegotiable". This is not a bad idea until you read to what lengths the author will go to make this happen. When they cannot make church back from a trip they have church in the car and the order of worship is planned before the trip! I found this extremely legalistic.
• The Practice of Travelling Together - only Christian tapes and CDs are listened to in the car. How about exposing kids to other forms of good music?
• The Practice of Hurting Together was the most bizarre! The family dog gets knocked over by a car and it's leg is broken. The author chooses the family devotions that night to discuss the fate of the dog. All the time leaving his family anxious that he (as leader!) is not going to allow the dog to get an operation. He starts by painting "a pretty harsh, dim picture of the beloved family pet" and when the faces of his family were starting "to cloud up" he decides that this was the teachable moment, the time to make the point and gives a mini sermon on Romans 5! He sees it as an unexpected opportunity that his kids suffered the daylong anguish of not knowing whether he (the dog) was going to live or die. And says that his pain (the author) came from the hundreds of dollars that suddenly left them without even bothering to take the dog with them (meaning the cost of fixing the dog instead of the dog dying). No mention of the heartache to his family should this have been the case!
Red flags for me before buying the book would have been that the author was affiliated to the Southern Baptist Convention and that he used the book entitled Raising a Modern Day Knight as reference.
It is a book full of good spiritual practices but would it result in a Winning Family? I believe it could leave parents feeling defeated, worn out, unable to reach the bar, inadequate as parents in what is already a very stressful world in which to bring up children. Bringing up children in a Christian way can be a lot more fun and less legalistic.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews