Review: Gospel-Centred Family by Ed Moll and Tim Chester

Ed Moll and Tim Chester have written Gospel-Centred Family, a book/workbook for Christian parents.

Ed is a vicar who blogs at Journeyman Preacher, who I was able to serve with on a CPAS venture last summer. Tim Chester is well known as an author and for his involvement with the Crowded House church planting initiative.

The book is twelve short chapters long, each including a short Bible study and questions for thought/application.

I'll readily admit that I'm not the target audience for this book, being married with no children. Nevertheless, I think this is a highly valuable book for parents, which throws a couple of sticks of gospel dynamite under the idols of our heart bound up in the issue of family. It consistently applies the gospel to all sorts of areas of Christian family life with the occasional surprising result.

Some particularly helpful topics covered include your ambitions for your children, enjoying them, and the importance of belonging to a family (the Church) beyond your family. This last point is particularly important to me, and I have experienced wonderful kindness from Church families in the past when they have included me in their lives. Chertsey Street Baptist Church in Guildford is remarkably good at this, incidentally.

I do have some minor quibbles/suggestions for improvement. This is still the most helpful book I've seen on the subject, and available at approximately £5 it's a steal. Before I mention my reservations, you really should go ahead and order it.

Buy it from the Good Book Company or 10ofThose now.

Done? Good.

There's a helpful review of the book at Reformissionary which touches upon one piece of advice in the book that I wonder about. But here are mine:

• Definition of the family: In the introduction, the authors state that families come in all sorts of different sizes, although no acknowledgement of no-children-yet families. Of course, since this is a parenting book that's not the biggest deal (although it leads to serious problems when considering public policy). However I wonder if this is the root cause of the second (and to my mind main issue):
  
  
• Male/Female Roles: Clearly, if you're writing for all sorts of family units, you might well refrain from talking too much about Mother and Father. But this is the normal family unit, established by God. A couple of times the authors get close to talking about this but seem to shy away.
  
  I think that both the authors would take complementarian positions on male and female roles in family and Church, but it doesn't seem to matter enough to make it into the book. But there are important questions about this area, which are close to the gospel concerns the authors clearly show.
  
  If we are to raise boys to become men who sacrificially love their wives like Christ loves the Church, our parenting may be different to them, than to girls who are to develop different skills and strengths (not to mention attractions, etc.)
  
  This may well be partly/largely due to Tim Chester only parenting girls and Ed Moll only parenting boys, which I believe is the case (from the back cover).
  
  Also relevant here is the potentially different roles of Mother and Father, in how they relate to each other in front of the children, and what differing roles they may play in parenting (e.g. discipline).
  
  These aren't obscure doctrines that make no practical difference, nor are they easily separated from gospel-centredness, being as they are, so closely related to the story of Christ and his bride.
  
  Some of these issues are covered briefly in the talks from Emmanuel Evangelical Church (Southgate)'s 2011 Family Conference. Listen to the mp3s here for extra credit.
  
  
• Extended family: by which I mean other people from Church. I've already mentioned that the points raised in chapter 11 are particularly good and helpful. This is really just an add-on that I'd like to have seen in the book. What do you do with childless couples (particularly those who want to have children, like myself and Adele, but who haven't yet been able to conceive)?
  
  Make sure you invite them too. They can even cook for you all at your house. Ask them to babysit (if they're anything like us, they'll be keen).
  
  I wonder if we can apply this more smartly in our church structures. Why do we need to organise small groups in Churches when God has organised them for us in families? Make sure everyone in the Church is adopted by a family and get them to eat Sunday lunch together each week. Make sure you talk some Bible while you're there (even if it's just going over the morning service's teaching). This would kill a lot of birds with one stone.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent book that I highly recommend. If every Christian parent in the UK read and tried to practise half of what's in this book, reformation would come quickly to our Church and country.