Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

The answer is yes. Discipling our children is not optional. If you have kids (or grandkids) you are discipling them. You might be discipling them for good or bad, but you are discipling them one way or another. There are at least four ways parents disciple their kids:

1. Accidental Discipleship.

Discipling is not always purposeful. Sometimes we disciple our children without them or us knowing it. For instance I remember as a little boy hanging around my dad during a work day at camp. On a coffee break a knot of guys told an off-color joke. I noticed that my father didn't join the guffaws. I watched him gently shift the conversation to a higher level. He was discipling me... accidentally. You and I have all kinds of opportunities like this to disciple our kids accidentally. More is caught than taught.

2. Discipleship Moments.

Have you had those moments when your child is especially open to you? You know, those half-minute windows when they are approachable? These are Discipleship moments and kids are open for influence... even if only for a moment. I remember discovering an item in my mother's grocery sack for which a clerk had forgotten to charge my mother. She said we could keep this and they would never know, but that would be wrong. She sent me back with the exact change. My mother was discipling me in integrity with that short sentence. With my own kids we did a lot of discipleship while we watched television. When we see something that is contrary to Christian values... we often make a momentary comment or corrective. Just for the moment. This is discipleship too.

3. Discipleship events.

Great celebration events have a major impact on kids. Consider the feasts and holy days of Old Testament times. These were perhaps the primary means of discipling Jewish children. Children love big events. For years my family got up at 4 a.m. on Easter to attend a city-wide Easter pageant. It was a purposeful annual event designed to disciple my kids. When my sons were little kids I promised each of them I'd take them on a father-son tour of Israel when they turned 12. They remembered. I had to keep my promise. It was a monumental spiritual event in the lives of both sons. This is Event discipleship and our busy lives don't allow enough of it.

4. Scheduled Discipleship

This is what we think of mostly when we hear the word Discipleship. It is meeting with your child on a scheduled basis and working through a Bible book or discipleship materials. The old fashioned family devotions were scheduled discipleship though, so few Christian families do that any more. If you don't do family devotions, what have you replaced them with? I know one father who got up every morning for Bible study with his son for two years straight. I talked with a mother who met for a half hour after school three days a week with her daughter. When each of my sons turned twelve I started taking them to a restaurant for a Discipleship Breakfast one day a week for two or three years. We studied verse by verse through Matthew, then Acts. We went through a couple of other discipleship books. We had fun. We just talked. I remember overhearing one of my sons talking about discipleship with another teen. He said, "My Dad discipled me." He wasn't talking about the more important means of discipleship—the informal, unscheduled, and often accidental kinds of discipleship. He was speaking of the formal breakfast times together. That's the advantage of scheduled discipleship—the child knows it and feels discipled.

Do you have kids at home? Grand kids nearby? Perhaps you need to think about adding some sort of formal scheduled discipleship for your child or grandchild? Family Devotions? A discipleship breakfast? Sunday Breakfast? After school? If so, don't delay too long. A lot of what you plan to do this year can be done even after the kids leave for college. But the window of opportunity to disciple your own kids closes fast. Faster than you'd think.

What have you done, or are doing, in discipling your own kids? We'd all like to hear your ideas.

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu